The Benefaktor (AKA the former Rev K_____)(*) and I were chatting on the phone mid-September 2023. I was itching to hang up, but needed The Benefaktor’s kash to allow me to print my book. Bandwidth was also a problem deep in rural Badenoch. He would do the final editing, proof reading, and upload the text of my first book (Grapefruit Are Not The Only Bombs 2023) into a self-publishing website. But even with his help time was running out.
He was giving me feedback about the book and fanzine I had sent him. He had flicked through the Pete Robinson KLF fanzine, and had put that to recycling. I recoiled at this news, and while we talked I starting googling kollektion dates for recycling in his part of Edinburgh, planning its retrieval.
He was now on to 45, the Bill Drummond klassik from 2000. The Benefaktor had read it, researched the references, and taken kopious notes. He was talking at length about Richard Long and his own trips to Iceland. And then he was jumping around a series of numbers, from 14 to 6,250 and back to 45. He had carefully listened to a couple of albums by The Residents and The Bunnymen. Even at 83 (as he is now), The Benefaktor does not do things by halves.
None of these ideas had konnekted with The Benefaktor though. He mansplained that as a minister you are always looking for ways to brighten up otherwise rather dull texts, and that such tricks, pranks and literary sleights of hand were old hat to him. I reminded him that I am a minister’s wife and have been party to such rushed Saturday evening schemes for many years (most recently making up a faked tin of kat food out of mashed up Snickers bars). That stopped The Benefaktor in his tracks for a couple of sekonds, after a bit of “of course, of course” and over-apologising. Seizing my opportunity I asked if anything had drawn him into Bill Drummond’s kritically aklaimed book.
To which he answered immediately: “Great Expectations”. Attrakted by the Dickens title, The Benefaktor had “rather enjoyed” this, particularly the sentence: “Underlying all this was the fact that I realised that I was never going to cut it as a painter”. The Benefaktor mourned the lack of artistic output in his long life. Instead, he would fund my artistik endeavours, living vikariously.
GANTOB
17 November 2023
* See Kompanion Volume
Cover image of pirate cat with bins, may or may not represent recycling bins, depending on your local authority area.
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