JR has been a regular contributor to GANTOB since its inception, with a question in the first book, contributions to the second book through the “Demokratisation” of December 2023, and contributions towards 52 Pamphlets, which will ultimately become the third book. He sent me his new mind expanding piece (below) yesterday. The day before, I had sent him a spare pamphlet, pencil, tea slip and annotated sheep.

Throughout the GANTOB project JR and I have had a to and fro of ideas. We discovered that we had both read Thomas Pynchon’s 1966 book The Crying of Lot 49. We learned of our shared love of Vienna and the art of Hundertwasser. We exchanged photos and pictures of Antony Gormley sculptures last summer. And we have also used some of the same project management techniques professionally. I could go on.

There are so many references and hooks in JR’s piece below that I encourage you to search for any phrase or word that you find interesting and reflect in the comment section below. In particular, I draw your attention to the word “mondegreen”. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song”. The word’s origin is rather marvelous. The Oxford Dictionary gives it as “Mondegreen, a misinterpretation of the phrase laid him on the green, from the traditional ballad ‘The Bonny Earl of Murray’”.

Some enthusiastic GANTOBers have, in the past 24 hours, sourced a few examples of modegreens that are included at the end of this post. But for now, over to JR…

KODAKROAMIN’ FOR MADELEINES (by JR)

Time passes. Circumstances alter. People change.

Time isn’t holding up. Time isn’t after us.

Time is an estimate. Time is an asterisk*

Forever changes.

The ineluctable modality of the visible, while vision remains.

Some days we live like there’s no tomorrow

Some days we move through solid air.

Rewind. Distract. Go back. Let’s take the boat out (don’t wait for the darkness). Search for our personal madeleines. Fire up the Time Teleskope and let’s go Kodakroamin’

Get the box down from the loft. My God it’s hot up there! Blow off the dust, mess up the table. Open the packets one by one.

“Kodakchrome gives us the nice bright colours, gives us the greens of summers, makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah” (*Paul Simon copyright 1973)

The heat has stuck the photographs together. Should I peel them apart or soak them? Can’t wait to soak them all. Peel. They tear sometimes. The colour of one sticks to the back of another.  Damn, patience is a virtue but when was I ever virtuous?

There are so many. Can’t find the right ones. They must be here somewhere. Time plays tricks. Did I ever actually photograph it? The big disc, The Sun Disk? Arnie Tomato’s magnum opus in Piazza Meda. The sculpture that captivated us. The one we returned to. The Time Teleskope does not lie. I know we were there. More than once we stopped the car on the way home in the small hours. Parked the 124 illegally, crossed to the island and pushed the heavy disc round and round on its axis. Until the bearing seized sometime round the winter of 1984. Sometimes we could catch the first rays of the morning on the bronze, bounced them round the piazza. Like reflecting sunlight off your watch and annoying the teacher in the classroom. We would have been too drunk to photograph it then, unless one of us had a pocket point and click. But if we didn’t do it at night I know I went there with the Pentax and took “proper” pictures. These are what I’m searching for. The smell of a life in Milan 40 years ago. I’m having a U2 moment, but I will find them sooner or later. She will see them again.

Meanwhile, under the photographs we find a small box. Inside is a bronze disc. A medal made by Arnaldo Pomodoro for the city. It has some heft. It’s tactile, sits well in the hand. That will do. Not a photograph but still a Milanese madeleine. She can hold it if the darkness comes. Feel the textures, smell the metal.

To the next box. Smaller, fewer photographs. Fuji film from a different continent. 5 years younger. Less familiar images, not so much time spent in Japan. Not quite holiday snaps but there’s a definite “prove I was there” feel to some of them. Pieces of machinery, the insides of factories. Just in Time, Kanban, Kaizen, engines, motorbikes, trains, ships half built. Eventually it is there in my hand. A photograph of The Sleeping Dragon, (which may be a misremembered name but I’m holding it). North Kyoto. The finest arrangement of rocks and stones you will ever see (Is there water underground, under the rocks and stones?). Ryoan-ji Zen temple. The silence. The stillness. The calm that comes from clarity in the mind. And vice versa. Contemplate the stones. I can hold the picture again now and with the Time Teleskope I can send my mind back. I have found a Japanese madeleine to savour.

We stop now, for today. We have madeleines to feed on, mementos to hold, emotions to unpack and new dreams to build. Time you can enjoy is never wasted.

JR, 28 June 2024

• Note from JR: I discovered today that I have a long standing “mondegreen”. I thought the line from “Once in a Lifetime” was “Time is an estimate”, but the lyrics on David Byrne’s official website say “Time is an asterisk”. Other lyric sites have “Time isn’t after us”. Irritatingly the lyric sheet in my copy of “Remain in Light” does not give all the lyrics, it truncates after the “Same as it ever was” repetition. I listened to the live version on “Stop Making Sense” just now and it’s hard to tell.

JR and I discussed some of the points further.

About mondegreen JR writes: “It really is a great word isn’t it. I love the way it came about. I’m sure you’ve looked it up.

I must be prone to them. It was only when discussing Bowie’s Jean Genie with Paul Hanley one day in about 2010 that I discovered that the Jean Genie loves chimneystacks. I always thought he “loves your moustache”. Funny how confirmation bias works. It seemed much more logical to me. I mean does any other pop song mention chimneystacks? (Or, comes to think of it, moustaches? 😀).

I still think “time is an estimate” makes sense, and that’s partly why I wear a Picto watch.

I like Picto watches. The dial with the dot rotates to mark the hour instead of a traditional hand. Created by 2 Danes.
“Picto® was created by the two young hippies Steen and Erling in the 80s. In a time when everyone was busy talking about ‘time is money’, and ‘every minute counts’, the two creators went in the diametrically opposite direction. With Picto® you are encouraged to set your own agenda. Here, the day is not divided into minutes and seconds. It is rather an indication of time.”

Or in other words “time is an estimate”!

And some other examples:

This one is from Slipmatt, via csidewolf:

“There are two types of people in this world… Those who know the lyrics to ‘Freed From Desire‘ [by Gala] are ‘My love has got no money he’s got his strong beliefs’ and those who think a ‘Trombelese’ is an actual thing”.

And another from csidewolf: Paul McCartney in Wings’ Live and Let Die, via podcast 25 of Chart Music: the TOTP podcast, and detailed further on a fan site:
“this ever changing world in which we live in”; or is it possibly “in which we’re living”?

NIk G aka YMoF has this one from The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You“, the theme song for Friends. He writes, it’s not “when the rain starts to fall.” It’s “when the rain starts to pour”.

Gaynor writes that her “favourite misheard lyrics are from Pearl Jam’s song Black. To be fair Eddie [Vedder] is famed for his sometimes unintelligible mutters and growls and any PJ track is a bit sing the screams, job’s a good un!
Black has been with me for ever. In fact they played it at Manchester on Tuesday and I cried a bit I was so overwhelmed. This misheard lyric is impossible to sing correctly even when you know the correct lyrics:

“Sheets of empty canvas untouched sheets of clay
HER LEGS spread out before me as her body was there”

or

“Sheets of empty canvas untouched sheets of clay
WERE LAID spread out before me as her body was there”

The second is correct, but I don’t know anyone who sings the correct words.
Ed’s a mumbler……

Also theres an unspoken rule as Eddie is so baritone. When ever you say Eddie, it has to be your deepest EDDDDDIIIEEEE.

And finally, a few from me: “Winthrop my babop” instead of “Withdraw my labour”, in Scottish band Hue and Cry’s Labour of Love. Not much of the song makes sense without a lyrics sheet, and I say that as a Scot.

For a few months it was “agents of groove groove” rather than the correct version which I need not repeat here.

A source of debate with The Benefaktor is The Electric Light Orchestra’s Can’t Get it Out of My Head, with either “Walking on a wave she came” (my view) or “Walking on a wave’s chicane” (The Benefaktor’s preference). You decide.

And Dexy’s wonderful song Now, which begins with the lyric “Well it was way back in the 40’s from the western part you came”, which I have messed around so much over the years that when I find myself singing in the shower it becomes “Well it was way back in the 40’s when the circus came to town”, and sometimes other versions entirely. Lyrics are there to be reinvented, even when it drives everyone around you up the wall.

Mondegreens are positively encouraged.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this pamphlet. There is still time to contribute to the final two pamphlets, as long as you have your text and/or image in by 23:23 on 30 June 2024.

Pamphlet 50 of the 52 Pamphlets

The question I would like to answer is question 20 – ‘Where is your green door?’

I remember once hearing someone say words to the effect that “anything asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence.” Well, by similar reasoning I believe it is fair to say that any question posed cryptically or ambiguously, can also be answered cryptically and ambiguously.

I think I know what this question is getting at. I suspect the mind behind this question had their own ‘green door’. It sounds like a gateway to another world – a place of safety to retreat to in childhood. The green door led to that special place that was just yours – seemingly unnoticed and unclaimed by any other. 

This seems a more plausible and more fruitful interpretation than to suppose that the green door the questioner had in mind was the same one Shakin’ Steven’s sang about.

At the funeral of an old school friend, his best mate spoke movingly about the garden shed the two of them shared as kids making model aeroplanes in the summer holidays. They’d grown up together, started careers and families and remained close. He said whenever the two of them got drunk and sentimental, it was always that garden shed they both wished they could return to. Whatever the actual colour of their shed door was, it was their green door, in this sense.

But I’m just unpacking the question here – interpreting it and not answering it. 

Where is it? Well, unsurprisingly, it was close to my childhood home.  

I come from a fairly religious background, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I just thought everyone went to church, because everybody did (or seemed to) in our town when I was growing up. It was the sort of place where, on Monday mornings, the teachers would ask the children to raise their hands if they had been to mass the day before, and most of us did. Then they would start with the questions. “What time? Was it Fr. Tarrant or Fr O’Kelly who said mass? What was the Gospel reading? What was the Psalm?”  

My dad, who’d been to the same school years before, told me that in his day, those who didn’t raise their hands to confirm their attendance at mass received six of the best. That practice had stopped by the time I started secondary school, but the stern, disapproving looks were still ongoing. A friend whose father was a local councillor once told me that our hometown had the highest concentration of Catholic churches per 100,000 of the population anywhere in the UK, but I don’t know if that’s still the case. 

My parents were perfectly normal, ordinary working-class people. My father was a carpenter, and my mother was a secretary. I was neither privileged nor deprived, although our house was lacking in some of the mod-cons that I could see in the homes of my school friends, not because we couldn’t afford them, but rather because my parents had that frugal, ‘waste-not-want-not’ dislike of consumer goods you sometimes find in religious people. 

At mass on Sundays, I’d see most of the other kids from my class with their families. My mum seemed to know lots of their mums from “The Mothers” – that is, the Union of Catholic Mothers, or U.C.M. These were the ladies who really ran the parish. They organised all the jumble sales and other fundraisers.  

Every year, we’d send a small group of sick and elderly folk on pilgrimage to Lourdes, with a group of volunteers from the ranks of ‘the Mothers’, who would push the wheelchairs and care for their charges. My mum and my aunt were especially active in all that. Growing up around all this, I had a real sense of a close-knit and functioning community. By face if not by name, I knew most people from my school, parish or estate – a Venn diagram of those 3 categories would almost be a circle. 

Despite my flippant joke a few paragraphs back, ‘the green door’ I first thought of when pondering this question was not Shakin’ Stevens’, it was the green door of “the green hut”, which served as the community centre for Our Lady’s parish. It was here that parish jumble sales would take place if it was raining, or where I would sit with my classmates to eat sandwiches, jelly and cake after we’d made our first confession, first Holy Communion, been confirmed etc.  

While writing the above, I’ve just had a flashback to a time when our family arrived at the church on a winter evening after dark because Fr O’Callaghan had asked my dad to help with some carpentry, and my brother and I were drafted in to help him. The admirably named ‘green hut’ was the place where my dad set up his makeshift workshop to repair the Stations of the Cross. 

But although the green door of the green hut was the first thing to occur to me, it is not the answer I choose to give. I’m just setting the scene.  

It’s not an original observation to note that we tend to look back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, and maybe that’s what I’m doing here. Perhaps all was not really well for everyone once they were behind closed doors, even green ones. My adult cynicism tells me that that golden age is really a myth borne of childhood naivety. Doubtless there were those in my hometown who must have suffered, who were forced to hide some core aspect of themselves from their socially conservative neighbours.  

Again, as I write this I’m having another flashback to a time when my brother and I had to share a bedroom for the night (with me on the floor, since it was his room and he was the oldest) because my mother had taken in one of the other U.C.M. ladies who arrived at our door in tears, and whose husband was a heavy drinker. Their son was in my class, and I also remember a conversation with my mum, the gist of which was ‘don’t talk to him or anyone else about this matter’.  

Years later, home from university and visiting my parents, I glanced at a copy of their free, local newspaper and saw that this same lad had died from complications arising from a heroin addiction. He’d always been a troubled lad. Our headmaster had once arranged for him to ‘shadow’ me for a whole term in our final year at school. I was supposed to be a good influence on him. After a couple of days, he confided that this whole arrangement was made because he’d attacked his father with a knife. But I digress. 

So, there may have been a hidden darkness in my hometown, but it was well-hidden and relatively rare. This is the context. This is where I found my green door – that place I want to return to when I’m indulging my sentimental and nostalgic side. It was in my aunt and uncle’s back garden. They lived a few minutes away, in the biggest and most expensive house in the area. Its previous occupants had been the Kumars -“Dr Kumar” and “Dr (Mrs) Kumar” was how their names appeared on their respective doors at the local GP’s surgery. I mention this because my late aunt, bless her, was enormously proud to live in a house that was previously owned by Drs, and was sure to tell any visitors. My uncle, I was told, was “very clever” and “had a very good job working for I.C.I.”  

As befits the status of a house once owned by two doctors (can you imagine?!), it had an exceptionally large garden, like no other I had ever seen. My aunt and uncle would never have designed a garden like the one left behind by the Kumars. Often, if I was bored or at a loose end, I’d wander off down the road and ask to play in their garden. They never said no, and I was usually offered a glass of cordial and a biscuit. My cousins were older than me and had flown the nest, so I had the garden all to myself. 

There were two trees at the end of garden (I should say, there still ARE two trees at the end of the garden, but I haven’t visited them in many years). On the left and to the fore was a well-established weeping willow. Set further back behind the willow, and a few shrubs and bushes, was an apple tree. The overhanging branches and long leaves of the willow formed a canopy, beneath and behind which I could disappear completely. 

The apple tree was my favourite thing, though not because of its bounty. These were “cooking apples” and “not for eating,” I was told, which never made any sense to me, and still doesn’t, but I accepted it. The appeal of the apple tree was the ease with which it could be climbed. It had the most convenient arrangement of sturdy branches. I could reach almost to the very top with little effort or risk. I never once lost my footing. 

The tree’s summit gave me a magnificent view of the neighbourhood, but also a magnificent feeling. Not a gloating or superior, ‘king-of-the-castle’ sort of feeling though. Now that I come to describe it, I realise it’s hard to put it into words. Partly it was the fun of being able to watch people passing by, unaware that they were being observed. No one ever thought to look up. I remained unnoticed. 

But it was also the joy of feeling that I’d discovered a secret place that only I knew of or how to reach. It gave me a unique perspective on things, literally and metaphorically.

To the west, I could see the spire of St Michael’s church, poking out above the houses just down the road. Sometimes the parishioners of St Michaels would process to our church (I think on a particular holy day, but I don’t recall which one) and both parishes would have a shared mass celebrated by both priests. And sometimes the parishioners of Our Lady’s would process to St Michael’s church. I was always amused on these occasions to note that “we” would all sit on one side of the church, and “they” would all sit on the other.  

Over to the north, Our Lady’s Church had no spire. It was a modern rather than traditional design, but its tall, pointed roof was just about visible, beyond the park and the rows of semi-detached houses. Experience had taught me that I wouldn’t need to wait long before something interesting happened down below. I could stare and eavesdrop to my heart’s content, and no one would tell me stop. 

On one occasion, up in the apple tree when I must have been about 10, I saw the familiar figure of Father O’Callaghan arrive at our gate, and knock on our door. My dad answered and invited him inside. Now, I wanted to avoid Fr O’Callaghan because the last time I was in his company he tried to persuade me to become an altar boy, which I really didn’t want to do.

But it was getting close to dinner time and I had to go home soon. So I kept watch hoping that he’d leave before I really had to go, but he didn’t. I walked in to find him and dad creased up laughing, almost uncontrollably. I’d never seen the old priest like that before and it was a bit of shock. My dad refused to tell me what they were laughing about.

A few years later I asked him about it and he explained that it was soon after Pope John Paul II’s visit to the UK, including a trip to Liverpool, where the Reverend Ian Paisley and company had set up amongst the crowds of well-wishers, essentially to shout abuse. Apparently Fr O’Callaghan had been telling my dad the content of some of the football-chant replies to Reverend Paisley. 

For a few years before puberty struck and everything changed, the garden with its apple tree and vantage point was my green door – a safe space that was mine alone, where I could play as I wanted to without any fear of mockery. With a pair of binoculars and two small pocket guidebooks obtained for a few pence at a parish jumble sale, I taught myself the names of common British birds and trees. Sometimes I would fashion a makeshift den beneath the willow tree and spend all afternoon reading there. 

Where is your green door? My answer to this could not be given by GPS coordinates; it could not be found on an OS map. It is not really a location. My green door lives in my mind. It is a state of mind. It is a feeling, an emotion or sensation. It is the sense of freedom that comes from the absence of any anxieties. It is a fond memory.  

THE STUDY MASTER

26 JUNE 2024

Number 49 of the #52Pamphlets

An answer to question 20

If you would like to answer one of the 23 Questions, there’s still time. Answers must be received by 23:23 on 30 June 2024.

I am tidying. I have lost one of the tiny “00” gauge sheep that I had marked with a muted postal horn, ready for The KLFRS gathering in Liverpool this weekend. I had been moving some of the key objects from my study to the sitting room where Ali was pulling on his boots ahead of a day on the neighbouring croft. I wish he would do that in the lobby. Rushing as usual, and fully aware that I was taking a risk, I loaded everything up to try it in one move. Ten tiny sheep, a much bigger lamb and a ewe, some pin badges and pencils, lined up on a copy of a book by Georgiana M.M. Colvile, ready to set up a tableau alongside some jarred creations from the difficult second GANTOB volume. There were ten other tiny sheep, still in their packet, yet to mark up, and another large lamb that has been marked up and sent ahead already. But at that precise moment, I was concentrating on my misjudged task. Angled awkwardly as I turned the door handle I felt them shift and slip on the slim paperback. Down they went – a pencil, a couple of badges and the off-white flash of a sheep (horned, but not on his head).

The first paragraph of #48 of the 52 Pamphlets

GILLIAN 21 JUNE 2024

The full version of this pamphlet will be distributed at The KLFRS gathering, Liverpool, this weekend. There will be 23 copies on various colours of card. They will be in a bag marked “tuna”. There will also be a grapefruit tin, 22 sheep (one having already wandered), 23 pencils with GANTOB stickers, a kollektive barrel pencil sharpener, and 23 green tea slips for you to draw on. And some badges. I have no idea when or where this will happen. The bag is on its way to a regular GANTOB contributor who will do the job on behalf of GANTOBers everywhere.

The final version of this pamphlet, and the revelations alluded to within, will be in the final GANTOB book, 52 Pamphlets. You can earn your copy of that book by making a written or artistic contribution by 23:23GMT on 30 June 2024. Details about how you can contribute via the blog menu, under 9 Missing Years, 52 Pamphlets and 23 Questions. Good luck.

Caroline – one of the earliest GANTOBers – is the first to complete questions to each of the 23 questions.

There have, of course, been answers from plenty of others along the way. I am going to need to set up a database to keep track of them all and work out if there is a way to cross reference them. There is plenty of time to answer the 23 questions in your own right – the strictly applied deadline is 23:23 on 30 June 2024.

Over to you Caroline.

Question 1 – Is work important for the soul?

Work is important for the soul, absolutely.  There are many days when it’s awful, you feel unappreciated and frustrated at inequity but it gets you up and out and teaches you values and gives you a place in society. 

Question 2 – What fuels your passion for blogging so?

I have no real passion for blogging.  I am enjoying the Gantob experience but feel inadequate to blog myself and have little time to explore others’ blogs. Some blogs are just pish anyway. 

Question 3 -What is the male ego?

I don’t understand what the male ego is. I think it’s confused with id.  I grew up in a strange family where I stayed with my father and my 2 brothers after my mother left to have a midlife crisis. My sister, the eldest of 4, had already left. We lived on a farm.  My best friend was a boy. I’ve never been a girly girl. Gender stereotypes never fitted my life and I feel when people talk about the male ego, I am only guessing they mean more the desires that to me are the id.  I did marry a misogynist pig but I think he was just small minded and thick rather than his issues being about male ego. 

Question 4 – What is rhythm?

Rhythm is balance, joy, energy, grounding.

Question 5 – Is it mathematics?

Mathematics is a nightmare.  Beautiful, smart, nightmare.  Not for me. 

Question 6. Is all that glitters gold? 

No.  All that glitters covers more than gold.  Personalities can glitter. 

Question 7. When was the skull?

The Skull? A British horror film from the 60s or 1994 when I cracked my coccyx giving birth to my son. 

Question 8. Do sparling still return to the River Cree, Galloway, each spring?
Never been to the River Cree, but I hope the sparlings are still there each spring. 

Question 9. What are the two sides of the same coin?

Yin and Yang.

Question 10. What is Addiktion?

Addiktion – this is what I experienced last summer having been drawn into the Gantob experience by random luck and was hooked, I craved more and took time off my work at short notice to pursue it because it was all that mattered and it gave me such a high. 

Question 11. What is the question?

The question is impossible.  More answers bring more questions, it’s perpetual. 

Question 12. When is enough?

Enough – when you’re about to break and just want to cry, or when you’re so content you just don’t need any more. 

Question 13. What is the Root of Forty?

6.3245.  Or your conception. 

Question 14. Is modern art just bits I could knock up in my shed or does it have deeper meaning?

Modern art is shite.  Literally. – elephant dung on canvas at Modern Art One, Edinburgh. I could get the dog to crap on a blanket.  An edgy woman’s unmade bed? Deeper meaning – lazy cow.  I could knock up far more interesting things in the shed. 

Question 15. What is melodic?

Melodic – sounds that come together and speak to your soul. 

Question 16. Does anybody have the sheet music (or the musical notation) for The KLF’s (or even Acid Brass’s) What Time Is Love?

No. 

Question 17. Have pamphlets ever changed the world, and how would we know?
Pamphlets have the power to change people, inform people and people can make changes to the world and we would know because people talk. 

Question 18. When is addiction?

Addiction is when you need something to fill a void, to make you better, physically, mentally, spiritually and you can’t keep going without getting it. 

Question 19. Is it ever time for the Teletubbies?

Sadly, yes, I think there is.  Just because some may not like or understand it, others do so yes, there must be a time for Teletubbies.  (probably ruins my modern art answer).

Question 20. Where is your green door?

My green door is the door to a barn on a farm in the Scottish Borders. I wasn’t allowed to be there but it provided great excitement and opened to lots of adventures, to me it was like the wardrobe to Narnia. 

Question 21. So what?

What? Get on board, enjoy the ride.

Question 22. GANTOBBING: How was it for you?

GANTOBBING was fab!!  I felt energised, happy and youthful.  Come the winter it became a source of stress and guilt and I struggled with my addiktion, life was getting in the way but gantobbing wasn’t the problem, I was. 

Question 23. What is effort?

Effort is moving, thinking, listening, talking, living.  Making time mean something. 

This is all very weird really, a funny path.  When I was in my teens I loved the KLF, felt more into it than my friends, I still love it and it’s brought me to here, just a bit bonkers.  Oh how I wish I’d been at a Day of the Dead, followed the ice kream van or visited Jimmy Cauty’s Estate in Muirhouse, or was as cool and interesting as Ade Cartwright but I just have songs in my head, fun memories, my heart annoyingly on my sleeve and a basic honesty that means nothing in the world of art.

CAROLINE, 11 June 2024

We are approaching the deadline for the third book (23:23 on 30 June 2024). To earn a copy you will need to answer one of the 23 Questions and/or make a written or artistic contribution to the 52 Pamphlets. There is still time and we may need to go beyond 52 pamphlets (but not beyond 30 June 2024).

Taylor Swift is in town. The streets are full of pink, sparkle and cowboy hats. The excitement is infectious. Tonight is the third and final night of her Edinburgh performances on The Eras Tour. 9 June. That makes it St Columba’s Day: 1,427 years since his death. I jot that down in my Black n Red notepad. I will come back to that. I have decided to head out to take in the atmosphere around Murrayfield Stadium. 73,000 people plus all the crew and venue staff. It is not a bad evening. Some sun, though there are clouds to the west. I imagine that others will have had a similar idea.

I have listened to Taylor Swift’s most recent album on Spotify. The Tortured Poets Department. In fact I heard it twice in quick succession, because Spotify just loops around. I find that irritating (Spotify, not Swift). I rather enjoyed some of it. I find myself humming “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me” as I head along the Water of Leith. Perhaps that should be my new anthem. People do seem rather scared of my Benefaktor persona. I find it hard to believe that people would have a problem if they met me in real life. I am a pussy cat really. You just need to watch for my back claws; and my bite.

Well, even with my presbycusis I can hear crowd noise and bass as I walk along the quieter stretches of the river. I am heading east to west, the right direction for the speakers I am told, and the wind is carrying the sound towards me as well, skipping low along the water, finding the gaps between the houses and trees. There are no birds on the water tonight. As I approach Roseburn and then Murrayfield itself there is a spring in the step of everybody I pass, even without trabs(*).

There is a trail of trash along barriers that previously guided queues to merchandise stands, burger vans and ticket turnstiles. I sit on a bench under a chestnut tree (it is pouring), near an illuminated Edinburgh sign erected I assume for the concert, and listen. They are playing my new theme tune. No more Dance Macabre for me.

“If you wanted me dead, you should’ve just said/ Nothing makes me feel more alive”. It reminds me of my fall in the second GANTOB book – my first public dispute with GANTOB (AKA Gillian).

It is still light enough to sit and write and will be for another hour or more. I will need, however, to be careful to catch the tram back before the crowds pile out. I pull out my notepad and phone and start a new piece.

A psalter is “a translation or particular version of the Book of Psalms”. With the poetry and songs of the psalms this was as close to reading for enjoyment (and of course enlightenment) 1500 years ago. In the days before mass produced books, if you wanted a copy of your own you needed to either have a lot of money, luck, or be prepared to write it out yourself. Columba opted for the latter, copying out a Latin translation of the Book that had been compiled by Finnian, Abbot at Clonard Abbey, Ireland. Columba wished to keep this copy for himself, but Finnian would not allow it. The decision went to court.  King Diarmait mac Cerbaill ruled in Finnian’s favour: “To every cow her calf; and to every book its transcript”. After further disagreement, a battle and much bloodshed, Columba was sent to Iona. And the principles of copyright were established.

I think that I will leave it there, except to note of course that Taylor Swift re-recorded her albums because of issues around copyright and ownership of the master tapes of the original versions. Somethings never change. Kopyright be damned.

I take out my Saltire card, wind around the stadium towards Stenhouse (the stop before the stadium), and head for the tram. I have no need of (its near-homophone) a psalter. It is all available immediately on my phone, and I know many by heart. Nonetheless, there are frequently new lessons from re-reading and different versions. I read a few pages, but before I know it, I am back on Princes Street and striking distance of the flat. I walk home to the sound of fireworks and the last chords and applause from the concert. It has been an enjoyable evening, despite the rain.

The Benefaktor 9 June 2024

(the last couple of paragraphs are imagined based on observations of the sound and pyrotechnics from Murrayfield Stadium on preceding nights).

(*) Trabs have been mentioned in a couple of Christine’s pieces. Gaynor explains: “Christine’s bouncey trabs! Love it! – you know what they are? 110s…..(I bounce about in them too). They are really called Nike Air Max 95s as they were released in 1995 but then cost £110. Scallies adopted them for jumping off bins and fences at stuff. And us trab collectors, trainers that unify!”

This is not a pamphlet – just an impromptu blog post for, I hope, your interest.

An excerpt from pamphlet 45 of the 52 Pamphlets. The full version will be included in the third and final GANTOB book.

At the age of 84 I am asked whether I should be winding down – whether I should be committing to another grand project. I pretend not to hear them. I think back to James Gowans, the Edinburgh architect about whom I wrote in the second GANTOB book, in my thwarted Curt Finks forgery.

Urs and I had a couple of nights away recently, taking in the sights of the North East of England. We had debated the usual spots – Bamburgh Castle, Hexham, Beamish – but seeing the weather (it was pouring as usual) and reading about alternative destinations landed instead on Sunderland. We hot-footed it from the station to the shopping centre and topped up on waterproofs at an outdoor store. A few minutes later we arrived warm and dry at the Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens and plunged into their excellent pottery and mining exhibits.

However, my eye was drawn to one of their curios, tucked away at the back of a cabinet dominated by lions. It was the head of a walrus, not a sea lion, though both are pinnipeds.  I read the following description on the museum label:

‘There is a popular legend that this walrus inspired Lewis Carroll to write “The Walrus and the Carpenter” on one of his visits to Sunderland. However, the poem was published three years before the walrus was given to the Museum.’

Which got me thinking…

THE BENEFAKTOR 30 MAY 2024

To read more you’ll need to wait for the third book. To earn a copy you will need to answer one of the 23 Questions and/or make a written or artistic contribution to the 52 Pamphlets.

It has been a busy week of GANTOB bureaucracy.

First the subcommittees:

• The Quality Assurance Committee, which you may have read about in the first part of this piece
• The Arts and Craft Committee, which we will come to in a future post
• The Finance Committee, the details of which I will not recount here

Once the minutes of these three Committees were approved we were able to hold the GANTOB Executive Team meeting, via Zoom (because Gillian was back at The Kroft by that point).

We have come to a few important decisions which I have been asked to share:

• There may be more than 52 pamphlets. The only absolute rule is that submissions must be received by 23:23 GMT on 30 June 2024
• Now that we have mastered printing card (rather than paper) pamphlets without breaking the printer there will be one further mass mailing of pamphlets. This will be called “BADGE”
• The runner up prize for the Stone competition has been sent (and indeed received by the pair of scallywags who thought that they could submit an entry out of Lego bricks and stickers). The runner up prize contains a newly found Curt Finks story in an edition of one. It requires considerable construction. There is no time limit for such construction. Indeed, there is no requirement for completion. The story will be included in an appendix to the 52 Pamphlets book
• The winning entry for the Stone competition has been promised by 30 June 2024. A progress report has been received with pictorial evidence. This is very encouraging. It has required immense fiddly effort and may well become an answer to question 23. The prize – the winner may be glad to hear – will require minimal construction. It will be made of card and string. It will be a 3D working model. It will have a story within a story. It may answer some questions about GANTOB. After an audit of the GANTOB oeuvre by the GQAC discovered a near absence of material about Jimmy Cauty, there will be at least some Cauty reference in the model. The model will represent a collaboration between GQAC and GACC and will be finalised only on receipt of the completed Stone competition entry. It will be produced in an edition of one. It will be described in a section of the book that will not feature at all on the blog
• We are reaching the denouement of GANTOB (the project). Reflecting on Christine’s comment about the second book just containing material from the blog (which is not quite accurate) the final “pamphlets” on the blog – starting today – will only include the first ~250 words of text. The rest (~550-1,450 words per pamphlet) will only be available in the book. This may be frustrating to some readers, and may prove a bit tricky to follow, but is consistent with the guiding principles that Gillian laid out in the first of these 2024 pamphlets. People interested in finding out how GANTOB (the project) concludes just need to answer a question or submit a pamphlet by 23:23 on 30 June 2024. If their contribution is accepted, they will receive a copy of the book. People outside the GANTOB Executive Team who would prefer to see their pamphlet included in full on the blog can request this with their submission. Applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis by an extraordinary meeting of the GANTOB Exceptions Committee.

And so to today’s pamphlet. Number 44/#52Pamphlets I think. The illustration is retrieved from my stash of Curt Finks papers. It was titled “Picture of a dead editor in the shape of a fish”.

THE BENEFAKTOR, 19 May 2024, now feeling rather more connected with the project and back in the first person. Cheerio for now.

I had to think on my feet. Urs was standing by my side, helping me order the contents of the drawer so that I could close and lock the filing cabinet. I fussed and dithered, playing the part of a frail old man. I could picture the triumvirate sitting on the other side of the table in the dining room: interview panel, judge and jury, and firing squad rolled into one.

I have left spiritual things behind, and I certainly did not verbalise these ideas, but I could not help but think about the books of Luke and Acts. Two accounts, apparently by the same person, but giving different perspectives on the same events. If it was alright for Luke, then perhaps any inconsistencies on my part can be excused. I kept that knowledge up my sleeve just in case. I like to have precedents that I can draw on in such circumstances.

Out from The Kino, into the hall. Light flooded in from the bathroom, activating my glasses. I walked slowly, collecting my thoughts. Back in August 2023 I had kept my prior encounters with Curt Finks quiet. I was just the funder of GANTOB (the project). Then there was all the fuss about my forgery of his story about Gowans, the Edinburgh architect. And later on, The Photographer’s black and white documentation of my presence at one of Finks’ Fringe performances. The camera never lies and everything. Or it didn’t use to. So perhaps more than just Luke and Acts.