GANTOB blog

HAWTHORNY (by URS)

Jan 27th, 2024

Written on the occasion of the publication of her husband and GANTOB’s book GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy

Pamphlet 4 of 52 Pamphlets for 2024

Submit your own idea for a pamphlet at GANTOB.BLOG/pamphlet

Listen to Urs narrate the pamphlet here:

My granddaughter Katie (AKA The Foundation Doktor) has been asked to proofread GANTOB’s second book. You should receive the result in the same parcel as this pamphlet. This is my second pamphlet for GANTOB. Helping Katie with her task, and my observations of the goings on in our household over the past few months have been useful preparation.

The shine was off my first pamphlet even before it arrived by second class post exactly a week after it was uploaded to the GANTOB.blog. My husband Douglas (The Benefaktor to you) was the first to point out my errors when I showed him the blog on my phone. I had mistaken the common-or-garden viburnum flowers for apocalyptically early hawthorn blossom. How could I have been so naïve? His question, not mine. He is always correcting me. It is not as if he is always right himself.

(Douglas is furious that none of his errors about Bill Drummond or The KLF in the early chapters of the book have been “korrekted”. Katie mentions GANTOB’s Kreative Tyranny. Douglas does not know yet about the major changes that GANTOB and her Deputy General Manager have made at the end of the book. Rather hypocritical of them. Hopefully I will not be in the flat when he reaches that part).

I emailed the corrections to my pamphlet to The Deputy General Manager. An addendum (but not correction) was added at GANTOB.blog before anyone had read it. But by that time the physical copy of the pamphlet – GANTOB’s “payment” for my efforts – had already been posted to me. The pamphlet arrived in a long white envelope, address printed on a label, GANTOB’s exploding grapefruit logo on a label providing some extra stickiness to the seal. The invitation to submit an entry for the GANTOB 52 Pamphlets project had suggested that the selected authors would be sent a personalised version. However, the instructions accompanying my pamphlet were very much “do it yourself”. As in myself. I was instructed to gather some hawthorn blossom on a dry day and press the five-petalled flowers inside the pamphlet, then inside a heavy tome. I decided against asking whether I should attempt the same with some viburnum bloom. It was pouring outside, so I did not feel like going to the park to visit the bush. Then, remembering that after researching my error I had spotted a viburnum in the shared garden, I snipped a carefully selected spray, dried it on some kitchen roll, and placed it inside an ancient Yellow Pages. I might add some hawthorn blossom in May, or whenever it appears in north Edinburgh’s shaded gardens.

Two weeks have passed since that pamphlet was published – The Three Trees. A week ago Stuart Huggett wrote a piece called The Gate is Open, making profound points about James Joyce, William Blake and HG Wells. I have not read any of them before, much to my chagrin. My first pamphlet comes off badly in comparison: it is just a description of a chain of events. Stuart’s submission is a literary essay, unpicking a topic and proposing something original, linking it back to The KLF. I would like to do the same, but know little of The KLF (apart from snippets gleaned from Douglas, Katie, the GANTOB book, and Mr Huggett’s piece). I think I am off the hook though on that count. GANTOB has already said that it should be something that interests you as the writer, not shoehorning The KLF in for the sake of it.

Katie visits. A day off after a run of night shifts. I tell her about my flawed pamphlet – my first piece of creative writing since leaving school. I give her some time to read it and explain the error. After a bit of thought she starts to explain some concepts from a recent research module.

Confirmation bias – when you mistakenly see something that appears to support your pre-existing beliefs. I was expecting to see evidence of global heating, after reading a Greenpeace pamphlet, so imagined that a flowering bush in the dead of winter was evidence of impending catastrophe.

And the aptly titled Hawthorne Effect, named after a Chicago suburb rather than the tree. She gives me a potted summary: subjects in a research study are thought to have modified their behaviour because they were being observed. The original context was factory workers in a Western Electric plant. The experiment measured productivity in different lighting levels and conditions and found improvement with almost all alterations, including breaks and shorter working weeks. Katie and I are not sure that it really applies to my mistake, but we agree that the GANTOB participants were very productive (artistically and in putting pen to paper) during preparations for the second book.

I marvel at what I do not know, but must have been well established decades before I started school 70 years ago. Take the Hawthorne Effect – the data was collected 100 years ago (1924-1927), but we are still hammering workers. Douglas tells me that quantum mechanics is the same, but I have heard his century old Heisenberg lecture on repeat.

Katie heads off for some bouldering, so I pop along to the library. I am going to check my facts for this pamphlet, sticking with the hawthorn. I am confident I can find a link between the shrub and Stuart’s pamphlet, and who knows, maybe even The KLF. Stuart mentioned Blake’s poem Milton, and its relationship to The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu’s song It’s Grim Up North via Parry’s hymn Jerusalem. With GANTOB’s strict word count (which I feel compelled to ignore as I am doing her a favour introducing her second book) Stuart focuses on the northern English imagery in the poem – “the dark satanic mills”. But Blake’s words also take us to the southwest of England, and Joseph of Arimathea’s reported visit to Cornish tin mines over 2,000 years ago: “And did those feet in ancient time”. Some versions even have a young Jesus accompanying him. Joseph of Arimathea will forever be associated with Glastonbury where, exhausted, he stuck his staff in the ground and lay down to rest. On waking, he discovered that his stick had taken root and sprouted into a hawthorn tree, with beautifully scented blossom. And if that was not enough, Joseph’s tree flowered twice a year, unlike the common hawthorn. Biflora.

The Glastonbury thorn. Burned in the English Civil War, circa 1647. Replanted in 1951 (but destroyed by unknown vandals in 2010). Propagated at other sites multiple times, but only some of the resulting trees flower twice in a year, in May and Christmas time. I visit the bush in my local park again, with its January flowers, but it remains a viburnum.

And Glastonbury, I find out from a series of internet searches on the library computer, is one of the last places where The KLF, in their K Foundation guise, broadcast their music. Against Michael Eavis of Glastonbury Festival’s wishes, they hooked up their song K Cera Cera and blasted it around the festival site in 1993, for peace in the Middle East. If only.

Nothing is new. The religious intolerance of the 17^th century destroying a tree that had survived across two millennia, and the destruction of the replacement Glastonbury thorn in 2010. It is too close to the much-publicised Sycamore Gap incident at Hadrian’s Wall, September 2023. News stories from that time mention the connection with the Bryan Adams number 1 song (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, 1991. Now, I remember that! And I discover that was the year when The KLF rarely left the charts: 3AM Eternal, Last Train to Trancentral, the aforementioned IGUN and Justified and Ancient.

There are a few blind alleys. The hawthorn is most associated in literature with William Wordsworth and Marcel Proust. On the off chance I google another literary giant mentioned in Stuart’s piece: James Joyce. I add in “hawthorn” in inverted commas to the search as Katie suggested. And there is a connection, however tenuous. A 1962 pamphlet written by the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid called Poetry Like The Hawthorn. From In Memoriam James Joyce. 150 copies, octavo edition. The local antiquarian bookshop has a copy, but at £50 for 5 pages I am unfortunately not in the market. I find it in the library in a volume of MacDiarmid’s selected poetry. The hawthorn poem takes us no further – we already know when the common hawthorn blossoms. But in the poem Plaited Like Generations of Men, also in MacDiarmid’s Joyce series, he references the double “k”ed Danish philosopher Kierkegaard: “How the moment can be made eternity… it depends on repetition”. That sounds like The KLF. But it is a bit spurious. By channelling Joyce, MacDiarmid can just do a stream of consciousness. You could find a few relevant words on almost any topic from such a long, gnarly and spiky poem.

I am feeling a bit stuck. I want to move things on. “Add to Playlist” as Douglas mentions in one of his chapters in the book. As a final attempt, I make a random choice from the poetry section. Modern Scottish women poets(*). More my scene. I land on page 180, and read In the Kibble Palace: Sunday Morning, by Anne MacLeod, 1999. I am drawn to mention of chrysanthemums, “palm and fern and moss, a green confusion”. But I check and there is no mention of viburnum or hawthorn. But no matter. I already have my connection. Kibble. It rings a bell, though it is not a word I can define. I have read it in GANTOB’s second book:

“Characters from GANTOB’s first book, ‘Grapefruit Are Not The Only Bombs: 2023 re-enactment” kibble, adding layers to the intricate tapestry of her GANTOBverse”. (Chapter 80, by The Inconsistent Influencer, who also likes to be known as “A young man on Facebook”).

Kibble – but not as MacLeod uses it (which is a reference to John Kibble, who established an iron-framed glasshouse now in the Glasgow Botanical Gardens).

Nor is it the noun – kibble: an iron hoisting bucket used in mines. I wonder about tin mines. It is from the Latin for cup. Could it be the “holy grail” we seek in adventure films, our deeper explorations of the great poets, or even record and pamphlet searches relating to The KLF?

No, as “The Inconsistent Influencer” explains later by email, kibble (the verb) means to “loosely mix with and grate against”. He used it to “evoke thoughts of K-related influences, such as the Kindred of Kibbo Kift, or the K Foundation”. And there we are. A completely new topic to explore for a future pamphlet. Who on earth were the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift?

Urs, 27 January 2024

#GANTOB2024 Pamphlet 4. A paper copy has been sent to Urs and recipients of the second book

(*) Ed McMillan and Byrne, Canongate Classic, 2003

If you know something about the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift and want to contribute some new writing, please get in touch via GANTOB.BLOG/pamphlet
THE GATE IS OPEN (by STUART HUGGETT)

Jan 20th, 2024

Thanks to Stuart Huggett, regular GANTOB contributor, for this thoughtful and literary journey along the Sussex coast. A personalised copy of this piece, in a trifold pamphlet, will be winging its way to Stuart along with his copy of the new book GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy, the latter as payment for his GANTOB blogs last year. Find out more about progress on that front on X and Instagram.

You can submit your own pamphlet for consideration following the instructions below, or by visiting the 52 Pamphlets page. Contributors will receive a copy of the book 52 Pamphlets , publication date January 2025.

But before that, please read or listen to Stuart’s new piece.

Listen to this pamphlet:

Enlightenment can occur at any time and in any place. For me, the time was less than a week into 2024 and the place was Butlin’s holiday camp.

GANTOB’s call for 52 Pamphlet submissions had been made on Thursday 4^th January, while I was getting packed ahead of a weekend at Butlin’s in Bognor Regis for Rockaway Beach festival. We’ve been to every edition of Rockaway Beach since it began in 2015 and there’s little on the surface to connect it to the worlds of either GANTOB or The KLF/Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu.

With thoughts of submitting a pamphlet in my head, the only KLF connections I could come up with at first were that Echo & The Bunnymen had played the festival twice and The Fall had appeared once. This year’s line-up included Skids, whose leader Richard Jobson does appear in Chris Atkins’ 2021 film ‘Who Killed The KLF?’ None of these connections felt particularly strong though.

A couple of things I did know about that immediate stretch of the Sussex coast, however, was the presence of two key figures in British and Irish literature. A 15 minute walk to the east of Butlin’s brings you to Felpham, where the thatched cottage that William Blake and his wife Catherine resided in from 1800 to 1803 can still be found. Blake began writing his epic poem ‘Milton’ in Felpham, the preface to which is best known in its musical form as Sir Hubert Parry’s hymn ‘Jerusalem’.

A few streets west of Butlin’s, in Bognor Regis itself, lies Clarence Road, where James Joyce stayed in 1923. A blue plaque informs us that Joyce wrote some of ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ while visiting here. Draw a line between Blake in the east and Joyce in the west and your path passes right through the holiday camp.

While I was hoping to describe Joyce or Blake as pioneering pamphleteers to bring them into the GANTOB project, the facts of their publishing histories don’t really fit the conceit. Still, we were spending three days eating, drinking, dancing and sleeping on a Blake/Joyce literary ley line, so something might find us, and in his 2021 book ‘William Blake Vs The World’, KLF admirer John Higgs does point out that Blake “was a one-person publishing industry, writing, designing, printing and colouring illustrated works of his own devising. Although he was still in the Georgian era, Blake was practising the ‘do it yourself’ ethos of punk rock.”

One of our party arrived on Friday having brought along the 2006 Tate Publishing facsimile of Blake’s ‘Songs Of Innocence And Of Experience’, remembering our first exploration of Felpham the previous year. Reproduced from the 1992 Folio Society edition, Richard Holmes’ introductory essay quotes from Blake writing about his initial arrival in the village:

“Work will go on here with God speed. A roller & two harrows lie before my window. I met a plow on my first going out at my gate the first morning of my arrival, & the Plowboy said to the Plowman, ‘Father, the gate is open.’”

In his 1995 biography ‘Blake’, Peter Ackroyd writes that, “For Blake this was an emblem of his new life, and of the work that he was about to begin.” If this encounter was symbolically important to Blake, it could also be important to us.

Some downtime on the Saturday led me to explore nearby Hotham Park, with its miniature railway, nature garden, café and private residence, Hotham Park House. A William Blake Trail information board at the park’s southern entrance repeats the story of Blake interpreting the farm boy’s call as a symbolic sign. I’d not been looking for Blake in the park but here he was with the same tale told. I still wasn’t feeling very visionary myself but I banked the memory.

Fittingly for a weekend spent midway between the former lodgings of William Blake and James Joyce, half our chalet party were English and half were Irish. Blake’s presence was starting to loom larger than Joyce’s as the weekend progressed but I bore in mind an argument put forward in Jeremy J. Beadle’s 1993 book on sampling technology and musical post-modernism ‘Will Pop Eat Itself?’ where he suggested that “the literary echoes consciously summed up in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, its use of sound collage, were all discrete sounds fed through the digital sampler of Joyce’s imagination to produce art of a (supposedly) coherent narrative.” It’s worth noting that Beadle’s book analyses The KLF at great length.

Sunday brought us to a lunch booking at Felpham’s Fox Inn, an 18^th century pub across the street from Blake’s cottage. While the property has inevitably changed over time, not least being damaged in 1946 and rebuilt three years’ later, a blue plaque in its doorway marks the spot where Blake was arrested for sedition in 1803, having thrown a soldier billeted at the inn, one Private John Schofield, out of his cottage’s garden in a fit of anger.

William Blake’s cottage. Credit: Stuart Huggett

Over the course of a couple of hours in the pub, my companions having a Sunday roast while I opted for game stew, the magic of the Blake connections worked their way back through my memories, dredging up forgotten facts while my conscious mind was still rattling through conversations about the FA Cup Third Round.

It was only as we left the Fox, stepping back out through a doorway still vibrating with the energy of Blake’s arrest, that the recurring phrase finally clicked into focus. “THE GATE IS OPEN” is a message on the label of the 12” release of ‘What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral)’, the version that began The KLF’s run of Top 10 singles over the next couple of years.

I had to Google it to make sure but there it is, down at the bottom of the label, in the Other Data slot used, on other KLF releases, to quote from their lyrics (“OVER AND OUT”, “THE K. THE L. THE F. & THE OLOGY”), add missing credits (“MC BELLO APPEARS COURTESY OF GEE ST. RECORDS”) or just to play with the record buyer’s expectations (“PROBABLY THE MOST NAUSEATING RECORD IN THE WORLD”).

One Discogs user reckons that ‘THE GATE IS OPEN’ is “a reference to The KLF’s announced but naturally unreleased acid-house album ‘The Gate’ which they intended to record in 1990 but scrapped in favour of filming their one-hour feature ‘Waiting’ on the Isle Of Jura.” The KLF’s own press release ‘WAITING: KLF BIOG 010’ states that “The KLF’s original plan on visiting Jura was to take their mobile studio ‘Trancentral’ and record an album entitled ‘Gate’. It was to be a minimalist techno record, but the power of the land, sea and sky scapes of Jura and the almost dream-like quality of the light put an end to any thoughts of making music more suited to inner city night life.” Blake would recognise such a description of Jura in his own early perceptions of Felpham.

What if ‘THE GATE IS OPEN’ IS a deliberate reference to Blake though? After all, The KLF have drawn on Blake’s work at other times. The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu’s ‘It’s Grim Up North’ climaxes with an instrumental rendition of ‘Jerusalem’, the Sir Hubert Parry hymn based on the preface to ‘Milton’ that Blake began in Felpham. ‘Jerusalem’ fits perfectly as the whole track is a celebration of the north of England. Remember too, the visual quote from The Fall (who themselves had previously covered ‘Jerusalem’) at the end of the video, ‘THE NORTH WILL RISE AGAIN’.

Elsewhere, Blake informs The KLF’s work more subtly. Some of the sampled crowd noise on their Top 10 album ‘The White Room’ comes from The Doors’ album ‘Absolutely Live’. The Doors took their name from Aldous Huxley’s book of psychedelic experiments ‘The Doors Of Perception’, itself a quote from Blake’s ‘The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell’. William Blake breaks on through.

Referencing H. G. Wells’ unnerving 1906 short story ‘The Door In The Wall’, GANTOB has occasionally written about Green Doors (as in her pamphlet ‘Paint Them Black’). In her telling, these are doors, literal or metaphorical, which appear occasionally in our lives, the passing through, or not, of which are branch points at significant moments in life. It may be notable that The KLF’s quoting of Blake on the 12” label of ‘What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral)’ occurs at the start of a significant shift in their artistic practice.

Prior to this single, The KLF’s work, and their previous activities as The JAMs and The Timelords, can be seen as playful, entertaining and innovative, certainly in their post-modern, post-Joyce, cut and paste music. They are not yet transcendent though.

‘What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral)’, however, marks the point at which The KLF not only became hugely commercially successful but also visionary in a much wider sense. From here on in, their big budget videos, outlandish ‘Top Of The Pops’ appearances, wild collaborations and mock pagan rituals all fired the imaginations of the global public, for years to come.

Consciously or not, Blake had been invoked by The KLF. His eternal, imaginative spirit entered their work and the course of their lives and popular culture was changed as a result.

The gate was opened. The world followed them through.

STUART HUGGETT, 20 January 2024

PAMPHLET 03 (2024)

Notes

The original source of Blake’s “The gate is open” quote is ‘The Letters Of William Blake’, edited by Geoffrey Keynes (Oxford University Press, 1980).

Thanks to Carolyn Bristow, Laura McQuaid, Noeleen Murray and Laura Tyrell for exploring the Blake/Joyce literary ley line with me.

Want to contribute a blog? Pamphlets should be between 800 and 1600 words, ideally an exact multiple of 400. Submissions to 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com should be made as soon as possible (first come, first served, unless something more suitable comes along), and no later than 27 December 2024. Suggestions for developing ideas or other modifications to the submitted pamphlet may be made by the GANTOB Pamphlet Committee.

Follow progress via @gantob2023 on X and Instagram. Good luck!
THE THREE TREES (by URS)

Jan 13th, 2024

This is the second pamphlet from the GANTOBverse for 2024.

Urs is having a bad week. Please hear her out. Indeed, you can listen to her read her story here:

Next week’s blog will be by Stuart Huggett. It’s a cracker. Find out how you can contribute at the end of this piece.

Erratum: Urs is mistaken about the first tree. It is a viburnum, which is meant to blossom at around this time. The labels had got mixed up. The cherry tree, however, is not meant to be in flower.

Over to you Urs…

My husband Douglas has admitted defeat with this week’s pamphlet. You may know him as The Tonsure, The Benefaktor or Rev K______. His piece was to have been a version of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s 1884 novel Flatland, or Orwell’s Animal Farm, but with fruit rather than shapes or animals. He is still working on it, but I have offered to do my bit. That curious individual GANTOB will put it into pamphlet format I am told.

There is burnout in the air after Christmas and the New Year. Our son, a GP, worked both long weekends with the out-of-hours service. Two four-day stretches when everybody else was resting. He tells us that he spent the intervening days curled up in a ball recovering. Before he worked in the out-of-hours service he was a GP partner, but the pressure was unspeakable. He is talking about reducing his hours further. Douglas was swanning about with our granddaughter in Europe over the New Year, as is his habit (except over the Covid years), but this time they came back dejected. Both in a great big sulk.

We soldier on. But there is an edginess in the air. The Post Office scandal. The Middle East. Trump. Global heating. And here I am writing about three trees (and a plastic one). But they are symbolic of what we are all experiencing, so bear with me.

On Wednesday I set out to the Nostalgia Café where I volunteer most weeks. Out of my usual routine and having had a rush with the baking I took a shortcut through the local park grateful for my choice of boots. And there was the first tree. It was a funny gnarly thing with offshoots off the main trunk. A hawthorn with a small crop of last year’s berries shrivelled on the stems but also a fresh display of fully formed pink blossom on the newer growth. No bees or birds to enjoy the heady perfume. I took a photo as evidence, the morning gloom failing to do its blooms justice.

Blossom in early January on the “May tree”. I attempted to explain it away. The enthusiasm of youth. The main body of the tree, after all, had no blossom. I kept moving. I was meant to be setting up after all. Nobody had been in over the holiday period. There would be quite a lot of tidying up, and who knows what would be happening with the heating.

Tea, cakes and reminiscing with the “old dears”. Not that some of them are any older than me. That is the way of things. Same with volunteering at the Marie Curie clothes shop. The young ones come and go, but it is the core of septuagenarians and octogenarians who keep things afloat. We always have such a beautiful selection in the shop, and so well organised. But that is my Friday job.

I was pondering this while taking down the Christmas decorations and squirreling them away into the group’s limited cupboard space. I put the 5-foot plastic tree back in its Woolworths box, which already contained the broken branch that we never quite get round to fixing or chucking out.

Googling it now I see that Woolworths closed 15 years ago, in the period immediately after Christmas 2008. Miserable for the staff. I do not know how long before that this tree was acquired. I am told that it was a donation from one of the families we were supporting. But that was before my time. I was still working at that point. Not that I have ever really stopped since “retiring”.

The community centre that hosts the “café” each week looked bare when I had finished. But we are lucky to have the space. During the pandemic it was a Covid testing centre. I remember it from my own test, having dodged the bullet for 18 months. Cubicles in a row, staff dressed in spacesuits, everything spaced out and demarcated. We were not sure that we would get back in again after it was decommissioned. Lots of talk about decontamination, which we took to be a euphemism for gentrification. Another block of student flats. More profitable than refurbishing it and returning it to its original use. A petition has granted it temporary reprieve. Who knows how long it will take the bureaucrats to make their final decision. No doubt more paperwork and meetings to fill out. Add it to the pile.

I had only 15 minutes left to turn things around. Nobody else was there. Time for a sticking plaster fix. I covered the bare plaster where there had been partitions, and the signs and arrows mark that era. I found the box of posters and pictures from previous visits by a local artist. That cheered things up, as did the tablecloths and napkins. The home baking would also help when the rest of the team arrived. I left the corner by the kitchen clear because we had a singer and violinist visiting. I hoped they were not doing the WWII greatest hits again. 1960s and 70s would be more appropriate for our current group. A bit of Dexy’s Midnight Runners would hit the spot I thought. John, one of the other volunteers, had roped in his husband to play the piano. And speak of the devil, the other helpers appeared, rushing in, excuses about the traffic.

The old dears started to arrive a few minutes later, in minibuses and adapted people carriers, a couple in wheelchairs pushed from the flats and sheltered housing nearby. One of the men vomited on arrival, so we sat him quietly at the back to recover, arranged a cordon using chairs around the slip hazard, and directed the stragglers to their tables. Phyllis mopped up.

The morning was a blur as usual. Falls averted, misunderstandings between the regulars cleared up, the wanderers who would not settle. “Walking with purpose” is the current term I read in the form that I have to send to the council every year – I will have to submit that in a few weeks and I have not even started it yet. When the music started I loaded up the trolley and wheeled the dishes to the kitchen, rolling down the hatch to avoid disturbing everybody else. Ishbel came through to help, and we nattered away as usual. She talked more than dried, as is her habit. She had read something on the BBC News app about global warming and commented on the cherry tree visible through the kitchen window, in the garden of the Georgian house next door. The whole tree was ablaze with pink blossom. Months early. Not just the new shoots. No arguing with that. John, who is a keen gardener and helps out at the community garden project, confirmed this when he came in to escape the strains of “We’ll Meet Again”. I seemed to be doing everything, and the dishwasher had stopped working. I would need to report it. Another email to draft. And everyone was talking, that awful singing just would not stop and the violin was flat. I snapped and bawled out John and Ishbel, and wondered if we should have called an ambulance for the vomiter who was lying stretched out across three folding chairs, an accident waiting to happen. I worried that I would need to fill out an incident form.

I hobbled home, my left ankle throbbing. I was looking forward to a cup of something from the tea advent calendar that my other granddaughter gave me (a bargain from the New Year sales). Douglas was scheduled to be out that afternoon. I would have the house to myself. I would switch off. Silence.

But as I squeezed past the 4×4 parked up on the kerb I saw that our gate was blocked by a huge Christmas tree stretched across the pavement. The others along this stretch of street had been lifted earlier in the week. Presumably a neighbour in one of the big houses had missed the collection. Left outside somebody else’s gate for them to sort out. That somebody else being me. Another call to the flipping council. It had already become a magnet for other detritus – a packet of crisps that had perhaps blown along from the communal bins, a large orange pile of dog poo, another neatly bagged up in a blue bag, hanging on a branch. I could not bend down to reach the tree’s short stump and I did not have suitable gloves to protect my hands from the pine needles. I nudged it with my boot, but whichever angle I tried it was too big to move. Stupid ankle. And there was no hope of me climbing over the railings. The doorbell was out of reach and as usual Douglas was not answering his mobile or landline. It was the last straw. I would have screamed, but who was going to hear me?

I laughed bitterly at the irony. A dead tree, still bushy and green, looking as if it would survive and flourish if it were planted in the ground. Rootless, but immovable. Sorrowful in its undecorated state, save for society’s excrement. And the two other trees, too full of life, beautiful in their premature livery, potentially spoiling this year’s crop.

I made my way to the local chain café, picking up stronger painkillers from the pharmacy en route. I would be able to put my feet up for a few hours and hope that somebody else cleared the way for once. There really are so many jams to kick out, as I believe they say.

URS, 13 January 2024

PAMPHLET 02 (2024)

Want to contribute a blog?

In effect we will be constructing a memoir of 2024. Write it in the first person, or which ever person you want, and make it relevant to now, but building on what you’ve learnt so far in life. Or make it entirely fictional. Or philosophical. Relate it to the GANTOBverse in some way, however subtle, for bonus points.

Spread the word. Subscribe to gantob.blog, and follow progress via @gantob2023 on X and Instagram. Good luck!

As a guide, pamphlets should be between 800 and 1600 words, ideally an exact multiple of 400. Submissions to 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com should be made as soon as possible (first come, first served, unless something more suitable comes along), and no later than 27 December 2024. Suggestions for developing ideas or other modifications to the submitted pamphlet may be made by the GANTOB Pamphlet Committee.
ON PAPER (by GILLIAN)

Jan 6th, 2024
The first of 52 weekly posts/ pamphlets for 2024. These are longer pieces than the daily blog posts for the second book GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy (which were 400 words long).

Authors have 800/1200/1600 words to explore a topic in more depth.

There are more details on how to make your contribution after Gillian’s introductory pamphlet: “ON PAPER”.

I am writing this in response to recent controversies and disappointments about books and other physical copies of paper documents.

First, in December 2023, there was the Ministry of Justice’s plan to destroy historical wills. They would be digitised, but archivists noted the loss of details that are not captured by digitisation – for example the type of ink and paper, indents of the pen – and the risks of losing information as formats change or systems are hacked.

Then on 2 January 2024 came the bombshell that Bill Drummond’s planned books – including his “memoir” The Life Model, with contributions lovingly crafted by 140+ volunteers for his 70^th birthday – would be released only in web and audiobook formats.

This took me back to something that Evelyn Glennie, percussionist, mentioned in a repeat broadcast of Tom Service’s Music Matters recently. She noted that “Bill Gates encourages you to go into a bookshop and pick a book that you have absolutely zero interest in – something that you think is just not at all related to any of the interests that you have, or the job that you do – and see what happens.” Looking back at an article on the same theme I read: “Gates discussed how he takes notes while reading, sometimes writing in the margins of his books, to help him better remember and engage with what he’s reading. ‘For a lot of books that is key to my learning’”. There’s a lot that books remember, without even being asked.

I worked in a bookshop for almost 6 years – a huge Frankenstein’s monster of a shop, over multiple floors and connecting sections, that had been strung together by knocking together different buildings along the front of an entire block in a university town; a site that could trace its history back much further. It’s not the bookshop pictured below. In the late 1980s I started in the schools department and antiquarian section on the top floor, but I must have visited every inch of that shop, including accounts, the multiple staff tea rooms, store cupboards, collections, each of the many departments (including children’s, remainders, the in house publishing company, front desk, local interest, stationery, music, gifts, modern languages, technical, law), and the basements and stairways through which books, exam papers, and supplies arrived, depending on the size of the delivery. I loved that shop – the staff, the customers, the books, the introduction to a world beyond my previously cloistered existence, working a range of shifts from 09:00 to 22:00, meeting people from all walks of life, from teenagers like me, to the tea lady in the management corridor who was said to be in her eighties, and authors including Iain Banks, and quite possibly Muriel Spark, if I had known who she was at that age. Politicians popped in (for example John Smith), and the evening security guard introduced us to a whole different clientele who skirted the boundary between the chaos of a street teaming with night life, and the warm, civilised interior. The joy of bricks and mortar.

So it will probably come as no surprise that I love books. Hardbacks, paperbacks, signed, annotated, pristine, tattered, fact, fiction, gift, donation, translation, whatever. I always carry a book with me, usually a small paperback, in case I have a spare moment. The book is a miracle of technology. It doesn’t need WiFi connection or require charging. And there are no algorithms to guide your selection and narrow your world view. Technical knowledge is not necessary – it’s not in a special folder or app, and can be transferred from bag to bedside cabinet, or handed on to somebody else regardless of their background or experience. Finding your place is incredibly easy. At the moment I am using a crocheted cat that my daughter gave me for my birthday as a bookmark. If I find myself reading something else at the same time I might use a train ticket or flier – which in itself may well tell a story, and could even take you back to a point in time that you had completely forgotten. Perhaps not a miracle then – more like magic.

Leakey’s Bookshop, Inverness, August 2021

I have tried other technologies of course, and they have their merits. My crocheting daughter loves e-books – the E-reader is compact, you can look up words in the device’s dictionary, and search and track your reading behaviours; but I don’t really want another expensive gizmo when I already have enough books to last a lifetime. Sometimes in the past I have listened to audiobooks on long commutes (usually on foot – unlike The Foundation Doktor on her bike), but I frequently found myself distracted and losing the plot, or frustrated in attempts to find my way back to a key passage, or willing the author to read just a bit faster, or without whining. Now I prefer to listen to the wind in the trees, waves on the breakwater, birds calling, people talking. I would rather not wear headphones at all – with all their associations with work since the pandemic, and feeling curiously vulnerable and disconnected when using them on a bus or park bench. At home I rarely have a quiet half hour to sit back and listen to a book without interruption. There’s the clatter of dishes, conversation, deliveries, crises. But I know plenty of people who love them, and podcasts. And it will be quite an honour to hear Bill Drummond read out my words and ideas.

I should also say that I love libraries – whether run by the council or Little Free Libraries. And charity shops, particularly Oxfam Bookshops. I have to confess, however, that I usually find antiquarian bookshops a bit intimidating – charting successive generations of largely forgotten writers. Most authors will be discarded all too quickly as tastes change. Martin Amis? So last year. My brother enjoys older works, including – moving backwards – Walter Scott, Laurence Sterne and Miguel de Cervantes. The survivors. I have mainly gravitated to mid to late 20th century, but have enjoyed books from the 19th century Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola recently, after a lucky dip, care of the Highland Council mobile library.

But let’s zoom forward to the 1980s and 1990s again. I have books that I bought in that bookshop that I still haven’t read. I don’t know if I ever will. They stand as challenges – The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing is one. I cracked another much shorter book recently from the same shelf – William Golding’s The Spire. On three previous occasions I had given up on that in the same long section of dialogue, where I lost track of who was speaking. Ironically, an audiobook might have helped with that – a creaking voice for a dusty cleric, a looser, rougher brogue for the mason. It would take a talented narrator to pull that off convincingly – switching between voices in quick fire delivery.

And I wonder about electronic communication – websites, and blogs – which Bill Drummond proposes as a worthy substitute. Assuming he doesn’t pull the plug (again) before somebody captures it on the Wayback Machine internet archive. Sitting at the desk in that bookshop, before email or internet, I remember being shown a way in the command line to communicate between the computer tills. I cannot remember the operating system – perhaps CP/M, or Unix. We would while away the time sending short messages between floors in green text on black screens. Great fun at the time (before we realised that electronic mail would become a blight on most of our lives). Until one of us sent a message to the central computer in the shop – the one that only the manager could access when he arrived early each morning to complete the backup of the previous day. Woops. No control-Z or delete function. Apologies made and accepted after a sleepless night, we vowed never to use the system again. These messages, now long forgotten, stand as a reminder of the transient nature – and potential dangers – of electronic communication.

And with that, I declare my preference for a physical book. Each to their own. I can see the drawbacks of books. The remainders section of the bookshop was clear evidence of that. The place where books went to die, to get pulped, but from there to be turned into new books. It’s not all doom and gloom.

GANTOB, the imagined person, the “karakter”, may have ceased to exist at 11.59 on 1 January 2024, but GANTOB, the project, does continue. The Pamphlet Committee requests your submission of pamphlets for consideration towards “The 52”: a set number of weekly pamphlets by up to 52 authors, to be issued as:
- a bespoke printed version for that week’s author (with some GANTOB-type art), sent via snail mail each Saturday
- an online version here on gantob.blog each Saturday, for all to read
- a plain printed copy of the first 34 pamphlets from 2024, to be given away in book and vinyl drops to local charity shops and other carefully selected locations at the next Battle of Perth (Stirling, Scotland, 27 August 2024)
- a book, with the full text of all 52 pamphlets, bound into a GANTOB-branded A5 book to be published early 2025
There could be an audiobook version if contributors provide a spoken word recording of their piece. Indeed, perhaps that would be a good idea, as it builds in a form of proof reading and checking scansion.

In effect we will be constructing a memoir of 2024. Write it in the first person, or which ever person you want, and make it relevant to now, but building on what you’ve learnt so far in life. Or make it entirely fictional. Or philosophical. Relate it to the GANTOBverse in some way, however subtle, for bonus points.

As a guide, pamphlets should be between 800 and 1600 words, ideally an exact multiple of 400. Submissions to 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com should be made as soon as possible (first come, first served, unless something more suitable comes along), and no later than 27 December 2024. Suggestions for developing ideas or other modifications to the submitted pamphlet may be made by the GANTOB Pamphlet Committee.

Spread the word. Subscribe(*) to gantob.blog, and follow progress via @gantob2023 on X and Instagram. Good luck!

Gillian, 6 January 2024

PAMPHLET 01 (2024)

(*) I’ve added this link as an experiment – please let me know if it doesn’t work (you’ll need a WordPress account I think)
99. DRUMMIN (by THE DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER OF GANTOB (THE PROJEKT))

Jan 1st, 2024

It is approaching midnight on Hogmanay 2023, and GANTOB is well past her stated deadline for submitting her final blog (23:23).

So I am initiating the agreed kontingency plan.

I suspect that there will be complaints – introducing a new person for the final blog of 2023. Exceeding 400 words. Too much jargon. Too many pictures.

From tomorrow GANTOB (the projekt) will no longer exist, apart from the small matter of the difficult second book. Don’t ask me what comes next, though you may want to check social media (X or Instagram) to get a head start. I’m just the dogsbody. GANTOB and the forces unleashed by Demokratisation are the “kreatives”. The Benefaktor is the funder.

GANTOB (the person) had very much wanted to post today’s blog, but she, Ali and family seem to have dropped off the radar. I have made some urgent enquiries with her hotel in Newtonmore. They found discarded materials in one of the rooms the “Finks” family checked out of this morning. The best guess is that they are currently stuck somewhere up near Drummin. If they’re lucky they’ll have found the bothy nearby. Perhaps they’re snowed in. There’ll certainly not be any mobile reception. If they’re desperate, perhaps they’ll be eating the black buns that GANTOB had reportedly bought for first footing tomorrow morning. Let’s hope that, to keep warm, they don’t have to burn the Curt Finks papers that they had so carefully packaged up and placed in the boot of the car.

The Kreative Tyrant in her had wanted to “feel” the final piece, rather than have it scheduled days ahead. That’s the risk you take. Blame Storm Gerrit, or whatever it was that came next.

The Benefaktor and The Foundation Doktor are currently “in transit”, on the way to Vienna for the Neujahrskonzert by the Wiener Philharmoniker, at Musikvereinsplatz, near Karlsplatz. All the Ks, as GANTOB might say.

Little Grapefruit might well be back in Vienna (apparently hunting “The Third Man”), after teleporting from her gaff in Wigan to “Ernie Toffee’s” art passage at Karlsplatz subway station (a location proposed by JR in a comment on a piece by Ariadne). And I am told that two rather minor characters from the blog – The Philatelist and Paula – are also making their way to the Austrian capital (good luck if you’re planning to piece together their involvement – though if you want to submit a theory of your own, and have a spare 800, 1200 or 1600 words, I am sure you know what to do, or can find out).

I am reliably informed that GANTOB and The Benefaktor are at loggerheads about their forthcoming volume GANTOB’s 2023: A trilogy. The Benefaktor is keen to spend his money within the financial year, for tax purposes, so wants a basic “book of the blog” – a simple cut and paste job. GANTOB is striving for “artistik purity”, so wants it to read like a book rather than a blog, however long that takes – replacing the early audience participation bits (snip, stuck, skateboarded etc) that were there to entertain/ build audience. I’m worried that she is promising too much. You may remember that the last book almost broke her. I have offered my services as editor, if they have the materials to hand.

Here’s what I do know: There is major restructuring underway. If all goes according to plan, some of GANTOB’s previously unreleased spying from October will feature in part 1 of the forthcoming book. This will apparently help pull together some of the loose ends in parts 2 and 3. But real life is messy, so don’t expect everything to be concluded neatly just because the year is coming to an end. In fact, 2023 has been particularly chaotic – arguably more disjointed, unfair and unpleasant than even The JAMs predicted.

And here’s what I hope: That this post will be replaced in the book, once the snow melts and GANTOB reaches her “black sheep kroft” and settles into her new life.

And should we be reading anything into the fact that the map of Drummin is on a website called ARIADNE, which shares its name with a double GANTOB contributor from Australia? Or do we just need to accept that ARIADNE is short for ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AIDED D-BAND NETWORK FOR 5G LONG TERM EVOLUTION?

Eventually everything connects.

Hart Street Lane, Edinburgh

Uncredited art – photo GANTOB

If you want to read what happens in the final version of this 99-day-tale (which will be GANTOB’s second book – unless a more definitive account of Curt Finks’ or Little Grapefruit’s adventures emerges), and have not yet submitted a blog (the payment for which is a copy of that as yet unpublished book), then you have until 11:59 (GMT/UTC) on 1 January 2024. That is a minute before the bells in Samoa. If I am able to upload it to this website before 12:00 (GMT/UTC) then you will receive a copy of the book. 400 words are all that is required, on a topic related to GANTOB, ideally with a picture. Read more here on how to do this. But beware: if you or I fail in the task of uploading your planned piece on time, then you may not be eligible for a copy of the book. GANTOB will be the final arbitrator. Please note, however, that she (and perhaps The Benefaktor) has the right to delete posts that I have approved. Her decisions are final. Good luck!

Oh, and Happy New Year when it comes, wherever you are, and many thanks for all your interest in GANTOB (the projekt) during 2023. I don’t think that anyone had any idea in July that this would end up in quite as elaborate a project as this – two books, with contributions by dozens of GANTOBers, and counting (books and people). Long may it continue. It’s keeping a bunch of us occupied, albeit unpaid.

But for now: “Shut up! It’s that time again, kick out the old, welcome the new”, as Dirty Den once shouted, and The JAMs of course sampled in 1987.

DEPUTY GENERAL Manager OF GANTOB (THE PROJEKT)

23:59 on 31 December 2023 (UTC/GMT)

View from the bridge on the way up to Drummin. Don’t forget to shut the gate
98c. THE EPIPHANY OF THE BOSS PART II (by LIAM)

Dec 30th, 2023

I had an extremely busy day yesterday (day 98 of this blog). Preparing to move back up to Badenoch, but not The Manse. Posting three pieces by three GANTOBers. Messing up the numbering of these posts.

This is the third post. It’s definitely still 30 December 2023, in Honolulu. And will still be 30 December for a couple more hours in Samoa.

The post below is by Liam, concluding his earlier piece about Susan and The Krossing. You can watch a video that I (GANTOB) made in tribute (with help from my family) at the B&B where we’re staying before our move.

I am posting it at 23:23, Honolulu time. We are then stocking up at the local Coop and finally moving in to our new place before readying ourselves for Hogmanay. Work is a distant thought (3 January). WiFi (beamed to a dish via local beacon or something) and a perch for me to use in my telesales persona are already tested.

I will post my final blog for 2023 by 23:23, Inverness time (i.e. GMT/ UTC). Then I will prepare the book of the blog.

Thank you for making the last 99 days of 2023 such fun.

Yours,

GANTOB

The caffeine was beginning to kick in, and Susan decided it was time to put on her big girl pants and get involved in the madness.

All around her were people who all seemed so different, yet all seemed to share a zest for life, a willingness to immerse themselves in a common cause, and were not afraid of what anyone might think. For once in her life, Susan wished SHE could be like that. What was stopping her she asked herself. The answer to that was, of course, nothing. nothing except her inane fear of not being in Kontrol!

But in order to find out What The FUUK was really going on, she had to leave her inhibitions aside. It was now or never.

Animated pyramid provided by Liam

She has a wander around the room, taking in all the Skools that were happening. A coffin made of cardboard was in front of her. It was diligently being put together by a friendly looking chap. Let’s call him Andy, for that was his name. “What are you doing and how can I help?” Susan found herself asking. The answer was that this coffin was going to be filled with 23K shredded words from the Eulogies of people who had died in 2023. And once full, it was to form part of the procession along with The Peoples Pyramid. You can help by doing some shredding said Andy.

So Susan found herself reading through the eulogies of people she didn’t know, had no connection to, or any links whatsoever. But on reading these words, she realised that this wasn’t actually true. She read the celebration of each person’s life in the words of those that knew and loved them, and it suddenly clicked. Everyone and everything is connected. Every living soul, every person who has passed, every action and every reaction.

The Epiphany was real! It was happening to Susan and she embraced it. It all became clear to her. The reason GANTOB had done what she did. She realised that the things she herself held as being important were nothing of the sort. The things people put emphasis and importance on were nothing more than a charade.

Susan was now questioning her whole life, but rather than being deflated, angry or Konfused, she felt alive. She had found her tribe. She couldn’t wait to find GANTOB.

LIAM

30 December 2023
98b. LITTLE GRAPEFRUIT’S GAFF (by GAYNOR)

Dec 30th, 2023

Gaynor’s daughter LittleLegs has provided an excellent rendition of this Little Grapefruit tale:

Gaynor contacted me yesterday (in a short Instagram post), with a glowing reaction to Ariadne’s blog on The Museum of The KLF. You will recall Gaynor’s two parter Grey is the colour of hope from earlier this month.

Well here is Gaynor’s fuller response. A beautifully imagined dreamscape, riffing on Ariadne’s post, inspired by Little Grapefruit and Vienna, but very much Gaynor’s own.

Over to you Gaynor…

How had I stumbled into Little Grapefruit’s opulent abode?

I had been traipsing alone around Vienna, feeling a little melancholy. It was a Wednesday afternoon, a bit drizzly.

I was walking almost on autopilot. No direction, no purpose…

I stumbled on the Hundertwasserhaus which was a building of sheer beauty, glowing with colour like a patchwork on this otherwise gloomy day. I marvelled at the blue, orange, yellow and pink paint and tiles.

I felt the sensation of not being alone, stood in front of this building. I looked slyly to each side of me so as not to draw attention to myself – but no one was there. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling. I looked up, wondering if someone was looking out of the window above. Tree tenants perhaps? Then, without thinking, I looked down towards my feet (more to admire my trabs really).

And I saw her: the tiniest perfectly round little grapefruit you ever did see. She had a smooth shiny rind. Grapefruit blinked up at me for a while (I knew she was a friendly Grapefruit – don’t ask me how). She rolled along waiting for me to follow – she trundled, and I trotted.

We passed a beach populated by iron men and a necropolis full of memorials, finally stopping outside Wigan Casino.

Little Grapefruit’s house was on the other side of the road. There was no mistaking it.

It was beautiful, with a gigantic almost spiritual golden dome perched between two huge concrete blocks and a vast front door overlooked by three medusa heads guarding the door. There were two planters with the number 23 painted on. To the right of the door were nearly identical walls forming the front of the building. On both were huge black letters: MU MU (not in a typeface I recognised).

GAYNOR’s imagining of Little Grapefruit’s abode, potentially somewhere in/near Wigan. (Credit: Gaynor)

She led me in. I looked around admiring the sensuous artwork of Gustav Klimt.

Grapefruit’s carpets were lavish – probably best for rolling about on I thought.

I knew I had to leave. I felt it was time, so I tipped my hat and waved farewell. I turned to exit via the front door, expecting to see Wigan Casino. Instead, I walked out of a blue metal graffitied shipping container full of smoke and the deafening racket of Chinooks and sirens were blaring and the sound of Amber Rudd trying to reclaim chaos battered my ears. I legged it.

GAYNOR

30 December 2023
98a. I AM KURIOUS, GRAPEFRUIT (by STUART HUGGETT)

Dec 30th, 2023

This is Stuart’s third blog in this process of #Demokratisation for December 2023. Read his previous posts about The Foundation Doktor (and indeed The Doctor) and the connection between The Benefaktor and his granddaughter.

Today he is focusing on Little Grapefruit and family, and a kurious twist in The JAMs history (awakening unpleasant memories of that period when I thought that I had killed The Benefaktor). Note too the unexpected Edinburgh connection.

I’m glad that The Benefaktor recovered from his tumble – I still have unfinished business with “Douglas” (as he might or might not be called) and his apparent interference in my father-in-law Curt Finks’ life and legacy for a period spanning 50+ years. I just need a bit of time to piece together the evidence that I have collected over the past few months. It’s all packed up in a box in the boot of our car, outside the Newtonmore hotel where we’re staying before making the final stage of our journey to our new home. Winter tyres already fitted.

Over to you Stuart, with grateful appreciation of the distractions you have provided in this blog. We will hear more about the adventures of Little Grapefruit in post 98b, from another regular GANTOBer. Then we really need to get on the road.

Watch Stuart narrate the piece

Little Grapefruit has been touring the continent for weeks but she still keeps in touch with news from back home in Greater Bowlingham. She has particularly enjoyed seeing her travel diaries uploaded onto GANTOB’s blog, recognising many of the places in the old photographs selected to accompany her adventures.

All she has to do is roll herself into an internet café and nestle quietly near a router to tune her mind into the pathways of the World Wide Web. This should not come as a huge surprise to human beings. We accept that birds, bats, dogs and cats all perceive the world differently to us, picking up on audio frequencies and elements of the light spectrum inaccessible to humankind, and Little Grapefruit is the same.

By the time she reaches the next town, it is late and the only internet café has closed for the night. Anxious to catch up on family news and feeling the need for warmth, she rolls along suburban streets until she finds a quiet house with an open catflap and hops inside. Locating the household’s hub in the corner of the dining room, she settles down and starts surfing.

Emails checked and socials perused, she clicks onto GANTOB’s blog and is amused to find it is referencing The Fall again. Little Grapefruit knows all about the group as she takes particular pride in artists that acknowledge her citric cousins. Lemon Kittens, Lime Cordiale and Tangerine NiteMare are all favourites, as is The Fall’s 1988 album and ballet ‘I Am Kurious, Oranj’.

Little Grapefruit begins composing a blog for GANTOB, all about how, that same year, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu decided to actually become The Fall, attempting to rename themselves The Forever Ancients Liberation Loophole, and how Mark E Smith was having none of it.

American guitarist Brix Smith, of rock group The Fall, poses on a giant hamburger from the set of the ballet ‘I Am Kurious Oranj’, performed by Michael Clark and Company, with music by The Fall at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, 20th August 1988. (Photo by Kevin Cummins/Getty Images)

She writes about the idea rebounding on Drummond and Cauty when the bootlegging jokers who ran Swansea’s Fierce Recordings turned themselves into a fake Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu in return, releasing a fraudulent JAMs 12” and advertising a New York showcase with The Pooh Sticks together.

A few paragraphs in, though, Little Grapefruit thinks better of it. There just isn’t enough fruit in the story to hold her interest, let alone that of her friends and family back home in Bowlingham, she reasons.

She deletes her email. The KLF Re-enactment Society can deal with that one, she’s sure.

STUART HUGGETT

30 December 2023

Cover image is from a scan of the Pooh Sticks/ fake JAMs gig poster
97. THE MUSEUM OF THE KLF (by ARIADNE)

Dec 29th, 2023

Today I’m packing up, again. Leaving the motorway hotel in central Scotland to move into… well, I don’t want to give too much away. I’m looking forward to a change. You’ll need to keep reading.

I have been distracting myself by re-reading part 1 of the blog (posts 1-33). If this is going to work as a book I realise that I will need to substitute some of the “audience participation” sections with more narrative elements. I have plenty more to tell you, largely from my research into The Benefaktor and friends. Again, I don’t want to say too much…

Except to say that some of the revelations focus on Vienna. Which leads nicely on to Ariadne’s second post for this blog (make sure you read her first post too). We’re back with our most popular character, Little Grapefruit, rolling around the city.

Art work by Ariadne.

Thanks Ariadne!

That night as Little Grapefruit fell asleep under the Spraybanane she dreamt of Vienna but it wasn’t the city that she had spent the day rolling around. It contained elements of Helsinki, Bratislava and other cities that she had yet to visit.

There was a lot to explore in this dream Vienna. After rolling down one particularly steep staircase Little Grapefruit found herself rolling from cobblestones onto sand. She was standing on a beach somewhere back in Finland. Above her the Aurora Borealis glowed a beautiful array of various shades of grapefruit.

She took a roll along the sand enjoying the exfoliating effect it was having on her rind. A path appeared before her and at the end of this path stood a low rectangular building. It looked very dark and like no one had stepped inside for many years.

Little Grapefruit was unperturbed and bounced inside. She found herself rolling down a long corridor, the light was low but she could make out the words SHAG SHAG SHAG painted in large black letters on the walls. She rolled into a large room. The Top of The Pops theme tune circa 1987 played in the background.

Credit: Ariadne

In the middle of the room sat a completely white 1968 Ford Galaxy. Surrounding the car were large display cases. 23 to be exact. One contained two tuxedos, one white, one black, with two matching Flying V guitars. In another stood mannequins in long white robes with horns sticking out from underneath the hoods. And in one almost hidden, shoved in the back near the exit there sat with nothing else inside it, one lone, singular brick.

Little Grapefruit made her way around the room looking at everything in these dusty glass cases, large fluffy deer stalkers sitting next to mirrored shades, the charred remains of a wicker man, fake moustaches, one pencil thin, the other heavy and bushy.

There was a lot to take in, but she had done so much rolling and she needed a sleep, she jumped into the deerstalker, snuggling into its softness and thought about her travels. How for such a small fruit she had seen so much of the continent, all on her own. She felt very proud of herself but slightly melancholy as well. As her tiny eyelids closed all she could think was that sometimes life is a very lonely adventure.

ARIADNE

29 December 2023

Any ideas about the location of The Museum? Please post below. I wondered about The Secession Building – that would look “grape” with a grapefruit on top.

Source: Wikipedia
96. PROF GRAYLING MUIR – part 5

Dec 28th, 2023

Curt Finks has finally arrived at the hide, with his friend Bronwyn and visiting academic Prof Grayling Muir. Finks is still reeling from the interview with the Fringe of the Fringe journalist. The concluding part of the reconstructed tales of Finks and friends from the late 80s and early 90s.

Part 1| Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Eventually Curt Finks calmed down. Bronwyn had learnt to shut out her friend’s witterings when he was having such a rant. However, Grayling Muir sat listening with studied attentiveness as the Reverend’s story unfolded – a joker distributing a different programme in his name for each of his Edinburgh Fringe performances. Who could possibly have set up such an elaborate scheme, with such convoluted rules? In contrast, Finks’ performance had not changed since his 1972 debut.

Thankfully, conversation moved on. Grayling was detailing his research so far. The Brent Geese had arrived on their scheduled day, flashing their green, yellow and pink tags as a challenge for the local bird watchers to document and track their route, mourn the missing, and tag the newest additions to their flock. But a few geese in one corner of their patch had, for a second year, started to show a stumbling state of stupor.

Recounting the natural history of this strange condition, Grayling painted a gloomy picture. Some of the birds had been found circling incessantly. Others slept through the day as if scared of the sun, surfacing only at night to start their shuffle all over again. Yet more showed even more worrying signs, a distant look in their eye before disappearing, their tags found discarded in a trough that cattle and sheep shared in an adjacent field.

According to Professor Muir there had been reports of similar episodes in letters responding to his various publications on this phenomenon. Similar behaviour had been observed in Canada and Siberia. After recruiting volunteers from an advert in the same journal, Muir carefully tabulated the details of the plants growing where the geese had been found. On one occasion he noted the little yellow flowers found in a puddle of vomit close to an affected goose

Intensive statistical analysis, using mainframe computers in the veterinary department of his Canadian university threw up an unexpected pattern. A strong correlation between number of Brent Geese affected and proximity to patches of ragworts. Finks and Bronwyn Gosling knew this part of the story: the eradication of the culprit flora.

Now that the area was clear of the cause of their illness, the Brent Geese numbers had boomed, without a return to their toxin-induced catatonia. “And that”, said Grayling, flourishing his most recently published paper, “ends my Muir Trance Series”. A coot in the distance peeped out a rhythmic call.

Reconstructed by GANTOB and Ali from discussions with Bronwyn Gosling and details from Curt Finks diaries, 1988-1992