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.
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.
The Benefaktor was deep in the task of checking the tiny little card snips for a newly reconstructed Curt Finks story, retrieved from the floppy disk of an old Amstrad computer. The GANTOB Quality Assurance Committee had been in session for a few hours. It was a physical meeting, rather than the Zoom meetings that had become the norm. Gillian, The Benefaktor, Katie and Urs were sitting around a mahogany table, with one of those special reading lights. Ali was holding the fort at The Kroft. Katie had brought Krispy Kreme donuts. The Benefaktor had never tasted anything so searingly sweet. He felt that his head had been split into two.
They re-read the story, counting the words (without the hyphens that Microsoft Word includes in its automated check), and reviewing the brick template that Gillian had printed out on five different colours of card before travelling south to the K_____’s flat in Edinburgh. The Committee agreed that while not perfect the little cuboid shapes were “good enough” and moved on to the main task of the day: checking that the words were all included, in the right order, on the right size of brick, legible, numbered correctly, punctuation annotated. Some spares would be included. The committee decided that this time the story would not just be a wall. It would be a construction – a building – but without a plan, which is where the spares might come in handy, for example if the selected recipient decided to make a roof, windows or a door.
The Benefaktor was “in the zone”. He was enjoying one of what he imagined would be one of the last meetings of a GANTOB committee. There would be other GANTOB Board meetings of course, but they rigidly followed an agenda, without deviation; done and dusted in 45 minutes, like Kirk Session bureaucracy. In contrast, these GANTOB committee meetings were more flexible, hands on, problem solving. It felt like the old days before the revelations about The Benefaktor’s interference in the Curt Finks legacy had come between them.
They took it strip by strip. While The Benefaktor snipped, with some nail scissors, and documented Gillian’s neatly written words on a white board that they had moved through from the kitchen, he let his mind drift. He was thinking about two words: “multifarious” and “nefarious”. They had popped into his head while Gillian was throwing insults around earlier. Was either fair? And what was with the “-farious”? He poked around his brain, like a tongue – a lingula – or perhaps he was trying to find a crumb of unbearable sweetness from that donut, lurking behind a tooth. He was desperate to eradicate all remaining traces. Where was The Linguist when you needed him? Six feet under, unfortunately, or in a jar on his niece’s mantlepiece actually. Damn. He was pretty sure that the words were unrelated and that the “farious” was made up from quite different roots, or stems, or whatever the term would be. He could not check, because the committee had agreed it was a phone free zone, and he was not currently allowed into The Kino to check a dictionary.
Rules are rules, not that that seemed to mean anything to the others. The “no chat” rule was being flouted with impunity. Katie, Gillian and Urs were giggling and gossiping, gathered together at the other end of the table. He sighed, the stream of exhalation from his hairy nostrils disturbing the line of neatly placed snips that he had laid out on a carefully wiped and dried tray. There he was in the spotlight from the light he had been given for his birthday, feeling gloomy. And there they were huddled around a dim table lamp, in sparkling form. Who was he fooling with his earlier sentimental recollections of GANTOB (the project)? He was feeling increasingly distant from the whole business.
Vast stretches of time had passed without any contact from Gillian. Katie was always busy in the hospital. Urs had found a new lease of life since unearthing her creative side. And The Benefaktor had been locked out of the GANTOB email and social media accounts since changing phone and attempting to install Ubuntu on his PC. He hadn’t even visited The Kroft. And he could not really say that he had had a proper discussion with Gillian since their huge row in Vienna Airport in January.* They had been separated by airport staff and forced to travel back on separate planes. He was lucky that he had not been banned from flying and forced to nip along to Bratislava.
No, he realised. He was no longer the imagined artist writing swathes of text and injecting new ideas as he had done at the start of the second book. He was just the funder now. He looked down at the snips laid out on the tray. He had cut the word “mournful” (number 291) in half, at an angle. What had he been thinking? He tried to forge Gillian’s capitals, but his letters sloped to the left. So easy to identify. He shuffled along to the other end of the table with a spare orange snip long enough to contain the eight letters, and asked Gillian to write him another. He started to explain that it had been damaged before he cut it out, but stopped as she glared at him over the rim of her glasses. He decided against yet another untruth. She wrote the letters down without looking up again. No connection, except in anger (from her side). Katie and Urs kept chatting away, without apparently noticing that anything was up. The Benefaktor sloped back, wondering why he was writing in the third person. Distracted, he snipped the word in half again. Damn. He could not ask her a second time. This time he would just need to forge the word. The first attempt strayed outside the cuboid. He tried again, just about squeezing the letters within the box. Good enough.
He completed the six paragraphs, taking photos of each to document the positioning of the words in the cuboid template, the accuracy of the snipping, the completeness of each section, before tipping them into a medicine container. They were uploaded to the Google Photos folder to which the GANTOB inner circle had shared access (though he was never sure how that happened given all his other IT problems). Exhausted, left hand aching, he stickered up the bottle and slipped it inside a specially procured jiffy bag. He was pleased to have completed the task. With the others still chatting at the other end of the table he decided to race out to catch the post office before it closed. He addressed the package with a preprinted label with its familiar exploding grapefruit logo.
On his return to the flat he realised that he had forgotten his keys. No point pressing the service button – it was way too late in the day for that. He would have to announce his scattiness by ringing the flat. Buzzed in as soon as he started his mumbled apology, he climbed the stairs wondering if there were other tasks in store. Urs was standing at the door, with Gillian and Katie lined up behind. Gillian had her hand out.
“Please can we check the medicine bottle?”, she barked.
“I don’t have bottles, I have a blister pack”, he replied.
“Not your medicine, fool! The container with the Curt Finks story in it”.
“I’ve posted it”.
And with that she pulled out her phone in a rehearsed and irritatingly officious manner to show him photos of the 4th and 5th paragraphs with words cut off from the two photos (top and bottom respectively). While he tried to inspect the images, she shoogled her mobile from side to side a couple of times like an angry parody of one of those Instagram adverts where they try to make everything look jaunty and appealing. He would take her word for it.
“You’ve misfired D______”, snapped Gillian.
Katie took his phone to check whether he had edited the photos, leaving earlier versions that could be retrieved.
“Nope”, she replied. “Nothing”.
“What is the point of having a Committee”, shouted Urs, “if you operate as a lone wolf”.
Gillian joined in: “And you cannot just add the words ‘Quality Assurance’ as if they will cast their spells by their mere presence”. He decided not to point out that QA had been her idea.
They went through to the Dining Room. Snips of paper were scattered across the area where he had been working. He was relieved to see that none had words handwritten by Gillian on them. He started to explain that he was confident in his checks but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder as he was guided to a seat at the top of the table.
None of his excuses washed. Not even Gillian’s own motto of “Keep Learning Fool”. They reconvened the QA Committee, this time without gossip or straying from the agenda. Gillian pulled out a serious incident form that she had adapted from her previous job, having GANTOBized it with the grapefruit logo at the top. They worked through the sections line by line. They agreed that there was no need to reissue the story inside the medicine bottle. They would have to rely on the recipients in Wales to reconstruct the story and post their results. They then moved on to disciplinary action. The Benefaktor was to be excluded from further artistic input into the project, including posting, packing, snipping and photography. He would be removed from the Google Photos account, if they could work out how. He was solely the “money man”, as had been the intention from the start of his involvement at the end of the first book.
He stood up when it was clear that the meeting had concluded, and moved as quickly as he could, without marching, to the door. But hand on the mother-of-pearl doorknob he stopped and turned, firm in his resolve to reveal the information that he had refrained from sharing these past 9 months. That would grab their attention and regain entry to the inner sanctum.
“Urs, can I have the key to The Kino please?” Urs, conflicted in her loyalties, paused, looking at the other two women, but then relented. The couple left the room together, with the agreement that he would be allowed into his room for 5 minutes and under close supervision. Luckily, he knew exactly where to look. Urs unlocked the top of the filing cabinet. He pulled out the second drawer, flicked to the third suspension file from the front, and retrieved a sheath of papers in a clear plastic folder: his Dallas Curt Finks files.
A self portrait by Curt Finks, c1999 (c/o The Benefaktor)
To be continued…
THE BENEFAKTOR 15 May 2024
Pamphlet 43 of the 52 Pamphlets
(*) The Vienna trip is documented in the second GANTOB book, but not the blog.
If you would like to contribute a pamphlet (by 30 June 2024) or receive one of the last few copies of the first or second book, please get in touch.
A news article in last week’s NME (‘The K Foundation ‘flog’ film’) has announced that “The K Foundation and London’s avant-garde nighterie Club Disobey will host an event at 8pm on December 8 where they will show the K Foundation film – previewed at In The City in Manchester earlier this year – and give people a chance to buy frames from it.”
I’ve already rung my KLF-mad friend Ade Scripps to see if he wants to catch up at the Brick Lane event. We’d had our own KLF-inspired art duo at university but I’ve not seen him since we took our final exams back in the summer.
When the day comes, I leave my shared house in St Leonards and stop off in the Co-op on London Road to flick through the broadsheet newspapers, looking for any adverts promoting tonight’s event. Sure enough, page 9 of The Guardian carries an ad headlined CAPE WRATH 5-11-95, revealing that ‘ON 5 NOVEMBER 1995, JIMMY CAUTY & BILL DRUMMOND SIGNED A CONTRACT WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD AGREEING TO END THE K FOUNDATION FOR A PERIOD OF 23 YEARS’ and ending with the line ‘8PM TONIGHT, THE PREMIER CARPARK, BRICK LANE’.
Confusingly, page 15 of The Independent carries what appears to be another K Foundation advert, simply reading SIX THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY SEVEN CANS OF TENNENT’S SUPER. I buy both newspapers and a 2-litre bottle of Olde English cider and head to St Leonards Warrior Square station to catch the train to London.
Later that evening:
It’s dark and it’s cold and it’s on the verge of snowing. I’ve drunk nearly half my cider on the train and have been trudging around Whitechapel in a merry state, wondering if Ade’s going to show and where the hell The K Foundation are. I’ve located the Brick Lane car park but there’s nothing happening.
Fortunately some bloke turns up and tells me and a few other lost souls that the event has moved indoors to The Seven Stars pub back down the street. I stash my unfinished bottle of Olde English in a bin outside the pub, creep inside, get another pint and sit at the nearest empty table.
Jimmy Cauty, Bill Drummond and their companions arrive and sit next to me. Shit. I try to stare at my pint and not at them.
One partial, abandoned screening of ‘Watch The K-Foundation Burn A Million Quid’ in the Seven Stars’ basement later, I stumble out into the cold night air. I’ve not spoken to the K Foundation and not been able to buy a frame from the film (Gimpo objected very firmly to fans trying to snatch his reel from the projector) but my cider bottle is still in the rubbish bin, undisturbed.
I fish it out and finish it off on the train home. Ade never made it.
Thursday 25th April, 2024
It’s early evening and I’m on the 19.09 train from Brighton to London Victoria, heading to Coventry for a couple of nights in order to explore the middle section of The K-Line, a 180 mile long leyline connecting Trancentral in Stockwell to the Mathew Street manhole cover in Liverpool.
My wife Carolyn has picked up some snacks to help me on my way: cereal bars, cashew nuts, that sort of thing. Also a four-pack of Budweiser beer, in a limited edition can designed by the British Pop Artist Sir Peter Blake. I’ve been at work all day and, to celebrate catching the train in time and having the chance to sit down for a while, I open one.
In a previous pamphlet for GANTOB, I wrote about the connections between The KLF and William Blake. Aside from their surnames, the artistic practices of William and Peter Blake have nothing formally in common, although both occupy iconic positions in the story of English art.
There is a direct connection between Sir Peter Blake and The KLF, however. The ferry hired to cross the Mersey at K2 Plant Hire’s event The Krossing on Thursday 23rd November 2023 was the Dazzle Ferry(*), painted by Blake in a Pop Art homage to the ‘Dazzle Ships’ camouflage first used on boats during the First World War.
Is the Blake Budweiser can a work of art? It’s certainly pretty and widely available as an artistic ‘multiple’ but does it have any artistic worth? While it’s available in the shops, it has more retail value full than empty. Could a full, or empty, can have any measurable worth in the future though?
Sunday 24th December 1995
It’s late in the evening on Christmas Eve and Drummond and Cauty are driving around London on a flat-bed truck, attempting to hand out the previously advertised Six Thousand, Two Hundred And Thirty Seven cans of Tennent’s Super to the capital’s street drinkers.
It was some time before news of this happening reached the wider world. I can’t remember now where I first read about it but Drummond tells the whole sorry tale in his 2000 memoir ‘45’. The cans of Tennent’s Super were twice assembled into a shining blue cube of super strength lager, which twice collapsed.
As he writes, “The remains of it are still stacked up in a container that Jimmy and I have, where we keep all our old costumes. The plan is that if there is ever a retrospective show of what The K Foundation did, we can empty these leftover cans down the drain and then use them to build a hollow, life-size replica of our original cube and this piece can act as the all-important documentation of the event.”
In which case, The K Foundation’s numerous empty but otherwise bog-standard cans of Tennent’s could have more worth than an equivalent number of unopened ones, and arguably more than Sir Peter Blake’s mass produced Pop Art Budweiser cans, empty or full.
One way in which Tennent’s Super has more value than Budweiser is its alcohol percentage: 7.5% to Bud’s 4.5. I tried getting hold of some Tennent’s Super in Brighton while I was writing this pamphlet but many of the city’s off licences are a bit too gentrified for a street drinker’s tastes these days, with most equivalently strong beers being half the size, twice the price and called things like Texan Sex Robot or Grandad’s Dead Horse.
Tennent’s was impossible to track down so I had a choice between McEwen’s Champion and Carlsberg Special Brew. I bought a can of the latter because of the Bad Manners single but I don’t know if I really want to drink it.
Saturday 9th March, 2024
It’s late afternoon and I’m staggering into Bletchley. I’ve spent the whole day walking north-west across the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire countryside along the course of The K-Line and I’m exhausted. I’ve taken numerous wrong footpath turnings in the last couple of hours, trying to get across from the village of Mursley to Bletchley railway station in order to catch the train home to Brighton before the sun sets. I’m also desperate for a beer.
I enter the first off licence I find, a branch of the Co-op on Newton Road. The one with all the helpful little robotic delivery vehicles lined up outside. I need a beer with some kind of extra fruit kick, a citric or berry tang, to rejuvenate me, and opt for a can from the BrewDog range. It’s called Elvis Juice. When I eventually reach the station, take my seat on the Euston bound train and open the beer, my mental and physical equilibrium feels restored.
Thanks to ‘Bad Wisdom’, his 1996 novel with Mark Manning, we have an idea about what Bill Drummond thinks of his own drinking. “I don’t want to get pissed; I never do. I have an in-built something that prevents me from getting drunk. Three pints of bitter and I switch to halves; after the second half I start drinking water. Z hates me for it.”
What does Drummond think about BrewDog branding one of their beers in homage to his beloved Elvis Presley, I wonder. Does it help contribute to the cause of world peace?
Thursday 27th November 1997
Another evening and I’m back on Brick Lane. This time, I’m carrying a letterbox-shaped, full colour flyer.
ARTHROB FOUNDATION & ELLIPSIS PRESENT THE OFFICAL BOOK LAUNCH: K FOUNDATION BURN A MILLION QUID. ARTHROB DJ’S + CREW + READINGS. 27 NOVEMBER 1997. ATLANTIS ART SPACE.
I remember I bought a copy of the book, by Chris Brook and Alan Goodrick (Gimpo).
I remember there was K Foundation ‘Brick Ale’ for sale. 6% abv, 500ml. ‘The beer of the launch. Of the book. Of the film. Of the act. The lingering death of the idea; seeping…’
Credit: Stuart
I remember buying a bottle of Brick Ale and being told not to drink it because it would be worth more if it was still sealed. Then drinking it anyway. And buying another. And drinking that as well. With apologies to hardcore KLF kollectors, I may also have drunk a third.
I remember there were readings. I can’t remember who by. Chris Brook, I think. Iain Sinclair, possibly? Perhaps not. I do remember someone burning a ten pound note.
If I hadn’t have been drinking, I might have remembered more, although there’s no guarantee of that.
How much money have I spend on alcohol over the years? A million quid? Unlikely.
How many drinks, though? Six thousand, two hundred and thirty seven? It’s possible.
When is addiction? A drink every day? Still going at it into middle age? Answers on a beermat, please.
A couple of weeks ago I started sending out books, magazines, posters and pamphlets to previous contributors to GANTOB (the project). Ultimately I sent out 23 packages, in an attempt to contact “The Ten”. These included the 23 Questions in various different formats (pamphlets, posters, paper and card, slightly different wording).
Tuesday’s pamphlet from YMoF was number 39 of the 52 Pamphlets. There are therefore only 13 slots to fill before I conclude my work with the publication of the third and final GANTOB book, 52 Pamphlets. This will be posted free to all contributors to this stage of the project.* I have a bit more to say myself, which leaves around 10 slots still to fill. Hence The Ten. If there are more than 52 pamphlets submitted, then there will be ways to include some or all of these contributions.
Four people have already been in touch since this most recent GANTOB mailing. Here are two of their contributions. They illustrate that you do not need to contribute a full pamphlet to be part of the third book. You could answer one of the 23 Questions – and your answer could be a word, sentence, paragraph or a pamphlet. Or a photo of your scribbles. Or a piece of art. You decide.
This is not a pamphlet. It is an update. It will, however, be included in the book.
To submit your contributions please use contact details in the About GANTOB section of this blog.
Contributions from Stephen and Andy follow.
Hi GANTOB
I received the poster and book today and felt I needed to finally answer one of your questions. Text is below, feel free to edit and thanks for not giving up on me.
All the best
Stephen
I was initially reluctant to respond to the 23 Questions. I didn’t think I had a whole pamphlet in me and didn’t want to waffle just to fill out the space, like a school assignment with a set amount of words. Now there aren’t many questions left and GANTOB just sent me a ‘To The Ten’ poster with a copy of Bad Wisdom by Bill Drummond and Mark Manning. As this is now my third copy I will have to part with at least one to a charity shop as was suggested in the poster’s text. The second is a spare but really I should give it away too (useful if someone needs to borrow it but who am I kidding). In the text of ‘To The Ten’ I also noticed that the answer can just be ‘a sentence, paragraph, a pamphlet, or a series of pamphlets’. This was news to me and encouraged me to have a go.
I’ve decided to answer Question 21: So What? This seems both existential and very open ended. My initial answer is: because it matters. I don’t know what the ‘So What?’ is actually referring to but I feel if it’s important enough to ask the question, even if it’s just one person asking, then it must be about something that matters. If it is meant to refer to the GANTOB blog and the whole effort it has spawned (so what, why was it done, what does it matter?), I’m not the person directly responsible to answer that. I have a belief however that, if they so desire, people need to add their voices and opinions to the rest of the world. If they don’t, then we are left only with the loudest voices, the most numerous voices and commercial interests. The internet is still a place where any voice can be placed for no real cost and be heard by a few at least, at best (or worst) by all. The more variety of interests and opinions shared the better. GANTOB is justified simply by this belief alone. It’s our differences that make us human and have helped us evolve to where we are and difference is what will keep us the dynamic species we are. Out of the billions of people, one person, one voice, can really still make a difference, big or small, in secret, over the years or in one fast minute.
STEPHEN 9 MAY 2024
Andy messaged me on Twitter/X a week earlier. I have transcribed his answers to questions 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23:
* If you are a GANTOB newbie, or lapsed GANTOBer, and would like a copy of the first or second book, then a very limited number of copies are available on request, after a second printing to fulfill requirements to the UK copyright libraries. First come, first served.
In the grand tapestry of artistic expression, there exists a curious and somewhat perplexing phenomenon: the deliberate act of burning one’s own creations. This peculiar practice, while more often provocatively deliberate to challenge convention, can leave the dedicated kollector in a state of mild vexation, ruing the enigmatic motivations behind such actions. Let us embark on a journey of contemplation, exploring the intricacies of such ritualistic incineration and its implications for the world of art and those who seek to collect it.
From Penkiln Burn website originally, via KLF.DE website
Consider, if you will, the case of Bill Drummond, a figure whose artistic endeavors have long captivated and confounded audiences. In a moment of whimsy, or perhaps calculated defiance, Drummond elected to consign several copies of his limited edition paperback, “Man Makes Bed,” to the flames during a public exhibition in the bustling city of Amsterdam. To the discerning collector, whose pursuit of completeness borders on obsession, such gestures are nothing short of irksome. The sudden reduction in available copies only serves to inflate the price of the remaining ones, making the task of acquisition both more arduous and costly.
Yet, in the midst of this frustration, one cannot help but ponder the deeper significance of such actions. What drives an artist to destroy their own creations, particularly those which are held in high regard by collectors and enthusiasts alike? Is it an act of rebellion against the commodification of art, a rejection of the notion that creativity can be quantified and possessed? Or perhaps it’s a statement of self-liberation, a declaration that the artist’s vision transcends materiality and ownership. Or maybe it’s bollocks.
Paperback edition of the book. From Penkiln Burn website originally, via KLF.DE website
Indeed, the act of burning one’s own work is not merely a physical destruction, but a symbolic gesture laden with meaning and ambiguity. It challenges our preconceptions of value and permanence, forcing us to confront the ephemeral nature of human endeavor. For every book cast into the fire, another inevitably takes its place. The cycle of creation and destruction continues unabated, rendering the notion of completeness a fleeting illusion.
Yet, amidst the ashes of what has been lost, there exists the potential for new growth and discovery. In embracing the impermanence of our pursuits, we are reminded of the ever-changing nature of human expression. A kollector, once bound by the pursuit of completeness, finds liberation in the acceptance of incompleteness. For it is in the gaps and absences left by the flames that new narratives can take root, new connections forged.
And so, as we contemplate the flickering flames of our artistic endeavors, let us do so with a sense of quiet reflection. Let us acknowledge the frustration of the collector, while also recognising the inherent futility of complete pursuit. For, in the end, the true value of art lies not in its physical manifestation, but in the ideas it embodies and the emotions it evokes. It is a force that transcends boundaries and defies categorisation, inviting us to embrace the uncertainty of our own creative journey.
In conclusion, the act of burning one’s own work, while intensely annoying for a completist collector, serves as a poignant reminder of the transient nature of human expression. It is a ritualistic incantation that challenges our notions of value and permanence, inviting us to embrace the impermanence of our pursuits and find liberation in the acceptance of incompleteness. And it is in this spirit of renewal that the true essence of art is revealed: not as a static object to be possessed, but as a dynamic force that continues to evolve and inspire long after the flames have died away.
In response GANTOB wrote:
“I don’t know if you saw the news recently on deciphering a previously unknown passage about Plato’s last hours, from the ashes of Pompeii. Makes you think!”
To which YMoF replied:
It’s New Year’s Day 2317 – still six years to go before the KLF’s World Tour finally begins.
In one of the first unlicensed applikations of quantum unentanglement technology, dedicated descendants of 1990s’ KLF fans succeed in unearthing the final unrecorded utterance of either the Elderly Gentleman or his TowerBlock accomplice from their Striktly Unrekorded death day* interview:
When asked, by the 21st Century’s AI-bot reincarnation of stalwart BBC DJ Steve Wright (or maybe it was @GANTOB or @PopJustice), why they continually self-destructed their work, one of the pair was finally heard to re-utter the word “Whatever”. The other was finally seen, by the miracle of quantum unentanglement-vision, to silently nod.
Back in the 24th Century, the BBC tracks down a descendant of Gimpo for a characteristically colourful comment for the morning news show – “Boolukks!”.
* before which one of them was best, allegedly.
By Young Man on Facebook, 7 May 2024
Pamphlet 39 of the #52Pamphlets
Visit the 52 pamphlets page to find out how you could submit your own pamphlet.
Gimpo – as ever – was the one who had to keep an eye on everything while the other two swanned about. After beating the bounds and congregating, he sent us all towards the Ferry while he made off back to the van. It wasn’t the best evening for a Krossing on the Ferry. It was rough as fuuk. With each step I took the boat would either rise to meet my foot, or swoop away causing me to wobble and go off-kilter. I stood close to the Panda and kept one eye on my precious niece. By now she had submerged herself into the madness and was wearing a retractable traffic cone on her head, tilted to the side like a fine hat and fastened underneath the chin. Like me, she was no stranger to mishaps. She had the biggest of smiles as she took in the madness around her. I could still feel her pain though. We were all called to silence as the roll call of names ensued and the lights from the Liver Buildings shone bright across the water. We gasped and gulped as my brother’s name was read out among the names of those to be Mumufied this year. A reminder that he was gone.
I’ve often gathered my family together in the autumn months to take the Ferry ‘cross the Mersey to remember our Dad/Grandad/Great Grandad. At least one or two were obliging most years. I didn’t go back to Liverpool much since I left in 1994 when I was 21. I tried to keep it to once a year. If someone died, was born, married or had a significant birthday then I was usually persuaded to return more often. I like a family party, even if it is a wake. It is nice to see everyone together and remember those who have passed. Talking about the good old days.
One year, on a bright and balmy October afternoon, I managed to get at least 10 of us together, and we took the Ferry to the other side, and back. We never got off the Ferry, straight back to Liverpool and then off out for tea: that was our tradition. This time our Ray even made it. He never had before, and he never made it again. This year he was on his best behaviour and made it to the Ferry terminal to meet us all there. He wasn’t even gouging out or rattling too badly. We posed for photos, all four siblings, even some of our kids. My mum loved it and thanked me for arranging everything. Just as we were about to pull back up at the waterside, before the sound of the chains, and the smell of the oil, Raymond disappeared into the toilet. We all got off the Ferry and looked around for him. Eventually, he came skipping down the gangplank. He was fuuking muntered. He was smiling and laughing. My Mum announced his full name while rolling her eyes. Most of the family muttered in unison, “Oh for fuuk’s sake”. I took him by the hand and led him along with me, asking him how he’d been and if he was buzzing? “Yeah!” he nodded. I was long past being angry with him for being an addict. I saw it as a potentially permanent, terminal illness that deserved empathy, understanding, the odd chin wipe and a constant stream of £20 handouts. As I said, I didn’t see them often, so it was never too onerous to endure. I loved my brother dearly; we were best friends all our lives.
Christine’s brother Ray
Dad was still holding my hand as we walked off the Ferry. I felt him walking slower than me, so I tried to slow down. It had been like this for a while now, but I didn’t ask too much about it. I just walked slower or sometimes I would take a step forward and then back – a bit like Scottish dancing where you take two steps in the same place before you move along – but slower and still holding his hand. I noticed how Dad’s hands had become smoother than they used to be, even the traces of oil were gone from his nails.
He hadn’t fixed a gearbox in ages. I missed having a Scania parked at the end of the path. I was always proud to show off Dad’s lorries to my mates when he brought one home and would use my acrobatic skills to get up to the cab, informing my friends that they were not allowed up here. I’d smile at myself in the large wing mirror and enjoy the smell of the cab.
We walked along the waterfront, looking across to the other side, Dad informed me correctly that it was the best view in the world from over here and the poor sods from Birkenhead didn’t have it all that bad: at least they get to look at Liverpool. The view from our side of the water was pretty grim. We called Birkenhead the Badlands. It was really fuuking grim in the 80s: everything was. Dad had to sit down. I could see it was upsetting him, so I declared it was time for another sandwich and some of Auntie V’s homemade delights. He agreed and I was even allowed to hold the Kiaora bottle this time. We sat looking across the water, thinking to ourselves, munching away on Viennese Whirls and Battenberg. Dad finished off the butties too. Divine.
Summer came and went. Dad took me to see my other aunties, one by one. We had a lot of days out me and Dad that summer. I had to start the big school. It was a convent school. I was dreading it. I had heard about the Nuns from my sister. She was 12 years older than me and had been taught by the same nuns and so had my brothers. The Sisters of Mercy. I had been informed they were merciless. A few weeks into term, Dad got a date for his operation that was going to make him better. I was assured by everyone that he would soon be right as rain. I love rain.
Ray’s brick
At last, I heard the chains clunk. We were waiting by the exit keen to get off. A girl ran past and shouted “Fuuk that boat!” as we disembarked. It was a rough crossing. As instructed we walked slowly and in an exaggerated manner along the landing pier and out towards the Badlands. The choir from Toxteth was waiting on the other side singing aloud, informing us that “one day like this a year would see me right, for life”.
Me and my niece locked into a hug and wiped each other’s tears. “That fuuking boat though!” we laughed and wretched in unison. The ice kream van chimed the tune of Justified and Ancient, and a police van tore towards the terminal with its siren and lights. It wasn’t for us. We were all surprised. Flares were going off, smoke and colours. We collected my brother’s brick. He was heavy, I’m not going to lie. The pyramid led the way, on a forklift truck of course. I followed the crowd and I found myself walking along a strip of the waterfront I hadn’t walked down since 1983, when I was with my Dad. I thought of everything in a flash that had been and gone over the 40 years since I was last here. What had life taught me? I realised all at once the knowledge I had gained, the stories I had seen unfold. I wasn’t sure how, but for that moment, I knew. The tears streamed down my face. The Panda saw them and wiped some away and nodded his big Panda head. That Panda took care of me. He fermented foods for me: pickles. I like pickles.
Mr Pickles with Panda head
Dad died just before 8 pm on Tuesday 25th October 1983. Karma Chameleon was number one in the UK Charts and Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers were number one in the US Charts with Islands in the Stream. I sat in my bedroom with my pull-out poster of Boy George. I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry for years after that, not properly.
The crowd gathered around the Pier Head at 5:23 pm. It was pissing down and we were soaked wet through after having the bright idea to walk along from Toxteth. It wasn’t raining when we left, but by the time we got to the gates with the little turret on top of a bigger turret the wind swooped sideways from the Mersey through the Kings Dock. Intense sharp rain right in the face, drenching the clothes through. The ice kream van went past a while ago heading towards the waterfront, playing their tune as they got close to us. They must have noticed the flashes of hi-viz on our attire, or maybe it was because my husband was wearing a giant Panda head. He got a lot of attention that day and it kept him dry from the rain. We gathered and danced and sang together, some played the drums. We were all from the same tribe, all banded together in our madness and grief.
The bus pulled in at the Pier Head. I was sat on my hands clenching myself to the seat trying not to focus on the tea splashing around in my belly as we took a wide corner into the bus stop. I fixed a smile on my face so as not to have the focus shifted to my very full bladder. Tea goes through you very quickly. While I didn’t want to spoil the day by being demanding, I couldn’t risk wetting my pedal pushers. I looked smart when I left the house this morning. Mum had left my blouse and pedal pushers out on the side for me, all ironed and smooth, with white knickers, a vest and some frilly-edged socks. Dad commented, “Sunday best!” when I got dressed. It wasn’t Sunday though, it was Monday so I didn’t have to lie about going to church today.
Dad took me straight into the landing terminal where the ferry embarked from and took me to the turnstile of the toilets, waiting for an old lady to come to the gate at the same time as us. Dad took 2p out of his pocket and passed it to the old lady we had never met. She knew what to do. She stood me in front of her, put the 2p in the turnstile and then pushed me up close to the bar and we both poured into the public convenience together, two for the price of one. I didn’t feel the need to do any handstands in these toilets. Instead, I hovered over the seat and aimed in the general direction of the loo, just like Mum had taught me. “Do not sit on that seat!” she would always remind me. She wasn’t there to remind me today, but I knew it was dirty and I could not tolerate smells. I gagged at the stench and quickly pulled my sleeve down to cover my hand while I unlocked the door to get out of there and buried my chin and mouth in the ruched collar of my blouse. I washed my hands and breathed in the smell of the council soap. It was the same smell as the soap at school, and every other public toilet. I pulled tongues at myself in the mirror as I rubbed my hands together, splashing the suds between both hands. I looked down realising I had covered myself in water from the sink. I tried to rub it dry with the cotton towel. I pulled a clean bit around, scrunched up my wet blouse and rubbed it with the towel. It didn’t dry it. Now I just had a scrunched and wet blouse. Oh well. I shrugged to myself in the mirror and walked on my tip toes with my arms in the air out of the public convenience.
Dad was waiting for me. He looked like he’d missed me because his smile was beaming at me as I used my belly to push the bar to get out. I was tempted to do a cartwheel then but as I looked down at the floor it was dirty with cigarette butts so I decided against it also knowing that those types of “acrobatics” as Dad would call it, had no place on the street. Instead, I took giant steps still with my arms in the air until I got closer to Dad. He took my hand and pirouetted me around on the spot. I bowed to him and then walked normally, or as best as I could until I tripped on a flagstone, falling to my knees.
The best thing about pedal pushers was that I didn’t rip them as I fell. Instead, I just had a spot of blood on my knees from the graze. Dad took his chequered hanky out of his pocket, still folded in a square and neatly ironed with his initials on the corner, WJF. He gave it a rub and said, “It will be a pig’s foot in the morning!”. We snorted and laughed.
We started to walk away from the Ferry terminal, at which point I asked, preparing to be disappointed, “Are we going on the Ferry Dad?”
“First I want to show you something”, he replied.
It was only a short walk along the Pier Head to the War Memorial. We walked slowly. Dad sat us down in front of the War Memorial and put the Kwik Save bag on his lap. He took out the sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. Some were cut into quarters, in a triangle shape and the other sandwich was cut in half, not in a triangle. He passed me one of the small triangles. I bit into it, left the crust hanging out of my mouth and smiled at Dad. He took a bite from his buttie and said “Divine”. I knew he was referring mainly to the butter and not the whole buttie. Dad loved butter. I checked once by holding a buttercup under his chin and right enough, it shone golden yellow on his big grizzly round face. He loved butter.
William Flanagan. Seaman and Fireman.
Dad reached across and took the crust from my mouth, knowing I wouldn’t eat it anyway. He checked and there was a bit of chicken still between the crusts which he took out and popped into my mouth. I said, “Amen!” and swallowed. Dad finished my crust and wrapped the foil around the rest of the sandwiches. He took the lid of the Kiaora bottle and held it to my mouth while I took a sip. “That will do”, he said, and safely took the bottle away from me to avert any further mishaps, I presumed. Dad started towards the War Memorial and began telling me a story. He asked how old I was now, “almost eleven, in eleven days” I replied.
He began: “Well when I was 7, I had a Dad. He went away to sea to fight the Gerrrrrmans. He never came back”. I felt his sadness. “I was just a little boy”, he said looking up at the War Memorial. Dad walked around the outside edge of the Memorial, there were hundreds of names all around, and on the inside too. He found the list of names of the Seamen who lost their lives on HMS Manistee and pointed to a name on the list. It was written “W. Flanagan”. “William John Flanagan the first”, he explained. Dad was the second, my brother the third and I had the cutest little nephew just one-year-old. He was the Fourth. Bless him.
William Flanagan. Seaman and Fireman. Died at sea aged 41. His boat was torpedoed once and he survived, the second time it happened he didn’t. War is stupid!
“Did you cry?” I asked.
Dad said, “No, I didn’t cry for years”. I thought that strange but didn’t push for any clarification. I went down the list reading all the names out loud, most of them were Irish-sounding names, so they were easy for me to read. Dad walked to the water’s edge and leaned onto the poles looking over the water at Birkenhead. He reached into his pocket took out the small medicine bottle and popped one of the tiny tablets under his tongue. He looked exhausted. Had I worn him out already? It seemed I did that these days. We walked slowly back towards the Ferry terminal and showed our SaveAways to the man at the turnstile. He let us through and pressed his little clicker twice.
Dad found us a seat on the deck. The sun was shining on the water and the view of the Pier Head suddenly became enchanting as the boat took off. We were on the Royal Iris. I’d heard a lot about her but this was my first time going over the water.
The Pier Head building was huge and it didn’t seem to get smaller as we moved away from the water edge. I could see the Liver Birds on top from this distance without straining my neck to look up. I imagined them flying away with the other birds and then realised that would be sad if they were gone, so I flew them back. I put my arms out like wings as I stood on the deck, feeling the sway of the water beneath us. The sun shone on Dad’s face as he raised his chin up and smiled, the wind catching his curls on his full head of hair. I sat backwards between his knees and let him cuddle me for a minute. I rubbed my soft cheek on his spikey chin. Dad got a shave every morning but by lunch time would be able to annoy me by rubbing his stubble on my face, making me giggle. It didn’t annoy me today. I rubbed back and forth slowly, bobbing along on the water over the waves and looking back towards our hometown. The sound of heavy chains and a sudden bump brought me to my feet as I realised we were on the other side. We got off the Ferry hand in hand both of us looking out for things that I could potentially trip over. I smelt the most glorious of smells, one that will always remind me of my dad: engine oil. I breathed in the air and remembered the days when Dad would come home late for tea with bags of sweets and his overalls still on. I would try to intercept him at the door so I could get a cuddle while he still had the smell of engine oil on him. I loved that smell. It was warm and cosy.
Christine, 1 May 2024
Pamphlet 37 of the 52 Pamphlets
If you would like to contribute a pamphlet or an answer to the 23 Questions then please get in touch.
We counted the pile of 10ps on the table. We had enough for two SaveAways. Adult and child. Adult all areas. Child was All Areas anyway.
Dad made the butties while I was dawdling and doing handstands against the bathroom door, making sure it was locked. Dad had a proper sulk with me the other week when he knocked me flying into the living room because I was on the other side of the door doing a handstand when he walked in. I made it worse by doing my dying fly act, expecting it to be one of my brothers who had tried to kill me and knocked me into the brown Formica table. After a moment of screaming “Look what he did to me” I opened my eyes to find the man who usually comes to my rescue, scalding anyone in his path. The bathroom door was the only door in the house with a lock on it.
Me and my Mum and Dad. May 1979
After brushing my teeth, rubbing my face with a wet and warm flannel coated in Palmolive soap and rubbed together to form a froth, gargling along to the tune of Ave Maria with a teaspoon of salt in a glass of warm water; I spit! Prepared to leave the bathroom and face the day with my Dad. It was going to be a good day, just me and him. I did a jiggle, a giggle, one last handstand quietly against the door, rolling into a curl onto the floor, pirouetting up, raising my leg over the sink, smiling in the mirror, touching my nose with my tongue, wriggle my shoulders, touch one ear to one shoulder and then the next, stand up straight, feel uncomfortable, wriggle about again, unlock the door. Blink my eyes. One, two. Not bad. Smile. Don’t blink again all day.
It was a bank holiday, so we had chicken butties with chicken left over from Sunday lunch. The doctors had said that due to Dad’s heart condition he wasn’t allowed butter. I know we both had butter on our butties that day. We agreed they wouldn’t be butties otherwise. They would be margarineeees, and no one wants to eat one of them. A bottle of squash and chicken butties, with salt and butter and medium sliced bread. Divine.
Dad’s HGV licence
Dad had been out of work since his company went bust. He was a haulage contractor and a commercial mechanic on the Dock Road in Liverpool, doing very well before I came along. By 1983 everything was gone. There was no longer any income. And there was a new baby to support. Dad got angry when he saw politicians on the telly. He said they were all arseholes. If you’ve read some Kurt Vonnegut you will know what an arsehole looks like already.
I may not have been drawn to write about this day, had my mind not recently been jolted back to a walk I had with my father in 1983. One of the last walks I had with him. My Mum used to say that life goes round in circles, taking you back to places you need to revisit. It does seem that way. We do tend to find ourselves walking down the roads we have previously been down, just as a reminder and to get a better understanding of the last time we were there. To see deeper into a situation long since passed.
It was November the 23rd 2023. A day I had planned for. Awaiting messages, clues, codes. What was it going to be? I don’t know when I started waiting for that day, but it was likely a few years before. 2017 probably, but that period was all of a blur, given the circumstances. I couldn’t ever reliably remark on what happened that year. I survived, and so did those that I entered into it with, that was our blessing. We’re all still here, but one. But that’s another story altogether.
It was cold, the wind swirling around the Pier Head, rain changing direction between every building. Rain often fell sideways on the waterfront. We congregated, waiting for the hour and for the Ice Kream van to appear again and more importantly, the Pyramid. Dazzle was waiting at the end of the landing pier. “Get in! Is right! It’s fuuking Dazzle!” I squealed. I hadn’t come to terms yet with my power of manifestation.
Dad dropped the pile of 10ps on the bus conductor’s tray. We got on at the Douglas Drive end of Moss Lane. We were on the 310 out of Maghull. This is when we had our best times, just me and my Dad. Maghull held tensions. It was indeed a nicer place to live than Norris Green but it was still fuuking grim. The bus driver handed over the two Saveways. Dad checked the date with the bus driver just to be sure before he started instructing me to rub off my silver panels. Monday 30 May 1983. It was my birthday in 11 days. I counted it out in my head and on my fingers and nose to be sure, yeah 11 days.
We got upstairs before the bus turned the corner into Foxhouse Lane. Sitting in the front left seats, my feet dangled from the chair. I was next to the window and squished my face against it, breathed out and watched the condensation from my breath spread out across the window, blurring my view. I sat back and drew a smiley face on the window then looked through the eyes to see the houses below with their gardens with big trees. I love those trees, all of them. They’ve been there all my life. Dad looked on the opposite side of the road, his favourite pub was over there. It was too early now for it to be open. I wondered if Dad would pop out for the last orders tonight. As we drove past the bungalows, I remarked how they looked like cute little doll’s houses with paper flowers all around the edges of their neat gardens. My mum loved neat little front gardens. Ours was a neat little garden, although my Dad and my brother often messed it up by parking cars on the drive to fix them, pouring oil down the path and then taking the wheels off and letting the car sit on bricks for weeks. I don’t think the neighbours liked it much either.
As we turned the corner onto Hall Road, Dad squeezed my knee, partly to stop me from kicking the panel of the bus in front of me so I didn’t annoy the driver but also to make me laugh. It got me every time. I didn’t want to laugh. I hated the sensation of having my knee squeezed but Dad did it anyway. I laughed and used it as an excuse not to look at the senior school I would be joining at the end of this summer hoping Dad wouldn’t ask me if I was excited. I wasn’t. I swung my jaw up in the air opening my mouth until my ears felt squeezed, then twisted my jaw to the side while bringing my shoulder up to my ear and then again in the other direction with the right ear towards the right shoulder. I wriggled, and squeezed Dad’s knee between my thumb and index finger and whispered “The Clutching Hand”. We both laughed. Dad put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in. Being my prickly self I quickly sat up straight and placed my hands on my knees. I tensed my shoulders and held them back until we were safely past Pat Thompson’s Dance Studio: the best thing about Maghull until the roller rink opened. We were safely out of Maghull for the day.
Maghull was pretty in comparison to the rest of the journey into town. Arriving outside the Bus Station, the stop after Old Roan, you could feel the warmth of the day beginning to ascend on us. It was almost 10 am. The industrial fumes from the docks seemed to make it to these parts: it always smelt funny to me. You never knew if you were going to have to sit and wait for a driver while the bus engine was left running to add to the smell. Maybe that was the smell: maybe I couldn’t smell Bootle from here. I got impatient and opened up the bottle of juice, squeezing it as I drank ensuring it ran down my face and blouse. Dad took it off me, placed the lid back on the Kiaora bottle and rubbed my sticky chin. I was wriggling again and didn’t realise I had started kicking the panel until I felt the knee sensation. I tensed, sat straight and concentrated trying not to do those things.
The houses were dirty along the next bit of the road, from all the passing traffic I assumed, and not being cleaned. “I need a wee”, I said. We were at the Black Bull. Dad nodded. He waited for the bus to take off and he pressed the button and stood up. I followed. We got off the bus at the next stop. Dad said, “Let’s go and see Aunty V for elevenses, we should be just in time.”
We crossed over the road, over the bridge and down the road to the cleanest house on the street. We knocked on the door. Uncle Martin was by the vestibule door with his coat on: he was just going out with Alan. We said, hello and goodbye in a brief exchange and then me and Dad wandered down the back of the house to find Aunty V in the kitchen. We’d passed the dining table on the way through. It was set for elevenses with cakes all laid out. Aunty V jumped when she heard Dad’s voice, expecting it to be Uncle Marty. She threw her arms around him repeating his name, “Billy, Billy, Billy” only stopping when she saw me in the doorway behind, slowly walking past the cakes with bigger eyes than usual. She kissed me on the head, spun me around into a chair, put a lovely china plate in front of me and reached for a doily to cover the plate. “Which one do you want first?” she asked. This was an informed decision and one that was easy to make, “Can I have the Victoria sponge please Aunty V”. I knew I couldn’t travel far with a slice of that and the others looked like they could be wrapped in a doily.
Aunty V and Dad
Dad and his twin sister went off to the kitchen while she made a fresh pot of tea. I could hear them talking while my finger scooped the cream out of the middle of the cake and popped it in my mouth. Aunty V made me a cup of tea too, which reminded me I needed the loo. I asked politely then made my way upstairs. It was just a loo on its own, with tiled walls, no lock on the door and no room whatsoever to do a handstand. I went down the stairs on my bum and did a roly poly towards the vestibule door, being very careful not to kick it. When I walked back into the kitchen Auntie V was saying to my Dad, “Well the world won’t be the same without you, so do your best Bill”. Her eyes turned towards me as she nodded to my Dad.
Homemade Battenberg and Viennese Whirls were wrapped up in doilies as we made our way onto the next bus at 11:12am from the Vale. Next stop the Pier Head. I know I am going to need another wee by the time I get there.
Listen to Gillian and Christine narrate their emails
This is #GANTOB2024 Pamphlet 35. That means that we are two thirds of the way through the 52 Pamphlets. And it isn’t even the end of April 2024. The end stages of GANTOB (the project) are rushing on. These pamphlets are contributions towards the third GANTOB book.
We are therefore 2/3s of the way through the third of three books. On publication of 52 Pamphlets (the book) GANTOB (the project) will end. That will probably be sometime towards the end of July 2024.
It is therefore time to start taking stock. The GANTOB Pamphlet Committee calls it “evaluation”. “Securing the GANTOB legacy”. But that’s just jargon from The Benefaktor. It makes the project sound like the London Olympics or something else much grander than it is. Though there are certainly times that GANTOB (the project) feels like a marathon.
Luckily, Question 22 of the 23 Questions gives us a route into exploring the project’s impact. Skellbert’s Pickles has asked “GANTOBBING: HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?”
I like that. GANTOB has become a verb as well as an anonymous participative art project. It hadn’t dawned on me that the present participle of the verb “to GANTOB” would have two “B”s, but it makes sense.
I want to hear from people who have participated in GANTOB (the project).
First up, it’s Christine. Let’s make our introductions.
After this pamphlet I am handing over to Christine (AKA Missi Formation) for a trilogy of personal pieces.
GANTOB was born on 27 July 2023, a few days after reading about the refresh of The KLF Re-enactment Society, and while ploughing through The JAMs’ book 2023: a trilogy for the first time. On 13 August 2023 Christine followed GANTOB’s Instagram account.
GANTOB messaged back that same day:
Many thanks for the follow. If you’d like to enter the Grapefruit Are Not The Only Bombs 2023 Kompetition please send a message via Instagram or an email to 100percentvinyl2@gmail.com, asking a question about how you can improve 2023 for yourself or others, giving a bit of context to the question, your name and address. The 23 winning entries will be sent a copy of the book by post, which will include a quote answering their question. Examples already submitted include “How can I improve my swimming skills?” and “Will AI develop empathy during 2023?” Please ignore this message if you have already submitted an entry. It’s not always easy to match up name and Instagram identities. #GANTOB2023
The rest, as they say, is history. Over to you Christine…
17 April 2024
Shwmae GANTOB (The Original),
I’ve been rather busy lately, what with the house and the garden and slaying the mud monster that tried to destroy my polytunnel. I’ve also been busy writing, something that a year ago I would have laughed out loud if you’d have told me I’d be enjoying. Ha! I’d have snapped! I have always struggled to write, I got through my studies with one-to-one support from my dyslexia tutor and tears and tantrums before deadlines. I have no confidence in myself, and the times I’ve been treated like I’m stupid still resonates through my brittle ego. I felt most things I say are shit and meaningless. I’d rush to finish my sentences so that people didn’t have to listen to me for any longer than needed.
Then one day I got a calling to throw a leaflet into the very river I had been out protesting and singing about to defend it from the rubbish it was having pumped into it. “Our waterways are losing wildlife, plants and flowers, we can save it we have power”, I sang again as I let the paper plane fly from my hand taking a sharp turn downwards into the mud at the side of the river, just out of my reach. I felt bad and good, unruly and accomplished. Such a tiny act got me out of the house and doing something as instructed to perpetuate some madness about to stir. I liked that.
The antics of a grapefruit got me all excited too. I’ve always given substance to inanimate objects, talking to them as they appeared in my path: “hello chair, you’re looking pretty today sitting there with your shiny legs”. I have a whole drawer of googley eyes for inanimate objects that look a little lifeless. It helps others to understand why I am talking to the objects I see around me. Anyway, I started writing about the Grapefruit, as you know. No one seemed to mind at GANTOB the project if my writing was shit, rambling or silly. So I just wrote. Then when I saw it in a book, I couldn’t read it because it was in a book, I flicked through looking at the pictures and examining the tables, placing my finger under the odd line of someone else’s text, which I felt compelled to read. Then the second book arrived, this was even more off-putting. I flicked through the pictures and put it down, leaving it for my husband to read. He assured me I had read most of it anyway as I had been reading the blogs. Blogs are easier for me to read and I never feel guilty about not finishing one if it is too long. I scroll on. I love books. I’ve got hundreds of them. I have read most of them, but often from the back to the front.
There were talks about a third book, and invitations to write and contribute again, except it all seemed to get way too serious and the main characters lost the round and squishy pinkness I had become fond of. I was bored.
I had several pages in my Google Drive where I had started a sentence or two, but often clicked them closed when I next opened my MacBook. I was very bored by now. Waking up in the middle of the night is a speciality for women my age, often catching a glimpse of the clock at 3:23 am. On March 6th this year, it was my dad’s birthday. I was feeling particularly emotional and couldn’t get back to sleep, so by the time it was 5 am I started writing to settle the boredom and to keep me quiet. I’ve been known to move inanimate objects around in the night. The screeching of table legs on hard floors is annoying in the middle of the night, or so I have been informed.
So this night, I wrote and it flooded out. Poured. Oozed. Dribbled and dropped, right out of me. It hasn’t stopped since and I don’t know quite how to deal with it. Compliments on my writing‽ Absurd! Unheard of. It has been an emotional year. I’ve struggled with grief for most of my life and this year challenged that pain, and brought it to the surface for me to examine again. I didn’t want my story to be about the KLF. They really bore me. Not just the band, but the KLFRS and their lack of inclusivity. However, the facts were, on 23rd November 2023 I walked down a road I had not been down in forty years. Life had taken me on a huge journey to complete this circle returning me to the same bit of waterfront I had only ever walked along once before.
I would like to share with GANTOB some of the writing I have done since March. GANTOB certainly inspired me. You should be careful doing that! Going around empowering others to do their thing, it’s dangerous and beautiful, and very kind. I wasn’t going to share it with you, but when Gillian informed us through her blog today, that GANTOB will not exist after the next book, I just wanted to let Gillian know that she did good and I would like to thank you/her/him/them/it.
Diolch yn fawr iawn.
Cheerio and thanks for all the Grapefruits.
Christine
I replied a week later.
24 April 2024
Dear Christine,
I have been thinking about your email of 17 April.
Here is my response to some of the themes and points you raise.
When I was newly hatched as GANTOB, back at the end of July 2023, the world was new, brightly coloured and full of new people to meet. It was fun. I was working, with a reliable salary, in a comfortable house. Bursting with creativity, guided by The JAMs’ imagined version of 2023 (from their 2017 trilogy), I tried out a lot of new ideas. It was all paper aeroplanes and the liberation of destrukting a kollektion that had taken Ali (and latterly me) decades and £+++ to gather. I was on fire. I burnt out.
The Benefaktor took over. He funded and printed my early work in the first book. We spread the load, coopted others from our circle of friends, family and associates, and then from across the world through the process of Demokratisation, and knuckled down to document our 2023, in real time. This became the second book. The inner circle of GANTOB pretended to be artists/animators/writers even though we knew that we weren’t really. It was fun pretending, and to be knocking about with people who are properly creative and sparky. The second book has some differences from the blog – there is less of the snipping and art, more of the backstory, through The Philatelist’s chapters and the trip to Vienna that Ali and I took over Hogmanay. I don’t know if they are of any interest to you or others – but they certainly helped Ali and me understand some of the mischief that The Benefaktor had perpetrated and some of the quirks in the life of Ali’s father Curt Finks.
The 400-word snapshots in the second book were all very well, but they didn’t allow elaboration, even if we strung a few posts together. I wanted to give myself and others the opportunity for longer pieces. This gave birth to the 52 Pamphlets idea for the third book. Some early pamphlets meant that the writing took a literary turn, through William Blake (whose work I didn’t know, but I have now explored via Stuart and Urs’ contributions) and Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (which was a connection back to my much younger self). It has helped me understand why I have kept coming back to topics like the 1960s and The KLF throughout my adult life. (+) It has corrected some misconceptions and poorly remembered ideas. And it has helped me read, process and write new thoughts down much more rapidly.
I have enjoyed reading the pamphlets that others have contributed, and have been inspired down completely unexpected paths. I have certainly engaged my creative side in ways that I could never have anticipated and have met some lovely people, albeit via email and social media. Unfortunately, I have to I accept that anonymity is absolute as GANTOB (the person). I am proud that the combined power of GANTOB (the project) has unofficially completed the 9 Missing Years in Bill Drummond’s memoir. I am pleased that some of the output of Curt Finks is in print, including in Vipers Tongue Quarterly. Once the Muons pamphlets are complete I will be able to file the rest of Curt’s writing away as “curios”. There will no doubt be some GANTOB writing that will go the same way.
There have been times when I have been very busy with other things, when I have had to force myself to sit and think, devise creative challenges, write and print pamphlets and personalise them and remember to post them and update the social media feeds. Recently, with the evenings getting lighter and bird song pulling me outdoors in my spare time, I have had to remind myself that I have made a commitment to other contributors, to The Benefaktor as funder, to readers of the blog. I am on “task and finish” mode. I am empowering people. I am inclusive. The power of positive thinking drives me on.
The paper aeroplanes have all been launched. My kollektion has been Destrukted. I have developed and shed my childish ways. GANTOB (the person) now has baggage, commitments and deadlines to meet. Over the past 9 months our youngest child has flown the nest, I’ve changed job, moved house, settled into a completely new way of life with none of the old certainties. My father’s health is failing. I can see the effects on my writing. I am now exploring the past, relationships, loss. I am finding a philosophical streak. I try to write in a way that will interest others, but perhaps we are all really writing for ourselves. When I read the first draft of the third book – which the Deputy General Manager of GANTOB (the project) has committed to having on my desk a few days after the final pamphlet – I am not sure that I will be able to be objective about this work. Perhaps I should ask you, as my most frank critic.
So what? That is always the question, though not yet one of the 23 Questions. Perhaps I will add it today. Having written this all down I realise that your path may have followed a similar trajectory to mine. From cuddly representations of cartoon grapefruit that can swim and converse in pubs and clubs you have moved to a very touching exploration of your life and family. I am delighted to include your trilogy as part of the 52 Pamphlets, and am very grateful for your feedback. I will have to think how I can capture the spirit of early GANTOB as we reach the project’s end.
Thank you for everything,
GANTOB
Pamphlet 35 of the 52 Pamphlets
Part of the answer to questions 22 and 23
Stay tuned to the blog for Christine’s trilogy over the next few days, and consider making your own written or artistic contribution to The 52 Pamphlets, the 23 Questions, or feeding back about your experience of GANTOBBING. You can navigate your way through the different parts of this project using the menu at the top of this page.
(+) I am not sure if I am brave enough to attempt the same type of approach for the other itch that I really want to scratch before GANTOB’s work is done – The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I read that at around the same time and have felt it tugging at me recently. The intrigue, symbolism and nonsense in that book may explain a lot about The KLF and GANTOB.
As a final point, GANTOB (the person) would like to say that in her experience The KLFRS has always been very approachable, supportive and inclusive.
GANTOB blog 