I walked past a bin man this morning who had just collected my rubbish. He smelled like a duty free department. I wonder if he was wearing aftershave which some wastrel had thrown out. They do tend to enjoy abit of the old grotty dip.

I cannot tell which is more odd- a bin man sticking on some aftershave he had found in the garbage for a laugh, or a bin man deliberately musking himself up before work. He might as well have gone the whole hog and donned a white silk cravat. Was he trying to impress his co-binmen? Perhaps he sees a particularly fanciable commuter leaving for work at this time every week on this route, and he wanted to impress her? Does she notice the heady mix of rotten celery and CK Be, and perhaps ask herself: ‘Who is this enigmatic civil servant? Does he see my longing?’? Are you that commuter? Could you, would you?

On second thoughts, he probably was just wearing it because his wife cannot stomach the tangy reek London waste. Or he moonlights in a perfume laboratory.

I found this on a wall in an alley near Chiswick high road:

It was bizarre but someone either was bored waiting for someone, or thought that the leaf was pretty. I like to think it was the latter.

Then walked round the corner and saw this:

I think street drinking is fucking sad. This young guy had his arse out and his tracksuit trousers were soaked. These guys are often hanging out on the corner pissing their precious time away. By the way, what was his friend thinking/saying/doing while his mate was clearly having a minor bodily collapse next to him?

In Britain, we love to mine the rich seam of humour of alcohol-associated humiliation. And my first thought was how the scene reminded me of 8-Ace from Viz, the perennial figure of drinking-excess fun. But I was struck by what a terribly sad sight it was, seeing someone degraded so low. That guy was once a baby in his mothers arms, now he is slumped bare-arsed on the cold pavement doused in his own waste.

I cannot help being reminded of when I was in Mauritius, where there is a notorious drinking problem amongst the locals. One day we drove through a suburb of Grand Baie. We saw a guy pissed off his nut slouched against a wall in the full burning sunlight (it was regularly around 40 degrees C). He probably died of sunstroke.

It is so easy not to care about street-drinkers, because they do it to themselves and when they are abusive and covered in vomit- well they are hardly Andrex puppies, are they? Hmmm. I still feel uneasy about taking that view though…

It is the summer solstice already. The weather is still grey, damp, and distinctly un-Summery. Fuck. I might have to emigrate to the sun at this rate.

There is not much hope of having a more satisfactory Summer here. I recently read Tacitus’s description of British weather two thousand years ago: “Their sky is obscured by continual rain and cloud.” He also describes the manifest British religion of Druidism. Not much has changed by the looks of things (except that the Druids aren’t ripping out human entrails with golden sickles). 

The last (and only time) I went to Stonehenge was three years ago by my reckoning. It was an interesting experience not so much for any earth-womb spiritual malarky. It was interesting because the flock of rag-tag pikeys and trustafarians (dreadlocked middle-class hippies with public school educations and trust-funds) who descend on the soggy plains near Salisbury exemplify a strange aspect of modern British subculture.

Apparently 30,000 people descended on Stonehenge for the solstice last night. When I was there it must have been a quarter of that figure. I was in Bristol and at some point late in the evening Dave the Craggg and I decided to jump in the mighty Steed and motor on down to the fields of the crusty folk.

I remember that Dave packed two of his comfortingly-battered old canteens, filled with deliciously sweet, milky tea. I also remember discovering that he had hastily munched down a pungent pasta with tomato sauce when he let out the most incredible belch in the car. I do not remember ever having to open the car window before just because someone had burped, and I reckon I won’t ever have to again. Then again, never say never…

Anyhow, we stopped in the middle of the Salisbury plain for Dave to orate some poetry about stars while I grumbled about how polluted the night sky is in London.

When we got to Stonehenge, it took a moment to recognise the stones because they were covered with punters (the solstice is the only time when the prehistoric monuments are accessible to the public. I could see that half the cred-lock crowd had decamped from Bristol to slum it with genuinely penniless hippies. There were big plastic bottles of scrumpy cider swilling from mouth-to-mouth, heavily pierced cyber-chicks twirling poi and fire-sticks, and generally loads of munters stumbling round with plastic bags full of intoxicants. It was the usual scene. It was like a big after-rave party with abnormally few casualties.

The pikeys were having lots of fun threatening the rather un-amused policemen with their lewd bottles of cider. I remember a vegan activist talking with joyful anger to a druid about one of the things that irritated her about the world. My friends who I bumped into were confused as to whether or not they should be raving, and whether the lack of the music mattered to this point. All in all it was a curious event, neither a party nor a spiritual occasion (at least for the majority).

What I find interesting about hippies is not their hypocrisy. Condemning commercialism, capitalism, and materialism whilst their lifestyles are underwritten by the bank accounts of mummy and daddy. That just gives a good reason to give them the abbreviated name ‘hippies’. Fifty years ago these young ladies and gentlemen would have had good late-imperial careers ahead of them. Now there is nowhere for them to put their idealism.

A lot of the politics which goes along with the modern hippy culture in Britain is preposterously conspiratorial. The environmentalism is great. But the often severely judgmental view of popular culture, economics, and politics is helping no-one.

For this drifting element of our society, the Solstice is the time for them to have their say, to dance on a boulder without getting pushed off by the police, to feel proud of their opinions. Either that or it’s a good excuse to get fucked up on cider and crap their underwear in public.

In the end no-one new exactly when the sun rose because it was so cloudy  (like last night I gather). It was a bit of an anticlimax as you would imagine. Sporadic fits of cheers spread over about half an hour is not quite what I had in mind. Bah. Nevertheless, wiser for the experience, Dave and I left the muddling crowd to their boggy revels as we clambered back in the Steed and home to Bristol.

I can’t believe Ronnie O’Sullivan has been punished for asking a journalist if they fancied a nosh on his microphone. The man’s a genius, clearly.

On my way out of Ravenscourt Park today, I walked past a gang of little rudeboy whippersnappers on bikes. They were playing a game which involved throwing coins at a wall. One of the scamps crooned to me: “Oi boss! Oi boss! It’s my Birthday today…” I grinned from ear-to-ear and said: “Oh really? Happy Birthday!” In a over-effusive yet genuine voice. To my surprise the little tyke cocked his head over, leaned back on his bicycle, and said “Ta very much!” whilst issuing a thumbs up. I walked off thinking to myself that surely something else was supposed to have happened

Harry Enfield was filming a scene for his new series in my local greasy spoon (called ‘The Ritz’, truthfully enough) on King Street. He stood out like a big burning satsuma in the middle of the crowd of plastic extras.

Extras are a funny lot. They are the sort of people you’d buy from Ikea.

I have an itch to paint more portraits. I want to get some more photos and music up on the website too.

Someone said to me the other day that the reason why the England football team doesn’t win everything is because there are so many foreign players in the premiership. Obviously there must be some sort of conspiracy (led by ‘fucking’ Arsene Wenger according to him) to keep all the good English players down and out of the League by importing lots of inferior and over-priced foreigners to lower the standard of football in this country. There are only 191 English premiership players left now. It’s a wonder they can field a full team. I did pause for a second and suggest, incredible it may be, that perhaps we don’t have very good players in this country. He then reminded me that I must be racist to suggest such a thing. All countries are fundamentally the same, and in this state of affairs, clearly, England would win every match. “If it weren’t for the fucking foreigners” I imagine he forgot to add because it was just so obvious.

Euro 2008 begins.

I love watching sport of all descriptions. The more arcane the sport the better, usually. Football is alright too. A lot of my friends, however, dislike football, more specifically the watching of it, intensely. I think they have more of a problem with the supporters who can be, let’s be honest, a load of fucking toe-rags.

Four years ago on a weekend such as this Euro 2004 was starting. As was the first Venn music festival in Bristol. I was walking with my friend Ray along Stokes Croft when I had one of the most memorable encounters of my life.

I think we were off to get some audio cables or something for Venn. We were almost at Maplin, deep in some conversation or other under the baking sun, when I noticed loads of cheesy wotsits on the pavement under my feet. Then I saw a can of Fanta open and apparently undrunk by the shop-front we were passing. The third thing I saw was horrific. It was an England supporter, reduced to putrid bestiality.

This dude was completely fucked up. He was no aryan pinup to begin with. But by the time a dozen or so lagers and the raging failure of an England match had sunk in he was truly a work of human shit. The thirty year old bastard was bull-necked and barrel-bellied with an insufficient thatch of oily hair. He was covered in grease and sweat, sliming up his cherished England shirt. There was a vile yellow paste of mucus and vomit flowing down his face from his nose into the folds of his double chin. He stank of Lynx spray and bile (although it could have just been the Lynx I suppose). As his body trembled under the crippling paralysis of the booze, his eyes stared into a distant void. At least that is what I thought until I realized he was actually staring at me (or at least trying to).

So, having stumbled from the pub to the corner shop in search of some nutritionally negligible snacks, and having decided to spill his crisps and lose his drink within ten seconds of leaving the shop, this depraved zombie of spunk had sadly turned his attention on me. Presumably he wanted to punch me. Or wretch on me. Whatever his intentions, I am pretty sure he wasn’t going to perform the Japanese tea ceremony.

I was trying to figure out how to break it to him that I had already found love, when he made what appeared to be an attacking movement. I almost vomited myself at the very thought of coming into physical contact with the walking offcut. So Ray and I turned away and walked on to Maplin. When we had reached the shop door, about twenty metres away, I looked back and saw the oaf coming at us like a ball of used nappies rolling along the pavement. He ended up running into a load of bikes chained against a lamp post. I had never felt sorry for a bicycle before.

We left him there to his fate. I dread to think how his family/mother found him when he eventually made it home. Covered in blood, dirt, and tramp semen. Yuck.

Essentially the moral of this is that a. humankind has no boundaries when it comes to self-abasement; and b. supporting England in the European Cup can really turn you into a cunt, if you aren’t one already, so it is probably a good thing they did not qualify.

p.s. I would be disbelieving if anyone could suggest an example of a more disgusting state of filth, depravity, and self-pollution. But I would love to hear it anyway, especially if it is really gratuitous.

Check out this dude I saw on the tube the other day:

I deduced that he is about to play the role of King Henry VIII in a play or on the telly or something from the following observations:

• He looks like Henry VIII
• He was reading a book about Henry VIII
• He looks like an actor – he was wearing combats and white trainers, despite being clearly over 80.

A smoker was going on at me yesterday about how he was sick of all these self-righteous ex-smokers going on about how bad a habit it is. Also that it was his human-right to do whatever he wanted to himself, and that by smoking he was standing up “for political incorrectness” and “for personal freedom.” He forgot to add “for paying corporations and governments £6 a pop for a pack of finger-licking cancer up one’s arse.” The black-lunged tart.

I was sitting in a steamy perfumed dungeon in Mayfair yesterday evening, covered in four different types of mud, waiting for a tropical rain shower to start when I had a horrible realization: I am not actually working class!

I see Boris Johnson is traveling by tube everywhere. I suppose that’s better than the last twat who went around everywhere in the chauffeured car whilst explaining to Londoners that the tube runs perfectly and that “cars are not necessary in London.” If Boris reckons he’s a man of the people then he can come and deal with the woman who keeps leaving her poos in crisp packets in Hammersmith station.