I suspect,
one day.
This cold,
shall kill me.
But not today.

Ballerina sketch. Watercolour. A4-ish.

Blood, branch
broken bone.
Blind sockets stare
at setting sun.

Ballerina sketch. Watercolour. A4.

You make your home in this wilderness
And the desolation finds you.
Secluded glade dew drop daggers pretty,
Foxglove, rhodedendron, orchid.

The mighty Scots Pine,
No many left since the ships.
Going now too. Wood pulp. Bog roll.
Look at all that carbon blowing in the wind.

It stinks of rot,
Oil and grease and diesal.
It might come back.
But not in our lifetimes.

Serpent-rooted Beech is wisdom,
The mother of the woods.
Her consort, Oak king
silvered and broken.

Larch is binding,
Augustus could not burn.

But the Birch belongs to the Sidhe.

I see you, rot
Composing order,
disorder.
Silently creeping.

Hello Old Friend.


I still exist. Sort of. I have been very unwell.

Lockdown was hard, as it was for everybody. Mine was made harder by the woman I loved, being stuck in the States, having what was probably a massive bipolar breakdown and going seriously manic for over a year during those dark and terrible times.

Trying to cope with somebody who had detached from reality... She received no treatment, so her condition was life-threatening and severe. Until eventually she did what people with bipolar mania do, succumbed to the hyper-sexuality, and she began to see other guys while gas-lighting me about it.

So that sucked. Took months before I got the proof. On top of everything else, it broke me. It was... the situations and the conversations I was trying to deal with, and I couldn't tell anybody because she didn't want me to tell anybody.

I disassociated.


A couple of times over the last few years I've been ready to die, had the means, had made plans to sensibly dispose of my belongings, felt incredibly at peace with it. Roz reminded me I wanted to see the Obi Wan show, and the Ahsoka show.

Little things, sometimes.

So I withdrew, from just about everybody. The crisis nurse told me to get off Facebook. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I still speak to regularly. (And I feel, deep down, quite guilty for still being a burden to that handful.) In my dissociated state, I was called fucking toxic, and I just seemed to be hurting everybody around me. So I just... went away. For a couple of years now.

Time flies when you're broken.


I'm, lonely, but at least I'm not hurting anybody anymore. I talk to the trees and the birds and the bugs and the rocks. Oh, apparently I have autism, which explains... everything about me really.

(Bart was funny, shortly before he died, I mentioned to him that one of my nurses thought I might be autistic and he said shit man, of course you are.)

Sorry, I don't offer this as an excuse for bad behavior. I just offer it as an explanation for why I am the way I am in the hope it helps people understand that sometimes my brain... functions very differently. It explains why I sometimes don't understand what people say to me, it explains why I think in black and white even when I know I shouldn't, it explains why I don't grok social situations. Everything, really. It's been revelatory. Suddenly everything in my life I've always struggled with makes sense to me.

I've been scared to tell people. There is stigma. I know it is also a very fashionable thing and the internet is full of people self-diagnosing with autism because they did a couple of online surveys, but please understand I have undergone about 12 hours of assessment with trained healthcare professionals before coming to this diagnosis. And I was resistant to it at first too.

I'm in a waiting list to get help for it, but it's at least a 3 year waiting list. The nurses at my community mental health team are doing their best to help though, and I think it provides me with many new tools and strategies to work on myself.



And now I have lost... much of my internal voice. There is a void at the center of my heart where my internal monologue used to be, and I struggle for ways to find words, to find any sense of the Simon I was. So I thought I might try writing something in my old livejournal again.

I need... to try and find some way to feel alive again. I've been mostly dead inside for years now.

The BBC just did an interesting thing with their coverage of the UK opening up again, that reveals what the Tories plan is I think.

They said of course the country must follow the science, cut to Tory MP saying 'The science says this is very safe to do so long as we all follow the rules.' But that some scientists have concerns, cut to professor of virology saying what we're doing is basically fucking mad.

So they created a false equivalency between 'science' and 'Tory MP waffling bullshit', and then made a disparaging remark about 'some scientists' when bringing in the opinion of the actual virologist.

And the key message is 'We'll be fine so long as everybody follows the rules.' Even though nobody now knows what the rules are, and everybody is ignoring them because Cummings ignored them. So when the catastrophic second wave hits, the Tories will say 'Well we said everybody just had to follow the rules, clearly the people didn't follow the rules and that's why we're now in this horrible mess.'

It's cynical. It's murderous. And sadly it will work.

Amidst all the chaos, Anonymous have just released documents they claim link Trump and Epstein, and interestingly also claim Diana was murdered because she had tapes of other members of the royal family being involved in a child sex ring, involving Epstein and presumably Prince Andrew.

Although I'm not very convinced by it because one of their 'big leaks!' is Epsteins little black book, and I've had a copy of Epsteins little black book for about a year now, it was leaked a long time ago. Which rather discredits Anonymous's claims that this is big new news.

It just hit 30c in the shade, which might be a May record for this part of the Scottish Highlands.

Post office and chemist trip completed, I actually saw somebody wearing a mask in comrie. There were two nurses in the chemists wearing facemasks, the girl behind the counter was masked up, and the two pharmacists in back had PPE gear on.

Did I see any members of the public following the lead of the healthcare workers by wearing protection? No, not a single one. Just me again. People going in and out of the chemists with no PPE at all.

Fucking madness. We have specifically been told by the government that we should all be wearing masks in public, yet, I seem to be the only person in Comrie outside of the nurses and doctors doing so.

And weirdly people crossed the road to avoid me in my mask, yet walked happily past other people not wearing masks. There's some weird psychology going on with this.

Anyway, then I went to the park to metal detect and realised I'd forgotten to bring my KK with me, which was pretty stupid. But maybe for the best because it's like, 26C in the shade at the moment, so its maybe a little hot for metal detecting.

Damn, just watched the American police arrest a (black) American reporter and his American film crew for absolutely no reason. Live on air.

Police declaring war now not only on black folks, but also on the free press. I guess this is the actual real genuine Fascism that 40% of Americans voted for.

Cops murdering citizens in the street, in broad daylight, arresting reporters, and a President encouraging the shooting to start.

I'm not sure America will even get to the next election now, the fascists are obviously fully in charge of the police force, and there's nothing to stop them simply seizing the mechanisms of voting to deliver Trump a 96% victory, and they'll just gun down any Americans who take to the streets to protest.

The Cummings saga so far.

Copied from Jane Berry who found it on Twitter

"Too good to miss. It clears up everything. Enjoy. The week in Tory (Cummings special):

1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything.

2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn't care how things looked.

3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered.

4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign.

5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation.

6. He began by saying he wasn't speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street.

7. Then the self-styled "enemy of the Islington media elite" said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington.

8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis.

9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important.

10. Sadly he couldn't get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home.

11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours.

12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG.

13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family's sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands.

14. He explained that he'd warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog.

15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he'd returned from Durham.

16. And anyway, if he'd warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react?

17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week.

18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with "wonky eyes", he drove his child to hospital.

19. Then he said that to test his "wonky eyes" he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads.

20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the "eye test", cos she could have driven them back to London.

21. Then it was revealed the "eye test" trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife's birthday.

22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left.

23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Durham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you'd definitely do if you weren't hiding anything.

24. A govt scientific advisor said "more people will die" as a result of what Cummings had done.

25. Boris Johnson said he "wouldn't mark Cummings " down for what he'd done.

26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct.

27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well.

28. Johnson said Cummings' "story rings true" because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses.

29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was "blind as a bat"

30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was "wise" to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight.

31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this.

32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.

33. And then a minister finally resigned.

34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go.

35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they're all left-wingers.

36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he'd suggest it to the govt.

37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings' statement had lasted longer than that.

38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?

39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%.

40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt

41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.

42. We still face Brexit under this lot.

43. It's 4 years until an election.

44. And it's still only Wednesday"

Well that was frustrating, I went for a walk and took metal detector with me and found absolutely nothing but some garbage. Was coming back home across the field and got a really strong ping. And thought, oh, okay, this is the strongest ping I've had all day, I might as well do one last dig. So I dug, and there was nothing there, but a faint beep deep in the hole. So I dug some more, and found a rock, and hauled the rock out, and was getting a stronger signal. And I was quite deep now, so was thinking okay whatever this is, it must be quite old now, it's deep, and it was under a rock. And then I spotted a glint of gold! A gold circlet! Bright and shiny at the bottom of the hole. And I thought oh my god, this is it, I've found treasure! And I dug it out and it was the bottom of a scrunched up beer can.

41 more days for Boris to ask the EU for an extension on Brexit, and then 183 days for them to do any negotiating or planning at all, until car crash harder than hard Brexit wipes out the UK once and for all.

Stockpile like fucking crazy folks. The Tories are gonna crash us.

Oh that's grand, the governments new scientific advisor is certain that they did a thing they didn't do to control coronavirus on the 30 of February. He saw the imaginary memo with the imaginary instructions on the imaginary day.

But the big story in the press today is Keir Stamner bought a field for his disabled mum to look after sick donkeys and THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! THAT LAND OWNING TOFF! HOW DARE HE HAVE BOUGHT A DONKEY SANCTUARY! THAT SICK FREAK!

Just reading about how a book of Scottish witches from the 16-1700s has just been put online, and I'm reminded of the last witch in this area to have been killed, the witch of Monzie.

The story was a wealthy landowner stopped by her hut, for reasons unknown, and later discovered that his expensive knife and fork were missing.

Clearly the wicked witch had stolen them with sorcery. So he accused her of witchcraft.

Then it transpired that he found the knife and fork back at his mansion.

Clearly the wicked witch had put them back with sorcery. And she was burnt at the stake.

Rich people have always been arseholes.

So apparently the cinemas are going to open up again, because obviously what you want to do in a Pandemic is sit in a room with a hundred strangers breathing the same air as you. But what are they going to show given all the big summer movies have been cancelled?

Jaws. They're going to show Jaws. A movie about how a bunch of people die because a politician opens something up way too early in the face of all the expert scientific advice.

.... you see, things like this are why I have this theory that we're now living in a fictional universe.

I profoundly dislike how it has become a radical political statement to simply say: 'Be kind'.