A BAG OF MIXED SWEETS

Had another experience that was interesting and full of happiness.

For some time now I've latched onto wanting a bag of revels...I’m not sure how this was triggered off, but suddenly I felt that I needed to experience it.

Many weeks went by of the same old thing I do with my life, and then one day I found myself in the newspaper shop looking at the sweets on the counter...I don’t think I’ve bought anything there at this particular place in my life, the only memory I have of last buying sweets was in 2003, at college. So I see the revels...and really want them, and thus fourth reach out with my arm to get them with a hand grabing motion. My mum has the money and pays for the bag of revels...which I believe is something crazy like forty or fifty pence.

NOTE: It wasn’t a quick decision. I stood there looking at them for quite a while, and I did ask my mum if it was ok to sort of, you know, have some revvels.

Now came the eating of them, so I’m on foot going up a hill in the cold...and I start eating them and their not what I thought there were at all. To the absolute joy here they seem to be mixed sweets, you’ll get a coffee one and then you’ll get a chewy sort of toffee type of one, and so on. The coffee ones are particularly nice I must say.

I took a long time on thinking about this one, and I reckon that it’s a bit like...a bit like those childhood experiences that you had when you had to go everywhere on foot...and in all weathers, but you usually ate what you had just bought straight away outside.

NOTE: This empty bag (looking a bit erroded now) was put in the bin by my mother twice before it had been photographed. I also couldn;t help but notice how quickly these things get to looking in a sorry state.



It also become apparent that it wasn't Revels I was thinking of when I wanted Revels...I think what I had in my mind here was Minstrels...I wanted a bag of Minstrels...but getting the surprise of the Revels not being the Minstrels was great.

I don’t buy anything in that newspaper shop and don’t go to the pub anymore either, so am a bit out of touch with the prices on chocolate and a pint of beer...some people get angry about this and I’ve had that anger channelled at me more than once now, that I wasn't supporting the local shop, but I don’t read newspapers or smoke, or buy cans of fizzy drink, or sweets (sadly)...I also don’t have a mobile phone and I sure as hell don’t have any income.

But I cant tell you enough how great it was to eat those coffee sweets and other types of sweets, in that revels bag outside in the cold.

CINEMA GIVING YOU A BROKEN HEART, NOT FROM THE FILM ITSELF BUT FROM YOUR PARENTS = THE FILM BROKE YOUR HEART

Ok...now, I don’t often get charged up to write something about a film in here, but I keep getting this overwhelming uncontrollable serge in my brain, in the last forty eight hours its happened a few times, so here I am. Its bothering me when I go into conversation with my mother and father about the film in question I just felt somewhat heart broken.

The movie was Broken Flowers Directed by Jim Jarmusch...

...and I really, really loved it. And I find their thoughts (my parents) on the film to be somewhat staggering, it's furthermore incredible that a film can reveal these things...reveal things about peoples characters it such a clear way that you did not know about prior to this.

We follow this character called Don Johnston through the entire film...and through the entire film the man doesn’t do *anything* nasty to *anybody* ...at all...not *one* single thing. Now...granted we don’t know much about his past or much about him either...we don’t know if he suffers from depression or anything much really. All we really know is that he is fifty six years old, and appears to have had what seems to be about six or seven girlfriends over a very long time period.

Both my mother and my father said he was not a nice person and a womaniser...

But... it’s a pretty long period of time gone by here for Don Johnston...and we don’t have very much information to go on at all, as to how long he's spent with each woman. We do however get to see what each one of them is like for a little bit.

They’re only opinions though, and I have to accept that. But I’m shocked and saddened by the lack of empathy in my parents towards this Don Johnston character.

A BRANCH THAT I SAW STICKING UP IN THE FLOODED BURN

So I went down there again to see what the experience would be like a second time. I took the camera this time, its always a completely different experience when your with you camera because your not really looking at the environment constantly...you stop walking, stand there and fiddle about with your camera...looking through your camera a lot I really don’t think that you see very much...it's disjointed and one thing becomes two.

I spotted this branch though, sticking out of the very fast flowing burn. Which really hypnotised me...very hard to describe this (no I’m not on drugs...lol)...the footage I got doesn’t really it justice...watching it with your own eyes completely different experience, but I’ll post it anyway. It gets interesting at the end of this clip.

THAT THING WHERE YOU HAVE A PROFOUND OUT OF THE BLUE EXPERIENCE

So it was time for a coffee, made with milk in the sauce pan, I’d not had one of these in a long time, and now getting the hang of it a lot better than previous times, because I now know to put in extra amount of coffee (it’s instant coffee, but heck the results are actually really good) in there.

I wander around the house looking out of the various windows at the flood.

I wander outside...

I see my dad waxing the car...yes, waxing the car. He tells me that its good to do this once in a while, maybe twice a decade. He had also washed the car and water had run down the hill and round the corner of the house. Round there, there’s sand bags that seem to have burst open, there’s this small mound of sand. The rain has created some beautiful almost alien landscapes in the sand.

I decide to walk closer to the flood. Its really pretty spectacular. I think that you have to have a photo here of how it looks

Coffee cup

I put down the coffee cup, because I was not going to take that with me. I put it at the base of a tree. Now that looked odd seeing it outside...my favourite cup and all, which normally never goes outside. But furthermore here I think its because I don’t go outside much either.

NOTE: ok, this photo below is a re-enactment of what happened, I’m not awfully happy about the photo, I think it could be much better...it’s the same tree I put it next to though, and the coffee cup had not been washed, so what we’re getting here is sort of authentic... : O )



Climbing the barbed wire fence

Really quite tricky this, the best place to do it is at a bit with some padding round the barb wire, there also this log on the other side, but it was all wet and slippery as hell. As I’m doing it I’m thinking “what the f**k am I doing here, this is really dangerous” but, I think with the weight distribution across my foot this was going to be OK, and *was* OK.

I wander across field and down to where its flooded, to note I’m wearing my shoes that aren’t so good for walking in whilst doing all of this, but, I seem to have a problem with my feet at the moment as I’m always tripping up...these shoes definitely make things worse though I think. The ground s a bit uneven and the grass is very long and wet. You have to go down a steep hill to where it can only be described as one big bog...its like lord of the rings with the dead people in the water (always liked that part).

NOTE: photo will be uploaded when the camera is recharged.

Down there on what is the outskirts of where I live is really quite interesting because there’s new houses being built in the flood plain...they raise up at the end of what is a very flat bit of land...its well, a flood plain, but yeah I love how bogs look, I love that grass that sticks up. There’s a very surreal quality though when walking about down there.

The return journey home I see five pheasants, beautiful creatures they are, I love the way they run, one of them ran quite close past me... because when climbing back up the hill i was hidden by the...hill...so they didn't spot me...usually they fly off, but these ones seemed calmer than normal.

I climb fence again and see the coffee cup sitting there, I pick it up and then walk back up to the house and round by the sand to see my dads not there anymore...its eerily quiet.

Now various different people (and a ongoing stream of people throughout my life)...who...perhaps don’t know me very well have often commented and said to me “are you on drugs?” ...well I can assure you I’m not on any drugs and never have been...all I can say is this... I’ve felt...well I’ve taken long to obtain the word for this, but I eventually found it, I feel that I have a hyperawareness thing going on. Now, I think this is brought out of me perhaps by myself not going outside very often...or maybe it was just special because of the flooding, a bit like when it snows perhaps. I’ve always found water to be fascinating stuff mind you.

I’m always reminded of what Steven Spielberg said about 2001...he said something along the lines of this... “no, no you don’t have to be on drugs to watch this, the movie IS the drug.” now, I feel exactly like that when walking around outside sometimes.