dear people of the internet age,

gdhq is relocating as of approximately now. this means we will be cut off from the real world (the internet) for a little while i.e. we're not being rude / lazy if we're not answering you.

fare thee well good buddies,

we'll see you on the other side.

graf / gindrinker x

Following on from the previous blog, I have here an extract from an even earlier ephemeral document_ It is written on both sides of an envelope (a tactic I still use today), addressed to the Horse and Groom, Womanby St., which would probably date it to 2002. God knows what I was thinking when I wrote it - itwas probably an attempt to link W.S. Burroughs' The Wild Boys with Flannery O'Connor. I put this up to show you that I was thinking up preposterous crap even back in the day.

These are the memoirs of David Charles Gates. I was born in 1508 in a hovel in Preston, Lancashire. My father invented the pie and my mother won the Derby. Father came out of the land, in nearby Leyland, whilst mum was born in Swansea, although she had lived Up North since she was just a foal. Grandad Gates was the pilot for the original Montgolfier balloon and was carried off into space. Grandad Jenkins had been made into glue long before I was born. Times were right hard, as is the way Up North. I didn't have any shoes until I had seen nineteen winters (the only season in my part of the world), and the blacksmith only fitted me because Father had eaten his son and threatened to eat his daughter as well. We lived off the land until the Dole was invented.

   As I said, them were right hard times. Lancashire was still at war with Y__rkshire, and The North with The S__th. One day the King's hunt came through Preston and I was captured. Luckily, I found favour with Bluff King Hal, but he took umbrage when I buggered his son to death. I went to the Tower and was beheaded, although I grew a new one. My new head was not as pretty as the first. I escaped by turning myself into a river of buttermilk.

  When I returened Up North, Father said he had got some flowers for Mum. it was a good swap, but the cheesemaker returned her because she kicked over a barrel of Old Ale. It was soon the 1590's, and would be remembered as as a very cold period - the worst frosts in all my born days. Luckily there were plenty of Catholics to burn, so we were alble to keep warm on the cheap. One day I came home to find a big fat man eating my tea, so I thrashed him. Sadly, this man revealed himself to be Old Nick, and I spent the next four and twenty years in his service. My tears were my meat day and night, and I performed many a dark deed. When I was released I was immediately pressed into service in the war against the King. It was I that killed Prince Rupert's poodle. I fell in with the Diggers and the Ranters, but Cromwell imprisoned me for being a communist. Then, when the second Charles took the throne, I was hanged, drawn and quartered, amd my head struck off. It took some time to recover, and you can still see the scars of the executioner's awful blade.

There is another envelope of this stuff, but thankfully its whereabouts are unknown. Needless to say, a curiosity of novelty value only. Normal, Graf-tastic service will resume in the fullness of time. Yrs, Gates.

I was going through some papers yesterday and found some old notes of mine, dating back to pre-Gindrinker days. (Yes, I know it's difficult to even imagine what life was like back then, but try your best.) Most of these notes were episodic pieces for a short story I was writing, 'routines' that shifted the narrative, such as it was, into different times and places. So, in tribute to the smoking ban finally being introduced to England (and yet more self-righteous postings in the national papers), here's an extact from a lecture given by scientific contrarian Professor Ravencroft:

"...and in conclusion, gentlemen, we have found that, contrary to popular scientific research, the practice of smoking is not harmful at all, and that carcogens are hidden in many commonly-encountered substances. Any questions?"

"Professor, even you must realise that your evidence is circumstantial, laughable even?"

" And you, Perkins, must also realise that you have the breeding and manners of a dead dog's arse."

SMOKERS: Stop bloody whinging and step outside. Hardly Basra out there, is it?

NON-SMOKERS: Leave us to enjoy our filthy, life-denying habit in peace, hmm?

TTFN, the Gates

Looking at the correspondences on certain forums to which Graf is affiliated, I was shocked by the standard of punctuation, spelling, and so forth. Graf replied, "it's an internet thing, you wouldn't understand". And indeed I don't. Why do perfectly reasonable, educated people with expensive computers and whatnot, feel the need to dispense with the most basic characteristics of written English? What, because the online world is above the pettiness of such fripperies? Nonsense! This fashionable illiteracy is almost certainly the work of online geeks with college degrees pretending to be fifteen again as they cry into their second pizza of the evening. Stop it!

   Now I know I banged on about this in an earlier post, but as I intend to post more frequently (as of now), I thought it best to set an agenda. Maybe I shall issue each blog as a limited edition, appearing on a piece of paper, possibly bound together to make for easy reference. Hmm. I'm going to see how Victorian/Edwardian I can get this blog to be. Onwards to the Age of Steam!

Vale, Gates