1067 Chocolate Cream Doughnuts and a visit to Sunderland

Remembering the chocolate topped cream squelching doughnuts I floundered around this morning for an hour restless and excited about the match. There was time for making a few artman glitter cards and continuing the task of making the myspace experience into some kind of order, making lists of those who I had approached to be friends and why, so who had approached me and those which I had rejected or deleted. I found someone earlier who had a perfect black backcloth for their site. It seemed wrong to write anything on it but I will look to do so in white, for what may be several parts of 101 Myspace and of 101 the master project.

I decided not to go on line for my e mail account or Myspace which meant that if I had won a major prize in the Euro lottery it would wait. Having won £88 with the same six numbers used for year upon year without a win of more than £10, the law of averages indicates that a greater amount with these numbers during my lifetime is problematic, but do I change now, or add a new set of numbers?

Looking up to the sky from this desk I could only see the fret and thus it was so as I travelled along the coast road unable to see the sea. I arrived later than the previous match Saturday at the supermarket for lunch and was lucky to find a free table to enjoy a quartered salmon sandwich and a cup of tea, with an Eccles cake. There were doughnuts, but not chocolate topped squelching cream ones, and I do not yet want to spoil that experience attempting duplication. There was only limited debate about the need for and the consequences of the Eccles cake.

On the journey I had momentary dwelt on the situation of a party of four mums, each with a clutch of children around push chairs, making their way from Ocean Road crossing over at the Marine Pub over to South Marine Park obviously disappointed as the damp fret rolled into them whereas the sun was shining in the Town centre. The sun was warm and bright as I had lunch so I hoped the fret had rolled back for the children and their mothers. Fortunately there are amusements in the park and on the seat front for very young children because the weather is unpredictable.

I had a notebook with me, I have notebooks all over the house and with me when out because I can never remember all the ideas and precise formulations working out in the head. My writing is atrocious and I can only make out my scribbles with difficulty.

Before finding my internet supplier I used a firm just before the main Sunderland Bridge over the Wear and knew where to park the car and found a place facing the right direction for later departure. I cannot recall any of the previous times I walked across the bridge, but I think I will remember today. This could be the last experience. I have always had an awareness of the potential imminence of death, but as I approach seventy, I try and prepare myself, and for others. I can understand why some people try and take control of this situation for themselves.

The new dozen floor high block of smart flats at the Town corner of the Bridge is nearing completion and I decided on the underpass across the junction onto High Street and along to Wilkinsons having discovered that I had run out of red folders and albums. While there, I bought two "my first chalk board" sets, one to chalk 101 on and the other use as base to create a construction from used cartridges, glitter and glue tubes. I have several underway, with boxes upon box of materials. On return I sat in the car and wrote these notes before walking the 100 yards or so to ground. There was a brilliant start with a goal in the first ten minutes but after Q PR equalised from a penalty, the players and 39000 crowd became tense and nervy, "was the great adventure to have an unkind twist." I bought the fanzine "no greater love" and was reminded of what happened at Cardiff in 1979, and as Max Boyce stills says, "And I was there." A blistering goal with ten minuets to go by substitute Grant Leadbitter soared spirits although the result was uncertain until the lady of indeterminate size sang. I had sat wearing sun glass lenses but continued to need to shield the eyes from the sun, such was the glare, but the mist was still at the coast on the journey to see my mother before calling in at the local supermarket for some frozen veg to accompany a pork chop, a banana and some grapes after a glass and a half of red to finish the bottle of Italian Lancellota. I made my own wine for several years, until it all overheated and damaged.

Over the week I have been considering the composition of the 101 my space friends for 101 My space in Black and White. Should they represent the 101 dedication cards inserted into the 101 copies of 101 in Black and White, and I decided that I would make a new list of events which I would hope to remember with the 101 dedication friends in those last moments when it said that the whole of your life experience flashes by. Thinks, I ought to do another site called 101 the Long Goodbye, a review of memorable experiences since becoming the concept Artman in 2003. Would those chocolate topped, cream squelching doughnuts be included?

Later in the evening when I did go on line a friend had commented about the chocolate topped, cream squelching doughnuts, pointing out that the problem was not eating the odd one, or six but when half the income is used. Even this comment has to be qualified because it depends on the income and the consequences of gorging out on chocolate topped squelching cream doughnuts every day throughout the day. Of course some people do do this, I mean politicians for example they get high on taking decisions all day and night which affects people's lives. They genuinely believe the decision will make lives better and they question what their public servants and political advisers tell them before reaching decisions, but they still ignore the evidence that more harm than good is done overall when you intervene in the lives of others, even when they ask you to. They chose to ignore the law of unintended consequences which advisers always try and work out in order to be able to leak to the media, "I told them so," if the action goes badly wrong.

I am procrastinating from the main task in hand, as I have been for the past week. To be consistent I need to talk about the selection of 101 experiences which will form 101 Myspace great moments represented by Myspace friends. Drawing up lists has been no problem, but talking about or not talking about some aspects has, because not talking about tends to arouse more interest than by doing so, and doing so inevitably anyway arouses interest anyway. I considered representing my earliest of years with a good Alice and a bad/stroke wicked Alice. The Good Alice already among my friends I will keep. I could have searched for Jack and the Beanstalk, because of my tendency to charge off against real monsters rather than harmless Windmills. But Jack probably grew up to be a Marine. Although I was and remain a physical boy I was brought up with all the attitudes and feelings of being a girl, so it had to be a she, and although I have not read the story recently or viewed a film, I am confident that Alice was an adventuresome and independent creature who took such risks that she would be taken into protective care and her parents prosecuted for neglect. Yet it is only by being curious, taking risks and exploring the world that any of us progress into adulthood. The difference is having a protective shield of parents, family, school, and local society around us. I have rejected the original bad wicked Alice, because she was too precocious and wicked in reality to accurately represent my childhood.

I have previously tried to remember the earliest of memories, the first awareness of myself as separate from others and which had lasting impact on how I perceived the world then and now. There were at least five.

I have mentioned travelling with an aunt to the home of an aunt who had accommodation, allocated to the wives of officers at the Catterick Military Camp in Yorkshire, adjacent to a cornfield which during summer evenings we walked through. I travelled in an ambulance with the aunt who was deaf, dumb, blind and immobile. The most important memory was when I was taken by the aunt who was in fact my mother into Richmond for what I believe was my first professional hair cut and afterwards from a shop I was bought some plasticene, now called play dough which I subsequently squiggled into multi coloured lumps which could not be disentangled and which irritated my mother who had been opposed to being sent off with me alone from the outset. I was not the first or will be last child born unwanted to a woman in traumatic circumstances and who traumatically changed their lives. I sometimes feel that there are more of us than the rest of you, lucky bastards. Ops, no, I am the bastard, funny that.

I have also mentioned going into the air raid shelter where the aunts prayed to Blessed Mary, mother of God, Holy Mary Mother of Jesus, I feel their fear, I have it still, and watching a doodle bug flying bomb overhead, knowing that if the engines cut we could all be blown up. However the incident which affected me as much was when I was stabbed in my thigh by a nail in one of the bunks and had to be taken to hospital to have the wound cleaned, my war wound, although the physical scar has gone. How did we get to the hospital and back? I do not remember the telegrams saying that the two sons of the eldest aunt who slept at the other end of the double bed with my mother had been taken prisoner, but I do remember the day of the telegram which said that he had died and that it was given to my uncle to read. I also remember one event which I believe took place in war time when I went with my mother with someone she knew in a lorry to Brighton where we looked on to the beach separated by barbed wire from the mines and the obstructions to make any landing difficult, but more significantly the row which followed on return. I remember vivid waking dreams of seeing a physical presence devil, and I remember my first day at school and crying. I remember my aunt giving me a tin bath in our downstairs rooms and being embarrassed when others, perhaps cousins came in. I remember my aunt telling me stories at bed time, but did she read fairy stories as I do not remember any books. And now there is no one left to ask and who can reply.