Despatches from Gloucester

currently in gloucester. lush and green indeed. i think a lot of rain falls here.

just set up a 'test election' asking voters to pick a candidate based on the question 'who is ronald searly?'

zac happy seems to be leading in the current vote stakes. it had crossed my mind that he was searly on the DL.

on the way down here, drove past droitwich. must only be about 20 miles from there as i type. eyes are peeled for examples of re-use and extreme fixes.

more later. maybe.

hugh laurie lee

Cock and Bull

Had a meeting yesterday with a potential freelance client who started talking about 'designed sustainability' in terms of something being designed for deliberate re-use in another realm once its intial purpose has worn out. Had to use extreme self discipline to avoid shifting the conversation onto the Droitwich Fix. Don't think that would have impressed him. Or maybe it would. Perhaps he already knows of it and was also exercising similar self-discipline and restraint, falsely believing it to be for my benefit.
nb. An abundance of non-case related activity has profoundly slowed things on this branch of the investigative tree. Hopefully normal service will be resumed soon. Drawing the net in now anyway, linking things up, discarding irrelevances.

nb. I contacted the 'cock & bull story association' re: The Case, as i am visiting their town of operation this weekend. See correspondence below...

Hi, I am coming to Stony Stratford in a couple of weeks to visit my girlfriend's sister and came across your site while researching the area. The idea of the cock and bull story has great appeal for me. In fact, I am currently researching a very genuine cock and bull story with some members of a mysterious organisation known as 'The Skip Intro Collective'. If you are interested in reading the "story", it is currently being published as a blog which can be found here. [...] I hope you find this to be of interest and amusement. Thanks,
[investigator's name witheld]

In Reply

Hi, Interesting ... and weird! [...] I'm happy to put you on the mailing list for future issues of the newsletter, although you will get a fair bit of guff about Stony Stratford.
Check www.stonystratford.gov.uk for some of the music and arts events happening here. If there's music on at The White Horse you can expect to find me having a listen and a beer or two.
There is a YouTube feature on the origins oif the Cock & Bull Story -www.primustempus.com - which suppports the Stony Stratford claim.
As you have some fascination for doughnuts you might like to track down Ivor Cutler singing "A Doughnut in my Hand".
Cheers.
[source's name withheld]

In Reply

You forget one vital thing. With a poetry competition, I supposed that release of material was immediately subsequent to penning/recording. However, not so with basement tapes. They were indeed recorded in 68. Release occurred years later.

Grandma death, grandma time, old laughing lady. Yes – many names but I think one person. I managed to avoid running down a sweet highschool girl called Jena though. If such a sweet highschool there had been standing nearby, I would maybe have hit grandma death…

In answer to your earlier question – she didn’t stitch the bag herself. I believe it was purchased in a shop owned by a middle agent who imported goods from a producer, possibly with one or more further middle agent handler/importer between the shop owner and the producer. As with branching drug dealerships, this can make the producer very hard to trace… Perhaps it was made in Boston or, as Lone Wolf has suggested to me, Droitwich itself.

Nb. I assume the monk was toying with the French resistance roots of much dance music. A great comparison there. 68 both.

Down In The Basement

Did you ask the woman where she learnt the stitching technique? If you see her again, I suggest you try to glean if she ever spent any time in the vicinity of Droitwich. I take it that this is a wholly different lady to the old laughing elk you met in the road last week (the image of such a scene in my head makes me think of 'Grandma Death' from the film Donnie Darko). Old ladies are often wise beyond expectation and the insights possible from such sources should never be underestimated. Allow me now to recount what was gleaned from another Old Hand from the labs...

The evening with Dr. Epstein (in which he explained to me the guilt-free method of donut theft) yielded the following unexpected discovery of sorts. As the jazz music filtered through the post-dinner chat, there had been metion of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes and the mistaken belief was held that they were redcorded in 1968. An hour or so later, a copy of Thelonious Monk's Underground was noticed on the table, copyright information showing an original relase date of 1968.

The artwork on Monk's record depicts the artist in an underground bunker, a basement of sorts. In this basement, Monk is at his piano surrounded by assorted objects thus: cheese, grapes, guns, a haybucket, several wine bottles and glasses and a gestapo officer tied to a wooden chair. In the background (the image has a strong sense of depth) is a woman holding a rifle, staring at the viewer from a distance. Monk also sports a gun, strapped to his back out the way of his hands for freedom on the keyboard yet in easy reach should he decide he requires it's use. A detonator connected to a string of explosives lies at his feet in the foreground and Viva La France is grafittied on one of the walls [above the nazi]. The image is rendered in dark earthy hues and has a natural textural quality to it.

Now, i happen to know the Dylan record fairly well and am familiar with its sleeve art. The two are very similar. The artist is also situated in a basement with his instrument of choice (in Dylan's case a mandolin, being played in the manner of a fiddle). Earthy tones, seemingly random objects and characters abound. There is also a man in military dress similar to Monk's Gestapo prisoner. A woman also stares at the viewer from the back of the picture.

Working on the assumption that both records were recorded and released in the same year, it struck me that these two pieces of work were a further example of two people having the same idea, separately, but at the same time. However, upon returning home and checking my copy of the Dylan record, I discovered that it was in fact released in 1975 and so would not seem to be the evidence I initially supposed. One further thing did strike me about the two covers - both artists are wearing wool - Monk a fine suit and Dylan in a striped cardigan reminiscent of South American patterns and colouring.

Now, I am not for a 16th note suggesting that these two seminal musicians were involved in the beginnings of the soft-core group, but I have a hunch that there may be some significance in all this similarity and mistaken belief. If the softcore group have been in hiding for the last 3 years, where have they been? Based on the insights gained from these record sleeves, I have a strong suspicion that when the group went 'underground' they did so literally and have been living subterraneously since 2005. Given their suspected plan of trying to submerge a city, or even a state, it seems likely that they would possess the means to hide themselves underground also, something mentioned as a possiblity with regard to the stateline existence you hypothesized recently.

Of course this theory would have so much more weight to it if the two records in question had been released in the same year.

Notes from kojak asa400

At approximately 7am today I was contacted in a dream by the wife of James Long. She was wanting information on his disappearance. I gave no information, as I have none.

Later, on the way to the day job today, I saw a fine example of the Droitwich Fix – sweet lady waiting in the post office with glimmering silver and green purse – I comment on it, and she shows me – it’s made with old drinks can ringpulls, threaded together with green twine. I have a belt made of ringpulls too, she says. Heavy duty stiching technique – utilising second-generational-usage scrap metal to create a chainmail-style ‘fabric’. Very effective. I have become aware through theorising of an opposite principle to the Droitwich Fix. I found its name yesterday but it has slipped from my mind. More information on this when it returns.

Nb. Once on a visit to the outer rim isles (North Uist, from which St Kilda can be seen hazily out in the void, and then on to South Uist), I became aware of the ancient hand symbol supposedly of Jesus. On the catholic southern island, a stone statue of the mother and child shows the infant raising said salute: First and index finger raised, other fingers down – identical to the peace sign but with fingers together rather than apart. Yesterday I discovered the reason for this hand signal. Jesus had given up waiting on a bus, set off on foot, and was waving to passing vehicles while still holding his busfare in his hand…

For myself, the bus caught up with me some time later, and left me at desired beach location, along with two young campers, without charging me the fare.

I now recall part of the name of the anti-Droitwich Fix. It is the [something] itch. I suppose it may include the throwing away of something still of use. It is also the making and pushing of something with no actual use, its intended use being a mere charade. This would be a tactic well used by the Minnesota marketing people. It is a classic technique in the development of money generation and population-regimentation/control through the mid-20th century: must-have products, with a swift decline in any notion of what the product actually does. Often the product will do something, but not what they tell you it does. A classic result of the meeting between the marketers and the early obfuscationists…

In Reply

This is a lot to digest. I will take one thing at a time, if I can slow my excited mind enough to do so. First item: mass singer. I have operated on the assumption she was purely a dream guide, and was nonrationally working on the basis that she is Sadsack. However, as I have said before, who knows whether I dreamt of her then awoke to the morning light cat noises, or met her, then fell asleep and dreamt of the cat. In which case perhaps you are right, and she is a real UK operative.

The Religious Studies student theory has much going for it – the RS/Mass link in particular. I’m now working on the basis that you’re correct. I haven’t seen her again since dispite several nights frequenting the usual bars. She may resurface when I least expect it.

Second Item: Droitwich Fix. This is a central tenet of self-sufficiency. For every item its use. Throw nothing away! There is no ‘throw away’. Tin cans planted under apple trees to improve the yield. Old sewage outflow pipe rescued from the sea for a chimney. I am sure the inner handicraft core will be well aware of this from years of living on the edge; on the border. I feel the term probably refers both to this and also to the heavy duty stitch. It is a perfect name the soft core would choose for such a ‘fix stitch’.

I await diagrams, images and drawings.

Droitwich Fix

Enlightening wool knowledge there. I now wonder how wool knows which way is inside and which way is outside, and thus which way its heat transferring properties are to be implemented.One thing I forgot to mention - my initial suspicion regarding the girl you came across singing about 'Boston Mass' was that she was Costa, possibly on a recreuitment drive in the UK, or else meeting a connection there and filling in time playing solo spots as some kind of coded call to arms to any UK followers she may have.

However, in light of the BSS Ca-nad/lafon-ian tour, it seems unlikely she would be in the UK sans band, unless she was undertaking some low-key gig practice to work on her solo performance skills prior to the tour dates. It is entirely possible that she is no longer in the band, having trained them to function autonomously, though possbly still receiving her instruction from afar.

Another explanation as to the identity of the Boston Mass singer is that she is the religious studies student who had assocations with Costa in the '90s. She was known to be UK-based (at least during her studies) so would no doubt have acquaintances there- people who could provide her with shelter and find her work if needed. The fact she sings of some kind of 'mass' suggests that she is/was religiously minded, possibly abandoning Christianity or whatever her denomination was, in favour of some more fringe-based belief system. I certainly don't think she is connected to the religious right dogsquad, but I may be wrong.

Perhaps she is in the UK to locate contacts in the Droitwich reason (the theory was mentioned to this investigator that the 'Droitwich Fix' is a specialist stitching method used for heavy-duty repair work when a woven object's lifespan seems othewise at an end. A variation of this theory is that the term 'Droitwich Fix' refers to using an otherwise impaired object to serve a function different to that it was originally designed for - ie. using an old hat which no longer fits the owner's head as a tea-cosy, or fashioning a steel-bodied guitar from a broken oil drum (something this investigator has personally seen evidence of). Such things could be examples of the Droitwich Fix.

Either way, this theory, as put to this investigator, identifies the Droitwich Fix as a method of extreme object salvage when all other hope seems lost - something out on the edge of the repair/reuse/recycle culture which has been subordinated and marginalised by modern capitalism and its constant promise of shiny new goods to those who subscribe to its culture.