The Beggar, The Joker, The Buzzard, The Blog

16th September 2017

So I just got back from Scotland with my Serious Biscuits co-conspirators. Goodness it’s good driving around those parts. Even the motorways are joy enough to make you back your speed down to a ton or so and take it all in. She gives good for the peepers, does Scotland, but there’s even more going on than that up there. I’m talking about moss.

Hanging out around the Welsh borderlands, I’m pretty experienced with moss. I know how to peel it, cook it, and slip over on it when it starts growing over the railway sleepers that people adorn their gardens with. Frankly, I would have considered myself Mr Moss, but for the first time that I needed to find north a few days ago at a holiday cottage next to Loch Katrine. I found it alright, and the moss that was on every surface facing that way. And we’re not talking about a pinch of the stuff; we’re talking about a carpet of organism that grows on and on. I started to wonder about Moss Men who might pull themselves free of the saturated green menace at night, then go wandering about until they fall into the Loch.

I checked with Anna that she’d bolted the door and went to sleep feeling safe. But then in the morning an idea! Move to Scotland and become a moss farmer. Right now moss is a lower tier specimen, but at any moment it might become the cure to anything, or something else of equal or greater financial value.

Then who’s laughing? Me, I’m laughing.

Maybe by that point I’ve managed to rope the Moss Men in to help me out with the farming. I doubt that moss can get a bad back but sometimes mine can make me pull a face. And we might be talking another ten years before people sort their shit out and get on with the moss R&D. By that time the Moss Men (Mossies) are really going to have to pull their weight. I’m going to put up a big limestone wall to imprison them into the farm once I’ve got enough of them.

Then I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, and probably inside it too. Just don’t tell anyone about what I’ve just said. No-not even yourself before you ask. I own the rights to the concept, anyway. You can find the legal conditions and entanglements at #MyBrainIsMyChequebook.

We also went to a wedding whilst in Scotland. Great venue, big Loch views, smokin’ newly weds, and a canopy of sun just at the right moment to remind you that God has great timing. Great scones afterwards, too; I didn’t get any scones during my own wedding so I always make the effort to make like a pig for them on other peoples special day. Which conveniently enough is going to happen again this weekend at Colchester, where two of my dearest friends are going tie their knots’n’bows, and run an open tab at the bar. That last bit might be false info but I’m warming up my incredulous reaction to bar staff when they hold out their hand for some coins; at least a beggar plays a bit of tin flute before doing that to me. Of course in that situation I’m the one handing the double over, and if I’m not expected to be remunerated a thank you would at least be good manners. But they just carry on with the flute.

When the barman holds his hand out I’m just going to say thank-you and then turn about very quickly to mingle. I’m a pretty decent mingler; I just go for enthusiasm in place of even pretending to remember people’s names. So that’s the plan, but we’ll see how it goes down after the bell rings, and I’ll otherwise just wing it like every other day of the week.

So where does that leave us? I’ll just say that between returning from Scotland (remember, zip about the moss farming) and driving all over East Anglia, I’ve reached the very tip of the prism of the crucible of drama inside the first draft of my barnacled biographical bonanza, The Brine in Me. Now I’ve got to leave the unspoken words between Derek and Herbert unwritten until I’m back in the study and not outside on a patio finishing my blog while some gnomes watch me. Can anyone vouch for the safety of turning your back on a gang of gnomes when you’re working?

I’m going in to bolt the back door.

Love like the rabbit will run…
JW Bowe xx

P.S! Anna urges me to not to run up a tab anywhere that there is a wedding going on. I get carried away with generosity after the free champagne turns my brain into a Soda Stream.

If you enjoyed this blog, and you’re impatient for something else to read, feel free to bunch up close to a free sample chapter from JW Bowe’s debut novel, The Meifod Claw, which is available now at Amazon, iTunes and on various other international eReaders.

You can also double up your sampling by following this link to the forthcoming fictional autobiography of The Meifod Claw’s wheelchair-in-chief, Derek Gainsborough. His life and apologies will be released next year under the sail of The Brine in Me.

JW Bowe can also be unearthed on YouTube and in various other ways through the Serious Biscuits homepage. Scroll down for further links, action and disclaimers.