People who have read, or even just flicked through, Foucault, tend to relish the maxim ‘knowledge is power’. They usually like to pronounce it with a knowing look of informed gravitas that implies they too are laden with knowledge, and of course, power. Personally I’m not sure if surveillance is really power. Years ago the local authority installed CCTV in a long dark rat-ridden alley close to where I then lived. This was supposed to make me feel safe and less likely to be attacked by a knife wielding rapist/marauder. I always thought, so? They will have video footage of my blood-soaked end, then what? Great, I will rest so much happier in my grave knowing it was all captured on tape. I did not walk down the alley more often, or feel remotely more powerful. They (and by this I mean a gang of men in fluorescent tabards) have just repainted the stretch of the big road near me and along with the tarmac modification there is also a new camera. It is big, painted a discreet dark grey to merge into our urban landscape, and oddly visible and invisible. The real power, is not in the knowledge itself, but in the observee’s belief that the knowledge will be acted upon, and punishment meted out, willy nilly. Probably Foucault also remarked on this (although the context of the bus lane may have been slightly different).

I missed the connection from the Bakerloo to the Northern Line fiddling about to get this shot. Not that it was going anywhere I was just a bit slow off the mark. It’s a bit like the nape of the neck, or the soft bit in the crook of your arm, or the back of the knee. Earlier I fantasised about posting a sign on the stem of the new camera up the road that said ‘fuck surveillance’. Very crude, I know. I would become a suburban Banksy diverting and delighting motorists as they drove by. Like all good fantasies, this is probably as far as that little idea should go. However, sneaking up on CCTV and catching the blind spot on my little spy-phone did the trick. This is the position from where it would be exciting to view a poem, particularly one I had written, unseen, watching it watch and not knowing it was being watched. I checked, there was no camera behind me.

A big day! Today my chapbook – is that short for chapterbook or is it a book full of chaps? – is published. It is sort of a posh word for pamphlet, or perhaps not posh, but apparently trans-Atlantic. It’s a bit like when people leave their out of office on to say they are ‘on vacation’ rather than admit to being ‘on holiday’, which is frivolous and somehow sinful. Bah. Having looked it up I see it is ‘a small pamphlet of tales, ballads, tracts etc, hawked by chapmen’. Having now referred to the other dictionary which requires a magnifying glass, I see that is pretty much the case. So, itinerant men wearing chaps will be flogging my little book: but, rest assured, they will not be cowboys!

I think nerves and deviation probably measure in equal balance, so take my sudden interest in the etymology of chapbooks for what it is. If I was playing Just a Minute Clement Freud would definitely have control of the game by now with 6 seconds to go…

Coincidence is a funny thing, not least because it is impossible to write about with any degree of plausibility.

You will recall I referenced Ms Tattontastic’s blog (TOP FORM!) in my last posting, a mere 5 days ago, not having heard from her for a couple of years.

It being the holiday season I sent my pal Austin a text best summarised as follows:
‘Get your queer arse down to Cafe C, it’s Easter, Zillah1 is 30, we’re out and about and it’s time to shake your booty.’
He responded with a text that said:
‘Happy easter to you too. Would love to get my queer arse to all sorts of places but unfortunately it is stuck up a french mountain on a skiing holiday enjoying – or possibly polluting the clean air etc. Back in a week. Behave!’
That told me, but then I received a second text.
‘I.ve (sic) just had a (2 michelin star) meal with [Tattontastic] (in courchevel naturally!) She remembers you. How wierd (sic)!’
Hardly weird, I thought, most people do, even though that was not the point at all. Said skiier had left a comment on BlagLady only last week and was at the top of my thoughts. Then, as if by magic, there she was, skiing down Mont XX with the only international man of mystery of my current acquaintance, who I had just texted.

It should be said that Austin is pink with a blue rinse, ie was last seen trekking in Burma with a copy of Mrs Thatcher’s biography tucked under his arm. Tattontastic on the other hand might well be called Hattontastic in the land of political polarities. I therefore responded with a numbingly neutral ‘Quelle coincidence’ followed by ‘Ps have u got on 2 politics yet?’. I have heard nothing since then. I can only assume an avalanche precipitated by the boom of opposing thought and battling intellect in a molotov cocktail of champagne and fondue fired neo-liberal-Guevara-ist-somethingorother. I think I may be the missing link.

Well, a wonderful thing happened on the way to the forum! Did it? Not sure, I just love that expression, which is woefully misquoted I’m sure. Whenever I hear it or say it I think of Kenneth Williams nudging matron in Carry on Caesar, which is weird because I haven’t seen that film since I was knee high and used to fancy Jim Dale. Blimey. References aside, it was a marvellous surprise, I got a comment !! which is always excitement enough – but not only that, it was a comment from a friend of old, who is now a blogger herself, and a mighty amusing one too. Check out http://tattontastic.blogspot.com/ t. In one of her entries she discusses how lamentable it is that she can’t slag off everyone she’s ever worked with, just in case anyone she’s ever worked with reads the blog, and I have to say I know what she means – of late the prospect of anonymity beckons like a siren. Although I rather think, ironically, that a blog is in itself the ultimate exercise in anonymity. I still haven’t learnt how to monitor my stats and I’d rather not quite frankly. It’s a bit like being a closet exhibitionist: your sex in the phone box is so much more exciting, but you really really hope that no-one you know ever ever catches you…Soon I will split into multiple personalities online and the inner monopoly of BlagLady will be usurped by an ever-splintering group.

Currently, BlagLady is having problems with all things poetic, which of course is natural seeing as she now has special dispensation from God (aka The Arts Council) to write her memoirs in verse form. Of course it will not be memoirs, as if one would bore one’s reader(s) by discussing the mundanity of one’s actual experience. No, I shall be concentrating solely on insects, fauna, flora and the elements. Bizarrely as I write this with a bitter twisted moany tone about me I realise that this may in fact be true. They are infinitely more – well more infinite – well equally infinite, whatever – in fact I mean to say interesting – than any personal or biographical revelations I may care to share.

I forgot to mention, I have a new residency at the Museum of Garden History, where I get to Repatriate the Ark. Being a beauty fascist, there will only be the best-looking creatures aboard, with carefully groomed fur and feathers – after all fish can swim can’t they? It’s responding to the Tradescant’s collection that formed the basis of the collection at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Apparently Ashmole lived next door, helped the father and son collector team classifytheir booty, then when Tradescant the Younger (or elder, I forget now) popped his clogs he became the 17th Century version of Dan Brown/the Neighbour from Hell and claimed all the credit or something…I’ll get more accurate as time goes on…or perhaps less, who knows? It is therefore and hitherto very ology-proper and involves an exciting list of strange and bizarre objects such as ‘two fethers from the Phinix tale’ and one ‘griffinnes beak’. I have to respond first to the griffin’s beak etc and the concepts of collection and appropriation and then the work which various visual artists create in the exhibition.

I rather like this in my little history of Lambeth: ‘Flora Tristan, a French tourist ventured south of the river past Lewis Cottingham’s house in 1840; and she was horrified by what she saw…’ Some things never change – you should see some of the gentlemen of my acquaintance as they travel home southwards of a Sunday morning.

A momentous event occurred at 6.28 this evening. We signed off the final proof for my chapbook The Worshipful Company of Pomegranate Slicers which will be launched at Spread the Word’s new season party at Crockatt & Powell on Lower Marsh. (Monday 24 April). A lot of fussing and frooing and general to-ing and fro-ing occurred in the interim. Was ‘Arse’ hung too high or too low? (On the page of course.) Would we have running heads? Should I include a promotional pic? Answer no, mainly for aesthetic reasons. Of course the brown, slim, fresh-faced factor was – well a factor – but the real reason was because the book looked better, more confident without one, and besides it had lots of my snaps in it. Yes, Blag Lady scrubs up all right, but ultimately I thought it more revealing to show what I see, rather than to show me. Besides a lady should always maintain a healthy element of mystery.

So, back to letting go. Now the chapbook is out there – well up there – uploaded onto the printer’s website. The days of correcting and fiddling are over. I have made my decision. I will include X poem even though Y (and Z) didn’t like it. Now I have other decisions to make, other things I need to let go. Crutches to kick from under my armpits. I want to feel like I’ve just had my long hair cut really short. Suddenly I’m making plans and it’s all starting to happen. I will have to let go of my impediments because they have let me go. A bit like being dumped by someone you should have left years ago and were never really in love with in the first place. Now there’s nothing holding me back, I will have to go somewhere.