Diary Of A Country Boy

My Diary

2012-03-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

June went up the road on a motorised lily pad, entering Heron House as I entered the bathroom with a black cat in my arms. I pressed a flower between the pages of an unread book and put the key in the clockwork mechanism that controlled my butterfly wings - the farmer’s wife always said I spent too much time as the butterfly and not enough as the caterpillar. With a paint brush in seven of my eight hands I painted small red spots on everything I could get near to and then looked up at the red spot sky. The musician in the clouds was too busy to play.

My Diary

2012-03-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

I walked June to the helter-skelter to see if she could climb up as fast as everyone else came down and then worked in the garden for the rest of the day. A number of secrets were discovered among the artificial mountains, trees twisted into the calligraphy on twenty pound notes and stone statues that looked up and down. I looked down at the national collection of dogs teeth and then up at the patch of sky through which canine messages could be sent. June and I then went out; we both carried a target and a quiver of arrows. We sat down beside a busy road.

My Diary

2012-03-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

June and I caught a train, sitting down opposite an actor rehearsing his lines - I knew the play but not the language he was speaking. We then met my family at the station; the clouds parted as the guitarist tightened up a new set of strings - we went in for a meal just as he began to play. When we came out everyone had horse heads and arranged themselves like musical notes (I didn’t think the service was very good in the restaurant). Brushing our newly acquired horse hair we came home again, passing pigs in sties reading a recent translation of Animal Farm.

My Diary

2012-03-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

I left the whelk that June and I had been sharing with a pair of werewolf hermit crabs very early. I caught the remains of a Spanish galleon which had drifted by at the bottom of the green tea ocean and sat in the soil of the largest window box in the world. The battleship captain and I dressed clouds in our imagination and I came home under a cloud wearing my old school uniform. Poppy was waiting by the door ready to eat my old exercise books; not realising that I had already eaten them. June came in after eating a scribbled on calendar and two out of date diaries.

My Diary

2012-03-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

After apparently playing a sitar in my sleep I woke with a crick in my neck; June was dressed as a flamingo and went out kicking a pink football. I pretended to be a goal post and watched a number of large birds rise in the thermals above a faded skyline. I then went to town underneath a glider and crash-landed like a jet fighter in the supermarket car park. A group of people had congregated there and were looking at the spot where the Vikings had sailed up the river with the humane alternative to flaming dogs in their arms. I imagined a spot where fire meets water.

My Diary

2012-03-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

I unzipped myself out of my railway embankment hiding place using a hairy legged spider zip. June had already sprung up like a Spring bulb and was later found balancing an ornate four poster bed on a provocatively outstretched finger. I decided to put on curtains instead of clothes and drew myself shut. I said goodbye to a small flower which had wilted in the light of time, burrowed into the side of a hill and came home wearing jellyfish instead of shoes. I found June half way up the trunk of a large tree holding two children in her arms.

My Diary

2012-03-06T09:11:00.001-08:00

Choosing the right door for once (I chose the one with the skeleton of Mickey Mouse on it), I followed the shades of grey corridor and found June tied to the main stage of a Saturn Five rocket. I managed to cut her loose using a pen knife I borrowed from an ex-executioner of the Women’s Institute. I then took her papers to the entrance of the castle keep and rung a bell. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of severed heads playing football - I didn’t envy the referee. Just for the fun of it I grew to over a hundred feet tall and bounded back home.

My Diary

2012-03-06T09:08:00.001-08:00

Using my renowned x-ray vision I saw the backing board of the mirror but sadly not my face. I did know from my heightened intuition that I had an old fashioned hay bailer on my head, almost directly over a frontal lobe; I felt it was odd that the farmer couldn’t afford a new one and then scratched my back with the tip of a sword fish. June had gone out, looking quite dashing with a lobster claw replacing her left hand and later rung me from a constellation only visible from the Southern Hemisphere. I filled the bath with milk and then enticed a donkey into it.

My Diary

2012-03-04T12:04:00.000-08:00

June went to a different hospital today and came back with a sky blue hand - I pretended I could see an approaching thunder storm but in reality all the clouds were white. To past the time I had tunnelled into the middle of a loaf of white bread and was just making myself comfortable when someone knocked the door. Some time later, three thousand miles away, I had to inspect a meteorite which for some reason was wearing an eye patch - this was all the more extraordinary as both its eyes followed me round the room.

My Diary

2012-03-04T08:14:00.002-08:00

I accompanied June to hospital where she crawled inside a rugby ball and I carefully removed a group of still skipping lambs from my coat pockets. I put on my sheep in wolf’s clothing sun glasses and waited for it to rain. As we left the war memorial open house a man with so many legs we couldn’t count them all came in (June told me not to mention a caterpillar on a cabbage leaf so I predicted a teenage craze for wearing starfishes instead of hats). June and I caught a passing cuttlefish and had dinner at the bottom of an artificial ocean.

My Diary

2012-03-02T13:43:00.004-08:00

I swam out of bed very early, pulling ripe plums out of the purple mist, and boarded a tug boat which sat in the harbour like a child’s rubber duck in a gunfighter’s holster. I visited the old master in a subterranean cruise ship and pulled the laurel leaves off the head of Julius Caesar as he watched from inside the stone age control room. I parachuted down through a sky of children’s exercise books into a land where pencils were the size of sequoia logs and a group of of Bronze Age sacrificial victims pulled themselves out of the candy coloured bog.

My Diary

2012-03-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

June swallowed the alarm clock and I heard her ticking up the road as I went into my studio to count the number of hippos who habitually wallowed in the mud on the drinking hole carpet - I made it ten, two of which were trying on horizontally striped body stockings; I advised a change to vertical stripes and then went to stick a postage stamp on an imitation V2 rocket I had tied up in the garden. The fish man (who I have long considered a god and worthy of devotion) was having an argument with the angelic figure holding up a garden umbrella.

My Diary

2012-02-29T14:00:00.000-08:00

I followed the anthropomorphic marks on the ground with my bare toes and then pulled a mobile phone over my head and shoulders - the glow of light emitting diodes reminded me of my time at the Olympus holiday park being a naked cup bearer to the gods - I turned the page over of the book I had been eating and walked the pavement as if I was the sole sentry in a besieged castle. After flying to a vegetable patch to get greens for a family of pigeons I had hidden in my breast pocket I settled down to work inside a replica of the Statue of Liberty.

My Diary

2012-02-29T01:41:00.000-08:00

I felt better today as I sailed out of bed in a yacht with very dark hull and pale coloured sails - a figure; half woman, half bird, was tied to the mast. I dismounted from one of the four horses I had been riding and wrapped up a small image (representing Medusa) and placed it in a solitary shoe. I then took the dog out for a hop. She had been dreaming about holding hands with an eight armed Hindu Goddess and carried an elephant holding the world on her back. We circumnavigated the table top housing estate. The clouds touched the ground as I touched the ceiling.

My Diary

2012-02-27T14:00:00.001-08:00

I fed the horses galloping inside my head before getting out of bed; June had slammed the door like an Amazonian warrior finding a man in her bed and shot herself to work. I removed the ex-Southern Railway Diesel Multiple Unit from among my clothes and dressed on an army firing range, missing the bullets but tripping over a huge fungal outgrowth shaped like a pair of orang-u-tan’s lips. I walked the dog in the forest of Borneo and then settled down in my lunar tree house to work. I collected June later from a shopping centre on the outskirts of the solar system.

My Diary

2012-02-27T03:01:00.003-08:00

June and I had a lay in, she on a bed of nails and me on a sea of molten magma. I sucked an ocean dry and then dropped a couple of continental plates into my smiling face teacup - I later turned the cup upside down. After passing the time of day with a fish humaning on a river bank (he had already caught a balding insurance salesman and a retired school teacher) I pruned the roses of Heliogabalus and then went out for a meal with June. The restaurant was lodged between the wings of a biplane and we ate among calligraphic contrails. I swum home in a vat of real ale.

My Diary

2012-02-27T03:01:00.001-08:00

After finding a missing Dead Sea scroll in a vacuum flask I pulled my Wellington boots from a designer Crimean mud patch and caught the train. On my arrival at the stone circle station I got a lift in a passing moa egg and marvelled at a congregation of churches which looked like petrified trees in the morning light. We rolled to a wood, where I helped several people in gorilla suits cut down ancient skyscrapers, and then royced back. When I finally got home June was entertaining a family of friendly trolls and I introduced myself as Peer Gynt.

My Diary

2012-02-24T13:59:00.001-08:00

I got up in the pitch and putt darkness and put on a my clothes like a cat burglar going up a downpipe - the dog went out on her own wearing a balaclava. The bus followed a B road and the sailing boat of my imagination navigated the alimentary canal of a hump backed whale. I met the old man sat in a bird nest of white beard and we talked of people in past times across a horizontal reproduction of Cleopatra’s needle. I saluted a vertical reproduction of the tomb of Jane Austen and then found the horse I fell off as a child while searching my trouser turnups.

My Diary

2012-02-23T13:55:00.001-08:00

June disappeared in a cloud of smoke at precisely 9.15am and materialised a quarter of a mile away on top of a hill. I swilled myself around in a glass of water and then jumped into a vacuum flask - only to find it was already occupied by a family of fire ants who promptly went out. I went out also carrying a wildebeest from the Serengeti National Park. On my return I emerged from a supermarket carrier bag and sung a song to a hidden ring of Saturn. I then went upstairs to work; fitting a 42inch screen television into my beard as I did so.

My Diary

2012-02-23T13:53:00.001-08:00

June left to work as I was trying out a selection of new shadows; I settled on the shadow of a samurai warrior and then went out to fly a kite with a single bedroom bungalow attached to it. After witnessing a semi-detached house (with garage) re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere I climbed to the third floor of a two storey building. I worked in my room until June came home with a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead. I pulled a laurel tree out of my pocket and cast it at her feet; a family of miniature figures caught having an arboreal picnic jumped out and ran away.

My Diary

2012-02-21T12:55:00.002-08:00

June went off with King Arthur (or was it King Alfred) and I was left looking after the round table cakes. Poppy and I found a new continent in the middle of a recently formed puddle and I named it Atlantis - if I had had a sailing boat in my coat pocket I would have sailed out to explore it; as it was I stepped over it and showed the dog the place in the sky where the bearded face had appeared. On my return home, I shuffled around the bomb bay while waiting for June to ring; as she never did I put the B2 bomber in my mouth and swallowed it.

My Diary

2012-02-21T12:55:00.001-08:00

June was sucked into a hole in the ground while I was distracted by the moving clock hands that suddenly appeared in the carpet. The carpet depicts King Harold’s victory over William and I often looked at it to count the smiling faces. A messenger made of wax melted at the front door as I went out to get a gin and tonic for the budgerigar - I found a straw and thatched the roof before entering the Montezuma lookalike competition and winning a stone pyramid almost completely hidden by jungle. I went out for the evening with a Spanish Moss beard.

My Diary

2012-02-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

June and I stayed in bed as a family of shadows flew overhead; I thought I recognised the leader but I didn’t call out. I spent a shadowless morning in my studio playing wargames with letters - after the consonants had one I got ready to go out. June and I ate a cool meal surrounded by hot ice and then went to explore a multi-storey cave system - the caveman attendant showed us three badges and invited us to guess which was his; I went for the mammoth one but was wrong. At home June watched the television and I made myself a quantum mechanical sandwich.

My Diary

2012-02-19T13:59:00.003-08:00

June showed me her collection of frozen clocks before I caught the train to a quaint medieval town. I noticed the townspeople’s clothes matched the colour of the their front doors and I entered a door covered with uneven red and green stripes. A blazing bonfire moved like an exotic dancer in the wigwam living room; a faded armchair asked for as peppermint just before I cut the clematis stalk light cord. As the bonfire succumbed I caught the cold train home. June was cradling a recently fired clay penguin as I entered our muted front door.

My Diary

2012-02-19T13:59:00.001-08:00

Unusually I left the house before June, who was busy peeling herself off a sheet of sticky paper (a solitary eye was suspended in the blurred space over the repeated pattern of the carpet). I flagged down a passing wagon train and rode to the reflection-less plains were most of my happy memories reside. I met an old man half way up a greasy pole - we both slid down together holding thin slices of unbuttered bread. The tent canvas flapped like applause when I jumped out and rose again over the high plains. I could see for miles; mainly inside my head.

My Diary

2012-02-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

After putting on all my clothes back to front I walked backwards down the stairs remembering my past. A group of elephants were playing cricket in the back garden as I mowed a slice of bread in readiness for breakfast in the window box (June had already left for work accompanied by a giraffe riding a unicycle). Having only just made contact with a previously unknown civilisation living underneath the bath I left my model of a dormouse powered aircraft in the bathroom. I then gave the cat a newly powdered Georgian wig and walked the dog.

My Diary

2012-02-16T01:53:00.001-08:00

I woke as a sculptor’s maquette for a representation of Atlas - I held a huge stone on my shoulders (I blame the state of the pillow for this. Finally coming down the stairs with a bell cast for a medieval church in my praying arms I imagined June sat in the corner playing the harpsichord with rustic hamsters dancing a gavotte on her head - her recently coiffured hair bent down like a crop circle (I reckon it looked like a landing stage from space but the professor slowly emerging from my spectacle case categorically stated that it was caused by random air currents!).

My Diary

2012-02-14T11:42:00.001-08:00

Back to our normal routine; June had turned into a reptile for the day covered her scales with make up and then changed into her uniform at work. I counted the number of mirages on the fingers of one hand and brought back a white bag of greenery from the one oasis in town - at night it doubles as an alien cruise liner slipway (trips were organised to Andromeda and back). Once back in my space tug I worked all day on my artificially intelligent sofa which would recite one of its own poems when you sat down. I stood in the corner like a table lamp.

My Diary

2012-02-14T11:41:00.000-08:00

I got up early to arrange my collection of Viking helmets, tripped over a still smouldering long boat and then took my long eared friend out. Above our heads famous art works had been painted on hot air balloons and we walked down the railway hill under a collection of Cezanne’s uneaten apples - my friend wanted a bite from one but I rushed on - all the ex passengers ran up the hill with gas masks and helmets. Behind, explosions marked where each foot touched the ground even though the huge body was invisible. I collected my short eared friend later.

My Diary

2012-02-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

One of the strange creatures that inhabit the garden had left a gift wrapped box by the back door. It had a rather strange pattern of a rabbit holding a machine gun juxtaposed with a bouquet of flowers stuck in a noose. I pulled the “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster off the flesh coloured wall and walked the dog. The old lady who lives down the road flew by on a chariot pulled by animated birthday cakes - a straw bale monkey busy climbing a seaside rock street lamp blew the candles out. The dog and I avoided the freckles of ice and returned home along a left arm.

My Diary

2012-02-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

The garden wore its grey beard and I scratched mine as a number of basalt columns marched across the horizon like cruelly truncated legs - I imagined entire cities sited on the tops of each column with endless life and death situations in each city. I had meant to hollow out a log and travel up stream today but because of the weather I decided to stay indoors attached to an extra terrestrial search antenna like negatives from a glamour shoot drying on a provocatively strung cord. I walked June up and down the hill King Arthur was supposed to be sleeping in.

My Diary

2012-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

I woke from a dream where I had lost my bus ticket while waiting for my connection. I contemplated walking (at tree top height) and then decided to write a play with people wearing classical Greek costumes and faces of goats - I remembered a childhood visit to the sea goat. The whole performance came back to me during the day when I saw a string of Spartan hoplites march across the playing fields; I pretended to be a rabbit and attached a number of carrots to a kite cord at approximately ten inch intervals.

My Diary

2012-02-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

I got up with both of my heads aching. I laid on the delta wing of a Vulcan bomber and worked out a route for June and I to take. We had to carry the bomb between us and I had painted a landscape on one side and our next door neighbour had knitted a still life for the other. Later, I went to town with a cough, which got worse as I stood in a queue to sign my name on the side of a baking potato - after which I could attach plastic facial features and propose a fake marriage. June got back from work as I was hoovering a path to the city of Petra.

My Diary

2012-02-07T12:07:00.001-08:00

June had to get up early to prepare for a lecture by a crowned crane who had flown in specially with bright white spectacles on his nose. I had dreamed all night about selling small gifts on the sea front with a blood red sea sloshing in like wine being swilled around a glass by a critic. I had thick fog in my head and turned on the television to get the weather forecast; instead I saw a graphic reproduction of a dinosaur’s egg in a microwave - expecting an extinct animal to enter the house I was surprised at the arrival of a stunt double for Lawrence of Arabia.

My Diary

2012-02-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

Neither June or I slept very well. Her alter ego stood at the window watching an ornate pattern proceed down the otherwise blank fields, while mine looked at dancers made from street lamps shining through ice. I got up like King Arthur with a countryside eiderdown cascading from my head; a lone figure raised his hand just as he disappeared behind a low cloud. June went off to work in the mist. My head ached as the dog pulled a picture of a medieval jester through the salt and vinegar flavoured streets - I kept a pack of Polish martyr cards in my pocket.

My Diary

2012-02-06T03:43:00.002-08:00

Glancing at my reflected face as I floated down the stairs I noticed I had three eyes and four ears - not liking odd numbers I went off to find another mouth. June was at the sink rescuing a whale and putting it back in its bowl. I exchanged greeting with several animated chess pieces as they glided down the road atop a procession of giant tortoises. June and I then went out to dinner, me with a gibbet on my head and her with a box of white crayons - as is usual in this sort of situation every drawing board she came across was also white.

My Diary

2012-02-06T03:43:00.001-08:00

I metamorphosed into a puppet shortly after June went out to bury herself in a handmade birthday cake. With some curiosity I pulled in the strings to see who was controlling me; oddly I found it was me - I said hello but I obviously had something else on my mind. June returned with a small ocean which hadn’t been named yet; we counted the fish and then divided by six. We then used this number to work out what to have for dinner, unfortunately it turned out to an unoccupied block of flats and the crumbling edge of an ancient glacier.

My Diary

2012-02-06T03:42:00.002-08:00

I got up early and left the house dressed only in a mixed selection of rubber bands. I stretched my way to the bitterly cold countryside where I met the warm old man sitting on a a loaf of bread; I sat on a stale scone and we exchanged stories about winter sunshine and living in caves. I photographed my own cave art and then rode out on a baby mammoth. On my return home I settled down at the controls of the space freighter I had been piloting since a child - I wasn’t sure what the cargo was but I heard something stir deep down inside.

My Diary

2012-02-06T03:42:00.001-08:00

Strange music was playing in my head, and curiously in every enclosed space I entered. I shut myself in the cupboard under the stairs and listened to a symphony of footsteps going up and down the stairs - this was rather odd as I was the only person in the house. I had to go to town so drew a map on my back and laughed as other people followed it; on my front was a picture of an empty wardrobe although I noticed there was a tailored gorilla suit hanging there when I returned home. I decided not to put wear it and made a pair shorts from used teabags.

My Diary

2012-02-01T13:41:00.002-08:00

I thought I would have a swim in a tea cup before I walked June to the ocean she works in. We walked on water, her towards a rock formation taken from Leonardo’s Madonna Of The Rocks and me beside the recently exposed vertebrae of an unnamed sauropod. I got back home just as the bell of the sunken village started to toll. I watched mechanical diggers and cranes perform their mating ritual from the gantry of a Saturn Five rocket and then settled down to work until June rang from inside a black and white photograph of Arcadia.

My Diary

2012-02-01T13:41:00.001-08:00

I walked June along a tight rope two inches above the ground - I was scared we might fall. She went inside; all her memories wrapped inside an apple, which she gave to the teacher who taught her nothing. I pulled the ripcord and glided back to the hair parting runway. I worked in a bathysphere at the bottom of an ocean trench until the school bell rang and I went to town. June was snorkelling in wet concrete when I arrived with black lines across my face like badly superimposed Lone Rangers. We came home in the fragmented night.

My Diary

2012-01-30T14:55:00.000-08:00

It was snowing outside as I rose through a trapdoor into the secret smile garden - there was just grass and witches hats; it was fun lifting the hats in turn looking for the frog (the prince walked to town with me to clean the streets). I came back with a hat made from green leaves and forgotten voices emanating from my coat pockets - the top pocket voice had a speech impediment and the general populace claimed she was a witch. I covered my studio floor with dried flowers and then painted a landscape on a tennis racket. Sometime later I painted a face on the ball.

My Diary

2012-01-30T01:55:00.001-08:00

June and I meant to have a lay in but got up when an ocean liner drifted over head, its shadow embracing different patterns on the old carpet in turn - we plan to remove the carpet and replace it with fluttering butterfly wings when the weather gets warmer. After the ship had disappeared through the embroidered castle entrance we went out for dinner; I had crystallised lorry wheels and June had part of the Deccan traps. After a walk in the early part of the Cenozoic we came home to work’ pasting our faces into the pages of a book.

My Diary

2012-01-30T01:54:00.000-08:00

I pulled a coil of rope (complete with the skeletal remains of a climber who forgot to let go) from my Wellington boots and travelled to the top of a hill - a passing giant had laid out a cruet set and I accidentally knocked over the pepper. The pale white ghosts of cows shuffled by trying to escape from a lorry. I found an alarm in the middle of a thorn bush and turned it off - not realising it had already woken the collection of heads piled up in the corner; they spoke but I still called them fallen fruit. I counted blinking eyes in the bonfire before coming home.

My Diary

2012-01-27T12:57:00.001-08:00

I got up as early as a slither of light underneath a bedroom door and trudged downstairs with a replica of the houses of parliament on my shoulders. I found my friends, the rooks, playing hoopla and I shut the door behind me - the lady in the orb floating above mine opened her handbag and Danae spilled out all over a shower of gold. I met the old man wearing his Zeus shirt and we talked about people who had high fences. I foolishly said if he could find one higher than mine I would jump over it - a friendly cow offered to jump over it with me.

My Diary

2012-01-26T14:06:00.000-08:00

June had to go to the Saturn Five launch pad to get ready for her course on the history and culture of amoebic life forms. I wore a bacteria T-shirt and hung from scaffolding like Spanish Moss. I saw a procession of android nuns amble by and then dropped to the ground to play nought and crosses on my own face using mud from a genuine Hopi village. June came back dressed in a baguette so I put a partly buttered slice of bread on the top of my head and waited for an emissary from an alien civilisation to land on it.

My Diary

2012-01-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

I got up when a giant arthropod shuffled through the bedroom casting a shadow several metres long. It had traffic lights at the end of its antenna which stopped the traffic throughout the town - in this century and the preceding two. When it had gone I went back to bed where June was building a brick outhouse. She left the outhouse through the fungal door and I adjusted my micro-circuitry so I could pick up radio signals originating from down town Venus. I spent the day painting while listening to Venusian chamber music.

My Diary

2012-01-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

It was raining hard when I got up and I protected myself by sitting in a bucket - Jack and Jill went by but never heard me call. I noticed June was sat in the middle of a now leafless bush taking to our neighbour (who was standing in similar vegetation holding a candle she had only just extinguished). I climbed out of my molten lava bath and attached reptilian scales one at a time. After leaving it until tanks had been invented and used in the battle of Cambrai I walked the dog and then settled in my studio like a blanket on a bed of sea urchins.

My Diary

2012-01-24T00:47:00.000-08:00

June went back to work, I walked with her across the black rainbow bridge. I came back home to find every room filled with smiling ballerinas; they were packed in so tightly they couldn’t move. When I stepped into an alternative reality I went into my dancing studio but I still couldn’t move. I decided to perch on a branch to paint like a robin on a Christmas card - all of which had been sent away. I had to go out after watching a horse and cart emerge from a railway tunnel in the living room wall and counted the contrails across the old lady’s sky.

My Diary

2012-01-22T03:28:00.000-08:00

I had to get up early when an army of little red birds marched up the stairs and headed for our wagon train bedroom. I visited the cat who was reading a copy of Playgirl while simultaneously inventing a lavatory for use by all the domestic animals. I pulled the curtains back across my spectacles as June descended the talking stairs with a washing up bowl in her mouth. We spent some of the day in Arcadia picking up fallen fruit for our new range of eco-swim wear - I was a Gerald Shepherd and she was a shepherdess.

My Diary

2012-01-22T03:27:00.002-08:00

In a dream I tried to find the stairs and then woke up in a fairground with June on a roundabout and me on a roller coaster - I came to stop with Peter Pan’s signature on my cricket bat. June and I went out after breakfast, she wore matching hats and I put my head in a box. All the people in town had car engine heads, some of which needed a mechanic. We came hope with a shopping bag full of dinosaur footprints and sundry tropical tree parts. Once home June incubated rocks and I made a forest - we later met for a jungle tea.

My Diary

2012-01-22T03:27:00.001-08:00

I got up very early, leaving June asleep in the bed made from loaves and fishes. I grabbed a ploughshare as a giant red tractor sped by and travelled into the heart of the bell chime countryside where I found the bell ringer a little tied up (I was late and only had empty packets in my shopping bag). We peeled away memories from the childhood stick and I followed a pathway from under the carpet to under the Arthurian hills. When I got home June was cleaning bricks before setting them back in the living room wall.

My Diary

2012-01-19T13:52:00.000-08:00

June slept better; on the the wing of a Dakota hedge hopping immediately after the end of the Second World War if she is to be believed. I slept on a torpedo but kept waking up to check if had been fired - when I got up there was the same number of merchant ships on the windowsill as when I went to bed. June danced to the music of a medieval troubadour and I worked in the cling film silence of my studio (it was constructed inside the skeleton of a blue whale washed up on an Isle of Wight beach in the early years of the last century.

My Diary

2012-01-18T13:07:00.000-08:00

June and I didn’t sleep all; I found myself playing noughts and crosses on the checked shirt a cowboy was wearing (I was tucked up in his top pocket) while June approached from within a giant marsupial’s pouch - surprisingly there was two members of the Scots Guards still marching beside her. We got up with corkscrew eyelashes and went to see the invisible doctor; she wore a bright pink scarf and I had my invisible pants round my ankles. Afterwards she slept in the engine compartment of a luxury yacht and I worked in my sailing studio.

My Diary

2012-01-17T13:14:00.000-08:00

June was sleeping on a crashed Messerschmitt 109 fighter when I got up; the tendrils of a grape vine wound round my spectacles - I took off using the rotors on top of my pointed hat. I waited for the spectral tongues to be withdrawn into spectral mouths before walking the dog along an imaginary playmate path - beside the patented mechanical duck pond. I flew into my studio and sat myself down in the background of a large painting on my ivy clad easel. From here I could see the black shapes land and take off again.

My Diary

2012-01-16T12:10:00.001-08:00

I caught June following a will o’ the wisp and brought her back coughing madly. I feared the worst and slipped the anchor of the silent ship (only to find the dog playing the electric guitar in the reptilian hallway). We talked from adjoining girls and buoys until I found a strand of seaweed to climb. I found myself in an ogre’s studio and spent my time painting in the rarefied air. Every canvas had wings and eventually flew away, watched by a bespectacled cockerel on a geostationary weather vane. I put a sculpture of David in my sandwich box.

My Diary

2012-01-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

June spent a large part of the night clinging to The Leaning Tower of Pisa while I almost slept in an underground vault - I would have been better off without the waltzing couples with cockroach heads. I didn’t spray paint the garden as planned; June and I preferring to ride a roll of wallpaper to Rupert Bear mountain and back. While on the washing powder summit we were charged an extortionate price for a bowl of eyelash soup and toasted shipwreck sandwich. I moaned about this the rest of the day (with a glove puppet undressing on my hand).

My Diary

2012-01-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

June still felt ill and adopted a number of very curious poses on the rim of a Wedgwood saucer. I preferred to exercise in the cup (even though it had a chip) and then shot out of the window like a celestial brainwave, not stopping until I touched down in the middle of town. While there I searched for a pair of fincuffs for the goldfish and a wrought iron gate for the turtle tank - a helicopter circled inside my hat causing a curious sensation on my scalp (which an unknown sea sprite had painted a very bright mauve).

My Diary

2012-01-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

I got up early and left the house with a length of tramway running down my back, quite close to the spine. The invisible mermaid curled up in the small of my back was worst affected and threatened to grow wings. I met the old man sitting on a Welsh rarebit island in the middle of deep brown sea. We talked about three headed farmers and I then took a photograph of an especially strident mark on the carpet. I caught a milk float home, splashing about in curds and whey, and then crept back from town with a smile painted on the back of my head.

My Diary

2012-01-12T11:59:00.001-08:00

The morning light streaming into my mythical window was eclipsed by a smiling face. I pulled the curtains again and walked the dog along a length of model railway track. It was while pulling myself along in the Welsh mountains that I thought up the idea of steam powered armchairs. The mechanical digger outside attempted some very simple yoga moves and I trekked across a cat litter tray in search of King Solomon’s Mines. I had spoken to a number of Play-doh men before June came home in a nursing home uniform.

My Diary

2012-01-11T13:51:00.000-08:00

The inside of the concert venue was aching as I walked across a bridge of live crocodiles to reach the high point of the garden - bat wings grew from the blancmange hat I was wearing. I went across the forearm bridge to get some palm leaves and came back across flexing biceps with eight fingers on each hand. I gave the rabbit some cabbage leaves and he gave me his copy of Twelfth Night; completely unabridged. I wrestled with a cellophane angel that moved in response to columns of warm air and painted eyes on telescope lenses.

My Diary

2012-01-11T00:53:00.000-08:00

June had a cough and wrote a musical in her sleep; I was trapped in the auditorium with rumours of a wild beast roaming the theatre. She got up and slithered into clothes while the dog and I read stories to each other. Imagining the calligraphic resonances of a pod of killer whales swimming in treacle I got up in a fireman trance and cleaned the decks of the world’s first flying submarine. Once safely back in my dream-time world I performed a stick man ballet in a wood before designing a bonfire hat. June grew a beard.

My Diary

2012-01-11T00:50:00.000-08:00

June left the house riding a penny farthing, I would have waved goodbye but I had too much seaweed wrapped round my head. I picked up a swordfish phone after feeding the animals and spoke to a god. I had to go to town on a flying dinner plate with violins stuffed in my holsters - I planned to be the fastest player in the East. I came home pursued by a posse of dog headed men and then reconstructed the early days of the trojan war using Airfix kits. I celebrated this achievement by sitting a baby sea anemone in my lap.

My Diary

2012-01-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

June and I spent the night in an inflatable spacecraft, orbiting Mars and Venus before knocking the smile off the face of the moon. After a carefully orchestrated crash landing I walked through the nursery rhyme corridors with a long cloak covered with stars. I put a giant cheese roll in the loft and then June and I went out to dinner; we ate in the middle of an archaeological dig - neither of us could identify the skeleton whose hand protruded skywards from the middle of the table although I must admit his ring looked familiar.

My Diary

2012-01-07T10:42:00.000-08:00

June was the first to jump onshore and counted her steps to work (if the resulting number was divided by six and a half it would give the dress size of Cleopatra). I descended from the roof of a seven storey building some time later, flying by mere force of will. I found myself in the middle of a wood with a steam train round my neck. Fallen trees looked like dead warriors and the choir who had congregated at the treeline denounced all wars. I came home holding onto a set of multi-coloured chains - I pulled one as I neared the door.

My Diary

2012-01-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

I rose early holding a container of Nineteenth Century air which I wished to present as a gift. I caught a bus at the railway station and travelled to the open country like a cloud - descending like smoke into the giant’s living room. I noticed the walls were comprised of crosswords waiting to be completed and the floor was laid out like a chess board; my tea cup and I took the knight. I caught the bus home again wondering why the people in front had cuckoo clocks for heads and those behind lifelike models of the white cliffs of Dover.

My Diary

2012-01-05T11:36:00.000-08:00

I called the night Gallipoli and then started the day on the beaches with the wind a sword pulled from a gem encrusted scabbard (an alternative image came to mind of an artificial leg being pulled from a plastic downpipe). I kept inside most of the day as the exterior of the house was licked by quickly passing tongues. I painted a vampire inside a werewolf and then a bristlecone pine inside a tartan sock. Contemplating putting both feet in one sock I ventured out, only to come back quickly inside a car carved from freshly baked bread.

My Diary

2012-01-05T11:35:00.000-08:00

I started the day in two dimensions, leaving the house via a crack in the door and walking down the road with a playing card on each arm - I left the Queen of Hearts at the corner shop and drew footprints back up the flickering street. While the dog walked on stilts I sunk into a subterranean studio and worked on a replica of Olympus; the gods had came and gone leaving behind their rubbish (which was collected a day later than usual because of the holidays). I talked to the cat about the colour green - June came in with a red face.

My Diary

2012-01-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

The rain and wind stamped on the morning as the animals and I sheltered in a skyscraper boot. As the clouds parted for a mere flick of a switch I went out as fast as I could; my hands like crab earrings and my shoelaces undone. I placed my woollen hat on a holly tree and undid the ropes of the crepe paper man who was cowering behind a broken fence - I remembered the story of a anthropomorphic crack in a willow who had the voice of a sailor. Later, I waited in the sty for June to return from work pretending to be Circe.

My Diary

2012-01-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

June went up the hill to work twice, each time in a different reality - I went back to bed and pulled a third reality over my head (if only for the brief period between the pineapple night and the candy floss morning). I walked to a circle of trees immediately after taking the pterodactyl for a flying walk (I walked, she flew - this is the world that people with four eyes see). I entered the sacred circle like a shark in a goldfish bowl and came back with hair growing from my eyelids, entering the house just as an express train left it.

My Diary

2012-01-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

June and I went out for the day, travelling on a beam of light, we met the mythological monsters in the plastic seaside and stayed in a packet of time with a mountain goat of food. As cosmic beachcombers we watched the ebb and flow of sentient shadows and then recorded our impressions of meeting an apricot sky for the first time. As captives of two legged centaurs we watched a stasis of a wedding with the bride and groom moving only a few centimetres an hour. A plastic person knocked the door and asked to come in.

My Diary

2011-12-31T15:19:00.001-08:00

I sloughed out of bed, pulled nuclear missiles out of my hair and went out to interrogate a log - it didn't talk. I made a pyramid out of broken branches and then scrambled about like a collapsing house of cards trying to find the King's tomb - it wasn't there. After a lunch of paper hats I met June outside a shoe which had been hastily cast aside. We toured the entrails of a mystical beast and then came home clutching our bags. As the garishly painted curtain began to descend I saw a group of fictional characters standing at the front door, one of which handed me a note.

My Diary

2011-12-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

A very early morning and I had to tunnel out of bed like a trapped miner. I followed a vein to the father node and then sat motionless as a Toby Jug filled up with trinkets. My father showed me his memories trapped in amber. I thought of Jurassic Park and considered my own memories, resembling as they do a balsa wood glider tossed out of first floor window. I came home by horizontal parachute, travelling just a few inches above the ground. I landed in front of a choice of front doors - I chose the one which looked most familiar; not noticing the figure with fifteen arms.

My Diary

2011-12-29T12:50:00.001-08:00

I got up before June and found a tunnel last traversed by a pilgrim family looking for a shrine - I started the propeller I was wearing in lieu of a hat and found the very top of the sunflower where rain clouds congregated like black sheep. Me and the turtles talked for some time before I had to find a person inside an ice cold flame; I worked among the hot icebergs for some time until the paper smiles turned to frowns and I put my crayons to bed. June came in wet while I waited for the rain to fall; she had a map of the world in her sandwich box and handed me a crumb.

My Diary

2011-12-28T12:46:00.001-08:00

I slept in a sugar bowl and woke up tired. With my eyes half closed (some would say half open) I signed my name on a roll of bandages in eleven different languages - none of which I could speak. I had to go the workshops to get a new cauldron and then a lipstick to scrawl a message on the dressing table mirror. After a spin in a toy car I found myself in a wood embracing a length of pipe; I held my ears to the ground but couldn’t hear the water flowing although I did hear two sets of footsteps merge into one. I walked home inside one leg of a pair of tights.

My Diary

2011-12-27T11:48:00.000-08:00

June went to work as normal; I hopped about the battlefield inside a giant sock which was lost when the ogress did the washing. I went to town along the dorsal fin of an ichthyosaurus, bought a field of cabbages and then came home with the only working alarm clock sunk in a pail of unpasteurised milk. I took the pale white stairs to my studio, ignoring the clenched fist pinned to the door. I worked in a fossilised wood (which is kept on the top shelf next to the fossilised flames) until June came in with a medieval knight over her shoulder. I dropped his sword in my tea.

My Diary

2011-12-27T00:32:00.001-08:00

I first measured the dog’s tongue to see if it was long to enough to cover the entire perimeter of the garden and then went out (June and I were each carrying an enamel bath in our pockets and I threatened to sit in mine in front of the open fire). We all ate under a rather low ceiling and then returned like redirected letters to sit in someone else’s sitting room. We checked the backs of the Cyclops as they left the cave not realising the sheep were hiding underneath. As the light faded I wondered if I could a roll a model car under the legs of the table as it started to float.

My Diary

2011-12-26T01:05:00.001-08:00

June and I had our own clouds this morning; I think mine was slightly larger and followed me like a dog - it was fairly well behaved except when another cloud walked up the road on a lead. We all went out to dinner half way up a very tall tree (I fell out just after two) and then laid on a tropical beach watching the icebergs slowly drift by; one had several figures standing on it, the tallest of which was dressed all in gold. I came back to the plastic construction kit house and walked the dog along the pelmet of a Victorian window showering the crowds below with gold coins.

My Diary

2011-12-24T09:53:00.001-08:00

After designing a future city (based on plastic frog spawn) for the surface of Venus June and I went out shopping. I dragged behind me an eleven foot model of a mackerel and she carried a small gypsy (for good luck). We dressed as mechanical diggers before queuing for dinner on the hull of a capsized liner - I covered the rudder with woollen cardigans that had blown in from a mock up of the Gobi desert. After buying far too much we came back in the guise of nomadic herders, clinging to the roof of the train after the doors puckered up and I refused to kiss them.

My Diary

2011-12-24T09:51:00.002-08:00

I got up early; June was standing in the kitchen shining a torch at the ceiling light, an imaginary picture of Atlantis was sinking on her night dress. I swam to see a king from a childhood annual and we compared our joined up writing. I came back when the words separated with a family of tree shrews on my shoulder and my haversack full of old newspapers. As I rode a beam of light home I saw the man who chopped down a tree talking to the man who planted it. After this the biggest shrew talked to Shakespeare while I spoke to a coconut and two small courgettes.

My Diary

2011-12-24T09:51:00.001-08:00

I didn’t sleep very well as the abominable showman was handing out presents in the shadowing corners of the room (I also noticed that the uplighted clouds were clear enough to write messages on). June got up several hours after the alarm went off and walked to work wrapped in a tent. I found my name under a stone and collected several other versions for a glass cabinet that stood guard outside the princess’s door. On her return through a temporal portal opened up in front of the fireplace we went out again in search of objects for a friendly bower bird’s nest.

My Diary

2011-12-21T14:01:00.002-08:00

The humming bird in my mind made aerial calligraphy while I stuck a paper bag on my head (it had a smile written on it with a cheap biro) and complained about a sore throat. The face on the wall, made from my imagination and a hastily written down number, started a litany of inanimate anguish as I shut the door and sloped off for tea and slice of cake with an old friend. We talked of life inside a hidden henge while the black cat traffic hurtled by. Standing on a traffic island I thought of the sea, especially where the railway tracks disappeared under the waves.

My Diary

2011-12-21T14:01:00.001-08:00

I had to go to town, June had already gone to work dressed as a parakeet. I found what I wanted at the bottom of the ocean and I resurfaced in one of our garden ponds - only to realise that I had forgotten the postage stamps. The Christmas cards formed a monument on the coffee table which I walked around like a school boy; I returned the second time with my shirt out and trousers at half mast. Once ensconced in the ice tower (musn’t forget to give the budgie his medicine every night) I painted a picture on a skating rink and then fell over like a melting chocolate figurine.

My Diary

2011-12-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

June found a house on a skate board and stepped in it for the day. I pulled a iron bridge out of my hair and worked in the Little Jack Horner corner of my studio inventing transistor candles. I had managed to make a word out of worm casts and then tried to find echoes of the big bang in a cat litter tray when June came in with a bacon sandwich brooch - we shared advice about diode hairdos. The picture of a crane on the top of a mountain returned in the evening as we tried to thread a roll of antique carpet through a rabbit warren. We didn’t know the rabbit was a Zen master.

My Diary

2011-12-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

A picture emerged of a chilli pepper in an ice cube when I got up (wearing only a Michelangelo face mask) and followed June down stairs. I had my breakfast sat inside a aquarium and then went round the fish slice garden on the back of a turtle. The turtle let me down gently before June and I walked across an Icelandic glacier to town. I found some pictures to pin to the sperm whale shaped balloon floating just a few feet above the heads of the Salvation Army brass band; the choir sang from within the manger as June and I went off in search of the children of monsters.

My Diary

2011-12-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

I got up early again - my eyes crumpled up like an old pullover. I left June sleeping like a Neolithic long barrow while I got ready, accompanied by a char lady from a Fifties television advert (I later saw the bright white dog from the same advert floating outside the double bedroom window). I caught the train to an Ancient Briton gap in a Roman road and lit a bonfire while the sentries were temporarily blinded by sunlight. I signed my name on the side of an old tractor and came home in a suit made from egg shells; the train was already waiting in the station.

My Diary

2011-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

I left the cloth cap house some time before the vulture abacus was fixed above the dying mathematician (I counted myself out and counted myself back again). I met the old merman sitting on a piece of toast in the middle of the bright green sea; I found my own toast and paddled like I had just entered my third childhood. Incidentally it was a long time ago, when attempting to measure the longest strip of seaweed in the world that I found the found the remains of the first electric poet. At that age I totally ignored the fact that he had an elephant’s trunk and ears like solar panels.

My Diary

2011-12-16T13:48:00.001-08:00

I snuggled up inside an envelope and waited for at least part of me to be posted. The picture of a brain I had stuck onto the smiling face wall was looking more like a map of an unknown city every minute (in the city lived a toad called Emily; all the boys wanted to feed her with flies they had caught specially). As the first attempt at making an invisible man I went out to collect some boxes. I came back across a field of burning eyes; I stopped when they started to close - I kept a collection of variously coloured pencils in my pocket just in case. The rain lapped up the milk like a black cat.

My Diary

2011-12-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

June and I met my sister on the concrete landing platform in town; we then met my father, who head had become a giant chimney billowing out dream smoke. We ate our meal in the middle of the charge of the Light Brigade - I then had another pudding while everyone else stood and shone like street lamps. I contemplated the road ahead like the giant mechanical gorilla I have mentioned before. Later I saw a picture of myself with a mast on my head and the sail furled up - I waited to see if anyone would unfurl it but no one did. The concrete eagle flew over head.

My Diary

2011-12-13T12:25:00.000-08:00

It was a very rough night. This was confirmed by the china doll who sat outside on the windowsill; it warned it would jump but I knew it couldn’t. Inside, the head without a body grew wings just above its ears, they grew larger throughout the morning and when I returned from town wearing fourteen different items of clothing they looked like a map of Greater London. I worked silently until June came back from the desert island on the roof when both the doll and I spoke at the same time - using the same words in different colours. June climbed into an old shoe.

My Diary

2011-12-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

I walked June to work with bird song dropping from each street lamp in turn (blackbirds with ladies tights over their heads pushed barrows of fruit machines up the hill - at the top the organ recently escaped from the Royal Albert Hall sat eating). I came down the hill with my computerised earrings flashing messages - sadly one ear could not communicate with the other). Back in my studio I maintained the wind farm in my mind and reflected in the mirror like a bad headline. June and I had been talking about moving into a giant fungus but its fruiting body has squatters.

My Diary

2011-12-12T00:43:00.000-08:00

The alarm sounded as I found myself standing in a house slowly collapsing around me (a little boy in another dimension was hoping for Lego for Christmas). Marks on the floral carpet rose like Grecian columns; the time lapse movement of honey bees mapped out the shape of flower heads on their barefoot tops. June and I wore headdresses of sunflowers and went to town We looked through filaments of bright orange flames, me dressed in broadsheet newspapers and her wearing a costume of ancient paw prints. We walked home through industrial estate rain.

My Diary

2011-12-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

June went out for the day and I was left with the animals; the dog tried on her favourite little black number (we later walked both black and white numbers round the digital totem pole before climbing it like antithetical firemen) and the cats sat on a mat discussing the philosophy of Wittgenstein. I decided to clean out the pockets of an old pair of jeans that I saw walking up the garden path and found a black and white photograph of a zebra and a wrist watch shaped like a fob watch. I put the watch on - it was permanently kept at a normal human body temperature.

My Diary

2011-12-09T12:52:00.000-08:00

I left the house (called Nautilus) very early. I rose in an air bubble to the little house in the valley where the old man made breakfast out of slabs of concrete. We compared pictures of open and closed eyes and then signed our names on as many pursed lips as possible. I pushed my hands into bare earth and came home by parcel post landing on the doormat like a postcard which arrives after the sender is home. June had been swallowed by the hula hoop I sometimes call her job so and on finding my legs had grown to over six feet long I took my shadow out for a walk.

My Diary

2011-12-08T10:15:00.000-08:00

I noticed that the tortoise cat suit I was wearing first thing in the morning was becoming worn and looked for a bush I could use as a changing room - I changed into a chest of drawers and June later found the socks that were missing in my bottom drawer. After a brief sojourn climbing the Empire State Building with my butterfly wings bullet ridden and crumpled I returned to attaching old tin cans to the recently painted wall and finding stones small enough to sit inside them. I was conscious I did not have a tall enough mountain to shout from and went into a deep cave system to think.

My Diary

2011-12-08T02:53:00.003-08:00

I got up like a pilgrim who lost his religion half way into the pilgrimage and did not manage to settle down to serious work unto mid morning. The dog was trying to play herself at scrabble and lost the game when I spelt walk using letters from old envelopes - I changed the addresses of all the places I have lived at into a piece of poetry and was reciting this aloud when the postman knocked the door and handed me a glove with a hand already contained within it. I spent much of the afternoon painting all the light bulbs black and turned the lights out when June came in.

My Diary

2011-12-08T02:53:00.001-08:00

I had to go out (wearing two hats for a change) and found the first signs of a disembodied consciousness on the playing fields behind King George Road. I communed with kings without crowns and came home riding a surf board across the freshly laid tarmac. I worked all day inside a sculpture of solidified surf and then changed out of my desert flower swim suit into a costume made from the portcullis of a Norman castle. June returned as I was just about to climb the ladder I had purposely made too short to reach the roof. Two stone birds looked down from above.

My Diary

2011-12-08T02:52:00.001-08:00

I began the first chapter of the day astride a pebble skin dragon searching for a field of cabbages to plunder. I was served by the first in a new era of pocket sized robots and came back home with a picture of an octopus in a bathing suit on my banner. I worked in the white, grey and black towers until June returned as a damsel not in distress and I went out again sitting on a mobile windmill. It would be some time before I re-entered the page I was being read from and settled down for the evening attached like a footnote to the rather discoloured margin.

My Diary

2011-12-04T04:18:00.001-08:00

I should have stood in for Tarzan in a B movie today but had to get wrapped up for an early Christmas party instead. Before this I met my other self trying to find religion on a compost heap at the top of the garden; he pulled a cord and heard bells while I pulled a cord and a water filled blimp descended from the purple sky and discharged a dance troupe of mermaids (their movements below the waist were a bit limited but their arms moved like fiddler crabs). I came in like jetsam and pulled the photosynthesis cables from around my neck before the lightning beasts arrived.

My Diary

2011-12-04T04:17:00.002-08:00

June had a lay in and I got up to have breakfast with an Egyptian mummy. I wrote a conundrum on a length of white linen and then went out to find the answer. The clouds moved along like joined up writing as I left the house. A herd of brontotheres grazed in the derelict streets and I found a map on a paper plane - unfortunately, I couldn’t find the end as I didn’t know the beginning. June stayed with the fairy folk, sitting down for tea in a collection of giant hats, while I came home to work in the crow’s nest. I saw the folded up edge of the world but no ships.