THE SPOKEN WORD

THE WRITTEN WORD

Monday the 10th of January 2022

Dear Reader,

I am pleased to inform you that Tenzing Scott Brown has died.

Sadly, I cannot lay claim to having pushed him under the 298 as it made its way along Chase Side from Southgate to Potters Bar. I say the last sentence in jest, but only just.

The precise moment or location of his death is unknown, but it is assumed to have happened sometime between the early evening of the 2nd of January, after he took his last photograph of the Family of Ragworts on Chase Side, and the morning of the 5th of January when I noticed the last petal, of the last standing Ragwort of the Family, had fallen.

It has become clearer over these last two years that Tenzing Scott Brown had been attempting to downplay my growing stature, into being just a mere character in his ongoing plays. I found this to be both personally intrusive and offensive. I am not just a character in a play…

Having said that…

I will be taking full responsibility for the continued public production of these plays in whatever way they should be produced, even if that means there has to be a season of them to celebrate the life and work of Tenzing Scott Brown.

To be fair to Tenzing, he is not the first of Bill Drummond’s other selves to do a runner, or to quit when the going got tough, or just not to be up to the challenge.

There was that William Chameleon back in the late ’70s, when The Lonely Spy did not make the charts, and King Boy D with all his mouth back in ’87, and Time Boy with his wallowing in all the “one hit wonder-ism” of it all in ’88.

And there were others.

As for myself, I think I am here to the end, whenever that may come. I mean I have got to get Bill Drummond himself to the end of The 25 Paintings twelve-year world tour by 2026.

And of course there are those motion pictures that I want to get made for the strictly over seventies. The Southgate New Wave is not going to happen on its own. No bailing out at 52 like that lightweight Truffaut did.

So no more.

See you at the barricades babe
See you when the lights go low, Joe

Just see you on the 298 to Potters Bar.

And remember to bring your bus pass.

Yours Sincerely,

The Elderly Gentleman