FORTY WORK O’ART
Thursday, 18th June 2026 GMT* - CATA LOGG INFO - INDX
Spoke by Angie Darcy in character as Brush (Your Shop Steward)
1/40 BAKE A CAKE
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 2nd April 2026
Fellow Workers,
This BAKE CAKE is to be the first of the Forty Work O’Art by Bill Drummond for you to do or dismiss.
I have chosen this to be the first as it might be the simplest and to use that over used phrase, ‘most timeless’
All you have to do is bake a cake and then cut it up and eat it – on your own or with others. There are thousands of cake recipes to be found on your Hand Held Device, but if you have already thrown your Hand Held Device off a bridge, then you can follow the recipe used by the former Bill Drummond and appears within FOOT NOTE on the dates of his children’s birthdays. But for the sake of something we will also include it here for you to down load or use as a template for your painting.
Happy Baking...
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
2/40 START A RECORD LABEL
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 9th April 2026
Fellow Workers,
The former Bill Drummond has an unhealthy and recurring relationship with imagining made-up record labels.
This began in the late Summer of 1963 when Mackie Leonard’s mum gave the then ten-year-old Bill Drummond a copy of the 7” 45rpm record with the title Cinamon Cinder by The Pastel Six. This record had belonged to Mackie Leonard and Mackie resented his mum giving his record to the boy across the street that was then Bill Drummond. This giving and receiving happened in Lexington, North Carolina. This was the first 7” 45rpm the former Bill Drummond had ever touched. As much as the former Bill Drummond shook to the sound of this record when he heard it on the radio in their white Buick Special (1962), he did not have a record player to spin it on. And even when the Drummond family got back home to these islands, they did not have a record player between then and the Spring of 1967. And for those three years and seven months, that record sat in his bedroom not being spun, just as his growing collection of wild bird’s eggs could never hatch. But every day he would pick that record up and look at it. And he would touch the grooves and wonder how they contained that sound that made him shake and shimmy back when he was ten in the Summer of ’63. And then he would wonder if those grooves would still contain those sounds if it was ever spun again. And would he ever feel that feeling again that made him shake and shimmy. But more than that, he looked at the label and the words on the label. The main word was ZEN. But he did not know what this ZEN was or what it meant. Or where this record really came from. Or how it was made. Or why it was made. Or if it could ever be made again. But there was something in him that wanted to be that label. As in the physical label at the middle of the record, he was looking at. Back then the former Bill Drummond did not know that record labels were called record labels because every record had a label in the middle like this one with the word ZEN on it. And Z was his favourite letter because it was the last letter in the alphabet and the only word he had ever seen before that used the letter Z was the word Zoo.
But...
Things change. Things changed. The former Bill Drummond was now a teenager, buying records and listening to them in his bedroom with the walls painted black. But he never listened to this Cinamon Cinder by The Pastel Six. But sometimes he would pick it up and still look at it and wonder. And sometimes he wondered if he could be a record label. And sometimes he would buy records in the record shop because he liked the look and name of the label in the middle of the record, even though he had never heard of the band or singer whose name was on the record label. For him the record label contained an allure and mystery, whereas he knew the band or the singer just wanted to be famous and on television. There was no mystery to being famous and on television. There was no mystery to wanting people to look at you and like you. There was no mystery to music that people liked and wanted to dance to or cry to or...
Anyway...
Then The Beatles started their own record label, and it was called Apple. And this is when the former Bill Drummond learnt you could start your own record label. And the former Bill Drummond liked the look of this Apple record label. This Apple record label looked better than the sound of the records The Beatles were actually making. Even if it were just a Granny Smith’s Apple and not a Cox’s Orange Pippin. Maybe he could still become a record label like Apple, I mean there were over two thousand three hundred distinct varieties of apples on these islands to choose from, thus there must be many more record labels to imagine into being real.
Then...
This Apple record label released a record called Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. On the cover of the record was a photograph of Yoko Ono and John Lennon without their clothes on – fanny naked. The former Bill Drummond bought the record and took it home in a brown paper bag and played it on his record player in his bedroom. The record was unlistenable to. This was brilliant. This triggered something in his head that would not go away. It seemed even then, most record labels tried to release records that people would want to listen to by bands and singers who wanted to be famous, even if in an underground / alternative way.
But that Yoko Ono and John Lennon were famous so that made that record not count in some sort of way. So the former Bill Drummond searched in record shop for records on labels he had never seen before and by bands or singers he had never heard of before, and he dreamed he would never hear about again like Cinamon Cinder by The Pastel Six.
For his 16th birthday he was given a record token. He went to the record shop and bought a record that had been released the day before by someone he had never heard about before on a label he had never seen before. And on the cover the singer was seen pretending to murder his mother. This looked like the right sort of record to buy, especially when the woman working in the record shop told him it was the worst record ever made, even worse than Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. This record was called An Evening With Wild Man Fischer by Wild Man Fischer on a record label called Bizarre. And as previously observed the young Bill Drummond liked words with the letter Z in them. It was a double album, like the white record by The Beatles had been a double album. When he got the record home and put it on his record player, it was so unlistenable to he was unable to listen to it all the way through. And never has done. It was that good. And he wondered if this Wild Man Fischer was a real man or just a made-up man. Or could you be both made-up and real at the same time.
Anyway...
By the time the former Bill Drummond reached that moment in his mid-twenties when he knew that he would never be able to find a record more unlistenable to than An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, he decided he had to make-up a record label himself that would release records by bands and singers that no-one had ever heard of and would never hear about again.
But he did not have the courage to do it on his own, the former Bill Drummond embraces his lack of courage. So he did it with a David Balfe. And the record label was called The Zoo. And they put out 7” 45rpm records by made-up bands that no one had ever heard of and would never hear about again.
But some of those made-up bands wanted to be heard about again. They even wanted to record long playing records. And even wanted to be famous. And even worse – they became famous and successful. The then Bill Drummond was unable to stop them from being famous and successful. So he stopped.
But the former Bill Drummond was now in his thirties and almost middle-aged and he found himself being inspired by the record label Ralph Records and their made-up band called The Residents. Even though the then Bill Drummond wondered why they were not named The Rezidents. Maybe he still had a chance. Maybe he should not stop that urge in him to make-up a new record label. But again, he did not have the courage to do it on his own, so he did with two men called Rockman Rock and King Boy D. And the record label was called KLF Communications. And they made and released records by made-up bands. And although the name of the record label did not have a Z in it, they invented a guiding philosophy called Zenarchy. But again, the then Bill Drummond failed in his mission defined by Zenarchy, as some of these records and even the made-up bands became successful. So he stopped.
But in his forties the now very middle-aged then Bill Drummond, could not stop the urge in him to make-up a new record label. And now he knew what he was doing, so he made-up a record label in faraway Finland, and he called the made-up record label Kalevala. And this Kalevala record label had a mythical made-up tyrannical boss called Hannu Puttonen. And with a Mark Manning, whom the former Bill Drummond called Z, they together made-up bands from this mythical faraway Finland. And recorded these made-up bands in the reality of faraway Finland with real Finnish musicians and singers. And released these made-up bands’ records on the Kalevala record label. But only 500 copies of each of the records and never anymore. This limiting them to only 500 copies each made sure none of these records could ever be successful. Thus the former Bill Drummond finally felt he had achieved his lifelong ambition of making records that could never be successful, and nobody could ever know who or what these made-up bands or singers were or were not. Almost as great as the untouchable Cinamon Cinder by The Pastel Six.
But...
When the former Bill Drummond found himself in his fifties a thing called the internet had sneaked in. And with this thing called the internet, everything could be found out, and everybody could be famous and every record ever made could be heard wherever you were in the world.
This was the end.
So...
The former Bill Drummond decided that the making of records was a thing of the past. A thing of the 20th Century.
So...
The former Bill Drummond made-up a choir instead. And this made-up choir was called The17. But everyone in the world could be a member of this choir. But the only way you could ever hear this choir was if you were there performing in it as it performed. And The17 would never be recorded. And The17 would end the moment the former Bill Drummond turned 60. And all of this happened.
But the former Bill Drummond was now in his late middle ages, and he started to listen to recorded music again. But music he had never listened to before in his life. The music of Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Wendy Carlos and Moondog. But most of all Glenn Gould working his way through the Well-Tempered Clavier. Glenn Gould had flipped what the former Bill Drummond had been attempting to do with The17. As in Glenn Gould only made long playing vinyl records and never played the music contained on those records live in front of an audience.
But the former Bill Drummond forgot to make a made-up record label in his late middle ages with made-up artists like Alice Coltrain or Sun Ra or Wendy Carlos or Moondog or even Glenn Gould. The reason he gives for forgetting is because he was attempting to sail The 25 Paintings around the world in an attempt to...
But he forgot what he was attempting to do.
And then his late middle ages left him behind and he became an old man in his 70s. And as an old man he knew that he was now ready to imagine his last made-up record label and release actual vinyl albums and not just 7” 45rpm singles. This made-up record label was to be called Penkiln Burn Recordings and be run by a Geordie with a made-up history. And this made-up Geordie would only be called The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings, and he would have a made-up history. And Penkiln Burn Recordings would only every release five long playing records. Records you could never buy from a record shop or...
But...
And this is where it gets difficult and you might be able to step in and fill the void...
The former Bill Drummond wishes he had made-up a record label in his late middle ages...
Thus...
He is inviting those that are in their 60s to make-up record labels that he has left it too late to ever make-up himself. This being done in the hope that these records released by these made-up record labels will be difficult at the same time as not be tainted with the American Cultural Imperialism or from a bygone era like the records that he – the former Bill Drummond was listening to in his own 60s.
We here on the shop floor have a record player with its needle sharpened and primed to drop into the groove of your record(s) when you send one to us so that we can listen to it and them and wonder.
Yours from that very shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
brush@penkilnburn.com
3/40 CLIMB A TREE
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 16th April 2026
Fellow Workers,
Following on from last week’s extensive missive to you about the former Bill Drummond’s unhealthy relationship with imagining record labels and encouraging you to do the same, I have negotiated an agreement with those that attempt to pull the strings around here.
The agreement being...
From here on in my missives to you regarding former Bill Drummond’s war between Verbs and Nouns, I will never write more than four hundred words for each of the remaining Thursdays contained within FOOT NOTE, including this week.
Thus...
In the Spring of 1955 when the former Bill Drummond was yet to reach the age of two, his mother laid him on a rug under the Apple Tree in their garden. The Apple Tree was in blossom. Laying there looking up at the blossom as they danced in the gentle breeze made feel warm and comfortable and almost content. Then a petal fell from the blossom and landed on his face. He thought the petal wanted to be with him. And this made him happy. For the next ten years of his life, anytime he was lying in his bed at night, scared that the bad things might climb through his open window and steel him away, he would think about that blossom and that petal falling down to his face and how that made him feel in the Spring of 1955, and he would feel protected from the Bad Things.
And in the Spring of 1957 when he was still four years old, and the Apple Tree was in blossom, he wanted to be part of the blossom, so he pulled himself up onto the first branch of the Apple Tree. And from there he climbed to the next branch. And then the next branch. And when he could not climb any further, he looked out at the world and the world looked different. And he wondered why the world looked different. And he called this wondering Wonder. Then he heard his mother calling him. But his mother could not see him. His mother thought he had disappeared from the garden. He liked not being seen.
And from that day on he decided he would climb as many trees as he could so he could Wonder at the world. While not being seen.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
4/40 NAIL A NAIL
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 23rd April 2026
Fellow Workers,
Also...
At the age of four the then Bill Drummond wandered out of the garden gate and along the road and down the hill and into Mr McQuirter’s workshop. Mr McQuirter was banging a nail with a hammer into a plank of wood. Mr McQuirter was the town carpenter. The then Bill Drummond wondered if Mr McQuirter being a carpenter meant that one day he would become Jesus of Galloway. And one day Mr McQuirter would find himself being nailed to a cross.
But...
Before Mr McQuirter became Jesus of Galloway, he showed the then four-year-old Bill Drummond how to hold a hammer and nail a nail into a plank of wood, so that it would then be nailed to his bench.
For his fifth birthday the then five-year-old Bill Drummond got the birthday present he wanted – a hammer, a bag of nails and a bench to go in his bedroom. Mr McQuirter had made the bench. His Granny Drummond gave her grandson some pennies to go and spend at the sweet shop. But instead of going to the sweet shop the then five-year-old Bill Drummond took the hammer and bag of nails and pennies into the wood up the hill from the Manse. And he nailed each of the Pennies to different trees.
And...
When he lay in bed at night, he would wonder if those Pennies were still nailed to those trees. The now 72-year-old former Bill Drummond still lies in bed at night wondering if those pennies are still nailed to those trees.
But...
Back then the five-year-old Bill Drummond wondered if it was because Jesus was a carpenter he got nailed to a cross. And that if Jesus had been a mason he would have been stoned to death. And if he had been stoned to death and not nailed to a cross what would Christians Soldiers use to march into war.
But...
Now there is a dark side to boys wanting to nail nails into wood. That dark side is that as you nail you can see the wood begin to split and a slit appear. And when the teenage Bill Drummond thought about this, he thought that maybe this was like rape. The wood did not want the nail being nailed into it as much as the boy liked hammering his nail into the split in the wood.
But...
I have now surpassed my given 400-word limit, so please feel free to edit these words as you feel appropriate.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
5/40 CROSS A BRIDGE
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 30th April 2026
Fellow Workers,
We here on the shop floor were concerned that the former Bill Drummond might want to commission us to build a bridge. We know he has had an almost lifelong addiction to bridges. And maybe his addiction would get to a point where he would want to own his own bridge. But I guess we should have known that could never be the case, as he has an almost unhealthy eversion to owning things. I’m not going to bother with attempting to give any history about him and bridges, probably a number of his other selves have already told you elsewhere anyway.
But...
Although we know he does not have a suicidal side to his character, we do know he does have to supress that urge that many of us have to jump off bridges. We try to diffuse his urge by encouraging him to just lean over the side and look down into the water and wonder about that other world down there, for a few moments, before continuing his crossing of the bridge.
The other thing that is a bit of an issue for us, is when he finds a tree that has fallen across a small river and he decides that if is fallen precisely there for him to then attempt to cross the river using the fallen tree as Bridge sent by God. The thing is seeing as he turned 73 years old yesterday, we think he owes it to us – and maybe even his family, to suppress this urge as well. I mean he is pretty good at suppressing urges.
Anyway...
He is always on the lookout for new bridges to cross, even today he crossed one for the first time. I was down the lane to Red House by Rectory Farm, over a wee stream called Turkey Brook.
And today I am well within my 400 word limit and hope you download the accompanying poster and start your crossing of forty bridges today.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
Post Script:
Maybe me and a local artist should go and paint a painting of a bridge on his wall under Spaghetti Junction. It will be the last of our Twenty Five Paintings there.
6/40 DRIFT OFF
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 7th May 2026
Fellow Workers,
This is going to be a difficult missive for me to write and put in the post to you.
The content of this missive seems to go against everything that I aspired to back when I was one of those children, who would listen to every word our teacher said. Taking it all on board to the point that I could almost recite it word for word as I lay in my bed at night before the dreams would take me away.
But...
As the years began to drift past and I failed to achieve my ambitions - to start that much needed workers revolution and finally see The Man consigned to the dustbin of history - I realised I needed to catch a bus to that place Woolie Backs came from and find one of those things they call ‘meadows’ in poetry, and lie in the middle of that meadow but at the same time making sure I did not lie on some of that fresh cow dung.
While lying there I would stare up into the sky and find a cloud that was drifting across the sky and watch it all the way until it had disappeared from my vision completely
I found that I was unable to do this without my mind drifting away from concentrating on the cloud doing the drifting.
This was the first time in my life that I had allowed my mind to drift.
From that moment, on I would give over forty minutes of each day where I would allow my mind to drift to wherever it wanted to go.
And it was through this mind drifting that I discovered new plateaus in my imagination that I never knew existed.
I think it was this discovery, and what I learnt from it, that allowed me to be both an inanimate object, as in any one of the hundreds of paintbrushes that the former Bill Drummond has used, in any of his guises, whilst at the same time being a young woman who grew up on Merseyside inspired by stories told to me about Bessie Braddock.
You do know who Bessie Braddock is?
And if you don’t you better find out before I rescind your membership to the Union of Workers Chapel in The Penkiln Burn Universe
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
7/40 LIE DOWN
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 14th May 2026
Fellow Workers,
Does all life lie?
Does this capacity to lie make Life on Earth, different from all other objects that exist within the known universe?
As in; a stone cannot lie as it is being thrown at you, but the person throwing the stone at you can lie.
And they will probably lie to others when they are asked why they cast the stone.
Were Courts of Law evolved just so that humans could refine their skills at lying?
Who taught the male Pigeon’s attempt to impress a female Pigeon by the way he struts and ruffles his feathers?
She can see he is lying, even we can see he is lying.
I might be Your Shop Steward, but I am still only any one of several hundred, or even thousand paint brushes that the former Bill Drummond has picked up to paint whatever he is painting at the stage of life that he finds himself today.
As in; being a brush, an inanimate object, I can’t lie, but Bill Drummond can use me to tell his lies, because, by using me, whatever he paints is a lie.
I have noted in the past that the former Bill Drummond once claimed that mirrors always lie, that is why he has an aversion of looking into him. But I know, and I think you also know, that the mirror, as a fellow inanimate object cannot lie, but can be used as a device for not only the former Bill Drummond, but every human alive on earth today, to lie to themselves.
Same with the clothes that all humans wear. They might think they are wearing them to keep warm or even protect their modesty. But you all know everything you wear in your waking hours, is worn to tell a lie about yourself to every other person that might see you. As for that ‘expressing yourself’ stuff, that is and always has been a jumped up way of making out your lies have a creative or moral worth.
Which brings me to my five questions for the day...
1. Is lying as fundamental to Life on Earth as its hunger to consume oxygen.
2. When does a newborn baby first learn to lie?
3. Do humans only stop lying after they have died?
4. Is the longing for legacy, the hope that we learn to lie after we have died?
5. If cutting off one’s nose is done to spite one’s face, what can a human cut off to spite their hunger to lie?
If you have the answer to any or all of those five questions, please do not hesitate to email them to me at brush@penkilnburn.com
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
8/40 SEE THROUGH
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 21st May 2026
Fellow Workers,
This Seeing and not just Looking thing, is something that the former Bill Drummond has been going on about for the past fifty-five years and counting.
But the truth is...
I doubt he has got any better at actually Seeing and not just Looking during all of those passing decades.
And...
To clarify or maybe embroider the words that have been used on the accompanying poster I would like to offer the following thoughts...
Artists are just merely middlemen and, sadly, middle-women as well.
Artists just exist to scam fellow humans into thinking better of themselves while the humans admire the work done by the Artist. In the same way that Ministers and Bishops and Priests and Imams and Rabbis had been placed as the middlemen between mankind and whatever it is that we might once have hoped existed in some other untouchable world.
And in turn...
We know that Cathedrals, Synagogues, Mosques, Temples and even Stone Circles, only exist to be the physical but fake gates between you and whatever word you want to use for The Great Beyond.
It is the same with Art Galleries, especially the major ones, as in The Tates, the MoMAs, The Guggenheims and the Pompidous, that have been built for those Post-God-Fearing generations.
The hundreds of thousands of People that visit these Art Galleries around the globe every year, only ever Look at the Dead Art that has been displayed on those walls and floors and ceilings. This Looking at the Dead Art prevents them from Seeing the real art that is out there all the time, wherever they are in the world. Real Art that has been created by the Inanimate Artists.
I know this because I have spent most of my working life as a paint brush, thus an Inanimate Object, but at the same time as operating on the front line of Man’s Vanities.
And yes...
I know that while these words of mine are being written, VAPE SHOP is out there, attempting to See the work of those truly great artists like Bird Shite and Crushed Can, Empty Fag Packet and of course that greatest artist of all time Shadow.
In the meantime, I would like to suggest you stop what you are doing now, and take a short walk, and see if you can follow the words suggested in the accompanying poster to these words of mine, and in turn truly See the work that Bird Shite has been doing within a few yards of wherever you are on the world right now.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
9/40 CAST SYSTEM
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 28th May 2026
Fellow Workers,
Well...
I have to admit...
I am not too sure what it is that the former Bill Drummond is implying with the content of this latest NOTICE in his war between Verbs and Nouns.
I mean that closing line...
CREATE YOUR OWN CAST
For a start it implies that one should be using the verb Cast to create a noun with the name of Cast. Thus immediately admitting defeat in the war against nouns. As in the making of a physical cast to cast molten iron into cannons or bombs or something else that man might use in those wars they have throughout history indulged their fantasies in and in turn the slaughter of millions of...
Then...
It also implies that one should create one’s own Cast System. As in the Class System they had and still have in India.
You might think the Class System is bad enough in this UK, or any of those of physical places our other Western Workers might be Working within, but it is nothing like the Cast System that they have in India. I should know. Although now is not the time to go into why I should know.
But...
If you are to cast your own cast system, I impeach / implore / order you to create one where you are at the very bottom. And it being one that you can never climb out of. So no Slumdog Millionaire biopic type fantasies. Or even Born into Brothels documentary depicting your new life at the bottom...
I mean you have watched Born into Brothels?
If not watch it now and see you here next week. When you have learnt to cast everything you think you have ever learnt into the cesspit that Jamal jumped into to get that autograph.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
10/40 MAYK MUNI
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 4th June 2026
Fellow Workers,
Is the former Bill Drummond attempting to take the piss?
I mean...
Is he being serious?
Or is this just some sort of attempt on his part on being ironic about the whole world of online scam mongers.
I mean...
Should the title verb at the top of this week’s NOTICE have been SCAM.
If it is an attempt at a scam on his part, I don’t think anyone will be buying it.
And...
If his misspelling of the word MAKE, is just a way of him being able to use the same verb twice in his war between Verbs and Nouns.
Hang on a minute...
Am I getting this totally wrong?
Is the war between Verbs and Adjectives. As in both Verbs and Adjectives are attempting the curry the favours of Nouns.
And on the subject of ‘curry’. I suggest instead of you wasting your time with the MAYK MUNI scam, you should go and get some turmeric, cumin and coriander and make some curry this evening with whatever is left in your fridge that is bordering on passing its eat by date.
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
Post Script:
Or was all that just a play on the Selkirk Grace
I mean you do know your Selkirk Grace
11/40 FIND FIVE SHADOWS
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 11th June 2026
Fellow Workers,
Well...
I don’t know if you have the time in your life to go out and find five shadows, be they ones you have never seen before or ones that you see every day.
Or...
Maybe the former Bill Drummond just wants you to notice the world around you, on a daily basis, and the beauty contained within it.
As for what shadows are for, I guess there must be a scientist somewhere that has worked that out. Will it be the fittest shadows that survive.
Anyway...
Back to the verb FIND...
As Your Shop Steward, I would like to promote the act of finding, be that those five shadows, or the mere meaning of life.
I mean...
At breakfast this morning I found a toenail cutting in my marmalade as I spread my toast. My instant reaction was, to be disgusted, and throw the slice of toast into the bin, along with the jar of marmalade, that the toenail cutting had been bathing in.
But...
Then I decided it was my job, to find meaning in what this toenail cutting was doing in my jar of marmalade. And why my reaction to this finding was so profound. Or at least profound in that moment.
If you are able to find an answer to what I might have been trying to find, please email it to me at brush@penkilnburn.com
Yours from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
12/40 PAINT OVER THE CRACKS
SPOKE
WRIT
From the bench of Your Shop Steward
Thursday, 18th June 2026
Fellow Workers,
I won’t deny...
Today was a difficult day.
One of those days where you believe you are not up to the job, that you feel you were put on earth to do.
So much of what the whole of the Penkiln Burn Universe has been built on, has been the work of The 25 Paintings, and right now, it seems no-one around here takes any notice of them.
They have been shoved into a garage round the back of the workshop. It leaks in there, the asbestos is rampant, along with everything else that can be rampant and not good for the health. And spiders. Lots of spiders.
I might be just one of several hundred paint brushes, but I have been able to create a life for myself, where I am also a young woman from Merseyside, who has begun to climb the ladders of the Trade Union Movement. I embrace my duty, to represent the workers that need representing, now that we live in a world where the workers are hardly ever represented.
Who knows what lofty peeks I might reach. Maybe even run for being a Member of Parliament. I tick all the boxes – young, female, northern and other. And don’t ask me about the ‘other’, how many paint brushes do you know that have achieved what I have achieved?
The 25 Paintings wanted to have a private meeting with me today. Their primary concern is, the former Bill Drummond does not give a shit about them anymore. I told them I would recite for you, their list of concerns that they handed over to me. They requested, I do it in a Parisian accent, as if they might be living some sort of Belle Époque Bohemian lifestyle, in their now infamous Tea Rooms, up on the Montmartre.
Here goes...
2022:
We were in the Rooftop Gallery, in a town called Corby. This was the last year and place, we felt we were treated with any sort of respect. We were painted lovingly and diligently into Latvian. We were given a space to host our Tea Room. The former Bill Drummond was there working as our Nippy. People came and admired us. Both our front and our backs. We were told that our future was guaranteed. Our tearooms would tour the world, as in... The 25 Paintings Tea Rooms. A place where people would come to discuss revolutions, plan plots to overthrow those that abuse their power. And of course, flirt with those that required our flirting.But then in...
2023:
This Evil power was unleashed. Their name was Scissorman. This Scissorman threatened to slice us up. Destroy us. Unless they had their way.Yes...
A compromise was reached.
But...
That compromise, meant we had to be crudely painted with this tag of Scissorman and flaunted to a world who did not give shite about us. As in around the North and South circular of The Bleak City. No explanation. No admiration. I mean what is the point of a painting if it is not admired? Just all those passing cars and trucks around that North and South Circular, where the drivers are more interested in what their satnav is telling them about where the next speed camera or traffic jam is, than whatever art might be happening on the hard shoulder.
But then in...
2024:
We understood things were going to get better. A movie was going to be made. And it was rumoured, even implied, that we were going to be the stars of that movie. We were hoping François Truffaut was going to be the director. Maybe down on the Left Bank of the Seine. Maybe Jacques Brel doing the soundtrack.
But no...
We were loaded into a white van and driven north, and further north, all the way to a ferry that took us over to the north of Ireland. There we were dumped in the back yard of some tower. The weather was horrendous. But things got worse.
Yes...
There was a movie being made, but it was not François Truffaut, directing, but some woman from a coal mine or something. But in this movie, paint was merely flung at us, like they thought we were a Jackson Pollock tribute act. I mean who the fuck would want to watch this movie?
And then in the closing shots of this supposed film, one of us – was thrown into the sea, never to be rescued. Discarded. Abandoned. You might think there is something romantic about being ‘lost at sea’ but we can tell you, if you are a painting, it brings no value aesthetically of fiscally.
Anyway...
In the Spring of...
2025:
We were told things were going to improve, we would have our tea rooms, but on an island in the Penkiln Burn above the Queen Mary’s Bridge; that the Bluebells would be in bloom. We would be freshly painted to abstract perfection. None of those words by the forgotten Bill Drummond got in the way of our beauty. Yes, we had to be loaded into a White Ford Transit Van and driven to wherever, but when we got there, we were met by an eager team of youths of all ages, willing to carry us across the flowing and crystal-clear waters onto the island.But...
Once on the island, there were no easels on which to place us, not a whiff of our Tea Rooms or even a sniff of that Nippy. Just the woman from the Coal Mine shouting out orders. And within minutes we were being carted back over the water and shoved back into the back of the White Ford Transit Van. And driven a few hundred miles back down to that Bleak City to be dumped into this garage with all its asbestos and spiders.
And now it is...
2026:
This is supposed to be the final year of our twelve-year world tour. We were looking forward to one last and lasting coat of paint. A final fling, and then a long and illustrious retirement as the host of our Tea Rooms somewhere. Maybe up on Montmartre, in Paris circa 1895, or Greenwich Village circa 1962, with the young Dave Van Ronk and Phil Ochs hanging out singing their songs and strumming their guitars, while our Nippy was serving his perfectly brewed Darjeeling Tea and freshly baked scones.But...
None of that seems to be happening.
In fact we have heard rumours from those Spiders in here, that love to use their webs, to cast those rumours, that the forgotten Bill Drummond, - who by the way, has not visited us once in the first half of this our final year, let alone started to repaint us one last time - that he has plans that we are to be cast into those fast flowing waters of the Penkiln Burn, and left to float downstream into The River Cree. And then down into the Wigtown Bay. And finally, out to be lost at sea with our now long-lost brother. Just so it can be filmed by that woman from a Coal Mine. And he gets some sort of glory from that.
As their shop steward, I cannot deny, that all of what they have laid bare, in their overlong statement, is not true. The forgotten Bill Drummond, as they prefer to call him, has an ongoing record for flipping his whims and discarding, what he might have proclaimed to be his one remaining mission in life, for an even more ludicrous and undoable ‘life mission’.
What I did try to tell them was, I knew the forgotten Bill Drummond, had been working on the layouts for their final coating of paint. And these layouts are to be the most complex and...
I know that I, as one and all of his paint brushes, as well as their Shop Steward, will do my best at painting their canvases, be it in the right hand of the forgotten Bill Drummond’s other selves a local artist or The Part Time Painter, who will actually be seen to be holding me while I do the work.
And I will use this opportunity to share here with you those layouts, that he has been working on and that he tells me, we are about to start working on, or at least sometime in the coming weeks. But this all may take longer than any of the other layers of paint on their canvases since 2014. As in: this final year of their Twelve Year World tour might take longer than twelve months.
And...
Even if they were to end their days floating out into the ocean, thus no bohemian retirement in Montmartre circa 1896, or Greenwich Village circa 1962, their legacy will be long and lasting.
There was no proper response from the collective voice of The 25 Paintings, but there was something in their mutterings, that made me think, they thought a contrived Kurt Cobain legacy, could be their perfect ending. I even started to imagine them forming a proto-grunge band in Seatle circa 1990, in their afterlife.
We will see.
But in the meantime, what follows on this page, are the work in progress layouts for the 2026 layer on The 25 Paintings, even though there are actually only 24 of them that have survived this far...
Yours, from the shop floor,
Brush (Your Shop Steward)
