BANK OF THE GALLOVERSE
From the desk of admin@penkilnburn.com
Tuesday the 1st of October 2024
Kind Folk,
Bill Drummond has become a banker.
Or...
That is what I have been informed by those that inform us of such things.
In the early days of January this year, I wrote an email proclaiming that your attention is yours and if people wanted it, they should pay for it.
To read that proclamation click HERE.
Then...
In the early days of February this year, Bill Drummond ‘reluctantly’ agreed if he wanted your attention, he should pay for it – “An Acorn for an Hour”.
To read that proclamation click HERE.
With this in mind...
And...
As the Season of Acorns approached, Drummond made plans.
In the early days of September 2024, Drummond returned to Corby with his hessian sack, to harvest the fruit of The Corby Oak. He collected One Thousand fresh and ripe Acorns.
Then...
Drummond sketched a sketch of one of these fresh Acorns. It was this sketch that he was going to use as the working drawing for a painting on his wall Under The Junction.
This would also be the working drawing for the logo of The Bank of Oak – see above.
The brand was coming into season.
The plan was going to plan.
Drummond was even having unwanted fantasies about a futuristic high rise building in the shape a giant acorn. And this would be the headquarters of his banking empire.
This email to you was to be one where we were to ask you, the reader, to invoice The Penkiln Burn Branch of the Bank of Oak, for the hours of Attention you may have given to whatever it is that Bill Drummond wants your Attention for, and for that invoice to be based on the going rate of An Acorn for an Hour. And then Bill Drummond would post to you the total amount of Acorns from The Corby Oak, for you to treasure, cast aside, or plant and watch a sapling sprout its first leaves in the coming Spring, in the knowledge (or at least Hope) that it would outlive you all by several hundred years.
But...
This morning Drummond opened the hessian sack to find the Acorns were in a state of decline – Youth had fled, and Age was storming the gates.
As in...
The Acorns were shrinking and shrivelling and falling from their once fresh cups. The Green of Hope had turned to The Rot of Despair
The whole basis of his proposed transaction was based on the perfectly formed but tiny Acorn from which the mighty Oak Tree might grow. Even if your own Demise could not be outwitted.
But...
The Demise of these One Thousand Acorns were beating even Bill Drummond to that finishing line.
Not only was it The Penkiln Burn Branch, but the whole Bank of Oak had crashed.
Something had to be done.
But before he did what had to be done, Drummond took forty of these Aged Acorns and laid them in five neat rows of eight on his kitchen table and shined a light on them to see if it would make them look any better – they didn’t. And with his hand-held device took a photograph of them before throwing them in the dustbin.
Then he did what he does when something has to be done, whilst not knowing how to do it...
Drummond began to knit. As in one of the squares for The Million Stitch Blanket – you do know what The Million Stitch Blanket is?
And...
If you don’t, The Million Stitch Blanket is to be made from one thousand squares. Each square made of forty rows. Each row of twenty-five stitches. Thus, each square made of one-thousand stitches.
Up until the moment of him knitting the fortieth row of this square, this morning, Bill Drummond has never known to what purpose The Million Stitch Blanket might serve. It was enough for him and others to be involved in the knitting, to be satisfied with the nattering (internal or otherwise) that happens while knitting.
But...
This morning as the Hessian Sack still lay on the floor, with its shrivelled and shrinking contents spilling from it, and his internal nattering was getting ahead of himself, he had a vague idea – maybe not that Damascene Moment that he is still waiting for, but a vague idea to be explored.
Like when the world aspired to be on a Gold Standard thus gold bullion was locked up in the vaults of a bank somewhere, as in that gold, that served no practical purpose, other than to hold to account, the wealth of a nation, maybe...
The Million Stitch Blanket can be locked in a vault somewhere in the Galloverse.
Or...
Maybe in a chest hidden down the bottom of one of the long disused and forgotten lead mines in the Galloway Hills.
Thus...
The Bank of The Galloverse has been born.
Thus...
In the Galloverse, all transactions, symbolic or otherwise, are done using knitted squares of wool. And each of those knitted squares is made up of forty rows and each row of twenty-five stitches. Thus, each square made up of One-Thousand Stitches.
Thus maybe...
Someone can pay for forty hours of your attention with one Knitted Square.
Or...
You can pay for your mug of black tea (no sugar) in The 25 Paintings Tea Rooms by knitting a row of 25 stiches on one of their partially Knitted Squares.
And for this to work in the real world of the ‘real’ Bill Drummond, where things might have different complications than those in the Galloverse, he will pay you a Knitted Square for Forty Hours of your Attention.
But...
Some might be aware Bill Drummond once proclaimed, to all those who signed up to The Penkiln Burn Mailing List, that the list would be reduced to no more than Forty Folk. As in anyone having any more than 40 followers is only feeding the sewer.
As in his imagined Sewer of Our Times.
But...
Due to unforeseen digital logistics, that stand of his, against The Sewer never happened.
But...
These shortcomings on the unforeseen digital logistics front have to be addressed.
And this is how they are to be addressed...
The current Penkiln Burn Mailing List is to be scattered.
In its place ‘interested parties’ who are willing to trade their Attention, are invited to become one of the Forty Folk who will receive the Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters.
But...
These Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters will only exist in their physical form
Thus...
Will be posted to the Forty Folks physical addresses.
And...
If, perchance, more than Forty Folk are interested in receiving the Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters, forty names will be drawn from a hat made from a page ripped from a copy of a 1957 Rupert Bear Annual.
And those forty names will be those that receive the Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters.
But...
This will be done on the understanding that each of these Forty Folk, will provide a physical postal address.
This is to be done...
On the understanding that Bill Drummond will knit a Knitted Square and post it to that address.
And...
In time post each of these Forty Folk all of the Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters as and when they are published.
This is to be done...
On the understanding that each of the Forty Knitted Squares is the price that Bill Drummond will be paying for the Attention that those Forty Folk will be giving to the content of those Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters.
And...
That Attention will include the possible editorial and curatorial services, to ensure that the Fall of The Penkiln Burn Universe and in turn The Rise of The Galloverse, are documented, in those as yet unknown ways, that might be required.
If you have Attention to trade for being one of Forty Folk receiving the Final Forty Penkiln Burn Newsletters please email your postal address today.
Kind Regards,
admin@penkilnburn.com
Post Script:
There is always a postscript...
Does one’s life have a postscript?
Bill Drummond is occasionally sent emails asking him for his thoughts regarding an activity, an action, an outcome or something else carried out by those who ask.
The senders of such emails understandably assume the price of a thought is no more than a penny, as in a penny for your thoughts.
But...
Bill Drummond has difficulties with thoughts.
Thus...
Bill Drummond tries not to have thoughts. Or at least restrict his thoughts.
Thoughts get in the way of doing things. Thoughts almost exist to stop you doing things – or that is what he claims.
But...
For the sake of balance, as in those scales that exist in The Bank of The Galloverse, Bill Drummond is going to attempt to have forty thoughts in response to the next forty emails requesting one of his thoughts.
And...
He will trade His Thought for one Knitted Square containing 1,000 Stitches.
This Knitted Square must be knitted by the person requesting one of the Forty Thoughts.
And once that Knitted Square has arrived at the given address below, Bill Drummond will respond by emailing (via me) his thought (distilled into no more or no less than Forty Words) to whoever has asked for it.
The address is...
Forty Thoughts
c/o Alimentation
Marlinspike Hall
Walpole
Halesworth
Suffolk
IP19 9AR
East Anglia
England
