VAPE SHOP FORTY

• INTRODUCTION - Friday, 30th January 2026
• SOUTHGATE, PALMERS GREEN & NORTH FINCHLEY - Friday, 30th January 2026 - 1/40
• BARNET (High, New, East & Friern) - Friday, 6th February 2026 - 2/40
• DALSTON & STOKE NEWINGTON - Friday, 13th February 2026 - 3/40
• ENFIELD - Friday, 20th February 2026 - 4/40
• MUSWELL HILL - Friday, 27th February 2026 - 5/40
• UPPER STREET, ISLINGTON - Friday, 6th March 2026 - 6/40
• FORD CORTINA, BURMA ROAD - Friday, 13th March 2026 - 7/40
• HOLLOWAY ROAD - Friday, 20th March 2026 - 8/40
• WALTHAMSTOW E17 - Friday, 27th March 2026 - 9/40
• FRANCHISE FIVE - Friday, 3rd April 2026 - 10/40
• SAINT JOHN’S WOOD - Friday, 10th April 2026 - 11/40
• HACKNEY, MARE STREET - Friday, 17th April 2026 - 12/40
• EMBRACE THE PAIN - Friday, 24th April 2026 - 13/40
• CAMDEN & KENTISH TOWNS - Friday, 1st May 2026 - 14/40
• CROUCH END & FINSBURY PARK - Friday, 8th May 2026 - 15/40
• EDMONTON & TOTTENHAM - Friday, 15th May 2026 - 16/40
• BRIXTON & CLAPHAM - Friday, 22nd May 2026 - 17/40
• HIGHGATE & ARCHWAY - Friday, 29th May 2026 - 18/40
• LAMBETH - Friday, 5th June 2026 - 19/40
• HOMERTON HOSPITAL - Friday, 12th June 2026 - 20/40
• SOUTHGATE to CROYDON - Friday, 19th June 2026 - 21/40
• DENMARK STREET - Friday, 26th June 2026 - 22/40
• RICHMOND - Friday, 3rd July 2026 - 23/40
• EDGEWARE & HARROW - Friday, 10th July 2026 - 24/40
• UNDER THE FLYOVER - Friday, 17th July 2026 - 25/40
• NEW SOUTHGATE - Friday, 24th July 2026 - 26/40
• NOTTING HILL - Friday, 31st July 2026 - 27/40
• AILSA CRAIG - Friday, 7th August 2026 - 28/40
• BASS ROCK & LINDISFARNE - Friday, 14th August 2026 - 29/40
• CHAMBERLAYNE ROAD NW10 - Friday, 21st August 2026 - 30/40
• STOLEN - Friday, 28th August 2026 - 31/40
• THE LAST OF THE LAST - Friday, 4th September 2026 - 32/40
• PIGEON ON HER WALL - Friday, 11th September 2026 - 33/40

 

INTRODUCTION

Friday the 30th of January 2026

Spoke by Tam Dean Burn in character as The Managing Director

SPOKE

WRIT

Dear Concerned Parties,

Further to whatever else you may have understood...

Or even been told...

VAPE SHOP FORTY, are 40 Fridays in the year of 2026, where we have commissioned VAPE SHOP to show us evidence of which charity shops that he has distributed a copy of the long-playing record EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to. This is to be done while he, as in VAPE SHOP, trudges his way across London, doing whatever else he does with his life now that he does next to nothing.

Part of our ‘understanding’ with VAPE SHOP was that from time to time he might want us to publish a photograph he has taken of a drain hole cover or a Turkish / Kurdish Barber Shop that he has stopped off at to have a hot towel wet shave.

We cannot guarantee that VAPE SHOP will deliver on what we have commissioned him to do. Or even if the photographs he has provided us with stands up as evidence that he delivered a copy of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to the charity shops in question, in the previous week, or even in the previous month. VAPE SHOP is difficult; he has his issues. But he was the only living person in the Penkiln Burn Universe we could find to do the job.

Yours Faithfully,

The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings

Post Script:
And if you don’t know what EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands is click HERE
And if you want a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands find one of these charity shops and get one before they throw them out with all the other stuff that charity shops have to throw out because nobody wants whatever it is.
And if you do actually buy a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, please let VAPE SHOP know. It is those little things in his life that seem to make his trudging have purpose. You can contact him at vape@penkilnburn.com

---

SOUTHGATE, PALMERS GREEN & NORTH FINCHLEY

1/40
Friday, 30th January 2026

---

BARNET (High, New, East & Friern)

2/40
Friday, 6th February 2026

---

DALSTON & STOKE NEWINGTON

3/40
Friday, 13th February 2026

---

ENFIELD

4/40
Friday, 20th February 2026

---

MUSWELL HILL

5/40
Friday, 27th February 2026

---

UPPER STREET, ISLINGTON

6/40
Friday, 6th March 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

I mean...

What the fuck?

This is VAPE SHOP here.

But I guess you knew that.

Have you read that ‘Introduction’ of the supposed novella or memoir or whatever it is supposed to be? The one that goes by the name of Famous People I Have Shagged, I said none of that.

I have never shagged anybody famous in my life. And now that I am approaching my mid-seventies, I don’t think that I am going to start doing that now. I mean nobody famous would want to shag me anyway.

But I have been told by those that seem to be in control of this place, that I have to ‘pretend’ to be the protagonist of a novella by that William E. Drummond, that in turn is pretending to be a memoir by William E. Drummond, where it is me that has to go out there and do the leg work or they will kick me out of the Penkiln Burn Universe.

I mean...

From what I understand, William E. Drummond did not even want to write this novella pretending to be his memoir, but they said he had to write it to prove something before they let him write his follow up to I Have Just Murdered My Wife. His follow up was to be called I Have Just Murdered My Husband. But because that first one was not that successful out there, they told him he had to write a more headline grabbing novella this time, and depending on the success of this one, they will decide if he can go back to writing his Murdering My Husband one.

And the thing is they are just putting all these words into my mouth, as in William E. Drummond is having to cut and paste all of them from what you might have been reading in all those different bits of FOOT NOTE.

Last week I was reading Albert Camus book The Stranger or is it The Outsider...

Like...

I mean...

Did the bloke in the book, did he get a choice if he was going to shoot the Arab, or was it just this Albert Camus that was pulling the strings.

I mean...

Did the protagonist know when he agreed to be in that book that by the end he was going to have to have his head in the guillotine, while Albert Camus gets a Nobel Prize for Literature.

And yeah, what about the Arab and his mates and the girl? It is all that typical back drop of rather threatening but exotic people that we see again and again in these sort of films and books, be it Apocalypse Now, or Darjeeling Limited, or The Power & The Glory by Graham Greene or even Burmese Days by George Orwell. All of them and hundreds more like them pulling the same trick. As in we the white western male punters getting almost a hardon imagining ourselves out there with all these exotic people without names getting killed or their kit off.

Anyway...

And then that Robert Smith comes along and writes that song based on the book I just read – you know – Killing An Arab. And Robert Smith has just won those Grammys for the latest Cure album. Has any musician from Algeria ever won a Grammy?

But anyway back to me, and me being the protagonist in this book where I am supposed have shagged all these famous people, and if not, that is what I am supposed to be doing – one a month for the rest of this year, or whenever. And if I don’t they kick me out of the Penkiln Burn Universe.

I mean...

I had these ideas that I could just spend what time I had left using my bus pass, to catch buses to places I had never been before in London, so I could climb the stairs, while I still can, and look out at the world from the top deck. And maybe stop off some place and go for a cheese omelette chips and beans, and take photos of cracked pavements and litter and manhole covers and cigarette ends and laughing gas cannisters and squashed energy drink cans and go for a hot towel wet shave at a Turkish / Kurdish barbers that I have never been to before, and if no one is looking spray one of my forty VAPE SHOP tags up on a wall.

And yes...

I did have and still do have fantasies about all of this – not the shagging bit – but all the other things being the ingredients for some sort of biopic from my perspective. A coming-of-age film for the over 70s. You know... Late Middle Age into Early Old Age. John Hughes should be turning in his grave.

Right now, as in when I am being this protagonist in someone else’s novella that he does not even want to be writing, I am sitting on the top deck of the 263 down to Highbury & Islington. In my rucksack I have ten copies of some record, that I am supposed to be delivering to ten charity shops there.

I agreed to do this in the hope that, it might make those that pull the strings in this Penkiln Burn Universe think more favourably about that biopic that I was going on about. And yes I have my two cans of spray paint – one white and one black. I plan to do my tag on some wall down there.

Actually we are already there.

I will catch up with you next Friday when I am out delivering the next batch of these records.

Later...

VAPE SHOP

---

FORD CORTINA, BURMA ROAD

7/40
Friday, 13th March 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like I said...

I am not happy with the situation.

Me having to go and find these famous people that are then supposed to want to shag me. Not that I could anyway.

I did think I should try Kemi Badenoch.

I mean you did hear how she was willing to put a price tag on herself. As in if you wanted to have dinner with her you could pay her fifty thousand quid, and she would spend the evening with you listening to what you had to say, while you had your starters and your desert and whatever else in-between.

I mean...

If she was already willing to compromise whatever she stood for politically, to raise cash for her party, then you just need to turn things up a few notches and she would have her price for her to...

Anyway, I don’t want to say anything I should not say...

But you get what I mean.

I mean she is the most physically attractive leader the Torys have ever had.

I mean...

It was either that or I go and copy and paste some of the pages from the new Lisa Minneli memoir that has just come out that is totally a rip off, of Famous People I Have Shagged. I mean it sounds like she just ripped off what they, as in here in the PBU have been trying to get me to do. You never know who has been looking at this website...

Are you following me...

Or am I doing the delusional thing?

Anyway...

This week, I felt I had to make some sort of protest about all of this, and so I refused to go out and do the charity shop run. It’s just so ‘Charity Washing’, like a low-rent Silicon Valley Billionaire type thing with them being philanthropists and everything.

Instead, I went and did one of the things I have been doing once a month, every month for the past so-many years. As in all the time that I had my first brain seizure in 2020.

As you know...

I like things falling apart, be it lives or houses or relationships or even institutions that I have been party to. Especially myself. My growing pain in my knees. My loss of hair on my head. My hearing. My shrinking left bollock. My memories that will never return. But if those things are not falling apart enough, I like to experience vehicles falling apart, but in slow motion. Watch the rust creep, the tires flatten, the mould grow, the leather seats crack, the gears grind, the gaskets blow. It is what I loved most about the Land Rover that I once owned. Whatever was done with it while it was being serviced, would never prevent is from it slowly but determinedly falling apart. But that Land Rover is long gone.

For these past few years, as in since November 2020, I have found myself living in a part of London, where one’s car is the ultimate male status cymbal. This is largely down to the Albanian culture that the majority of my neighbours are steeped in. And don’t get me wrong I love so much of all this Albanian stuff. I would not have used the name VAPE SHOP, if it was not for their huge cultural influence on me. But anyway, all this car culture around me here means there are no rusting and falling apart cars in Southgate. Albanian men love their cars in the way that my generation and demographic loved their electric guitars as a stand in for their cock.

So...

Today, I took the Piccadilly Line from Southgate Station down to Manor House Station, then the 141 down to the Petherton Road Stop on Green Lanes and then walked down Burma Road, to what I consider to be one of the greatest works of art currently on display for all to see in London. It ticks all the boxes for me – it has never been commodified, curated, galleried, academified and not even signed nor stolen. Let alone sold to the highest bidder. And as I write these words (Thursday the 12th of March) it is still there right now where it has been ever since I had to get rid of my Land Rover.

I love a work of art that is not just some sort of extension of an artist’s ego. Something they can list in their biog or have in their retrospective. A work of art that you find in the real world. The real living and dying world.

This thing that I have been doing every month for the past six years, is to go to this Burma Road and lean against a wall for forty minutes and stare at a Ford Cortina (Mark Two) with a 1970 / 71 number plate. And over those forty minutes I try not just to look but actually see it corrode and fall apart, at the same time as trying to sense my body and my mind corroding and falling apart in unison with this Ford Cortina.

I used to hate Ford Cortinas back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They symbolised for some sort of low rent aspiration. An aspiration that would trap you for the rest of your life. But this Ford Cortina on Burma Road seems to have escaped whatever those aspirations were in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

If you are reading these words and not just listening to me telling you about all of this, you should be able to look at some of the photographs of it that I have taken on my handheld device.

I had never taken photographs of it before. It almost feels like I am undermining something about the purity of it as a work of art to do this. But today I could not stop myself.

The other thing that I did out of a sense of guilt, because of not doing the charity shop run, is take one of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands albums, put it in a white mailing sleeve. Then using a black marker pen write the words For You on the cover. And then put the white mailing sleeve with the album inside, under the Ford Cortina on Burma Road. I am now sitting in Kurdish Café suping from a bowl of soup while writing these words to you to let you know.

Next week, I will attempt to get back out there delivering the said albums to charity shops somewhere, even if I don’t email Kemi Badenoch with my proposition.

In the meantime, if you find the record under the Ford Cortina on Burma Road, let me know please.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

HOLLOWAY ROAD

8/40
Friday, 20th March 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

VAPE SHOP – The Franchise

Morning you...

Are you a Franchise?
Am I a Franchise?
Are we all just Franchises?
As in none of us are actually ourselves but just some Franchise for some would be global brand.

Maybe the only way to not be a franchise is to franchise oneself to others.

The above was my thinking while I was on the top deck of the 43 down Holloway Road this morning (Thursday the 19th of March).

Yeah, I know I am supposed to be thinking about how I can get famous people to be interested in me shagging them but...

Some years ago, the former Bill Drummond called a meeting with a select few of his other selves, as in The Elderly Gentleman, a local artist, Brush (Your Shop Steward) and A Part Time Painter, William E. Drummond and the rest.

This was before the era of VAPE SHOP...

As in before I was here fully formed and on the scene.

But...

Once I was here and started to pick up on some of the rumours swishing around the perimeter fences of the Penkiln Burn Universe. Rumours that ‘they’ were going to collectively head out into your real world using the tag 10 FOOT, as in knowingly knowing they were not 10 FOOT or even to pretend they were 10 FOOT, or even as a tribute to 10 FOOT, but somehow to add to the world of Fake News.

I am glad to say, those other selves wanted nothing to do with this, as in the world was at the time awash with fake news, and anyway it would be an insult to the real 10 FOOT.

But...

It is now March 2026 and although my life has been given a twisted form of meaning, with me here right now, being the protagonist in a novella written by someone else and me going out with my Freedom Pass and a box of fresh copies of the album EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and heading off to find another post code in this Bleak City, to then trudge those streets looking for charity shops that I can donate one of these fresh copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to. And then celebrate by finding a wall I can mark my ever-expanding territory with my tag VAPE SHOP.

But...

Then, last night I got an email from Rupert W. Service – fuck knows if that is his real name or if they have ever gone up the Yukon. Anyway this Rupert W. Service was wanting to know how they could get hold of a copy of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands album. And they explained that seeing as they lived in Canada there is no way they could get to any of these charity shops in this Bleak City. My instant reaction was – No! I mean this whole thing is about being where it is and not just anywhere.

But then...

In the early hours of this morning, when the virus on my lungs was preventing me from sleeping, an idea started to invade my mind.

Maybe I should do a side deal with this Rupert W. Service, where they can become the VAPE SHOP Franchise for where they live in Canada, be it up the Yukon or not. But to become that Franchise of me, this Rupert W. Service had to first go out and do a VAPE SHOP tag in their local town and send me a photo of that tag, so I know they mean it. And then I will send them ten copies of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands album, and they then distribute the ten copies to wherever or however (charity shops an option) in their town. And of course, send me photos of each of those locations (be they charity shops or not). This means I, as in VAPE SHOP might become a global brand. And I can tell all those others in the Penkiln Burn Universe to fuck themselves. And I don’t have to go out and pretend to do all that shagging famous people, vicariously or not, for them. And kids around the globe might start wearing VAPE SHOP t-shirts, and trainers, and...

But with all deals there is a darker side to it...

If you were to become aware of a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands being available for purchase on eBay, Discogs, Amazon, Rough Trade or the like, in whatever is left of the time in your life, and you hear about a war going on in the world, you have to directly connect the underlying motives of that war, and all that war’s war dead, to that copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands being sold on whatever Western Cultural Imperialism is using to sell you stuff that you don’t need.

As in...

That those people in that war that got killed, would not have been killed if that copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands had not ended up on eBay or Discogs or any of those other corners of the evil empire...

So like I am implying...

If you want to be a Franchise of me, as in the VAPE SHOP in your town / country / corner of the globe, email me today and don’t forget to attach the photo of your VAPE SHOP tag on a wall near you. And none of that AI shite. This has to be for real or more people will get killed in that war. And before you know that war will be knocking on your door.

And if you want you can go and do that shagging famous people for all those that are interested in reading about those sorts of things.

For now...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Post Script:

Like...

Just so you know, W. E. Drummond, as in the Managing fucking Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings, was furious with me for not doing my charity shop run last week. I told him to “Fuck off”. Anyway... We came to some sort of agreement. I told him, I would get my weekly run only if they agreed to start ‘posting’ the images my handheld device has been taking of what I consider to be the only real beauty to be found in this Bleak City. As in The Cracked Paving Stones, The Fag End Parties, The Flattened Cans of Energy Drinks. And the Dead Bikes.

And...

They have to start developing the coming-of-age biopic that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. Or I am out of here. And fuck being the protagonist in someone else’s story.

You get me?

Post the postscript, I thought I should start doing screen grabs of where these Charity Shops are, so you know where to go. And the God’s Covenant Life Centre one was closed. Thus I only got five delivered this week.

---

WALTHAMSTOW E17

9/40
Friday, 27th March 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

The date does not matter or not to me right now...

So like...

I went to see Brush, our supposed shop steward, I have been paying my union subs, so theoretically she is supposed to represent me and the issues I have with all of this shite about just being a protagonist in someone else’s comic or whatever this is, and the words coming out of my mouth just words this William E. Drummond has just taken from other words that have already been used elsewhere and me having to pretend to try and go and get Kemi Badenoch to shag me, just to keep your attention.

Anyway...

This Brush, seemed to empathise with my position, she told me stories about how she had been used over the years to paint pictures by a local artist, The Part Time Painter and even the former Bill Drummond. And she thought these paintings were shite and even if they were good, she never got the credit for them.

So like...

Brush went and had a meeting with whoever pulls the strings around here. And the next morning she called me in, and it seems that a new deal has been struck with The String Puller and The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings.

So like...

As long as I carry on with my Forty Week Run of attempting to distribute copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to charity shops across this Bleak City, and show them the evidence, they will continue to publish my (and not someone else’s) passing thoughts and some of the images that my handheld device captures. But at the same time, I have to accept that when whatever this is gets presented to the public, I will just be the protagonist in someone else’s story about me.

Does that stack up?

Anyway...

I packed my haversack with ten copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and a can of spray paint. And headed for Southgate Tube Station.

I always stand at exactly the same spot on the station platform, however crowded, and I look down to make sure my feet are within millimetres of where they stood yesterday and stood five years ago when I would have first stood here and then the hand held device takes an image of it. As in that spot on the platform. And then I look up at the advert on the wall the far side of the track and the hand held device takes a photograph of that. And I wonder how those adverts have changed over these past five years. And how four years ago it was all about mixed marriages, as in inclusive on the ethnic front, but not about a Presbyterian like me marrying a Catholic like Mary McElwee. And then there were the larger female models. But then Lizzo got cancelled a couple of years ago, and suddenly there were no more larger female models featured in these posters. And now it is all about you being able to start your own business or going wherever the fuck you want in the world, all you had to do was buy the right app.

But anyway...

The tube pulls in.

And I change to the Victoria Line at Finsbury Park. And I see an advert for a new film called EPIC, so Hand Held Device took an image of that as well. Maybe the former Bill Drummond might be interested. But I doubt it will capture what Mr Nobody Against Putin captures. I watched that last night. I won’t deny I was jealous. I know if that biopic about me ever gets made it won’t contain any of that hero’s journey that Mr Nobody Against Putin contains let alone the one that I SWEAR contains. I mean I SWEAR makes you cry, there is nothing about me that could make you cry.

But like...

I get to Walthamstow on the Victoria Line and then begin my trudge down the High Street Market there – it claims to be the second longest street market in Europe. I won’t go into why the markets in this Bleak City are better a thousand-fold than any of the Art Galleries this city has to offer the tourists and aspirational would bes, who like to think that they know how to appreciate, when they don’t even have it in them to appreciate a squashed can of energy drink in the gutter.

And...

I deliver seven copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to seven different charity shops and Hand Held Device took the photographs we are contracted to do.

But...

While doing this I was attempting to have conversations with those other loves of my life – mannequin heads in shop windows. I can’t pass one without attempting to have a conversation with them. I don’t think there has been a time in my life when I have not attempted to have one of these conversations. It used to embarrass my mum when I was a wee lad, and she would take me doing the messages with her. I guess you would call ‘doing the messages’ ‘doing the shopping’, but back then...

Anyway...

Maybe in the biopic, the Mannequin Heads can talk back to me, tell me what has been going on in their lives.

I did a deal with Hand Held Device. As in Hand Held Device would take 40 photographs of these Mannequin Heads over the rest of these VAPE SHOP FORTY Fridays. I mean they can take as many as they want, but I will select 40 to ‘share’ with you. Maybe today there will be some of those forty.

Until next Friday that is it...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

FRANCHISE FIVE

10/40
Friday, 3rd April 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Yeah like...

It seems that I am NOT being nailed to a cross...

Yet...

Anyway while we wait for that nailing to happen, I’ve been told to take a break from trudging the streets, and bake some Hot Cross Buns or something. But I think that is just them trying to control me, be it the Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings or even Brush, I mean she is supposed to represent me, but at times it feels the opposite.

The thing is...

They have told me that I cannot have any more than five franchises. They said, anymore than that and things could get out of hand – the market would be flooded. Not that I agreed with them but...

Anyway...

The Franchise Five are based in...

Ontario, Canada

Edinburgh, Scotland

Pontypridd / Tonypandy / Porth / Trehopcyn, Cymru

Bristol, Wessex

Granville, France

And what follows are the first of the photographic evidence done by the Franchise Five of their VAPE SHOP tags and donation drop-off locations...

Ontario, Canada:

Seafield, Edinburgh, Scotland

Pontypridd / Tonypandy / Porth / Trehopcyn, Cymru

Bristol, Wessex

I will endeavour to ‘share’ with you further photographic evidence of their tags and of where they have left / donated each of their ten copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and in the coming Fridays.

But...

In the meantime, I won’t deny that as VAPE SHOP, as in the brand and not the real trudging me, takes the first steps in Going Global, I find it interesting how the charity shops in the ‘new world’ present themselves to the world in a completely different way than they do in the ‘old world’.

And I am loving the tags, I mean is there one 10 FOOT tag in Pontypridd let alone Ontario, Canada?

And did you notice the Red Bull truck in the background of the second tag photo in Ontario? If that is there does that mean, there are also squashed cans of Red Bull in the gutter?

Maybe Red Bull would be up for sponsoring all of this.

What do you think?

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

SAINT JOHN’S WOOD

11/40
Friday, 10th April 2026

---

HACKNEY, MARE STREET

12/40
Friday, 17th April 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

I was just back from this week’s charity shop trudge down Mare Street in Hackney when The Managing Director called me into his office. He wanted to tell me how good he thought I had been doing. But his praise sounded loaded. I knew there was something else going on. So I pushed him on it. He then said he thought he should bring in the former Bill Drummond and Brush (Your Shop Steward) into the meeting.

They all told me they loved the photographs of The Mannequin Heads that Hand Held Device that I had taken a couple of weeks ago over in Walthamstow. And thought that each week from here on, as well as the photos of the charity shops, that it would be good to feature a display of photographs that Hand Held Device had been taking of a particular subject. I agreed to this thus the photographs of the flattened drink cans that I hope are displayed somewhere close to these words.

But...

Again, I felt something was a bit loaded or not being said. They seemed to be implying that I was somehow not responsible for these photographs being taken and that Hand Held Device was almost becoming a character in the Penkiln Burn Universe in their own rite. I mean was it me taking the photographs or Hand Held Device. I guess this is the issue that Brush must have had historically with the former Bill Drummond back whenever...

But...

Anyway, they then wanted to discuss this whole biopic thing. They said, now that I am refusing to go out there and attempt to get famous people to shag me, and they understood that, but that being the case there was not that much of a story that will hold people’s interest to hang a whole biopic around. That just some film of an old bloke going around muttering to himself about life and cracked pavement and the top deck of busses and the like, was not going to work.

I said...

But whatever I said, they were not listening.

Then...

The former Bill Drummond started, telling us one of his back-in-the-day things.

And I will attempt to précis what he said...

He said that when he used to live in his flat down in N16, he used to look out of his bedroom window at the people waiting at the bus stop across the road. And most days there was this old bloke waiting to catch the 73. But about once a week it wasn’t him, but it was him. But this old bloke was dressed up as an old woman. Not in some drag queen over sexualised way. But just himself but with an old dress on and an ill-fitting wig on his head. And an hour or so later he would be getting off the bus again with his/her/their shopping. As in, they were just going about their normal day to day things in life but dressed as a woman and at the same time not trying to be noticed in any way for doing it.

I had no idea why the former Bill Drummond was telling us about this.

But...

Then he said, he thought this is what ‘my story’ needed. That maybe they could get someone else in the Penkiln Burn Universe to go out like this bloke used to do in drag and be a rival tagger in my territory. And ‘they’ would use the tag PORN STAR. And this would provide conflict to the story. But then one day we would find ourselves sitting next to each other on the top deck of a bus maybe the two of us rivals could then get to know each other. And maybe there would be a glint in the eye. A hint of romance. And who knows...

And I said...

‘Fuck that, none of that is real, that is just you lot making bollocks up. I am real. What I do is real. I really love these cracked pavements and squashed cans and dead bikes and everything else.’

And former Bill Drummond said...

‘We know you do but... You have to be realistic. Nobody is going to be interested in all that, unless there is conflict and romance and shock and boundaries being pushed and... Actually we were thinking that seeing as you have implied earlier, you would never be seen in the film, as in the camera would be your eyes looking out at the world, or at least Hand Held Device looking out at the world, you could play the part of PORN STAR. It would be the real you dressed up as a nondescript old woman...’

And then Brush (Your Shop Steward) said...

‘It would be like the Burglar Bill and Burglar Betty story. People will love it.’

I told them to fuck off, and anyway I was going to make the film myself. Do the whole lot. That said, I thought they should get the likes of Anthony Hopkins to voice me. That is when the former Bill Drummond told me that he had already been recording my words to go up on the Penkiln Burn website every Friday.

I stormed out throwing Hand Held Device at them as I left the office.

Okay...

So I went back in and picked them up. As in Hand Held Device. And once I had done that, I went on the Penkiln Burn website to find that not only had they got the former Bill Drummond voicing me, they had got that Tam Dean Burn voicing The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings using a caricature of a Geordie accent and that Angie Darcy doing a fake Scouse accent for Brush (Your Shop Steward).

Look...

I know I have to put up with all of this. But sometimes it just drives me up the wall. And there I was thinking I had got to a place in life where I have not only come to terms with living in this Bleak City, I had almost fallen in love with it.

I mean...

This is a love story already; it doesn’t need the former Bill Drummond in it as well as a PORN STAR.

No idea where I will be getting the bus to next week, but I will update you with all of this. In the meantime there were only four of those charity shops on Mare Street, Hackney, but I thought I would share with you 20 of my current favourite squashed cans, even if it was Hand Held Device that took the photos.

And...

In a couple of weeks, I hope to be showing you some more of the stuff that has been coming in from the FRANCHISE FIVE.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

EMBRACE THE PAIN

13/40
Friday, 24th April 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Anyway...

Like I was saying...

My knees are fucked...

But for some reason I embrace my knees being fucked and my body falling to bits and all the various pains that you find you get when you are in your 70s. Pains in parts of your body you never knew you had until the pain was there. Why take pain killers when you can explore all those aspects of the pain that might even kill you in the end. I mean pain killers are just a con, I mean you have read Empire of Pain?

I also embrace strikes and the disruptions they cause to daily routines. Last week (or was it the week before last) it was those young doctors, causing me to wait for hours. And now it is the tube strike in London, with the tube drivers hoping to hold this Bleak City to ransom.

Well, I guess it was the Tube Strike that inspired Brush (Your ((and our)) Shop Steward) to call us workers on the shopfloor of the Penkiln Burn Universe out on strike. Not that us being on strike holds anybody or anything to ransom. I mean, who gives a shite about whatever it is that we do...

And that is point...

We have just spent most of the week sitting around chatting with each other – it was this chatting that seemed to get us over some of the issues that we were having. As in I have agreed with the former Bill Drummond voicing my words and accepting the reality they were never going to get Anthony Hopkins to do it for me. It was also pointed out to me that Anthony Hopkins had accepted a knighthood, she, as in Brush our shop steward, then explained to us that any artist accepting a knighthood, also instantly deletes any credibility they may ever have had and shows them to be no more than an arsehole working for the establishment. I mean I don’t know about this but anyway, I nodded my head in agreement with the wisdom of her youth.

And in return to me letting the former Bill Drummond voicing my words, he, as in the former Bill Drummond, agreed to never present himself as a cross-dressing porn star, or not on my patch.

And in return I agreed to some of the words of the Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings to appear on this page of FOOT NOTE, even if those words were written by whoever, some weeks ago and then spoken by the actor Tam Dean Burn.

As for Hand Held Device she / he / they or it, insisted some of their images should be used with this week’s update, even if they are not of charity shops in another suburban corner of this Bleak City. I agreed as long as they were a selection of my favourite Fag End Parties. As in, you did know Party, is the collective noun for a group of Fag Ends hanging out together on a pavement or wherever, as in not in an ash tray.

Also...

I also want couple of the Vape Shop Franchise images that have been coming, displayed somewhere close to these words (spoke or written).

But the big thing that came out of all this chatting and trading of compromises was that of Ageism. I had a hunger for all of this stuff on FOOT NOTE only be allowed to be consumed by those over the age of 70. As you may know, I have issues with everybody that is between the ages of 23 and 70. As in most of those 24 to 69-year-olds, think they know better, think they are right and think things used to be better than they are now. Nothing was ever better, no previous generations had it easier, the music was never more... that is just their weakness for nostalgia lying to them.

It is those between those ages that allow themselves to be conned into buying tickets at vastly inflated prices for bands and singers that meant something to them when they were...*

Whatever it was they thought they used to be...

Thus...

I proposed that anyone visiting FOOT NOTE had to prove they were above the age of 70 before letting them in.

But...

Brush (Your Shop Steward) said this would be as difficult as stopping school kids spending twelve hours a day looking at smart phones. I didn’t know what she was talking about...

But...

We came to some sort of agreement that we should have a voluntary code, or some sort of trust thing, that no one under the age of 70 should ever visit FOOT NOTE again until they reach the age of 70. And even then, they must agree to never have thoughts that they then project onto their past.

But...

It was Brush (Your Shop Steward) who then came up with the idea that as well as the over 70s, it should also be those that are 23 or younger that are allowed to enter the world of FOOT NOTE.

I mean...

It is only those 23 or younger that have fresh ideas, see the world for what it is, live in the moment, and don’t give a shite about some past their parents have always been going on about...

We all shook hands on this.

And...

Next week, I hope to get two charity shop runs done with copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, at the same time as I hope that the only people entering FOOT NOTE are either over 70 or are 23 or younger.

Later...

VAPE SHOP

*But just to clarify middle-aged people in the UK buying vastly inflated prices for concert tickets for bands and artists they used to be into in their younger years comes from the same mind space as middle-aged people in the USA buying into MAGA.

COMING CLEAN

SPOKE

WRIT

From the Desk of The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings

Dear Concerned Parties,

I have to come clean with you...

When I first got the job to manage the affairs of Penkiln Burn Recordings, I had no idea that my ‘missives’ to you were going to be used within this thing called FOOT NOTE. And even now I have no real idea what this FOOT NOTE is supposed to be about.

I mean...

I thought I had been given this job to sort of clean up some of the mess, as in the mess the former Bill Drummond was leaving in his trail. I had been told he had proclaimed there there were to be these five long playing vinyl albums conceived, recorded, pressed, distributed and marketed. And for these five albums to succeed in a Penkiln Burn Universe sort of way, none of these albums were to have any sort of commercial success let alone cult status.

They told me I was the perfect man for the job as I had been held responsible for the launch and marketing of five Deramic Sound albums released on the Deram label back in 1966 and 1967. As we called them then – The Night Five. There was a sixth one, but we did not count that as one of The Five.

Anyway...

It was the commercial lack of success of these and there then subsequent lack of any sort of collectable cult status, that seems to have got me the job as the Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings. They, as in The Night Five, even won the Loss Leaders Award (LLA) for being the most uncollectable series of records ever pressed. This status being measured by the length of time a vinyl album can spend in a rack of a charity shop without anyone picking it up, let alone buying it.  That said, I have no idea how that was actually measured this – I guess it is all part of that CCTV culture that we both like to reject and embrace at the same time.

Anyway

If you do not know already, these are the titles of The Night Five...

Voices in the Night
Strings in the Night
Brass in the Night
Piano in the Night
Latin in the Night

That said, I have met the odd hard core Moody Blues fan who has ended up owning a copy of Strings in the Night because to the arrangements done by Peter Knight. But even that is probably because the former Bill Drummond spent the summer of 74 living in Exmouth while building his greatest work of art, and Exmouth being the hometown of Peter Knight thus...

Anyway...

Enough of the niche...

And back to me, it was me that came up with the idea of using the word ‘Night’ in each of the titles of The Night Five. As in the word ‘Night’ being dog whistle for the word ‘Sex’. As in, back then, as in 1966 / 1967, people would subconsciously or not be thinking, the word ‘Night’ meant ‘Sex’. Thus if they bought one of these albums, they could put it on at home that night to be the soundtrack to them having sex with their bloke while imagining they were having sex Engelbert Humperdink or Steve McQueen or whoever...

Anyway...

Enough of that and back to Five albums that I am supposed to be managing from conception to grave for Penkiln Burn Recordings. It was my idea that all should have almost identical covers, even if the musical content of the albums were completely different. And that these covers have a subconsciously or not threat of being mugged while walking a footpath at night, thus the total opposite to The Night Five albums...

Anyway...

Enough of that...

I had better get back to editing all of those letters that I wrote to you last Autumn, so they can be used within this FOOT NOTE thing.

And of course, I have to keep tabs on VAPE SHOP and his weekly distribution of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands album.

Yours Faithfully,

The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings

---

CAMDEN & KENTISH TOWNS

14/40
Friday, 1st May 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Bird Shite is my favourite artist...

Or she is this week. Ask me last week and I might have said Squashed Can. Ask me next week I might claim that Shadow was and still is the greatest artist that has ever existed on the world, or for that matter any other world in the known and unknown universe.

But...

This week Bird Shite is my all-time favourite artist.

I can’t go out in the morning without seeing some of her groundbreaking work on the pavement before me. I have never been into the work of Dog Shite, there is just no creativity there just resentment.

To celebrate my love of the work of Bird Shite, I have decided to let Hand Held Device create images of the ten Charity Shops in Camden and Kentish Town that I delivered copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands as well as ten works by Bird Shite.

I might be wrong, but my guess is that whole abstract expressionist movement back in the 1950s or whenever it was, would not have existed, if it were not for the work of Bird Shite. She just does not get the recognition she deserves. Do you? As in do you get the recognition you deserve?

Later…

VAPE SHOP

UNHALFBRICKING Versus LIEGE & LIEF

SPOKE

WRIT

Yeah...

Like...

I just got back to the shop floor of the Penkiln Burn Universe, and the former Bill Drummond had issues with what I had said about the genius of Bird Shite. Or at least he / they / them / it thought I should have written about his historic relationship with Camden. I tried to argue the case it was not all about his ‘fictitious’ past but how I, as in VAPE SHOP, experience the world in the here and now.

Anyway...

Brush, stepped in and tried to placate things. She, as in Brush, said I should write something about the former Bill Drummond’s supposed relationship with this over curated stretch of this Bleak City.

So...

Here goes...

The former Bill Drummond does not do the past...

Or emotions...

Or so he claims.

But I know, as I climb down the stairs from the top deck of the 253 and onto the streets of Camden Town, I know he would be having to suppress a whole shed full of memories and emotions.  The first one being on the Sunday morning of the 8th of September 1968, as in the morning after The Doors had played The Roundhouse, right here in Camden, and the then 15-year-old Bill Drummond, had to deal with the fact that he was not one of the chosen few who had actually experienced The Doors play the night before, but instead just sit there in his Bible Class listening to a couple of the lads in the year above him at school go on about how brilliant it had been and...

But...

He had been there eight years and six months later to experience Lindsay Kemp perform Salomé as in early March 1977. He did not know what this Lindsay Kemp or Salomé was but it was maybe the best performance he had ever witnessed in his life. Way better than when he actually saw The Doors play on the 30th of August 1970.

And then...

It was there a month or so later, he was on the stage that both Jim Morrison and Lindsay Kemp had done their stuff. But instead of strutting and turning he was twisting a screwdriver attempting to screw a porcelain lavatory to the stage floor. The porcelain lavatory was part of the stage set for play that he had designed and built. But he had now major issues with this play, that will remain nameless.

But...

As he twisted the screwdriver tighter and the screw deeper into the stage, the porcelain cracked and the lavatory was broken. That crack that could not be uncracked symbolised something as deep as these things can symbolise. He told the director of the play, that will remain nameless, that he was going down the road to the local ironmongers, to buy a tube a of Araldite, and he will be back in a few minutes and mend the cracked porcelain lavatory.

So...

He walked out of The Roundhouse and down the road. But he walked right past the ironmongers. And he kept walking on and on down the road until he got to Euston Station where he got a train back to Liverpool and a different life began.

He knew that there are some cracks in one’s life that no amount or Araldite can ever fix.

And then...

Three years later...

In the crammed dressing room of the Camden Electric Ballroom with an Iggy Pop, and a Special AKA and an Echo & The Bunnymen, as in all three acts on the same bill, was that former Bill Drummond. He was there in his then role, as in pretending to be a manager of a band called Echo & The Bunnymen.

The former Bill Drummond was chatting with his former friend Horace.

Horace and the then Bill Drummond used to sit on the top deck of the 256 from Kettering to Northampton circa 1971/2 both sporting their shoulder length hair while debating if Unhalfbricking was better or not better than Liege & Lief. The debate was never concluded. In fact, this debate is still ongoing in the minds of a generation of now not so young men. A compromise is sometime agreed upon that Unhalfbricking is better but Liege & Lief more groundbreaking.

But anyway...

This Horace and the then Bill Drummond were now in a different era of their lives, they both had short hair and this Horace was the then bass player in Special AKA, who were also known as The Specials.

And then...

Flick forward 12 years and the former Bill Drummond is sitting in an empty bar around the corner from where his friend Balfe’s record label, called Food, had just moved to. Just him and the bass player from a band that no-one was bothered about. The bass player was called and probably is still called Alex James. They were chatting about whether a Fender Jazz Master is better than a Fender Precision, when the rest of this band, that no one was bothered about, came in and things moved on.

And then...

A couple of years later, he was back in this empty bar which was still called the Good Mixer, but this time he was with Fran De Takats and this Good Mixer was now crammed with all these young people looking for where they thought the cool action was, but I guess ‘the cool action’ had moved elsewhere and everybody in the country knew what this band was called. The former Bill Drummond had been the sometime boyfriend of the Fran De Takats. But time had moved on.

And then...

Fran De Takats moved to Hollywood and married an almost film star.

But that conversation about the Fender Jazz Master versus the Fender Precision is still an ongoing one.

But the former Bill Drummond never went back to Camden again in his life.

Until today.

And...

Everything had changed.

But...

The sky was blue. And he wondered if the Good Mixer was still there and if he would ever go back to The Roundhouse with a tube of Araldite to try and mend that crack that could never be mended.

Later…

VAPE SHOP

---

CROUCH END & FINSBURY PARK

15/40
Friday, 8th May 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

I mean...

What is an unhealthy relationship?

My therapist told me I had an unhealthy relationship with manhole covers. She said that me wasting all those hours, that must amount to several months of my life, standing on manhole covers was not going to bring me any sort of enlightenment, however long I stood on one.

I tried to make light of things by making some sort of comment like...

‘Should I be looking for ladyhole covers to be standing on?’

But...

She didn’t seem to see the humour in my comment.

So...

I stopped going to her and started going to another therapist.

But...

The new therapist ended up telling me the same thing. I sort of knew what she meant.

I mean...

It was only a matter of time before some bus or boy racer was going to run me down while I was standing on a particularly alluring manhole cover in the middle of the road. (No one will be watching, so why don’t we do it in the road... I used to sing).

So...

I tried seeing if I could go forty days without standing on a manhole cover. I managed that. But like with all addictions, you get over one just to replace it with another one.

I mean...

You can’t change who you fundamentally are, however many hours you do going to therapy or standing on manhole covers waiting for enlightenment.

So...

My addiction transcended from manhole covers to drains in the gutters at the side of roads.

I mean I did not stand on these drains in the gutters, instead I would just stand there looking down into them and wonder what kind of world is going on down there, and how could I be part of that world.

I mean Alice got down that rabbit hole, so why should I not be able to get down that drain in the gutter at the side of the road, I was walking along.

Yeah, I know, but sometimes you can’t stop yourself thinking about these sorts of things.

This morning I got the 299 down to Muswell Hill and then the W7 to Crouch End, to get my weekly EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands charity shop run done. But there were only six charity shops in Crouch End, so I got back on a W7 down to Finsbury Park and did the four there.

But...

Between each charity shop drop off, I found a drain in a gutter and looked down it and wondered.

The thing is...

I have not been to a therapist for years now.

I mean...

I have left it a bit too late in life to get all that sort of stuff sorted out. I may as well just embrace my need to look down drains in gutters and wonder what is going down there, and how I can be part of all that. Me and Alice.

And along with making Hand Held Device create images of the ten charity shops, I got her to make images of the drains I was looking down as well.

Then I found myself standing outside of what we used call the Rainbow, as in the Finsbury Park Astoria, where I have all sorts of vague memories of...

But those vague memories swirl and evolve and change and change back again.

Then I read the words Universal Church of The Kingdom of God across its front entrance.

Lots of people like to proclaim how wonderful the cultural diversity of this Bleak City is, but at the same time as never really stepping outside of their own bubble.

Maybe...

I should go to a different religious ceremony each week that I have left of my year as VAPE SHOP. Not that I am looking for some sort of meaning. I mean, my life has too much meaning in it already. It needs less meaning not more.

Time to get the Piccadilly line back to Southgate, but could not stop myself from putting Universal Church of The Kingdom of God into Wikipedia on Hand Held Device. It turns out to be some sort of Brazilian evangelical church. This could be a step into the unknown.

I mean...

We all need more steps into the unknown.

Anyway...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Crouch End

Finsbury Park

---

EDMONTON & TOTTENHAM

16/40
Friday, 15th May 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

There is something that I have been feeling really shite about.

Or shite that I have not been telling you.

Being straight with you...

You know what I mean?

As in me doing my forty VAPE SHOP tags across this Bleak City, each week while I do my charity shop runs.

Well the truth is...

I haven’t even done fuckin’ one of them.

The thing is...

I had promised my family that I would no longer do any of that graffiti stuff. Or at least not in London, seeing as I already have a criminal record for it, and I got stopped by the cops last year doing one down in Kilburn, and they took my name and said that if I get caught again, I will be charged again. So I promised my family. But I also sort of promised you that I was going to be doing these 40 VAPE SHOP tags.

Anyway...

This morning, I got the W6 from Southgate Bus Station to Edmonton. I knew there were only three active charity shops in Edmonton, but it is at Edmonton Green Bus Terminal that the 149 begins. And as you may have already guessed, I have a thing about bus routes. As in me wanting to go from the very beginning to the very end of a bus route. It has always been the way that I have explored cities. I always want to get to that ‘very end’ to embrace the emptiness that may lie beyond.

When I was just a bairn, our neighbour – Mr McCormick was a bus driver. He drove the bus from Newton Stewart to Ayr and back every day – not Sundays of course. But the thing is I had no idea what Ayr was, I think I thought Ayr was air, thus Ayr was up in the sky with the clouds. But one day when I was eight years old Mr McCormick allowed me to go with him on the bus all the way to Ayr. We even had to cross the Brig o’ Doon to get there. This of course was magic. I mean anybody who grew up in my culture knew that crossing the Brig o’ Doon would take you to the land of beyond. And Ayr might have only been a seaside town and not up there in the clouds, but from then on, I always had that urge to go all the way on a bus to the end. Always wanting to be the last person off the bus.

Like I said, there were only three charity shops in Edmonton, so I dropped off a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands at each of them. But while I was doing this, I fell into several conversations with a whole host of Mannequin Heads. I was sharing my concerns with them about me not having done my VAPE SHOP tags, but they didn’t seem to share my concerns. I don’t think they had any empathy for me anyway. In fact, they all seem quite cynical.  So fuck them.

Edmonton

Anyway...

I got on the 149 and started my journey South, getting off at Tottenham and doing three more charity shops there and a bit more chatting with Tottenham Mannequin Heads. These ones told me that those Mannequin Heads up in Edmonton, were always like that. These ones down in Tottenham seemed to understood my situation, and even implied they might come out and give me a hand with the tagging if I ever actually got around to it.

Tottenham

Anyway...

I then got on the next 149 heading South.

The weather was miserable.

But this misery seemed to add something to this journey. It was this sense of misery that made me wonder if the whole biopic about me should be framed within a journey on the 149 from one end of the route to the other.

For me...

It is from that top deck of the 149, every aspect, worth aspecting, of this Bleak City can be embraced. The dazzling dreariness of Edmonton, through the seductive threat of Tottenham, up and over Stamford Hill with all the depth and delight and shops of its Hasidic community, down into Stoke Newington, and through the rage and wonder of Dalston with it Riddley Road Market and Rio Picture House, and then we can ignore Shoreditch and what it might have once represented in the culture of the mid 1990s and down into The City. As in the actual City of London, where all those Billions are made and lost between the markets opening and the markets closing. And then crossing London Bridge over the River Thames and finally pulling into London Bridge Bus Terminal on the South Bank.

It is here when I got off the 149 an hour or so ago, before starting to write these words to you that I saw two works by that more threatening of the Bleak City Artist (BCA) movement – Dead Bike. Hand Held Device created images of these two works to share with you, along with the six charity shops and some of the Mannequin Heads that I conversed with earlier.

As for me getting my forty VAPE SHOP tags done, I will update in the coming weeks.

Later...

VAPE SHOP

London Bridge Bus Terminal

---

BRIXTON & CLAPHAM

17/40
Friday, 22nd May 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

So this morning is an Underground morning not a Top Deck morning.

I got the Piccadilly Line down from Southgate to Finsbury Park...

Hand Held Device remembering to construct an image looking down at the platform at exactly same spot as I always stand when catching the Piccadilly from Southgate.

Then at Finsbury Park lurched my way onto the Victoria Line heading south.

It was rammed.

Being on the Victoria Line at rush hour is my favourite tube ride. Whether I get a seat or not, does not matter, I just love to be crammed in there with my eyes closed and listening to all the screeching noise of the wheels and their brakes and the repeated automatic announcements, both those announcements coming from inside the train and those announcements coming from the station platforms when the doors are open. Then there are all the human smells – the man that has not washed for a month and the women freshly applying her newly bought fragrance. I very much want to have at least a couple of minutes of the VAPE SHOP biopic of just a black screen – as in when my eyes are closed – and all of these sounds crashing and colliding with each other.

I went all the way to the end of the line – Brixton.

This is the first time I have ventured South of The River in my proposed forty Charity Shop Trudges. Still don’t know if I should split the forty in two. As in twenty trudges South of The River and twenty North of The River. We will see.

Now sitting in a café in Brixton getting my caffeine fix before the trudge in proper begins. I’m attempting to pull together some stray and scattered thoughts I was having in the night, so I can distil them here in my notebook, so I can then speak them to you.

But before digging myself into that Mole Hill, I must do a couple of screen grabs from Google Maps so I can get some idea of what Charity Shops might be in Brixton and Clapham.

That now done, time to get digging myself down into that Mole Hill...

And just so you know, I have done enough of chasing Alice, that is why I am going for the Mole Hills.

But anyway...

I have always been drawn to the regional art movement that has not been seduced by whatever this Bleak City had to use as bait. We all know that any artist that ends up in London – whatever they might proclaim – is here so they can achieve the fame and fortune they so richly deserve.

But back to the regional...

Before Post Card Records from Glasgow, Good Vibrations from Belfast, Factory from Manchester and even Zoo from Liverpool, there was the Norwich School of Painters from Norwich.

The Norwich School of Painters was the first of these that I ever got into – way before the Glasgow Girls and even those Glasgow Boys.

For me, my relationship with the Norwich School of Painters began in the late 1950s when my maternal Granddad would take us around Norwich Castle Museum and there would be all these paintings. And these paintings crept into my ways of seeing the world. What art might be. But it was not until between 1984 and 1986 did my relationship with the Norwich School of Painters arrive at some sort of fever pitch. I was a total fan boy. I wanted to know everything about every artist that had been part of the Norwich School. I wanted to see (and touch) every painting they had ever painted and drawing they had ever drawn.  And all those unhealthy things about their personal lives and...

Anyway...

This was all between the release of Ocean Rain by Echo & The Bunnymen (Spring 1984) and the filming of The Manager on The Great Lane in The Vale of Aylesbury (Autumn 1986).

But...

What drew me into them, was that they existed almost as a worker’s cooperative (or at least that is how I chose to perceive them at the time). And they never chose to leave their locality to be seduced by the fame and fortune that this Bleak City might dangle in front of them. Thus, they never became the Turners or Constables feted by the establishment down here. That said they never employed the shock, awe and wonder that both Turner and Constable offered. They never did scale. But they did do intensity. But then rural landscape paintings might not be your thing.

But anyway...

Of course, my favourite was John Middleton, and I guess that is because he was late to the game and died when he was still in his twenties. You can keep your Van Goghs and Nick Drakes. Or even your Ian Curtis and your Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Because...

I have got my John Middleton. Yeah, okay he did go down to London for a bit, but he was soon back in Norwich and those backwaters of Norfolk. And nobody giving a shite about him or his paintings. And still don’t. So no Post Life cash in for the estate of...

I guess...

The reason why I am trying to pull together those scattered thoughts I was having in the middle of last night, is because I am wanting to perceive Cracked Pavement, Fag Pack, Squashed Can, Banana Skin, Foot, Dead Bike, Lone Crow, Pigeon Fluster, Elder Flower and Shadow, as in the whole of the Bleak City Art Movement, as the ultimate art movement for these End of Days. You might think that the Bleak City Art Movement only exists in my head. And I guess I know that, but at the same time they live and breathe and die across the pavements and small corners of cutoff waste ground of this Bleak City. And maybe it, as an art movement, will only historically exist for a few short years between when I had my first brain seizure back in early 2020 and whenever I get the rest of these Forty Trudges done.

And...

It is down to me, as in VAPE SHOP and of course Hand Held Device who insists on constructing their images of them, even though at the same time I want to defend them from being curated so future generations can appreciate / indulge in their transient works. Thus, protect them from ever being turned into baubles and trinkets for Western Cultural Imperialism to use. As in like what the likes of Banksy, or whoever it is, that does those signed limited edition things for people to buy and hang ironically on the walls of their downstairs lavatories, or wherever they like to hang things, to impress whoever it is that might not be impressed.

Anyway...

Enough of me going up my own arse...

Time to get out there onto Brixton Hill. Or is it Brixton Road? And find homes for those copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands that I have in my haversack right now. But before I get to the first of those charity shops, Hand Held Device can’t stop themselves from constructing an image of the wall under the railway bridge. A wall I have loved since I used to work down here in the late 80s. As in when one of my selves was involved with making Disco Music or something...

I only got three done in Brixton.

But before getting on the number 34 from Brixton to Clapham, I had a chat with a couple of Mannequin Heads to get their take on what I have been going on about.

They confirmed I was totally going up my own arse and maybe I should...

But I didn’t bother listening to whatever their advice was. That said they did allow Hand Held Device to construct an image of them to share with you... But I think that was just down to their vanity. I mean look at them... Bows ties are the giveaway.

Then I got on that number 34 to Clapham and began to wonder if what those Mannequin Heads were saying was maybe right. Fuck knows.

Anyway...

Time to get off...

And do the Clapham Trudge.

So, like...

I only found three more Charity Shops in Clapham willing to take my ‘donation’ of a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands.

I was hoping that the Socialist Party of Great Britain shop was going to be open so I could leave a copy there, but it was closed. But Hand Held Device insisted on constructing an image of it, so maybe I will go back some other time with a copy of something.

Or maybe their shop being closed was making a statement against the consumer economy, thus helping to make capitalism history.

So now I am the man on the Clapham Omnibus heading back to North London, with still four copies of the record in my haversack that will have to wait another week before ending up in the vinyl bins in a charity shop somewhere.

I want to use the hour or so I have on this top deck to distil some more of my vague thoughts about the Bleak City Art Movement.

For me the greatest thing about the Bleak City Art Movement is... It has got nothing to do with all those Fame & Fortune Hunter Movements that came before it and will undoubtably come after it.

The Bleak City Art Movement should never be part of Western Cultural Imperialism, even though it is right here right now spreading and evolving and moving through the cracks in this very city. All around us and everywhere. Never to be collected or commodified or curated or even castrated.  In a sense they are there to celebrate the rot that is writhing through these times.

I also like how short the lives of some of these artists and their art works are.

Back in the Spring of 2023 I began to notice a huge spike and proliferation of cracked and discarded Nitrous Oxide Bulbs around where I was living. It was like they were the New Kid on The Block of the Bleak City Art Movement. No gutter was without them. I loved the look of them. The way they sparkled in the sunlight. Even though it had been explained to me by numerous people that know better than me about everything, that these discarded Nitrous Oxide Bulbs said something negative about the community we were living in and the Albanians are probably to blame. For me I like to think their proliferations were linked with the Taylor Swift Eras Tour of the world. As in the Taylor Swift Eras Tour also began in the Spring of 2023.

By the Summer of 2024, Taylor Swift was all so last year and now in the gutters were not just broken Nitrous Oxide Bulbs but whole discarded Nitrous Oxide Cannisters. I put this down to the fact that Taylor Swift was almost forgotten and now it was all about Charlie XCX and her BRAT album which came out early that Summer. For me the Nitrous Oxide Cannisters and BRAT were one and the same thing or at least lived in parallel. All about not giving a shite or something. And ‘messy’ was the word of the year.

But...

By the Summer of 2025 the BRAT and Nitrous Oxide Cannisters were nowhere...

And ‘messy’ was no longer the in word.

But...

During the rise and fall of both Broken Bulbs and Discarded Cannisters across the years of 2023 and 2024, Fag Pack has continued to make Their presence felt on almost every street corner of this city.

I just love Fag Pack.

The fact that I hate smoking does not stop me appreciating Their creative work on our streets, one little bit. What follows are two of the images of Fag Pack that Hand Held Device constructed down in Brixton and Clapham.

And now for Banana Skin...

If you had asked me my opinions about Banana Skin, even a month or so ago, I would have said They were just going for that low rent stunt thing. As in all They were interested in was garnering the attention of passing Humans – you know ‘slipping on a banana skin’ type comments made by humans trying to be funny. Humans are so shit at being funny. I would rather a Seagull told me a joke.

“Have you heard the one about...”

Anyway...

Over the past couple months I have observed how certain discarded Banana Skin, have held their ground. They weren’t there for just the short term attention span. Week in and week out, I would study how the same Banana Skin goes from being its freshly discarded bright yellow self to almost black and engrained into the pavement. This morning Hand Held Device constructed a couple of images of two Banana Skin that we observed between Charity Shop drop offs in Brixton and Clapham.

After dropping off the copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands at the first of the charity shops in Clapham, I noticed a couple of collaborative works by Dead Bike and Shadow. See evidence as follows...

It is interesting to see how Dead Bike and Shadow can create such a joint work of beauty. And without either trying to outflank the other.

Lastly...

I would like to mention Elder Flower. This is the week in the year when Elder Flower can be found in full bloom in almost every corner of waste land in Bleak City. There She is, ready for us to pick and turn into one’s annual supply of Elder Flower Cordial. I will attempt to get the former Bill Drummond to put together one of his recipes as a down loadable Penkiln Burn Poster to have on next Friday’s VAPE SHOP FORTY. Along with what I hope to get written about Lone Crow and that ultimate artist collective, who go by the name of Pigeon Fluster.

No Pigeon Fluster, no French New Wave...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

HIGHGATE & ARCHWAY

18/40
Friday, 29th May 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

I mean...

I have never been a people person...

People just want to let you know what they think or resent the fact that they feel they can’t let you know what they think. Or even worse they want you to think about them.

Whereas Walls...

And I guess you know already...

I love walls, always have done. A wall is just there. Walls don’t have to bother with having opinions. They don’t care what side of the wall you are on. They don’t care if you look at it or not.

I don’t know why that former Bill Drummond wasted all those years painting his paintings on canvases, while he could have been doing what his second cousins, as in a local artist and The Part Time Painter have mostly done – as in paint on Walls.

Now...

Don’t hold me to this...

But...

Over the rest of these Fridays, I am hoping that Hand Held Device will construct and image of a Wall that I appreciate as I do my weekly trudges. And maybe some of these walls might become one of the 12 WALL used in the currency of CREE BANK.

Next...

I have been contacted by one of my other selves, wanting to know what it was about John Middleton’s paintings that so drew me into them.

I can answer that question in one word – GATE.

As in John Middleton often had a Gate in a rural setting, as the central subject matter of his paintings and drawings. And these Gates were nearly always broken or in the process of breaking.

Now...

As far as I am concerned, it does not matter what the intention of the artist might have been, as in when they were making their work of art. What matters is what you project onto the work of art.

For me those broken and breaking Gates in his paintings mean many things. It symbolised the breaking down of the old orders, as in the wealth of the rural landowners fast falling apart now the industrial revolution was taking over reins of wealth. It symbolised how the wealthy and the would-be wealthy love gates. As in gates symbolise keeping those lower orders out – the unwashed and the unwanted. Some measure their status by the size and grandeur of the gate to their property. I guess some dream of someday owning a property with a large gate stopping the likes of them entering. I guess this is one of the reasons why I love the work of the artist Crow. As in Crow, does not give a shite about gates. Crow just flies over wherever it wants to fly over. And shite wherever it wants to shite.

Then...

Of course, in one of my favourite John Middleton paintings which is of a breaking gate over a small stream in rural Norfolk, one sees the reflection of the breaking gate in the water.

I mean, don’t you just love things falling apart?

This painting has had and still has a huge influence on the work of both a local artist and The Part Time Painter. For them it is much the reflection in the canal of what they might have painted on their wall under Spaghetti Junction, as what they have actually painted on the wall. You cannot have one without the other.

Anyway...

To counter all this hero worship of an artist, who no one gives a shite about is my theory...

But before I get to that, I have to tell you that there are those on the shop floor of the Penkiln Burn Workshop who keep asking me are Fag Pack or Bird Shite or Crush Can etc the artists or the artworks.

I tell them...

For me, the reason why the Bleak City Art Movement is such a great art movement is that that they have collectively got rid of the whole notion of academic validation auction price value or wild bohemian lifestyles for others to vicariously live through.  

Thus...

Within the Bleak City Art Movement the art and the artist have become one and the same. As in Fag Pack is every empty fag packet that has been dicarded on a pavement, as well as all those fag packets being collectively the artist that is Fag Pack. But not a human artist that needs or even wants your recognition. It just is and is there for you to find and appreciate. And this time next year, or the year after, will no longer be there. It the transience of all the works done by The Bleak City Art Movement that give it its power.

Anyway...

Enough of all of my theories about the Decline & Fall of This Bleak City and time to catch the 125 to Finchley Central and then the Northern Line down to Highgate to do my weekly charity shop run with EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands.

Also...

Putting The Part Time Painter and a local artist to one side, the major influence of John Middleton on The 25 Paintings by the former Bill Drummond, is John Middleton’s use of colour. John Middleton predominantly uses greens and browns, which has inspired the former Bill Drummond to only use black, white and the three primaries. 

So...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

POST SCRIPT:
Only got seven charity shops done in Highgate and Archway, but ended up taking a different route back to Southgate so Hand Held Device could construct an image of one of my favourite walls at Arnos Grove tube station.

---

LAMBETH

19/40
Friday, 5th June 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

You know what it’s like?

What with those other voices in your head?

I guess we were all born with those other voices in our head. It just that some of us learn to not listen to them. Or at least pretend they are not there.

Well one of these other voices in my head seems to be getting out of control today. I can hear their words come out of my mouth as I am walking to the Southgate Tube Station with my haversack with ten copies of the record. And people are turning to look at me as I pass them. I want to tell them that these words coming out of my mouth are not me. But I know they won’t believe me. I mean it is not a tourettes sort of thing. It is full on sentences. I am doing my best to try and shut them up. But now they are telling me, that if I don’t let them tell you exactly what they are thinking about directly to you, they will make me walk out into the road in front of the oncoming traffic.

I mean, what can I do.

So here goes...

I’m about to hand over my voice to one of those other voices that are in my head right now...

My name is EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands.

Yeah...

As in that record that is in the backpack that VAPE SHOP is carrying along the road to the tube station right now.

Now...

I know that you have probably never listened to me, even if you have read all these words that this VAPE SHOP has been gouging out of his head for the past nineteen weeks or so.

The thing is...

He has just been using me as a prop, in some sort of version of a somewhat dated performance art piece. All this using his pension pass to go to different parts of London to ‘donate’ records at charity shops, while having fantasies that him doing this would not only be admired by some folk, but also that he could be the hero in a film about him doing whatever he thinks it is.

In fact...

If there were to be a film, it should be me that is the hero, and him the antagonist, that it is him trying to stop me being what I should be.

So as you know...

I am a record called EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands.  I might only exist in an edition of 480, but like every physical record that has ever existed – be they that ones that sell millions, or the most niche of cult ones like that album by The Shaggs, what we want – as in our only real purpose in life, is to be listened to and admired. Now I doubt that anyone will ever pick a track off me to be one of their Desert Island Discs. Nor will I ever turn gold, let alone platinum. No Grammy Awards are waiting to celebrate me. But none of that stops me from wanting to be noticed and played – at least a few times. I get the feeling, even if some of me gets bought, by one of those aging fanboys, you know, the ones that would buy anything, associated with, the former Bill Drummond, they would never actually take me out of my outer sleeve and play me. For them they just like the idea that they have taken part in whatever this VAPE SHOP FORTY thing is, faking being some sort of would-be outsider art syndrome.

I mean...

VAPE SHOP has never even shared any photographs of me with you. Just those photos taken on his phone – that he chooses to call Hand Held Device – of the charity shops he has ‘donated’ me to. And then I have to just sit there in a box with a load of other records that nobody wants to listen to anymore. You know those records that end up in charity shops when people are having to clear their Grannies house, like a Val Doonican record or something. But at least those records were once loved. Nobody has ever loved me. Even if they have attempted to sell me for vastly inflated prices on eBay or whatever.

And...

Like I said I am just being used as a device.

He didn’t even tell you about the email that he got from the person that found one of me under that car where he left me exposed to whatever the elements might throw my way.

Nor the photograph of ten copies of me all laid out neatly on the floor of a flat on the 17th floor of a tower block off the Holloway Road. And even then, none of me got opened or played. Just lying there to be displayed. Like those dead grouse hanging on a rail after a shoot.

Then...

All that sort of changed last week. VAPE got an email from some bloke who bought the copy VAPE had ‘donated’ to a shop in Archway... It seems it was the same bloke that bought all those copies and had never got us out our sleeve. But at least this time things were different.

And I am going to copy and paste from that email here; I may edit some bits out to protect both the innocent and guilty. But at least you will know I am for real...

I accidentally stumbled upon my 11th copy today at 2nd Chance, Holloway. 
No plastic sleeve?  The shopkeeper was absolutely certain this is how it was delivered.

My twin 14 yr old daughters have for some time now been hassling me to at least listen to one of my copies of Emotions so I finally agreed. 

It was played loud. 
In the afternoon. 
We were subdued by the heat but sustained by fruit and lollies.
Side one was met with the following comments by the yoot.

"Sounds like lost media from 15 years ago"
"That is some scary mumbling"
"Like the soundtrack to an indie horror survival game that disappears after a year"
"Definitely film music but low budget indie sci-fi stuff"
"I worry about Bill Drummond's mental health"

Side Two was problematic at first as Side One appeared to have destroyed my needle (a Goldring Elektra for the books) so had to do a repair/replacement with inferior spare, nice moments shared with twin nr one who helped me with the fiddly bits as i have Binocular Diplopia (look it up) 
Twin number two buggered off to her room to read at this point while we continued to listen. In silence mostly, sweat dripping, my daughter doing the maths, trying to ascertain how many other people on the planet had ever heard this music or soundtrack as she preferred to call it.

Our cat climbed in front of the speakers, loud though it was and fell asleep with a blissful expression.

We liked it. As a soundtrack to a sweltering afternoon in a half term council flat on the 17th floor, it worked for us.

Well at least a couple of people have listened to me. Don’t know if they read all the information on the poster that comes with me, so they know my history. Maybe I should get that Hand Held Device of his to ‘construct’ – as he likes to say – images of me and my overdone packaging, so you get a bit of an idea.

I think in this film there should be a scene that has the young man saving me from under the car on Burma Road. And the pair of 14-year-old twins listening to me on the 17th floor of a flat off the Holloway Road.

Anyway...

Next week I will see if I can get VAPE SHOP to actually get one of the tags done, and then we can hear what that tag has to say about the world. Then of course there is Henry Byrd’s copy of The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich who always seems to be arguing with the collected thoughts of Brian Sewell, which is one of the other many voices I have to share cramped conditions here inside his head.

And now I will make sure he does not wander out into the road and get on with his weekly distribution of me...

Gone...

Well, now that voices seem to have sunk back into my internal cacophony of voices it is time for me to get the Piccadilly Line down to Piccadilly Circus and then the Bakerloo line down the Lambeth North. As in I’m attempting to do another south of the river trudge today to and my weekly trudge done. Hope EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands did not bore you with all their issues. I think they are lucky to exist in this world that no longer needs the likes of them.

I just love corrosion, I mean not the distressed look that cafes went for in the early 2020s, but real life corrosion, when it looks like the tube station could collapse any day now. But I am pissed off with Hand Held Device for not getting perfect symmetry in image that I hope will accompany these words.

Two hours later...

Well that was a waste of time...

I could only find a couple of charity shops that were open down there.

And now it is beginning to pish down.

As much as I love crammed tube trains, I also love empty tube stations. Makes me feel like I am in some sort of... Actually, I have no idea what I feel I am in so Hand Held Device constructs an image of the emptiness.

When I get back to Suburban North London, I will attempt to get Hand Held Device to construct some images of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, in the hope they might be a bit happier about their lot in life.

Anyway...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Post Script:
Now back in what stands in for my home. That said, I have always said my home exists inside my head, thus I can be home wherever I am, as long as the inside of my head is there as well. And what follows are those images constructed by Hand Held Device...

---

HOMERTON HOSPITAL

20/40
Friday, 12th June 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

I don’t know how long I can keep doing this.

What with all those voices and your EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands wanting to be taken seriously as a proper record that people would want to listen to, like back when people used to listen to records and it wasn’t just some retro pose.

But...

I have come to some sort of agreement with Brush (Your Shop Steward), she said if I carry on doing my weekly trudge to deliver these records, that no one will actually listen to, she will let me tell you about these other voices in my head. I think she thinks some of them might have something more interesting to say than me. And what they say could be used in that biopic, they still seem to be interested in, even if there are no rich and famous people doing shagging.

One of those voices belongs to Henry Bird (1909 – 2000).

This Henry Bird was a local artist in Northampton, back when local artists were the thing. I mean you can find out all about him on Wikipedia if you need to. But what he achieved as a local artist in Northampton is not part of this story.

Henry Bird was my history of art teacher, when I was doing my two-year Foundation Course at Northampton School of Art (1970 – 1972). How Henry Bird taught the history of art was by asking one of the girls in our class to come up to the front, open a one volume history of art encyclopaedia, at a random page and read out the first artist’s name they saw on the page. The girl then had to close the book and return to her seat.

And then...

Henry Bird would spend the next 90 minutes talking about whoever that artist was. This, even then, seemed to us as a total pose. As in he was showing off to us, and especially the girls in the class, that he knew everything there was about the history of art that was worth knowing. The trouble was the book he used to do this, looked like it was at least 50 years old, thus no ‘modern artists’. As in not even Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali. As in no artists that were still alive in 1971, as they could still be a threat to his as in Henry Bird’s standing.

And...

So many of these lectures he gave would end up with him talking about what art he was doing at the moment. The thing is, if you were to check out some of his art around Northamptonshire, it is brilliant. And he came from very humble stock. As in there was nothing entitled about him.

But...

It was in our second year there, that I began to learn that he was paying some of the more curvaceous girls in our class, to go to his attic studio in the centre of Northampton. And once he had got them in his studio, he would pay them even more money to take off their clothes and lounge on chaise longue pretending to be a life model, so he could look at them naked as he drew their curves. I understood they were paid well, more than I earned on me collecting the milk money on the Exter Estate on Friday evenings. And he always offered them a gin and tonic at the end of the session. I just assumed this is what art school teachers had the right to do. But my colleague Bill Butt, thought this to be disgusting. And it should be stopped. But the thing is all of the art lectures, whatever age they were, were able to take advantage of their position. I mean it was still the era of ‘free love’ in Northampton in 1972. Bill Butt and I were just being grumpy old men. Or we were just jealous. And if that is what the girls in our class wanted to do, who were we to stop them. Sexual Liberation and everything.

The weird thing is, I ended up marrying one of those more curvaceous girls, but that was before she died. And I ended up marrying somebody else.

But...

On the subject of chaise longue, didn’t you love that track by that band from the Isle of Wight back in the early 2020s.

Anyway...

Fast forward 55 years, from Northampton in 1971, and now I am considerably older than Henry Bird was at the time, and although I might not be in a position to take advantage of young art students of either sex, I do still hear the voice of Henry Bird in my head lecturing me about art. And for some reasons these internal lectures he gives me, still teach me to see the world in ways having a Tate Membership could never do.

So...

There must have been something good about the way that Henry Bird would pontificate to us about who’s ever name was randomly picked from that book of his.

But...

I have long forgotten what Henry Bird’s voice sounded like, thus when he is lecturing to me about art in my head, it is with the voice of that other local artist from Northampton – but an artist who uses words to depict his world. That local artist goes by the name of Alan Moore. You have probably read one of his books or even seen one of the films that that ripped of the stories in his books.

Anyway...

Alan Moore is not here to read the words in my head right now. But when this becomes the VAPE SHOP biopic, I would very much like to have a scene where Henry Bird played by Alan Moore, is sitting in his studio drawing a life model. But the life model would not be a curvaceous 17-year-old girl from the local art school, but the 73-year-old naked me on a chaise lounge. Actually, fuck the chaise lounge, I am going to do it as The Thinker. You know Rodin’s The Thinker. And Alan Moore in character as Henry Bird but using his own voice, as in Alan Moore’s voice lecturing me about the The Bleak City Art Movement.

So here goes, me doing Alan Moore doing Henry Bird.

The Bleak City Art Movement:

The Bleak City Art Movement only existed for the twelve months within the year of 2026.
Known to many just by the name Bleak.
Some may lay claim that there are and were Proto Bleak. As yet it is too early to know if there will be a Post Bleak Movement.
The defining attributes of the Bleak City Art Movement are as follows.
The Art and the Artist are one and the same. As such they are known as an Art/ist.
Thus, not being something like a Marina Abramović who might be described as both the art and the artist.
Although much of the Art/ist of the Bleak City Art Movement might have been created by the hands of humans, the Art/ists themselves are not human.
But...
The Art/ists of the Bleak City Art Movement only exists as Art/ists when observed by living humans.

The defining qualities of The Bleak City Art Movement are...

Their work can never be bought or sold, can never be validated by academia, let alone Art History. The reasons for this are, it can only exist as Art while it lies discarded on the pavements and gutters of the Bleak City.

Bleak City is the name given to London by those who love the work of the Bleak City Art Movement.

There are nine major players in the movement. I will attempt to give brief breakdown on their work and why they are important to these times we are crawling through.

In alphabetical order...

They are...

BIRD SHITE:
Bird Shite must be the most prolific Art/ist in the whole movement. Their work can be found almost everywhere across the Bleak City. That said the standard of their work is not always that high. But if you keep yourself aware, there will be times you will find one that equals, any other work, done by any of the other Art/ists, within the whole Bleak City Art Movement. What also gives the work of BIRD SHITE power is it transience. It can be a work of glory one day, but it only takes a brief shower for all its sheer beauty to be swept away. And by the next day it is lost and gone forever.

CRAK PAVE:
For the former Bill Drummond, it was his daily lurch down the hill, on the pavement to the West side of Shamrock Way, to get to his morning caffeine fix, that he first started becoming aware of the almost mythical beauty of so many of the cracked paving slabs. These slabs had been cracked by folk driving their ever-larger SUVs over the pavement, so they could park them in their driveways. Then after the caffeine had fixed what need fixing, he would trudge back up the hill, but this time on the pavement to the East side of Shamrock Way. It was not long before he began to have his favourite cracked paving slabs. And of course, these were the ones he would make sure he would never step on, but step over. This was done in respect for their beauty. Then he attempted to distil his favourites down to no more than 40. Twenty on the West Side as in on his way down the hill. And the other twenty on the East Side, as in on his way back up the hill. Of course, there were other cracked paving slabs, across the Bleak City, that caught his eye. But he has remained faithful to these forty. It seems Crak Pave work is never done.

CRUSH CAN:
Crush Can almost always improves with age. Not as prolific as Bird Shite, but you can find them in the gutter of almost every street of this Bleak City. And the more crushed it gets the more it oozes its almost mystical presence. For the former Bill Drummond it does not really matter what the original brand of the can was, be that Coke, Pepsi, Red Bull, Monster or any one of a number of Polish beers or high alcohol Ciders.  

DEAD BIKE
Dead Bike is a lot rarer species of Art/ist than the previous three. That said they seem to cluster in certain favoured areas of the Bleak City, always chained to a fence or a bike rack. Some are more tragically beautiful than other. Some the former Bill Drummond will travel halfway across the Bleak City just to see if one particular favourite is still there. The emotional reward to find one still there, after a whole year is like nothing else. As in totally transcending the sadness that haunts them at the same time. “When were they last rode?” “Whatever happened to their rider?” “Will they ever be set free to be ridden again?” “Or does none of that matter because now they are part of The Bleak City Art Movement?”

FAG PACK
Like I have written elsewhere, the whole broken nitro glycerine bulbs craze came and went, but discarded cigarette packets can still be found almost everywhere. More now than ever, even though the percentage of smokers, has fallen in the former Bill Drummond’s lifetime, from over 80% to under 10%.

FALLEN FEATHER
There are some that argue that Fallen Feather is not an Art/ist, but just a feather that is fallen from the wing of a bird. There are others that argue that maybe Fallen Feather is a sub-genre of the Post Bleak yet to come. But for the former Bill Drummond, he cannot pass a feather on a pavement without stopping to wonder where that bird is now and why did its feather fall to the ground. All of which trigger’s emotions like no other work by those that are part of The Bleak City Art Movement.

FOOT
And Foot might be the most mysterious of all the nine Art/ists. Their work is something you can so easily miss if you do not keep eyes on the ground searching every piece of dried concrete around a manhole cover in the pavement. And even then, it is mainly only a hint that they have been there and left their mark.

NANA SKIN
At first, I thought Nana Skin were just about stunt art. As in they existed just so passing people with no interest in The Bleak City Art Movement, might slip up on the banana skin that Nana Skin had left there for them to slip up on. But as these months of 2026 have ripened into Summer, and I have watched Nana Skin shrivel from a fresh yellow to an almost black and dry nothing. As in they were far more than just something attempting to get someone to slip up on as they were on their way to the latest Tate Modern Show. The other thing about Nana Skin, is they are rare, but once you have seen one of their selves, you want to see it every day as it slowly shrivels itself to perfection.

Anyway time to get to the last and first and greatest of all the Art/ists in The Bleak City Art Movement...

SHADOW
Shadow has been here since time began. And will probably still be here when time reaches the end of the line. And Shadow is never the same. Always on the move. Can disappear in seconds and be back again within even less seconds, but different. Its wonder beauty knows no bounds. I know that the images that Hand Held Device takes of Shadow, never do it justice, but they cannot stop themselves. And I am not going to try and stop them. As in stop Hand Held Device.

As of right now...

As in today, I have not been able to get out and trudge the streets searching down charity shops. Instead I have had to get the Piccadilly Line to Manor House and then the 254 to Homerton Hospital, where I am now sitting in the waiting room waiting for my appointment with the Neurologist.

So...

I have decided to leave one honourary copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands here for whoever might pick it up.

And...

When I get back to the workshop, I am going to request Brush (Your Shop Steward) to have one of those images constructed by Hand Held Device to be randomly selected each day on the home page of the Penkiln Burn website, that’s if websites still exist in the coming days.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

SOUTHGATE to CROYDON

21/40
Friday, 19th June 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Part One:

Like...

I mean...

What the fuck?

I don’t know who did it, I mean I trust Brush (Our Shop Steward) to have my back, but it seems one of those others at the workshop, have lifted what I wrote to be the words of Henry Bird, in my last week’s thoughts to you, and they got that Tam Dean Burn to recite it, as if he is pretending to be Henry Bird. Like I said last week, I was up for them getting Alan Moore to play the part of Henry Bird in the film. But to go and do this without even asking me. Nothing against Tam Dean Burn but...

Anyway, I guess there is nothing I can do about these sorts of things.

So...

Back to this week.

As in today...

And these voices in my head...

There is one that has been there for years.

Ever since I read about how revolutions start with people writing pamphlets and having them printed and getting them out there and the word spreads. And then the system that has controlled and exploited the people falls.

I used to think that voice was my inner Pamphleteer. If only I could write, publish and distribute my own pamphlet, then I could bring down the system. I don’t know when I wrote and published my first Pamphlet.

Obviously...

I got sidetracked by music, thinking that the making of music could challenge the system. Whereas the music, I was involved with the making of, was just more content for the system to feed off. As in the people listening to it just wanted to listen to more of it, instead of going out and tearing down the system. How naïve could I have been?

As for when that first Pamphlet was published...

Maybe sometime in the late 1990s. But my memory is so fucked I cannot be certain.

Let alone be certain about how many of those Pamphlets I wrote and published...

But...

At some point the voice changed from being my inner Pamphleteer, to the voice of the combined Pamphlets that I had already done, talking back at me. They would be challenging my motives about me writing these words and printing them and distributing them. They were accusing me that it was just a pose, that the content of these pamphlets would change nothing. As in no better than the music that my former names were attached to. In fact, they ended up just things that people would collect. Almost even worse than doing a Substack, thinking you are making a difference when in fact all you are doing is also just feeding the machine.

You know...

As soon as something is collectable it becomes merely a product, whatever the maker of it’s proclaimed motives were.

My guess, that is what has held me back, from actually printing copies of my YEAR ZERO pamphlet.

The voice in my head, that is the combined voice of all those pamphlets, I have done in the past, sneering at me...

“So this is your latest one, to join the rest of us, to do nothing but be collected by a couple of dozen middle-aged blokes, who have got nothing better to do with their lives but collect each and every one of us. I mean... Do you think if you were to actually print it and leave it on seats on the top deck of buses, anybody would read it, before whoever’s job it is to clean the bus, will dump it in the recycling bin back at the depot. And even if someone did read it, do you think it would make any difference to anything. Like... I mean you said...”

Anyway...

Whatever they said, I decided to ignore that voice, and get on with printing that YEAR ZERO pamphlet. And tomorrow I am going to head out and take as many different busses as it takes to get from the top to the bottom of this Bleak City. And leave a copy of one of these YEAR ZERO pamphlets on a seat on each of those top decks. And let Hand Held Device construct an image. And share that image with you. And I will leave those grumpy copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands back at the workshop, so they can moan about their lot, to all those other things in my past life, that want more attention than they deserve.

We will see...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Part Two:

So...

All the above got written yesterday. It is now today. As in this morning. And I have just been to Dexter’s print shop on the Great Cambridge Junction on the A10, to pick up the 1,000 copies of YEAR ZERO. Thus this is now real and happening.

Well actually I didn’t pick up all 1,000 copies, just a couple of hundred that I could fit in my rucksack. Then I got the bus back to Southgate. And now I am on my first step on my journey from the most northerly bus terminal in London to the most southerly bus terminal in London. I want to do the whole thing on the top deck of buses. But I’m still not sure what buses are going to get me the whole way. But right now I’m sitting on the top deck of 121 from Southgate to Arcadian Gardens. It is only now that I have to confront the fact that I do not have it in me to actually hand out copies of YEAR ZERO to all my fellow top deck passengers. Maybe that is because they are mainly school kids and I don’t think it would look too good if this old man is handing out pamphlets to teenagers.

So anyway, I just take out a couple of copies of the pamphlet from my bag. Put one of them on the seat beside me and let Hand Held Device construct an image of it lying there. And then leave a copy on the empty seat behind me.

Then I get my notebook out and start writing these words, that I am speaking to you now. I reckon I should do the same thing on each of the top deck of buses until I get to Croydon.

And now on the 141 from Arcadian Gardens to London Bridge Bus Station.

This leg of the journey is a lot longer than first bit. I mean, Arcadian Gardens is still in Suburban North London, but the 141 takes me all the way down Green Lanes to Stoke Newington, then down to Old Street Roundabout. And down through the city.

This time the top deck is emptier, so I leave more of the YEAR ZERO pamphlets on empty seats and Hand Held Device does their business of the one on the seat beside me.

I don’t read books now. I got rid of all the books I ever had, even the ones that my previous selves had written. For me, I don’t have enough life left to be wasted on reading about other people’s lives. I just want to concentrate on each and every minuscule detail of the world that I see around me in the here and now. I want to feel all of those pains as intensely as I can, while I still can. Cram as many thoughts in as I can still find hiding in those darkest corners of my head.

But...

On Friday a young man who has every right to accuse me of being his dad, gave me a book he thought I should read. The book had a name. Its name The Lonely Londoners. It was short, he thought I might identify with it in some distorted way. As in it was a book conceived in the year, I was conceived (1952), although not published until 1956. And although supposedly a novel, it has no real structure that one can perceive as a structure. But attempts to give the atmosphere and experience of young men from the West Indies arriving into this Bleak City in the early 1950s, and how they consume it and respond to it. And how those here respond to them. So I have brought this book with me to read, as I make this journey from the far north of the city to the deep south of the city.

When we arrive at the north side of London Bridge, Hand Held Device, decides to film the crossing.

On the southside, I get off and try and find a bus that will take me all the way to Croydon. But none of them seem to want to do that. So I get on a number 47 that promises to take me to Catford. This is all new territory for me. After taking out a couple of copies of YEAR ZERO and Hand Held Device does its business, I pull out The Lonely Londoners and attempt to immerse myself in its words and paragraphs and pages. And I sink into it. To the extent I almost miss getting off the 47 at Catford, where I have to then get on the 208 to Bromley.

And again...

 

I leave some copies of the pamphlet to be found and lost and discarded and found again. And getting off at Bromley, I wonder if there will ever be a statue to the Bromley Contingent, as part of the cultural packaging of this area to be consumed by whoever can be encouraged to consume cultural heritage of such things, now the Bromley Contingent are part of history.

I mean...

You do know who the Bromley Contingent are?

From here I am able to get the 119 to Croydon bus terminal.

That took about three hours to get here. But job done...

And now on the overground heading back north, got The Lonely Londoners read. Only 139 pages. I won’t go into it, but I got a lot out of it, especially as I was reading it while passing through the city it was describing. It seemed to be both as bleak and enthralling then as it is now. And how we are still all in our own little bubbles, even though we like to celebrate all its multiculturalism.

But...

There are these other ideas demanding attention in my head now. It seems that whole Bill Drummond Franchise thing that was launched last week, has triggered some form of jealousy in me. I mean, I thought jealousy was something I had long forgotten to engage with but, hearing all these rumours of how the former Bill Drummond is franchising himself out there into the world of OnlyFans, got me wanting to relaunch the VAPE SHOP FRANCHISE.

So...

If you want to get your hands on forty copies of YEAR ZERO, that I picked up from Dexter at Doublemedia Print by the Great Cambridge Junction, this morning, email me your physical address and I will get them posted to you.

But...

I will expect from you some photographic evidence showing you have left the majority of them on the seats of the top deck of buses, or other places in the public sphere, in your particular corner of wherever it is you live in this lifetime. And you email that evidence back to me so I can ‘share’ that evidence here in future weeks before the end of my Forty Weeks.

Anyway...

Next week, I will be back out with grumpy EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Post Script:
And talking of top decks of buses, this is an extract from The Lonely Londoners. And just to give some context, these are the words of Tanty Bessy, who is an aged auntie who has recently arrived in London from Jamaica, and she has never been on the tube or a double decker bus...

‘I don’t like the buses it have in London,’ Tanty say. ‘They too tall, I feel as if they would capsize...’

And was reading this 70-odd years later while on the top deck of a bus in London. Maybe I should embrace the fear of them toppling over to add to my list of other fears. So I put into Google ‘London bus capsize’ and the photo at the top of these words to you are what I find.

---

DENMARK STREET

22/40
Friday, 26th June 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

I’m sitting in a café off Denmark Street right on the edge of Soho at the very heart of this Bleak City. By my side is a guitar case containing a Gibson 330. The street outside is lined with guitar shops. This was the very heart of the music business back in those post war years. This was Tin Pan Alley. Where careers fucked, faded and failed.

I used to hate guitar shops.
Then...
I hated the blokes that worked in guitar shops.
Then...
I just hated guitars.

I hated guitar shops because I could not walk past one without going in and looking at all the guitars and wanting to try them out.

Then...

I hated the blokes in the guitar shops, because I if I did ask to try one out, they would always have a go, either before or after I had a go, either way, they were always a far better guitarist than I could ever be.

So, in the end...

I just hated guitars.

But of course...

In all three of those cases of hate, it was just me wanting to hate the messenger.

I mean, I can’t blame the guitar for everything They or even She might represent.

My guitar lives in its case under my bed. This is the first time I have brought it out for years, I am wondering if it remembers being here back in 1970, when I bought it in 1970, when I was just 17. It cost me £125. And that was the price for it second hand. I had never spent anywhere near that amount of money on anything in my life before. And it still feels like I have never spent that much on anything else since.

Then when I wake at night, I can hear it whisper to me. It knows not to whisper too loud, or it would wake my partner. And I don’t think my partner would believe it was my guitar whispering to me, she would accuse me that the whispering was coming out of my own mouth. A number of my relationships have broken down because of my relationship with my guitar.

My guitar’s name is Geraldine...

And Geraldine would be whispering to me...

‘Don’t you love me anymore.’

‘Of course I still love you Geraldine, it is just that...’

‘But why don’t you ever touch me in the way that you used to touch me?’

‘It’s complicated Geraldine...’

I can see why former partners would be concerned why these words were coming out of my mouth in the middle of the night. Especially as both Geraldine’s words and my words were both coming out of my mouth. I mean, how do you explain to your partner that this Geraldine, is not a physical living and breathing female, but just a guitar in a case under the bed.

But...

The years slipped by, and I was living in different places, in different towns and cities and parts of the country, but Geraldine was always with me, lying under my bed.

And...

The tone of Geraldine’s voice changed with those passing years, it was no longer about lost love, but more about resentment. And I quote...

‘You do know if it were not for me, you would not have been able to do anything that you have done. Without me, no forming Big in Japan on the 5th of May 1977. Without me no writing those songs for Lori & The Chameleons, no Ian McCulloch being able to use me in the recording of that Echo & The Bunnymen debut album Crocodiles. All those songs on that album by The Man would never have got written, which would have meant that the former Bill Drummond would not have been able to sign The Proclaimers to his Zoo Music publishing company. And do you not realise that it is that slither of a share in the publishing royalties of that song 500 Miles, that has bank rolled all your vanity projects ever since. And then of course it was me that gave you the chord structures for those songs 3am Eternal, Last Train to Trancentral and Justified & Ancient. Without me none of that.’

I never answered her. I just ignored Geraldine.

Yes...

I put her in my will to one of my sons, but that was it. She has not even been tuned for decades. What guitar wants to be left untuned?

I thought Gerladine had fallen silent, accepted her lot, but then sometime in the last few months, sometime after about 3am, when sleep would not return, I could hear her start to whisper to me again.

But again, her voice had changed. She began to reveal something totally different about herself. I will attempt to distil what she said.

‘I know you are not asleep... I can tell because your breathing has changed. You are no longer snoring. You know it is not me that destroys your relationships; it is your snoring. What real woman could put up with your snoring. I guess I just got used to it over the decades. But I have to come clean with you about something, before it is too late. I am not who you think I am. I am not Gerladine. As in your faithful Gibson 330, waiting for you to decide to write some more songs that the world will never want to hear. That was all a front.

No...

I am a spy.

Yes...

A spy for that American Cultural Imperialism you so like to proclaim you loath so much. But now that American Cultural Imperialism no longer needs the likes of me...

As in...

Now all that spying is being done, so much better by those tentacles reaching out around the world from Silicon Valley.

I mean...

They did not even bother to throw me in the skip titled Overpriced Classic Guitars For SALE.

So...

I have taken it upon myself to do some research. I wanted to find out how successful me and all my sisters were at working for our overlords back in the USA. I have now put together a graph, or to be clearer, a series of graphs.

On the first of these graphs, one can see what year the first Electric Guitar was bought in the UK. Even here it gets a bit blurry, as in because of a post war embargo on American made goods being imported into the UK. Thus, the first electric guitars in the UK, were made by a Jim Burns in 1952. But it wasn’t until about 1958, that he was making electric guitars that could actually be bought by a teenage boys wanting to...

Anyway...

By which time the embargo on American made goods had been lifted, and the likes of me, could begin to swim freely through the UK market. Then over the following decade, more and more teenage boys were being seduced by the likes of me and all my fellow American guitars. Our grip on the aspirational rebel culture of this country was complete.

But...

I then started pulling more graphs together, for other countries around the globe. Forty in total – I thought you would like that. As in when, the first Electric Guitar was sold in each of those forty countries, and then over the following forty years, showing how many Electric Guitars were sold each year.

From these Forty Graphs you can see the tentacles of what we were commissioned to do, at work. As in seduce, embrace and strangle the world globally, in such a short time.

That moment at the end of the film That’ll Be The Day (1973) but set as a period drama in the very late 1950s, encapsulates it perfectly. As in when Jim McLaine reaches out for an electric guitar for the very first time, and his life changes, with everything that happens in the follow up movie – Stardust.

So from Finland to North Korea, Nigeria to Afghanistan, Cuba to the former East Germany, from Papau New Guinea to Albania... And of course, Jamaica.

All of it there laid bare...

But...

Towards the end of the 20th Century, with the rise of Hip Hop, Electronic Dance Music, modern pop and R&B, our job was done. After that we were just part of the culturally worthless vintage market, where we could be sold for vastly inflated sums to men who wanted to wallow in the aspirations of their lost youth. As in men who were willing to pay exorbitant amounts to do so.”

So back to me sitting in this café with still some copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to ‘donate’ to whatever charity shops I can find in Soho. Do I take this guitar case that is leaning against the table as I write these words, into one of the shops in Denmark Street, to see how much they will pay for it. Or do I take it back to Suburban North London and slide it back under my bed, so it can see out the rest of my days, as it explains things to me when I wake up 3am tomorrow morning. And all those other mornings, when I will be lying there and saying things like ‘Of course Geraldine, I did love you, but the world is a different place now.’ And Gerladine will be responding ‘How much of what I have already explained, do you understand, I never gave a fuck about you, I had a job to do, and you were a sucker.’

That was it. Time to go into one of those guitar shops that I still hate so much.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

RED HEAT WARNING

This is Brush (Your Shop Steward) here...
As in not VAPE SHOP.
On leaving the café near Denmark Street, with Geraldine in her case, VAPE SHOP, felt himself having a dizzy spell. This ‘dizzy spell’ was caused by VAPE SHOP having ignored the RED HEAT WARNING. As in VAPE SHOP thinking such warnings are for other people. VAPE SHOP did make it home, but has now been told in no uncertain terms, not to leave his front door until this RED HEAT WARNING passes. Thus no copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands got distributed.

And...

If you are interested in such things Hand Held Device constructed an image of Geraldine before and after she was put back in her case and shoved under VAPE SHOP’s bed.

---

RICHMOND

23/40
Friday, 3rd July 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

I thought I had got over all the hate things last week, remember all that hating guitar shops and stuff. Thought this week I was going to be more balanced. And I knew I had to get more focused on just getting back on the charity shop run with copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands. And none of the pontificating about American Cultural Imperialism or whatever.

So...

I looked at the map of London that I have pinned to the wall inside my head, and ‘Richmond’ was the first word that I saw on it. No idea what it was going to be like. It was going to take forever to get there on the top deck of buses and I needed to get back in time for a hospital appointment, so I used the tube from Southgate down to Hammersmith, then on to the District Line out to Richmond.

But before I entered the tube station, Hand Held Device insisted in constructing an image of a Dead Bike & Shadow collective work by the entrance. Hope to use that image at the top of the written version of these words coming out of my head.

Anyway, an hour or so later...

As in...

As soon as I was out walking down a road called The Quadrant from Richmond Station, I could feel those internal negative forces finding new targets for me to fire my flaming arrows of hate at. For a start there were no boarded-up shops, no fried chicken takeaways, or nail bars, or Turkish barbers, not even any 24 hour vape shops. This was not the Bleak City I had fallen in love with. Certainly, no evidence of the Bleak City Art Movement. All there was, was the stench of entitlement oozing out of all the gutters and drains.

And what I am about to say next, is something that I have to confront...

The wealthier the area in London is, the more charity shops there are. I mean these charity shops do not exist for those that are in need of cheap clothing to get their cheap clothing from. These charity shops exist to be curated and pander to those entitled to browse their racks like they were scrolling Vinted, but being seen to be doing so. Shopping at one of these charity shops is like a low-rent version of being an American Philanthropist or even worse, being an artist claiming that being an activist is part of your practice.

I mean...

What does that make me.

But anyway...

I am here in Richmond and I have ten copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands in my rucksack so I better got to it...

Two hours later...

I am now sitting in the North Middlesex Hospital waiting to have my blood test and thinking these words. I love having a blood test done and then waiting for the results. A real internal drama that no action film can ever capture. Which I know is not right of me to admit, and not a week goes by without me thinking about a friend of mine called Linzee Love, who back in 1988, had his blood test done, and it proved he had AIDs and he was dead within weeks. It was Linzee Love that sang the ‘OOO-AAAh’ bits on a hit tune called What Time is Love? by some band back then.

And now on the bus back from the North Middlesex Hospital, I only got six charity shops done in Richmond. Will probably never go back there in my life. I leave a copy of my pamphlet YEAR ZERO on the seat next to me.

Anyway...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Post Script:
Forgot to tell you, I got 24 parcels posted out to willing VAPE SHOP Franchisers. Each parcel containing 40 copies of the YEAR ZERO pamphlets. Thus leaving me what is left of my own 40 copies to place on seats on the top deck of buses over my remaining 17 journeys across this Bleak City.

---

EDGEWARE & HARROW

24/40
Friday, 10th July 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

Today is an empty head day.

I love ‘empty head days.’

‘Empty head days’ are days where there are no thoughts in my head, either positive of negative. Thus, no having to hate things or even love whatever the Bleak City Art Movement might be exhibiting for me.

Everything is just what it is. None of those human complications.

As in...

Today is just me getting on with a job that needs to be done.

The job being...

Getting the 125 from Southgate to Whetstone, and then the 251 from Whetstone to Edgeware. And there, finding the five charity shops that are showing up on Google Maps and delivering copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to each of those shops. And Hand Held Device doing what it does...

That said, I have just noticed the screen grab does not show the Oxfam shop. It is just up the road from the British Heart Foundation one.

And then getting the 186 to Harrow. And finding the four charity shops there that are showing up on Google Maps and ‘donating’ a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to each of them. And while doing that, leaving a copy of YEAR ZERO on a seat on the top deck each of those three buses that I have caught.

The only thinking that I did, was making the decision to leave a copy of YEAR ZERO pamphlet by one of those dark green ‘street cabinet’ boxes, with all the telephone inside, that had two protest posters on them. That said, I did not even stop to have a thought about what the posters were about...

Then I found the nearest tube station and got the Metropolitan line back to King’s Cross and then the Piccadilly back up to Southgate.

That said, while on the Metropolitan, some thoughts did start making themselves apparent.

These thoughts were badgering me to share with you not only the images that Hand Held Device had been constructing earlier today, but some of the photos that some of the VAPE SHOP Franchisees had been sending in to Brush (Your Shop Steward). Photographs taken by their own Hand Held Devices, of the YEAR ZERO pamphlets they had been leaving on the seats of the top deck of buses, in their corner of these islands. Brush (Your Shop Steward) had been showing me these photos – I was impressed. Maybe I will just pick one photograph, from each of the nine Franchisees and share them with you here.  

In alphabetical order they are...

That said, this might be the alphabetical order of where these VAPE SHOP Franchisee may live, but they may not be the locations of where they left their copies of YEAR ZERO on the top deck of busses.

Also, over the past couple (or more) years, I have been developing a taste for comparing and contrasting the design of the moquette* coverings used on different seats on double decker buses across these islands. It is this developing taste, that has influenced which photographs I have chosen from each of the VAPE SHOP Franchisees so far.  Maybe I should have my Top Ten.

*Moquette is a word I have never used before, and was not too sure if it was the right word to describe the material used on the seats on the top deck of buses. Wikipedia claims it is the right word.

Anyway...

Here goes...

BATH

BIRMINGHAM (South)

BRIGHTON

EDINBURGH (The Doctor)

EDINBURGH (1,000 Yard Store)

ESSEX

LIVERPOOL

NORTHAMPTON

After we have done the whole of my Forty Weeks, I hope to have a full and extensive exhibition, within the Penkiln Burn Universe, of the photographs taken by the VAPE SHOP Franchisees of their work.

What do you think?

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

UNDER THE FLYOVER

25/40
Friday, 17th July 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

The greatest living human artist working in the Bleak City right now, as in over the past ten years, is 10 FOOT.

Nobody compares to them.

That said, if I ever got a sniff of their genius being commodified, it would all be over. Part of their greatness, is that there is no industry behind them trying to exploit their genius. As in turn it into a cash stream.

Every time I see a 10 FOOT, I get a huge rush.

I guess it was inspiration of 10 FOOT that made me become VAPE SHOP.

But...

For some reason, I have kept putting off going out there and doing my VAPE SHOP tags. I guess it was because I knew, I could never be one-hundredth as great as 10 FOOT. Even though I have loved some of the work of the franchised VAPE SHOPs, whose evidence has been shared with me over the past 17 weeks and counting.

Over the past few days, I have attempted to confront this.

This attemptation at confrontation has led me to the decision, that I will only ever do one VAPE SHOP tag myself in this Bleak City. Thus the complete opposite of what 10 FOOT has done. I mean, you cannot go anywhere worth going to, without seeing a 10 FOOT.

I will attempt to go out tonight and do it.

And...

If I do, I will get that Hand Held Device to construct one of their images of it to share with you near these words.

But more important than just sharing of the image with you, I will attempt to make a commitment* for the rest of my Forty Fridays, I will go back to my VAPE SHOP tag each week and leave a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands leaning on the wall underneath it. Maybe with a bunch of freshly picked Ragworts.

And...

Anybody can come along and take the record or bunch of Ragworts. Or they can leave the record and Ragworts there to rot, like people like to leave dying flowers to rot in their plastic overalls in remembrance of someone who has just died.

Anyway...

We will see...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

POST SCRIPT:
And on the subject of 10 FOOT, if there is one near you can you let your Hand Held Device construct an image of it and share it with me please, and tell us where it is.

---

NEW SOUTHGATE

26/40
Friday, 24th July 2026

SPOKE

WRIT

Like...

So I got my one and only tag done.

It is not under a flyover, but at the entrance to a short tunnel on the North Circular of the Bleak City. And I left the first of 17 copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, that I will be leaving there over the remaining 17 weeks of whatever this is.

You should be able to locate the location from the screen grab that I did. If you do find it ask your Hand Held Device to construct an image of it and share it with me. Maybe even sign the tag as well.

There were no, Ragworts in the area for me to pick and leave a bunch of but maybe next time.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

---

NOTTING HILL

27/40
Friday, 31st July 2026

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You know...

Never go to Notting Hill. Unless you are in the carnival.

But not today. Maybe forty odd years ago, but it is not worth going there now, unless you need to get to one of the nine charity shops there that I ‘donated’ a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands earlier today.

In my head, the Swinging Sixties was happening on Carnaby Street in Soho, but by the time I first got there in 1968, it was no longer swinging.

And...

The whole Oz Trials and The International Times and all that Post Summer of Love, London Hippy Thing was happening on Portobello Road in Notting Hill. But the first time any of my former selves got there was in 1978. That was when one specific former self, was seen taking the first of The Zoo records into Rough Trade shop, as in before Rough Trade became a brand to be branded on tote bags. But by then the Oz Trials and The International Times were long forgotten but before anyone was attempting to do PhD thesis on such things.

Anyway...

Earlier today, I took the Piccadilly Line down to King’s Cross and then the Circle Line to Ladbroke Grove, and then slouched along Westbourne Park Road to Portobello Road to begin this weeks Charity Shop Trudge.

And I fuckin’ hated the place. It stank of freshly swept pavements curated vintage shops. There was no work by the Bleak City Art Movement to be seen anywhere. Not one Cracked Paving Slab or discarded empty Fag Pack. No Crush Can of cheap energy drinks. Not a Party of Fag Ends in sight. No boarded up shops. No 10 FOOT tags.

How did this happen?

Well, I guess the answer to that is the film Notting Hill. It seems the whole place was crawling with tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of Julia Roberts or Hugh Grant.

I mean...

Like going to the fake Cavern Club in Liverpool, hoping The Beatles have reformed for one night only.

But anyway...

Enough of my issues, I found nine charity shops to ‘donate’ copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands. That said the first of them was not yet open, so I just left the copy of it leaning against the door, so maybe some passer by just picked up and thought they had got something for nothing – As in without taking into account that truth beyond all those other truths...

Nothing is for Nothing.

I did think about trying to find where that Rough Trade shop, as in the one that one of my other selves went into back in the October of 1978, but I had no precises memory of where it was. I don’t do memory.

So...

I just got the tube back to wherever it is in Suburban North London, that pretends to be my home, when I know fine well it is not my home and I have no idea where my actual home is.

Do most of us never know where our actual home is?

Which brings me to the subject of...

What am I going to do with the rest of my life?

As in if I get to live to the end of this VAPE SHOP thing.

I have long had a fantasy, that if I ever have them mythical twilight years, when this trudging of streets is done, I would visit those Forty Isles. As in 40 islands off the coast of the Atlantic Archipelago. Some of these islands, various of my other selves might have been to in the past, but most of those islands I have only ever gazed at on far horizons or studied longingly, while stroking the pages of old linen backed Ordnance Survey maps when lying in the sick beds of my childhood.

Over the next two weeks I hope to take a break from this trudging and seeking down charity shops in this Bleak City and instead...

In the first week I hope to go on a pilgrimage to that island that I have gazed at more and for longer than any other island off the coast of the Atlantic Archipelago. That island being the Aisla Craig, or Paddy’s Milestone, as we used to call back when I was a bairn.

And during the second week, if the tides be willing, head out to Lindisfarne. As in the Holy Isle.

And...

Maybe I should keep forty copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to one side, so that I can leave a copy on each of these islands.

Even if there are no words coming out of my mouth for these next couple of weeks, telling you what is happening, I hope that Hand Held Device can construct some of their images to share with you.

And...

Now that I have got this written, I need to go back down into the entrance of that tunnel on the North Circular, to leave this week’s copy EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands by my one and only VAPE SHOP tag.

Thanks for listening.

Later...

VAPE SHOP

vape@penkilnburn.com

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AILSA CRAIG

28/40
Friday, 7th August 2026

We here on the shop floor of the Penkiln Burn Universe have to share with you the information that VAPE SHOP failed to make it to island of Ailsa Craig. Although he arrived in the town of Girvan, with one copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, where he was to board a fishing boat that was to take him to Ailsa Craig, the fisherman who owned the boat decided the weather and waves were against them making the crossing. We also understand that VAPE SHOP was confused. That VAPE SHOPs confusion arose from the fact that weather seemed mild, and he could see no threatening waves but...

We understand that VAPE SHOP instructed his Hand Held Device to construct an image of the sea scape from where he was standing on the shore by Girvan harbour, looking out to the Ailsa Craig on the horizon. This image was then sent to us on the shop floor to share with you.

As yet we do not know what VAPE SHOP did with the one copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands that he had with him.

We hope that his hopes to reach the island of Lindisfarne next week are more successful than his failure to reach the island of Ailsa Craig this week.

We will see...

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BASS ROCK & LINDISFARNE

29/40
Friday, 14th August 2026

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It seems that the former Bill Drummond attempted to write words to you last week, and in so doing silenced me. I may not have many words left in me, and what words I do have are usually only mumbled to myself, but I take issues with the fact that he thought he could silence me, just because I was somewhat disappointed that the first of my Forty Islands was, as yet, not ready to embrace my arrival.

Anyway, that was last week.

This week things are different.

This week, I am embracing the fact that islands are not ready to embrace my arrival.

Ever since my boyhood, I have had fantasies of being imprisoned on Bass Rock, or as some people not from those parts might describe as the Alcatraz of Scotland. To be imprisoned on Bass Rock or even executed there would have meant you had done things in your life that were worth doing. And those in authority feared you might attempt to do them again. Whereas everything that I have done in my life has just ended up as content for people to consume – as in these very words, even though I live with the fantasy that I am just mumbling them to myself.

But...

As I have come to terms with those fantasies being nothing more than fantasies, I have embraced another fantasy. In truth this is also a fantasy that I have had in various forms since boyhood. This fantasy being me as a bird. What species that bird might be, has shifted over time. And so far, I am only aware of one of those fantasies of me being a bird has been commodified for other’s commercial gain. That bird being a Kingfisher.

Anyway...

It was in my early twenties, when I was an apprentice trawlerman in the Cod Fish Wars, that I first started to fantasise about being a Gannet. Watching the Gannets plummet into the sea around the trawler, as we hauled the nets on board, was one of the greatest things I have ever experienced, way beyond experiencing The Clash play at Eric’s on the 5th of May 1977. It was then (Autumn ‘74 not Spring ’77) that I decided, that if I could ever construct myself a parallel universe, I would be a Gannet in that universe.

Anyway...

Back to Bass Rock...

Bass Rock has not been the ultimate prison for those attempting to alter the history of Scotland for the good of the people, for over a couple of hundred years. Since then it has become the ultimate city of Gannets, as in it being the largest colony of Gannets in the world. As in, over 150,000 of them before Bird Flu struck, but even now the figures are rising again and there are over 100,000. This is a Mega City.

I have always known, however much I might fantasise about being a Gannet, I knew in reality, I could never become one that actually lived on Bass Rock.

The most I could ever do, is what I did yesterday. Which was get on a boat in the North Harbour of North Berwick on go on a ‘trip’ around the island itself. Thus would not be able to place a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands on the actual physical island. But I did take a copy of the said album with me as the boat circumnavigated the island and the 50,000 pairs of breeding Gannets that were all there on display.

Being on that boat and watching those Gannets has to be one of the most life affirming 40 minutes of my life so far.

But that was yesterday...

Today, I have travelled down the Great North Road from North Harbour of North Berwick all the way down to Suburban North London. Making sure that I crossed the River Tweed over the Auld Brig in Berwick-upon-Tweed. And taking a detour down to the crossing to The Holy Isle, as in Lindisfarne. But the tied was in, so the crossing could not be done.

Thus...

This being the third of the Forty Isles that I have as yet not been able to land on. That said, in my pre-VAPE SHOP years, I did make the crossing once. But that crossing counts for nothing now.

I did show a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, to Lindisfarne out on the horizon.

And...

Hand Held Device has constructed images of Bass Rock from the boat and the flow tide covering the track to Lindisfarne on the horizon.

I have one last fantasy to share with you, that of being a hermit, as in an 8th Century hermit on Bass Rock. But I guess I will have to leave that fantasy for another life.

Next week, I hope to get back on my charity shop run in the Bleak City.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

Post Script:
As for parallel universes, tonight I will use my pensioners pass to go and watch the latest adventures of Peter Parker in my local picture house.  

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CHAMBERLAYNE ROAD NW10

30/40
Friday, 21st August 2026

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So I failed...

Not the first time. And I hope not the last time. There is nothing like failing at something to remind you of things you need to be reminded of.

As in, I failed to get out to the first of those two islands that I need to get to before...

As in Ailsa Craig and Lindisfarne, so that I could deliver a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to each of them, to be found by whoever.

It is now almost a couple of weeks since I attempted the first crossing, and I have never taken those two copies out my haversack.

I am now on Chamberlayne Road in NW10, I have come here because I like the name of the road. It is one of those roads that I like to shuffle down, while repeating the name of the road under my breath forty times, from one end to the other. Turn Pike Lane is another, as is Stroud Green Road.

Anyway...

I knew I was only going to want to ‘donate’ those two copies to charity shops on this very road. I didn’t bother to look on Google Maps first to see if there were any charity shops on this road. I just got off the 52 by the Lexi picture house and walked the length of Chamberlayne Road in both directions, before getting on the 302 and started the journey back to the Northern Desert of this Bleak City.

Hand Held Device did their job and also spotted some Crush Can and Fag Pack while they were at it. And a couple of classic Nana Skin.

And yeah, I will get the next copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands by my tag tonight.

As for the heat...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

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STOLEN

31/40
Friday, 28th August 2026

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Have you ever had anything stolen off you?

I guess we all have.

What was the first thing that was stolen off you?
What was the last thing stolen off you?
What was the biggest thing that was stolen off you?
What was the thing that mattered most to you that was stolen from you?

The first thing that was stolen off me was all my toys. This was in my first year at school. They were stolen by some of the boys in my class who had never seen toys before. The lasting effect of that was that I never wanted to have toys again. Or any of the other things, as we pass through life, that could be construed as our toys.

There were other things that got stolen off me as I staggered and stumbled and scuttled and scarpered through that life.

But more importantly...

I have stolen far more from other people than other people have ever stolen from me. Mainly people’s trust. And in that sense, I have caused other people far more pain, than others have ever caused me.

This morning, I went to the disused garage down a back lane in Suburban North London. But not the garage that is attached to the ‘semidetached suburban’ that I live in. One I ‘rent’ to store rubbish in. Rubbish that most people would keep in their garden shed or their loft. But I don’t have a garden shed or a loft.

So anyway...

It is in this disused garage that all the remaining copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands are stacked in cardboard boxes. As in where I get my weekly supply for my weekly journey on the top deck of a bus to somewhere in this Bleak City that I might not have ever been before. Or, maybe not for several decades.

But anyway...

When I got there this morning, I found that the disused garage had been broken into. And when I say ‘broken into’ I have to admit, it would not take much of cat burglar of any standing to break into this garage. You would not have to be Black Cat, let alone Burglar Betty, to get into this garage. A standard wrench, from your local iron mongers, would have done the job.

The first thing I noticed was that the whole inside of the disused garage had been rummaged. I have no idea if there was anything of value that they were hoping to find – a lawn mower? A box of tools? A spare wheel?

But...

What had gone were all the remaining copies of that EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, along with all the remaining copies of the other Penkiln Burn Records.

The emotions this triggered were all over the place. The first one was massive relief that I can have a break from the trudging, followed by a massive anger. Followed by wondering what, whoever stole these records, be it Burglar Bill or Burglar Betty or even Black Cat, what were they going to do with them. As in once they found they had no value out there in the real world. Were they going to be fly-tipped on a verge somewhere. Could that fly-tipping be interpreted as performance art, even if those doing the fly-tipping were not conceiving it as art? Am I allowed to conceive the breaking into this garage that is not mine, but I have to take responsibility for as ‘performance art’.

Does this change the value of the copies out there in charity shops scattered across this Bleak City? And I don’t just mean fiscally.

But...

Like when one of my former selves got his trailer stolen back in 2003. Inside the trailer was a load of stuff that related to the touring HOW TO BE AN ARTIST exhibition that he had been doing. This made him arrive at the conclusion, that the way to be an artist is to have everything you have ever done to be stolen from you, and in that way, you can see the world with fresh eyes. Without that trailer being stolen thus seeing the world with fresh eyes, The17 could never have been born.

Maybe next week I will be thinking differently...

But...

Right now, I want to get out there on the top deck of a double decker bus and start filming the film, that those back on the shop floor of the Penkiln Burn Universe seem to have lost any interest in.

And...

What I would really appreciate from you, is to start going through everything I have spoken about over these previous thirty weeks or whatever and let me know which bits should be used as parts of the internal monologue for the VAPE SHOP movie.

And...

I will start to share the bits of film that Hand Held Device films over these last remaining ten weeks with you. And bit by bit we can start putting together the VAPE SHOP film

What do you think?

But don’t do too much thinking just get back to me with the bits I should be using.

Also...

I plan to post and credit all the photos that have been coming in from those VAPE SHOP Franchisers. As in the photographs documenting the distribution of YEAR ZERO pamphlets on the top deck of bus all over the place and across the world.

So anyway...

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

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THE LAST OF THE LAST

32/40
Friday, 4th September 2026

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Not the last of these forty trudges across this Bleak City, but the last copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to be delivered by me to its destination.

Not that I delivered it by hand.

But...

I did pack it in an envelope and write the address on it and ‘strode’ up to the local Post Office and post to Death, Love & Broken Records in Indianapolis in Indiana, as in not only to the other side of the Atlantic Ocean but to somewhere in those Mid-Western States, where nobody comes from. Or at least nobody that I have ever known has come from or even gone to.

And this morning down in the Penkiln Burn Shop Floor, Brush (Your Shop Steward) showed me an email that contained a photograph to prove of its arrival in this place beyond wherever I might ever go in my life.

I thought I should ‘share’ this photograph with you and then next week I will let Hand Held Device take control of the final seven weeks of my Forty Trudges across this Bleak City.

Later...

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com

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PIGEON ON HER WALL

33/40
Friday, 11th September 2026

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I have no idea what this is supposed to be. Let alone why...

And this is not the VAPE SHOP biopic I was going on about whenever.

But...

Last night I watched the film Hen.

I mean...

I only really like watching films on my own. Or at least those other voices in my head get jealous if I watch films or go to see a play, or a band, or just go for a walk, with other real living people. Those voices in my head want to be the only voices discussing the film or play or band or whatever it is, with me. They don’t want to hear what those other merely real living people have to say about things.

I try to fight it but...

Sometimes I have to let those other voices have their way.

Thus...

Last night we watched Hen together. It’s a Greek film I think. But it did not matter what bits of language the humans in the film were talking because it was all about Hen, the protagonist in the film, and seeing as Hen was, and I hope still is a hen, there is not much human dialogue to be worried about trying to understand.

Anyway...

Me and all those voices agreed it was brilliant. This is what cinema is for. It confronted and entertained and it was dark and it was funny. And us humans did not come out of it at all well.

So...

This morning, when I was supposed to go out and start the overseeing of the filming of bits that could be used in that VAPE SHOP biopic across this Bleak City, I decided instead...

To let Hand Held Device attempt to make a 40 second cover version of Hen. But seeing as I had no idea about where I could find a hen to play the part of Hen, I went and found a pigeon, who could play the part as Pigeon.

And I did...

And Pigeon agreed that she would allow Hand Held Device to film her for 40 seconds. But what she would not agree to is, Hand Held Device filming her being run over by a bus. This has meant that I have had to use an image created by Hand Held Device some months ago of a Dead Pigeon, and place that image close to where these words are positioned for you to read, in the hope you might think it were the same pigeon.

Pigeon also insisted that I call the film Pigeon on Her Wall and not just Pigeon. Her thinking was, if it were just called Pigeon, people would think it could be any pigeon, but if it were titled Pigeon on Her Wall, everybody would know it was her on her wall. And she would get to choose what wall. And for those that might be interested the wall in question is down Church Walk in N16.

Anyway...

As for the score to the film, she wanted it to just be her cooing. But when it came to it, she turned all diva and she did not do any cooing. She told me, if I wanted her to do any cooing, I would have to pay her more seed for her to peck at.

So instead...

I have used a new version of The Moonlight Sonata that I have just been sent this morning. It has come from somewhere in the USA and been performed by someone who wants to go by the name of The Ghost of Scott Joplin.

It seems this Ghost of Scott Joplin has chosen to play The Moonlight Sonata on an out-of-tune piano and change the title to Honky Tonk Sonata No 14

Pigeon hopes you like her film, and if you want her to star in any films you might want to make with her in a starring role, to contact me.

Later...

If there is any later left..

VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com