VAPE SHOP FORTY

Friday, 5th June 2026 GMT^* - CATA LOGG INFO - INDX

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

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.

Right Here / Right Now

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

Brush (Your Shop Steward) would like to make it clear here that the former Bill Drummond would like it known that he / they had nothing to do with the location choice of this tag. That said, we on the shop floor think it looks good.

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

VAPE SHOP Scotland exploring ways of distribution beyond the Charity Shop run

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).

VAPE SHOP Bristol, Wessex marking their territory

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

The Breaking Gate by John Middleton
The Reflection in The Water by John Middleton
The Darkness at The Centre by John Middleton
No Blacks, Whites or Primaries by John Middleton

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.

And The Lady Breaks through The Breaking Gate by John Middleton

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

Due to health reasons, I have not been able to record the spoken word version of the following – I hope to have that done by next Friday.

Anyway...

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...