13/1 Housekeeping

Thanks for letting us out!

Don’t know how we wound up in your device like that! Hope nothing’s broken…

…Flower people walk on by

Flower people don’t you cry

it’s not too late it’s not too late…

It’s Friday 13th!

It’s Xanaduum!

Xanaduum! Back from a short midwinter break, surprised to discover that ‘they’ appear to have knocked down 2022 just as we were getting used to it, then elected to throw up this shaky new place, overnight by the looks of it. Slightly more threatening, somewhat more farcical but otherwise business as usual! I don’t know why they bother with a new one every time when it’s all just the same but uglier in the end…

Currently working on a couple of movie things which may or may not see the light of day, plus a bunch of comic books, an animated series, and a new novel idea. How about you?

Anyway, Friday the 13th has long had a reputation for negatively impacting personal fortune and more and more often it’s the holiday of choice for top influencers but there’s no reason anyone has to miss out on their own date with cruel fate!

You too can join the latest craze and suffer a daylong dose of awful luck if you take sensible precautions and enjoy our handy fun-filled guide to celebrating Friday 13th in style!

Friday 13th fun fact: they say 13 is an unlucky number because Jesus had twelve toes on each hand – but only ONE finger on his foot, adding up to…13!

According to scientists, it’s all down to Climate Change and Global Warming! Friday the 13th gets its ominous reputation from naturally occurring global luck cycles that can, during so-called ‘luck minima’ periods, reduce by up to 53% the effectiveness of the luck stream we rely on to survive - ‘most of the bad luck people complain about is nothing more than poor quality good luck…’ explains this typical science boff helpfully. ‘We’re talking here today, gone tomorrow stuff. Real bad luck looks like John Merrick, the Elephant Man…’

For centuries people believed that the colour yellow was ‘bad luck opaque’ and that ill-starred intent would simply reflect off it and stick to the nearest person not dressed in yellow. This was proven to be superstitious nonsense in May 1970 when a pair of tour buses, both painted yellow, one carrying lounge trio The Lemonettes, and the other containing The Daffodils, a British beat group, collided at speed in Yellow Springs, Ohio, during an outbreak of yellow fever, to the sound of Christie’s 1970 chart hit ‘Yellow River’, killing everyone and everything for miles around! The event was apparently witnessed by 25-year-old millionaire gambler Dieter Meier – who went on front the electronic music group YELLO in the late ‘70s! Xanthic!

Are you a fan of the popular herbaceous flowering plant and likely to fancy a banana on Friday 13th? Stop right there! Take the advice of top showbiz astrologer Purvis Quango - and leave your lunchtime treat at home today! Warns Quango - ‘Although these nutritious fruits (technically berries: ed) look harmless and taste great, on Friday 13th ALL bananas convert into potentially deadly repositories of bad luck, with an emphasis on the so-called ‘slapstick’ variant!’

Tip for today (Friday 13th)! Are you in a hurry to board a scale model replica of the Titanic/Hindenburg/Challenger? When you pick up that handy stepladder then race across the tarmac with the apparatus draped in an inverted V-shape across your shoulders, make sure you avoid crashing headlong into a mirror! While it’s true that Friday 13th only contains 24 hours’ worth of bad luck, most mirrors, even small ones are built to hold in a whopping SEVEN YEARS under pressure!

Extra cautious readers are advised to avoid potential Friday 13th mishaps by confining themselves to the interiors of luggage trunks for the day - but don’t forget to drill some air holes unless you wish to savour the fatal irony of your oxygen running out quicker than your luck!

If you keep these simple but effective guidelines in mind, you can look forward to a fun, non-lethal day of Friday 13th celebrations!

Gay Purr-ee © 1962 UPA

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS…

It’s with great pride and no small affection that we introduce this weekend’s speaker, Major Announcements - alongside General Issue and plucky Private Dancer, the Major ranks as one of the finest fighting men I’ve ever had the pleasure to kill and die alongside, in conflicts as varied as Agincourt, Vietnam, and the Tannhauser Gate and I’m privileged to welcome him here tonight to deliver 2023’s MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!!!  

As the days pool in this lightless wet puddle of the Northern year, where the cold gathers and the nights won’t quit, we reach the end of our first year spent scouting around this notional haunted mansion made of human bits.

Our gratitude goes out to all of you who’ve come along for the ride, uncertain of the destination but trusting of the Boatman!

We set out to create a fragmented biographical piece with a DIY fanzine cut-and-paste collage ethos. A ‘living archive’ preserving some atomized essence of an individual. This return to cut-and-paste roots would not have been possible without the kind of tight, engaged audience of enthusiasts and smart-asses ‘zine style projects like this one thrive on – I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to talk extensively and intimately with readers about stuff that’s of importance to only a few of us, I’m truly appreciative of your support and participation, and I hope you stick around for the denouement!

As this seemingly friendly, normal conversational set-up progresses by degrees into an obvious pitch, we’d love you to re-subscribe and see the Xanaduum experiment through to its conclusion.

Naturally, therefore, we kept the best bits for the second year!

The blog posts, curios, occult instruction, Tarot cards and collage strip will continue to assemble their 4-D jigsaw picture of a head – joined by more A/V content, more guests and all the really good stuff from the archives - but that’s not why we bought the Major a 1st class train ticket and brought him all the way here from his lovely retirement cottage in the Cotswolds!

After all the shuffling and vague hints, the wait is over!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls and Others – be here TOMORROW for MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS concerning PHASE 2 of XANADUUM!!!

RULER OF EIGHT QUARTERS

I’ll end how I always start the year, with some stupid tune stuck in my head. 2023 is no exception thanks to Tarot by Andrew Bown, from 1970. This was the theme tune for Ace of Wands, my favourite TV show when I was 11 (vying only with Timeslip). Tarot had a dandyish Jerry Cornelius look and was a stage magician with a side hustle protecting the world from occult menaces. A British Doctor Strange, with his assistants, ex-con Sam and dolly bird Lulli, who shared a telepathic bond with Tarot, (later Chaz and Mikki assumed almost identical roles), and Ozymandias the Owl, Tarot tackled some mind-bending magical adversaries typical of UK children’s TV of the period – the nightmarish Mr. Stabs, and Mr. Peacock, (Qlipothic Mister Men), or Mama Doc and Madame Midnight.

I’ve had this going on repeat in my head at 4 in the morning since the turn of the year.

Speaking thus of Tarot, Rian Hughes’ next card, the especially beautiful and regal The Empress is on its way, to be followed by that terrifying old favourite we’ve all been waiting for - Death herself!

Long live love!