bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Dear Rachel

Yeah there’s a saying – I forget exactly what it is, or what it is supposed to demonstrate – but it’s something about if you have a monkey at a typewriter hitting random keys for an infinite amount of time, he will eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. No, I don’t get it either. Anyway, now imagine the same monkey, surrounded presumably by balls of screwed up paper, monkey vending machine coffee cups and banana skins, still hitting the keys randomly, but with the added pressure of an editorial deadline. This extra element means that at the end of a set amount of time, he has to go with what he’s got, no matter what it is or how little sense it makes.

After some months of careful observation, I have reached the conclusion that this monkey supplies the scripts from which Winkle, Greenwich Market photograph trader of distinction, reads by way of conversation. Trading near Winkle is to drown in a tidal wave of total irrelevant fucking nonsense. I sometimes think he only talks to me because he is lonely. However, he is a man of hidden depths, and these to a large extent compensate for also being a man of ill-hidden dimensions, suggesting a diet of butter, glazed ham, cushions, and entire buffaloes.

[Hitting Read More will reveal possible ancestors and poorly concieved sporting challenges]

It was largely due to Winkle and his genuinely staggering knowledge of the photographic arts that I drifted along to the Beatles to Bowie expedition at the National Portrait Gallery the other week. I know everything about the Beatles, and was tempted to add to the delight of my fellow gallery-goers by latching on to family groups and offering additional information about every single picture, over and over again, until their children started crying.

While I was there, the Goat Bag Man texted me to say he’d found a book about Victorian poverty with a picture that he swears is my great grandfather in it. We discussed this at some length at the Duke later that weekend. While no definite conclusions were reached, proceedings ended some time later with a swaying midnight meander along Bishopsgate, during which I bet him that I could throw his new phone through a taxi, if I could get a level shot through both the driver and passenger side windows. Unfortunately for sports fans everywhere, he told me to try it using my own fucking phone, which obviously I wasn’t prepared to do.

Twitter. Always fascinating.

Facebook. Yeah, up to 108 members now, although I think that a couple of the newer ones are spam.

Photards: Top – The photard that the Goat Bag Man thinks is my great grandfather. It probably isn’t, although the family penchant for headgear and sideburns is in evidence.

Middle – The Goat Bag Man and Lou examining samples of new publicgriefjunkie product, which is on sale to the general public in Febuary, at the Duke of Wellington. Lou has been putting himself on sale to the general public for some time.

Bottom – Unmistakable – it’s London’s busy Convent Garden.