bored of excitement – the griefjunkie blog 

Ahoy there, casual lovers.

Those of you familiar with the far end of the Stables Market at Camden – where, as you might recall, we had a little shop for a while – will know that venturing up the cobbled ramp in the dark and the rain is bleak, depressing, and like accidentally wandering onto the set of Bladerunner, or between the pages of George Orwell’s dystopian classic ‘It’s 1984!’

I popped up there the other Sunday to see what was what, as I’d quite like to get our old shop back, for a lot of the newer stuff we’ve been mucking about with all year. There’s a tarot reader in it these days, which yes, we didn’t see coming. Otherwise, things are pretty much as they were. Steve Veedubs still has the shop next door, for which I paved the way by lying to the former occupant that the market was being demolished. Steve, who once drank a great quantity of his own urine, initially by mistake, is an excellent and trusted friend of the House of Griefjunkie. If, instead of writing Baloo as a lovely old clearly gay bear, Walt Disney had portrayed him as an enthusiastically flatulent ex engineer who is so gadget obsessed that he would buy a dog turd if you put a microchip in it, it would pretty much be Steve.

(You’ll need to click ‘Read more’, and now is an ideal time)

At this point I will ask you to grip your legs tightly and prepare for news that will horrify and alarm you, and from which you may well never fully recover. The reason that reconnaissance operations have been taking place in the Stables is that, at the end of the year, the good ship Griefjunkie will sail out of the East Yard for the very last time. We have no set date yet, although it looks very much as if December the 21st of December will be our last trading day. If you’re not already rioting from shock, it’s worth pointing out that the site will stay up, which will be nice, because it can then be our horrific little secret, and we can shove all the new stuff onto it.

There is a lot of new post-griefjunkie stuff. I have been surprised at the enthusiasm with which I have been designing duvet covers for gay men and adolescent girls (essentially the same thing), and this afternoon I will be writing about what biscuits Ronnie Kray and Jack the Ripper would have with their tea, for a joint venture between us and notorious velvet-toned posho Anthony from Meaningless Slogan, our fellow East Yard exile. Imagine the Vietnam War, but fought between two armies consisting entirely of homosexuals. Then imagine an American veteran of that flamboyant conflict. That is what Anthony looks like. Alternatively, if you were looking at him, and you didn’t know who he was, but I told you that he was the drummer in the Police, you would totally believe it. He doesn’t look like the actual drummer from the Police, he just looks like he could very plausibly be the drummer from the Police. He does, however, have the slight look of the wifeswapper about him, so I shall have to be on my guard during after-market drinks.

Anyway, all being well, we’ll move one half of our combined effort to pastures new at Convent Garden market. Convent Garden is a bit Mary Poppins for me, to be honest, and everything seems to be red and yellow there. Still, it will be an adventure into the unknown, like in Jules Verne’s ‘Journey Down The Centre Of The Earth’, or Robert Louis Stephenson’s ‘There’s Treasure On That Island’. Initially we’ll go over there with what is broadly speaking a kitchenware stall, consisting almost entirely of Anthony’s slogan apron stuff, which visitors to the East Yard cannot fail to have seen draped over cardboard cut outs of Sid Vicious, Patti Smith, Pete Shelley and Ian Curtis. As for the East Yard – well, we’ll probably chuck a few designs into a joint stall with Anthony, to see what happens, but I’d rather concentrate on other things. So yes, that will end publicgriefjunkie at Camden. It’s a shame, but I think five years behind a t shirt stall is long enough. It’s entirely possible that we’ll carry on into January if we have enough stock, but for now we’re sticking to the 21st as the day that publicgriefjunkie ceases to be part of the present, and slips gently into history.

This week’s photographic items are: Top inset: East Yard urchin Chris once said that there was no need for me to go up the pub, as an angry face drawn on a paper plate with a hat on it would be an adequate substitute. He has a point. Below top: Joe and Bridey chat over drinks in the East Yard. Below middle: burned out shops, still fucked nine months after the fire, and which will never be rebuilt. And at the very bottom: Gary’s girlfriend strangles a horse at Joe’s wedding.