Dyball and Kerr

@_fruitscentedcakes

Skidmore Solutions, Gold winners at Janitorial Suppliers Awards 2018, is pleased to announce the arrival of the latest range of scented urinal cakes. Always innovative, always one step ahead of the Janitorial Facilities curve, Skidmore Solutions have developed an exciting new tranche of trough scents and urinary fragrances. If you want the best micturitional experience, you want "Tropical Trough"

Mango Mist

Lime Leak

Sapodilla Splash

Passion Fruit Pulse 

Tuesday

So, Ubered to the White Cube for the Pascal Onane private view. Reviewing for The Guardian (er, natch) and Front Row. Just fantastic, er, spoiler alert! Five stars. Kinda a bit like Basquiat, kinda graffiti but with a kinda installation kinda sensibility, like literally. D'you know what? Er, fantastic. White Cube full of A listers, and one B Lister who's nearly an A Lister. A brace of Thronies, fellow hacks with Paul Borely there for Saturday Review, but he had to leave early as he was tearing up AGAIN. Poor Paul, still in the early stages of grief after David's passing, so he likes to curl up next to the Bowie shrine back at the BBC Six Music Studios. He says of all the people in the world (North London) David's death has affected him the most.

So, I'm like, gorging myself roundly on Onane, bubbles in hand (I SO love my job) and I'm thinking: fantastic, all the hot issues are kinda right here, right now - gender, social housing refugees. Yet, every time I have to go to the National Gallery, (Er, hello, a bit kinda rubbish.) I'm kinda thinking, this place is kinda full of dead, white males and when I stand in front of Rembrandt, I'm kinda thinking...Meh. The most interesting thing he did, was cut off his ear.

Thursday

So, difficult day. I'm like, interviewing Tiny Tempah for Front Row on R4 about how hard it is to find a decent, ironic, transport cafe in Kentish Town, (where we both live, er, natch).  And, here's the thing: my mind is elsewhere. I have to go for a scan at the Royal Free Hospital tomorrow. I think I have a Camden Spasm. This is quite a new neurological condition that affects a lot of us in North London. They think it's the result of the strain of being bang on trend, twenty four seven. The main symptom is a pronounced head wobble and flailing arms when we're doing a piece to camera and walking down a street at the same time. I first noticed it when I was filming outside Tate Modern for my new Chanel Four series called, "The Coolest Galleries in, Literally, The Whole World In London."

Sunday

So, to take my mind off the scan results, I uber up to Caitlin's in Crouch End, for one of our trashy and ironic guilty pleasure evenings, when we, quite literally, gorge ourselves roundly on great handfuls of ironic seventies sweets and vats of Hagen Daz while bingeing on trashy and ironic box sets.

Everybody in North London is going back to VHS, as it's gonna be the new vinyl, so Caitlin gets review copies biked up from the Netflix HQ and we kinda peel off the cellophane, and start multi screening, giggling like naughty teenagers. Er, hello? What's not to like. I SO, LOVE MY LIFE. Er, three words; FAN -TAS- TIC. Er, spoiler alert. Five Stars.

 ON  BOWIE 

I guess the only failing of David Bowie, if indeed you can attribute failings to a man such as he, is that he didn't come from the north. If he had come from the north, would we not have cherished and revered him so much more than the denizens of dismal Dagenham or soulless Staines, and would we not have cleaved him to our northern bosom where he would have been completely intoxicated by the nurturing aromas pouring out of northern breweries, fecund hedgerows and salty chip shops. That heady brew of Northern health giving properties would have sustained David for many more years than the watery, thin gruel that trickles through the arteries of blighted southerners. The same can be applied to his Purple Majesty, Prince, who, transplanted from Minneapolis and grafted onto the streets of Didsbury or Preston, would have thrived on the Northern goodness of tripe, rainwater and trams. If Prince had tried filling himself with industrial quantities of painkillers in the midst of no nonsense northerners, he'd have got short shrift and been told to piss off and get back to writing blissed-out. guitar driven soul poems.

I only have to spend a weekend in Lancashire in late November, ambling through bustling street markets where old boys with purple veined noses stare moodily into the middle distance, whilst pigeons dance comically around the cake crumbs to feel whole again.

'Tha's come back up to gerraway from yon soft southerners nae doubt' comes the voice of the ruddy cheeked barmaid in the Whippet & Ferret as she pours me a pint of black sludge ,

'I read tha' book on Joy Division, it were reet incisive an that' she continues and the regulars stand around laughing at me and I know I'm home.

paul borely