Friday 23rd January 2026, 17.24 Parkway flat
At 5.01 on Monday the above perfect one line reply came in response to my enthusiastic reaction to a video from the gorgeous A in Tasmania
My best of besties R came to stay in the front room on Tuesday bringing as always a whole new energy into my life. On her last visit I had been endlessly at my laptop working on fucking tax returns. Just past midday of the second day of her visit, when I was once again hunkered down in the kitchen at the damned spreadsheets, she messaged me…
I’ve spent hours over the past couple of days trying to put together (in a some sharply smartarse way) words to capture the impact of these six plain statements - and have failed. The best I can do is to say this was another moment when R has given my tree a resounding shake - always a good thing. The first five cheered me instantly - hell yes the fuck was I still grinding away doing lots of grunt number crunching (much of it for my ex)?
The magic/power of the sixth striking non sequitur ‘We could be prostitutes for the day’ was/is a stoke of R genius. Can’t/won’t explain why. Such imaginative twist can only to be relished not studied. The construction is of course inspired by Bowie…’we could be heroes just for one day’ - beyond that…never mind the sense - feel the width.
Up until my constipation driven Ambulance trip to hospital on the day of my 80th birthday I’d tended to be the kind of person who would always reply to emails from friends - usually pretty instantly. But messages from three friends - very special friends - who are readers have sat unanawered…[What are you on about old man - where is this going …do you have a clue…?] Ahem..so this too dull to go on with but to those people please know I’m truly grateful and will reply….honest i will.
As some readers may remember, but most of you will not - a few months ago I posted a chapter in which I mentioned that I liked the idea of making myself into a kind of punked up Camden Quentin Crisp. Alongside the Crisp fantasy came the idea of setting up some kind of occassional hang out time/place for punk Parkies. This idea came from a belief that I couldn’t be the only 80 year old Parkie who still dressed to kill and hankered for teenage kicks all through the night…
I’d mentioned the idea to my son and elder daughter back in November…who said of course it was a great idea. As I lived next to one of London’s most famous rock n roll pubs The Dublin Castle the next thing to do was to email the manager…But that - so it seemed to me - meant having an idea about what these punk parkies were going to do when the met…I had no idea…
As Parkie seems to be laying waste to my short term memory i try to remember to write down ideas as they bubble up…hence this recent text
20/01/2026, 14:39:00] Nick Comer-Calder: I’m thinking of having a pink plaque made to put on the yellow wall saying Nick Calder lives here
Poseur and Parkinson’s Dandy Punk
[20/01/2026, 14:39:36] R: Yes
[20/01/2026, 14:40:11] Nick Comer-Calder: Look - Camden has third largest number of blue plaques
so to cut a long and tedious story short by way of ChatGPT I got as far as this…which is too brash and vulgar to be used but I hope R would agree to paint me a full size Trompe-l'œil version that i could stick on the wonderful yellow wall that I painted on the flat…
ok so this post has been in gestation for so long that i’ve completely lost all the fun and nervous braggadocio which I had when I started writing this…
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