Frestonia-Your essential entertainment & lifestyle guide

Hello There Good People who still read this blog even though I’ve been away!

First of all apologies for not replying to emails, comments etc..and not writing my blog. Lots of stuff been going on in my life and Blogging is really for when you have nothing going on in your life, as is Facebook and other time-wasters.

However I do miss writing my blog and appreciate all the wonderful people who read it and sometimes comment. Thanks.

I just wanted to write about one quick thing. Normally I end up writing about a zillion things but I’ll be brief and return soon.

I had another one of those free Notting Hill magazines through my door. This is one I’ve never seen before called “Matchbox” it sounds promising to an occasional smoker like me but then unfortunately underneath it is annotated “Your essential entertainment & lifestyle guide“.

Oh Bollocks! They are trying to sell me things and tell me how to live my life if I want to be an acceptable human being living in a shallow consummerist society which is leading to global destruction.

However on the cover it says “Forgotten Frestonia” so I decided to read it. At first I saw the copious adverts for stupidly priced properties . I couldn’t believe that the “Matchbox” down the road from me is selling for 2 and a half million pounds! but there you go! No wonder my neighbours hate me for being poor , my place looking like a wreck and still living near their newly acquired ridiculously priced , perfectly furnished matchboxes!

On p.28 of this free magazine distributed widely in West and North West London, there is a 7 page Photo Story entitled “Welcome to Frestonia”. It has some fantastic photographs taken by Tony Sleep who was living in Frestonia in the late 70s early 80s. You can find these and more annotated photographs by going to http://tonysleep.co.uk/frestonia.

If you can get hold of the article it includes Frestonia postage stamps, the “score” for the Frestonian National Anthem, letters to and from the House of Commons, a Visa stamp for unlimited entry into the Republic of Frestonia and other goodies.

The article itself I haven’t read fully yet this evening but has a kind of 2008 perspective. I’ll quote the article:” it’s probably fair to say that most Frestonians suffered from depression, and many had medical histories of mental illness and addiction. They had to live somewhere, so long before “care in the community” became a political prescription, Frestonia road-tested the proposition on a micro scale”.

I didn’t live in Frestonia myself and don’t have any close friends who did so maybe I can’t comment. But to me even the above quote is true it seems to ignore the immense creativity taking place there and a freedom that we no long enjoy. All the very creative people I know suffer from mental illness or varying forms of depression and I just think it goes along with the territory.

Anyway enjoy the article if you can find it if not enjoy Tony Sleep’s website. I am borrowing a couple of photos from it to put here and hope he doesn’t mind!

This is Trevor he liked gardening and grew tomatoes in compost made from Frestonian resident poo however no one wanted to eat his lovely tomatoes (see Tony Sleep link http://www.tonysleep.co.uk)

According to resident and photographer Tony Sleep who took this picture this  actually worked as a sound system within the Apocalyspe Hotel ( please refer to http://www.tonysleep.co.uk for more)

This is a view of The Apocalypse Hotel (borrowed from Alan Lodge’s site see link) .
The Apocalypse Hotel which changed appearance regularly was named after the film “Apocalypse Now”. All this stuff is new to me , although I did spend some time hanging out with The Mutoid Waste Company who had connections with Frestonia the rest is not my own history, so I am just going to put up a few more photos and links for now.

Frestonian 1st Birthday Party with street entertainment ( see http://www.tonysleep.co.uk)

I will write more soon. Please go to Tony Sleep’s site for tons of fantastic photos with descriptions.

The first time I put up these photos I didn’t understand that they had a code on them or that they were copyrighted. I’ve left the code this time and hopefully they might link up to Tony’s site. Thanks to Tony Sleep for letting me borrow these.

If Frestonia was inhabited by some creative lunatics then this reminds me…

I am doing a gig tomorrow night ( tonight) celebrating the life of another creative lunatic Kevin Coyne. It is organised by more creative lunatics, and only creative lunatics will be performing so if you can somehow find out where it is you can find me! The time it starts, who exactly is performing and how much it costs seems to vary each time I speak to anyone. However I can tell you that the performers will be from a Kevin Coyne Tribute Album we all performed on. So catch us if you can find us!

To read more on Kevin Coyne go to this website although there are plenty of others! http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/dec/06/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

He recorded 45 albums , 23 singles, and wrote 6 books, so if you haven’t heard of him, get yourself aquainted!

The other daft thing I was going to write about is Matthew Wright. I watch and enjoy The Wright Stuff quite a lot on Channel Five and in spite of Matthew Wright’s chauvenistic stance and the huge chip he has on his shoulder with women which winds me up no end, I do also have an affinity for a lot of what he discusses especially the political. Unfortunately a lot of his panellists are very shallow self-serving conservative people but occasionally you get some good people on . He likes to talk about the erosion of our personal freedom a lot and you don’t often hear that on TV. Also he DOES speak his mind quite freely which you hardly ever see on tv these days.

Well to my surprise he was part of the free festival scene and goes on stage with Hawkwind! Is this man a secret Anarchist Hippie?

If anyone knows about this please add a comment. ( especially if you have any embarassing photos of him with long hair , a spliff in his mouth strumming an electric guitar under strobe lighting).

Ok I got to go, it’s late.

Bye bye good people who read this blog until another time soon.

P.S. on June 7th Matthew Wright has contacted me about this! Please go to my next post entitled ”

Freaky Coincidence?The Wright Stuff with Matthew Wright

and click the “comments” section at the bottom to read two comments he left if you are interested to see what he said. Brave man for coming to my blog and commenting in spite of my mixed review of his show which I do enjoy watching.

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