Bonzos are a brand new currency from Free Shit Salt Grit.
You can download and print as much of this currency as you like, go to the BONZOS page to download and print them.

You will then be able to exchange these Bonzos for special FSSG goods and services.
This month you can purchase our all new passport photo bottle opener key rings for the special price of 1250 BONZOS

Saliva flew from his mouth like venom, spitting out the words as he raged, “How are we going to get out of this man? I’ve got nothing left for you! Nothing! I wish I didn’t’t ever have to see you again! I hate you! I fucking hate you, you idiot!!, I can’t stand the fucking sight of you! Do you hear me? I can’t give anymore. Why do you do this to me all the time, Brian, why? I’m constantly tired and you just won’t stop, on and on, like an incessant screaming pain, filling my whole mind with your disgusting lies. I’m scared of you, I’m really scared. I just don’t know what you’re going to fucking do next. When are you gonna sort your shit out? Everyone’s talking about you, you know, and they’re saying you’re a prick Brian, incompetent, you can’t be trusted, do you know how that makes me look? Do you!? ”
The plump, downy, somewhat confused little duckling was stood in the middle of the farm yard, neck craned downward, eyeballing his own reflection in a small puddle, crying, angrily quacking at full volume.

I being of sound mind and bottom do declare that I am a magnificent masturbator. How this happened I cannot say, but suddenly the exotic allure of being Latin American has been significantly diminished by the recent media outburst over the very alarming swine flu (hog has such a bad rep right now). And well, considering that when I sneeze they run, it is fair to say the fairer sex are not exactly banging on my gate clamouring for a date with this celebrated Mexican author. Yes my dear reader, global events have once again conspired to make me celibate.

In addition my publisher has advised me that my forthcoming novel (the concluding part of my trilogy) The Ox He Stamp The Frog He Dance as a result of the global credit munch and other mitigating factors, has had its print run reduced and release date pushed back by two years. My advance has been stopped with immediate effect, and I certainly don’t want to go back home so I have been forced to find other means of funding my existence.

I did try to take advantage of your very accommodating social benefit system, but every fortnight there is a man called Barry who waits for me outside the post office and relieves me of my giro cheque. Barry is very nice about it “Sorry mate I got to, they stopped my jobseekers last month since I done Gary in the ‘ed with a hammer outside Debenhams in the town centre. They are not giving it back, well until there is no outstanding warrant.” He says he wouldn’t rob me like this if it wasn’t for his little girl, he has to pick her up at three and it just so happens that my allotted time at the job centre coincides with this two hour gap in his fractured family timetable. This all seems fair enough to me everyone has to eat, even skin-head behemoth men with scarred faces. I did tell the police , they took some notes “oooh yes we know him” PC Plod even said with a nod, but every fortnight they are not there, Barry is , right on time and you know what? They still haven’t given it back to him, so I have stopped going to collect mine.

This arbitrary and rapid descent from hero to worthless zero has tipped me spiralling head first down into a gloomy self pitying pit of deepest depression. It’s a vicious cycle of low self-esteem, pacified by playing with myself, followed by even lower self esteem and then even more masturbating, and so the hours pass by. I intend to sit at home until this whole thing is over or I am dead, and why not? It is after all my right, is it not? To opt-out? Because what happens when we stop participating in our lives, with each other, the world and everything within it? We cease to exist, we freely give our liberty, enslave ourselves for a fortnightly pacifier, a mortgage or even just a seat on the bus.

As soon as the pen stops and I stand from this chair I am no more. From your chair you can span space and time. Foot on the pedal speeding away from your everyday hum (be that the tireless drone of the photocopier, the computer, or the hiss of the kettle), in our mind’s eye we can travel on light beams to beyond the cosmos and back to a blade of grass in a rolling meadow. Participation in life is the key to our survival even if it makes no difference to our day to day forgetting, because there is an imperceptible shift toward something beyond our reckoning. Far beyond our tall buildings, trainers, temples, tax returns, and fashion trends, average weekends: exit Topshop, down the pub for a drink and a laugh with your friends, and binge drink until you drop.

Sometimes the end seems like it is pretty bloody nigh but I don’t for a second imagine that it is and if it was what difference would it make? I would just hope to spend it with someone that I liked and it would be nice if they could like me too. This earth is not under threat, it’s our role in it that is being assailed from all sides, and to reclaim it we only have to participate, be, ask questions, oh Hello, how do you do and what do you do? Oh I see very interesting, maybe that is not for me. Could you tell me what is this sinful patina that I am coated in? You too? It closes up the eyes and clogs the nostrils; -and what a shame would it be if I missed it all, all that is wondrous and beautiful, and let it pass me by just because I failed to realise, failed to see, that I am only ‘the puppet of a dream’, merely plotting to be ‘worthy of the world’.

I don’t watch this show but the father & son act Dimitrios and Lagi have made me think twice. Click HERE to watch the mighty Stavros Flatley.

In Whittlesea, from when no one quite knows, it was the custom on the Tuesday following Plough Monday (the 1st Monday after Twelfth Night) to dress one of the confraternity of the plough in straw and call him a ‘Straw Bear’. A newspaper of 1882 reports that “… he was then taken around the town to entertain by his frantic and clumsy gestures the good folk who had on the previous day subscribed to the rustics, a spread of beer, tobacco and beef”.

The bear was described as having great lengths of tightly twisted straw bands prepared and wound up the arms, legs and body of the man or boy who was unfortunate enough to have been chosen. Two sticks fastened to his shoulders met a point over his head and the straw wound round upon them to form a cone above the “Bear’s” head. The face was quite covered and he could hardly see. A tail was provided and a strong chain fastened around the armpits. He was made to dance in front of houses and gifts of money or of beer and food for later consumption was expected. It seems that he was considered important, as straw was carefully selected each year, from the best available, the harvesters saying, “That’ll do for the Bear”.

The tradition fell into decline at the end of the 19th century, the last sighting being in 1909 as it appears that an over-zealous police inspector had forbidden ‘Straw Bears’ as a form of cadging.

READ ABOUT THE REVIVAL HERE