Spring is taking its time this year. It has been snowing all weekend, a big thick wet kind of snow. The kind of snow that hurts your face and numbs your feet just thinking about it.

I didn’t leave all of the Brautigan Salad on the streets of London last summer, I kept one - the runt of the Shasta Daisies. A wilted, slow growing, needy, pitiful looking plant. Through the winter it has been working out who it is, exploring the air above its head with tiny upward movements, and now it stands 16 inches high. Despite the snow its little head is slowly unfolding - white against the white falling heavily around it. 

The Shasta Daisy has encouraged me to continue growing and sharing the Brautigan Salad. I still have a few seeds left. When the daisy opens fully I’ll plant the remaining seeds, a second flowering of Brautigan poems to share with strangers. 

This morning I went for a rummage in a second hand book shop. It is one of my favourite things to do. Trying to simultaneously recall a half remembered list of books I want to read, and keep my mind open to the accidental. Some of the best books I’ve read have been sitting on a shelf next to the book I thought I wanted to read, my eye drawn by title or design.

 Today, unaccountably, I picked up a book called Autofiction. I don’t know what I thought the book was, but it wasn’t. Absent-mindedly flicking through the pages while continuing to scan the shelf I found a piece of paper torn from a notebook that had been used as a bookmark. 

One thing I’ve collected for as long as I can remember are letters, notebooks, and scribbles written by other people that have become lost, forgotten or worthless. Finding small treasures is one of the greatest pleasures, a feeling I hope to give to other people by sharing the Brautigan Salad. I’ve found children’s stories in the street, enigmatic to-do lists at the supermarket checkout, and love poems on the back of receipts. I found one of my favourite stories in a side street in Hackney, nestled between a wall and a broken chair.   

There is something beautiful in the spelling mistakes, the directness of plot, and the abrupt resolution:

Once apone tame there lived a queen.

A queen was very georgious.

Sometimes she liked to go for a walk but sometimes not.

A queen was really good and happy. 

One day queen was walking down the street 

and she saw a lion. 

She was so scared and she started to run. 

But a lion was runing after her

and the queen died. 

The End  

Richard Brautigan ends Trout Fishing In America with a letter he found in a second-hand bookshop. The letter, and the novel, ends infamously with the line:

PS - Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonnaise.

Trout Fishing In America also contains recipes culled from a book in San Francisco’s Mechanics’ Institute Library. The page I found today is also a recipe, a recipe for jam scones.  

The ingredients are basic but vague  How much is a envelope of yeast? What is a quarter of milk? A quarter or a pint or a quarter of an american cup? How do you measure some salt? What does BUCHTEL mean? A quick research reveals that the recipe isn’t for scones, but Buchty - a kind of sweet jam filled Czech bread. I follow the instructions as closely as I can. The result is twelve warm buns that I’ve renamed Found Cakes.   

It is snowing. The first of the year. 

Today is the day for the last Brautigan Salad leaving.  The final two plants are a Shasta Daisy and a Sweet Alyssum. The weather has turned and autumn has a palpable tang of winter, so I can’t delay the leaving any longer. I’m filled with mixed emotion - my personal involvement with the Brautigan Salad is almost over, but I feel a sense of pride in helping to spread the growing poems of Richard Brautigan across London. 

I’ve arranged to meet up with Fuchsia, co-organiser of The Brautigan Book Club, to accompany me on the last two flower drops. Luckily she has brought an umbrella. 

Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942

C.Card is a penniless amateur detective, clueless even when they are piled high in front of him. His problems are magnified by his constant desire to escape to parallel dream worlds in Babylon with the beautiful dream goddess Nana-dirat. 

A small amount of sleuthing has led us to a cafe on Edgware Road called The Queen of Babylon. It is here that part of the Brautigan Salad will begin its alternative dream life. It is raining hard by now, heavy cold autumn rain. Luckily, just outside the cafe is a telephone booth. 

Telephone Door To Richard Brautigan

The album Listening To Richard Brautigan starts with a telephone ringing. It only rings once before Richard Brautigan answers. He excitedly explains to the unknown caller that his apartment is covered with recording equipment to make the album. “There are wires all over the place, all we need is like a body to cut up and bring back to life, like a Frankenstein monster. It is incredible!”

Half way through the album the phone rings again. This time it seems like Brautigan doesn’t want to answer it, only after the seventh ring he speaks.

“Whenever the telephone rings after 11 O’clock I automatically assume that it is not going to be good news”.

The Brautigan Salad phone box will never ring and will never receive any news, either bad or good, as someone has ripped out the receiver. We place the Shasta Daisy on the floor of the phone box out of the rain. It is now a telephone door that leads directly to Richard Brautigan. 

We sit outside The Queen Of Babylon, sheltered from the rain, drinking the first hot chocolate of autumn. No one even glances at the Shasta Daisy, as Fuchsia says “The rain has washed out everyone’s whimsy”. 

A Moustache Mystery Fit For C.Card

It is still raining heavily, so we decide to sit it out for an hour in the hope that it stops. Just near Edgware Road station is a pub called The Windsor Castle. It is packed with various collections, novelties, curios. It also the meeting place for The Handlebar Club - founded in 1947 - an international club for men with handlebar moustaches. The ceiling above the table reserved for their monthly meetings is covered with photographs of members, international visitors and celebrities with displays of facial hair that meet the membership requirement of “a hirsute appendage of the upper lip, with graspable extremities - beards are not allowed”. 

On the wall opposite the entrance is an original pencil drawing of members used for the club’s 1963 Christmas Card. Mysteriously one of the moustachioed heads is missing, all that is left is a ghostly outline visible against the yellowing paper.  

Why is he headless? Was he banished from the club for the gravest of misdemeanors - growing a beard? Or did he become disillusioned with the whole fraternity and simply shaved? Either one of those outcomes could have legitimately resulted in his symbolic erasure.  

Richard Brautigan would have made a fine figurehead for The Handlebar Club given a little encouragement from fellow members. Perhaps he should be awarded posthumous honorary membership to replace the missing head. I’m not sure what the rule is about hats though. 

The Last Stop On The Tokyo-Diner Hotel-Montana Express

Richard Brautigan’s Tokyo-Montana Express has 131 stops. This is the last stop for the Brautigan Salad on its own Tokyo-Diner-Hotel-Montana Express. The last five stations have been - 

127: A Letter Of Complaint To A Dangerous Umbrella

128: The Princess Diana Pub Bench

129: Find & Losing Two Stations With The Same Name. 

130: End Of The Line Polite Emergency Toilet Break

131…

…The last stop is on one of the back streets of Kings Cross, where some of the city’s seediest hotels still remain. But in comparison to some of its neighbours Hotel Montana looks welcoming, the glow of its own streetlamps marking the finishing posts, the end of the line for the Brautigan Salad leaving. 

I say a final goodbye to the final Sweet Alyssum and place it in the corner of the entrance way, just under the Hotel Montana sign. As I walk away I turn and glimpse two Japanese holiday makers struggling with their suitcases down the steps of the hotel, in what I hope is the start of their own reverse Hotel Montana-Tokyo Express. 

Now all the flowers from the Brautigan Salad have been left to be found by strangers all I can do is continue to hope that one, just one finder will be moved enough to contact me from the details on the back of poem-label. Or failing that, that they just keep their part of the Brautigan Salad fed, watered and warm throughout the winter and share the story of how they found it to anyone that asks, maybe reading Brautigan’s poem aloud as they do. Or even, if their greenfingers fail them, that they’ve pinned the poem to the fridge door, and once while making a cup of tea they’ll glance at it and wonder. And wonder is enough for me. 

I am very sad to announce the death of the Squash. It is the first death of the Brautigan Salad.

The Squash is the one plant that has really struggled, not helped by the lack of sun and the amount of rain during the prime growing months. It always looked on the cusp of flowering, a perpetual state of almost isn’t good for anyone, and overnight it just gave in. And who can blame it.

R.I.P. It is with sadness I never got to make soup from your fruit, and share it with friends and strangers. May the sun shine in the afterlife of the recycling bin. From you the future will grow.

This is it. The first day of Brautigan Salad leaving. 

The trial in London Fields a month ago was half a success - it took half an hour for the Sweet Alyssum to be taken but it has taken a month for someone to not tell me that they’ve found it. I’m a little disappointed. Its not that I want people to feel they have to tell me they’ve found a part of the Brautigan Salad, it is that I would like them to feel they want to. 

I packaged up the plants carefully, printed out the Google map of Brautigan related leaving locations, and arranged with Sarah and my friend Andy Gout to accompany me on the leavings.

Benjamin Franklin

The cover for Trout Fishing In America is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco’s Washington Square.

Born 1706-died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture. He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

This is how Brautigan’s most famous book begins. And indeed on the cover of Trout Fishing In America is a photograph of Benjamin Franklin, and standing next to Benjamin Franklin is Richard Brautigan. Richard Brautigan holds his hands behind his back and on his head is his hat. 

Standing at 36 Craven Street in London is the world’s only remaining home of Benjamin Franklin. I left a pot of Sweet Alyssum on the doorstep. A gift from Richard Brautigan travelling backwards through time. 

Trout Fishing in America

There are no trout streams in London. But a search on Google maps revealed a Trout Terrace, what looks to be a short passageway near the Savile Row area. On the way my friend Andy reveals that he was bullied in school, one group of bullies taking particular delight in changing his name to Andy Trout. I said I guess that they weren’t clever enough to realise that his actual surname, Gout, could already have been used as an insult. Andy said that Trout still has bad connotations, but that the worst group of bullies used to call him Grout. Those bullies have probably spent the rest of their lives using grout on a day to day basis, while Andy has moved on and among many other things paints amazing portraits. 

We were now standing where Trout Terrace should be, but it wasn’t there. It was as if someone had taken a section of the street and moved it. We checked the map I had printed, and the maps on our phones. I searched Google again for the place I had starred. We were right on it. It should be here at our feet, but it had vanished. 

I read the map again - my map reading had suffered from word blindness - it didn’t say Trout Terrace, it said Trout Terence. Trout was a person not a place. 

The Mysterious Disappearance of Terence Trout

It seems that not only had the non-existent Trout Terrace vanished, but Terence Trout was also an enigma. He owned a tailoring business, but a quick search revealed that Trout’s last tweet was from October last year, and that his website was just a domain holding page. But his logo is a jumping trout, and the only online feature about him starts: “Amusingly Stephen once crossed paths with an immaculately dressed client called Terence Trout and the seed was sewn”. 

The seed was sewn. An awful and obvious pun, but the mention of ‘seed’ might indicate that although the Trout we were now fishing for wasn’t the Trout I’d started out fishing for, if I can find him he should have part of the Brautigan Salad. At this point Sarah senses that this could become another lengthy obsession, and Andy is clearly just wishing I’d stop saying the word Trout. She goes into the nearest open shop, a men’s shirt shop, and asks “Do you know anything about the mysterious disappearance of Terence Trout?”. The man behind the counter looks up, and with a shrug says, “He moved out six months ago, he’s looking for new premises. Good luck finding him”.

I have to admit to myself that in the space of half an hour I’ve lost two Trout, and that maybe it is time to move on and find another leaving place for the Trout part of the Brautigan Salad. 

Instead I found a shop on Pall Mall that specialises in fly fishing equipment, and has been doing so since 1840. Over 170 years of helping people stand in hundreds of streams, thousands of historical trout swimming towards the future. 

I left a pot of Calendua on the stone balustrade and said my goodbye. As I walked away I turned and caught a glimpse of sunlight shining on the flower head making the yellowest yellow in Piccadilly. 

Willard And His Bowling Trophies

After yesterday’s transplant all of the flowers looked a little wilty, I guess they need a day or two just to settle their roots before they are taken around the city. So I’ve decided to leave them all, including the poppies, for a couple of days, and make sure they are well fed and watered before saying my final goodbyes. 

This morning Sarah was woken up by the cat, who was clearly grumpy about something. Still half asleep she went to feed her, and came through to the lounge saying “I know why Kook is so upset. A rabbit has been in and used her litter tray”.

I marvelled at the thought of the super-gymnastic toilet-trained rabbit that had scaled a 14 foot wall, broken in through the ski-chalet door to use the litter tray in a calculated attempt to agitate the cat. It worked. The cat was definitely annoyed. 

I was on my way to hunt for the rabbit before I realised what must have happened. Yesterday, after repotting the Brautigan Salad flowers in the chalet-area, I swept up the compost that I’d dropped on the floor. I thought a sensible place to put it was in the cat’s freshly cleaned litter tray, knowing that everything would be thrown out once she’d used it this morning. In the meantime the spirit of Richard Brautigan created a mythical dream rabbit from half-asleep concern for the emotional well-being of the cat. A rabbit that was house trained, yet insensitive to the socio-psychological needs of others. 

But now the puzzle of the rabbit has been solved, why the cat is so upset is still a mystery.

Today I’ve separated and repotted the Brautigan Salad flower trough into individual plants, I’ve written tags for each of them with Brautigan’s original poem and instructions of what to do if you are the finder, like a name label sewn to the back of a school jumper.

The Calendua are holding back a little in their blooming, but they’ll look radiant by the weekend. So today will be the day for the poppies. A lone trout in central London, flowering at the feet of rush hour.  

I’ve been away from the Brautigan Salad for over a week. The twin suns of Calendua have set. It is hard to decide when to carry out the next leaving. In a way I want the flowers to be at their prime. But prime can be such a tiny moment, and in waiting I might misjudge and miss it - I’ve lost two flowers already. But the Calendula has seven flower heads on the cusp of blooming, in two days I’ll need to carry out a leaving blitz. I’ve mapped out a constellation of Google stars marking Brautigan word associated places in London. The finding will be left to chance.  

The first poppy has bloomed! A true jelly bean red. I officially declare the Brautigan Salad sweet shop open. 8% off for the first 68 bees.

It is a day of mixed emotions for the Brautigan Salad.

The carrot leaves have been attacked by tiny black flies, an over abundance of full stops eating their way to death. I’ve done what I can to rescue the carrots, cleaned the remaining leaves and sprayed them with a vegetable friendly pesticide. It would be awful for the Brautigan Salad to grow this far through time to have one part of it not make it. 

The flowers all look incredibly healthy though, and the first two Calendua are are the cusp of flowering. They look like twin science-fiction suns rising on a green rectangular land - the low peaks of the Sweet Alyssum covered in snow, the volcanic urgency of the poppy leaves tinged with a halo of purple. The daisies are yet to reveal anything about themselves. I like them all the more for their silence.

Last night I went to the Brautigan Book Club, despite my hesitance, I had promised Vera who runs it that I would attend. Just before I left the house I had a quick conversation with my friend and writer Guy J Jackson in LA. We spoke about the time Guy took to the streets to busk telling stories and how hard it was because most people don’t have the capacity to tolerate something they don’t understand, assuming he was some kind of religious nut, rather than taking the time to listen and realising he was a man telling brilliant, funny stories – for no other reason than he wanted to tell his stories. I told Guy where I was going to spend the evening, he said:

“Oh, I don’t think I ever told you, but the town he killed himself in is north of San Francisco, I’ve just read the first few pages of that huge biography, I didn’t realise that I’d been to that town and partied hard there one night. It was a very strange town. When you come here, I’ll have to take you there. You go over the golden gate bridge, you go down this long windy road, and it is sort of tucked away in a cove. It is full of hippies. But rich hippies who have these massive houses. They take the road signs down to get to the town, so people can’t find them. It is a totally hidden town. Like they take the road signs down in Cornwall. So under all kind of altered states I was in this town, for some festival or something, but the whole town was like one big party that night. So you would just drift through all the people’s houses. It was very friendly and all, but they didn’t want anybody in that town. I didn’t realise at the time that that was the town he killed himself.”

On arriving at the Brautigan Book Club everyone was given a small piece of paper, hand printed with a lino cut of a bird’s head. On the reverse was a quote from Willard And His Bowling Trophies – the Brautigan book that inspired tonight’s theme and discussion. The girl who gave me the piece of paper said the quote represented my soul, like some kind of Brautigan tarot I guess. This was my quote:

“Upstairs Bob was mourning people who had been dead for over two thousand years. Constance was trying to console him. Tears were slowly drying on his face”.

I complemented the girl on her handwriting and went to consider my soul, the town that parties hard and the ghost of Richard Brautigan. 

The first speakers of the night were Caroline Jupp and Sam Brown who created and curate The Library of Unwritten Books. Taking inspiration from Brautigan’s fantasy library of unpublished manuscripts that is central to The Abortion, Caroline and Sam’s library is the result of asking people what book they would like to write, or might have dreamt of writing - recording the interview, transcribing the result, and printing a little booklet of that interview. So far the library is comprised of 800 volumes that range from half imagined sci-fi plots, books of lists, and pleas for lost dogs, but mostly they are honest, open tender and revealing stories unwritten by those who think they don’t have a story. 

The second talk was by Mark Aitken, a teacher and producer of film and documentary, who related a meandering account of his first encounter with Willard And His Bowling Trophies and his thwarted desire to make a film based on the book. Perhaps some books are meant to remain books.

It was a very sweet night, with a feeling of real openness and willingness to share. Conversations with strangers made easier I guess by the uncommon ground of Brautigan.

Vera has kindly asked me to speak at September’s Brautigan Book Club. The book is Dreaming of Babylon: A detective novel 1942 – a parody of the hard-boiled private eye genre. I don’t know what my talk will be about. I might take to wearing a mac and trilby to watch the Brautigan Salad flower leavings. 

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I’d found an email, from the finders of the Brautigan Salad leaving, in the trash folder of my email account. So I’ve spent the morning rummaging in electronic rubbish in the hope that I dream prophetic. 

Between emails headed ‘Gold Dust’ and ‘Bulletproof vest’, was one which seemed promising. The heading simply read ’Dearest One’, which although a little strong to write to a stranger to thank for leaving some flowers in a park, but entirely plausible as you have to allow for potential cultural differences in London. Sadly, the email turned out to just be a fishing scam, but a fishing scam with a plot lifted directly from the Brothers Grimm. 

The enemy who killed my father was not discovered till now and it makes me to be afraid because I might be the next target by the enemy. I am the only child, my mother died two years after my birth and my father did not marry another wife. My immediate uncle has made live difficult for me since the death of my father because he wants to claim my late father properties which rightfully belong to me as the only child. It is my belief that my wicked uncle has hand in the death of my father because of his greedy attitude over my father’s wealth.

As I am writing this, an email has just arrived from Agustina Waugh - I don’t know anyone with such an exotic name, only the Brautigan Salad could reach out that far - the email heading reads ‘I’ve got something important to say’ - this could be it:

I’m 26 years and I work as a manager in insurance company. I am a blonde and got second size of tits.  

Second size? I don’t even know what that means. Is it a scale that runs up or down? Why is she even telling me this? We are not going to become ‘friends, lovers, or maybe have some serious relations’, all I want to know is if she found the Brautigan Salad. 

My advice is never trust your dreams, and never rely on anyone with an alphanumeric name of over 10 digits. 

It has been just over a week since the couple found the Sweet Alyssum I left on the park bench, and so far they have only responded with silence. My hope is they’re waiting until it flourishes in their care before they contact me. I’m trying hard not to be disappointed as I sift through the 1000 imaginary emails they could have written.

This morning I met Vera who runs the Brautigan Book Club for a cup of tea. Coincidently the outdoor area of the cafe we met in looks like it probably has a section of disused trout stream piled up in the corner to add to its well-honed junk aesthetic. 

Vera very kindly gave me a Brautigan Book Club badge that has a picture of a slice of watermelon. I’ve not been to the book club yet, in fact I’ve never been to a book club. Part of the reason is that I’m a voracious solitary reader, the other reason is that in my mind I associate them with creative writing groups - I’ve had a bad experience with writing groups. 

When I first moved to London as an enthusiastic and naive teenager I was keen to explore the writing scene as quickly as possible. I bought that weeks Time Out and found a writing group that met on Friday nights in a pub in Angel. It sounded perfect - a chance to meet like-minded people in a supportive, creative and relaxed environment. 

With a copy of my poems, the listing and an A to Z, I set out to immerse myself in London’s literary culture. Before long I was lost in Angel. A tangle of streets had confused my map reading. I asked a couple of people for directions to the pub, after a few false starts I was finally heading in the right direction - the lights of the pub glowing in the distance. 

Inside the pub was noisy and blokey - more blokey a venue than I thought it would be for a poetry group. At the bar I realised I’d made a terrible mistake - this was a topless bar - the four barmaids were pouring pints and selling peanuts wearing only a g-string. This can’t be the right place - but I was at the bar and one of the barmaids was asking what I wanted. Stuttering the words ‘A pint of lager please’ while thinking ok, stand in the corner, drink quickly, then go home. But the confusion of being sure that this is the right pub still remained, and as I was paying for the drink I found myself asking a nearly nude 40 year old woman ‘Is this where the poetry is?’. Without blinking she replied ‘Yes, it is upstairs’.

Upstairs I found the writing group I thought I’d been longing to meet - all five of them, all of them desperate to read out their own poems. The youngest guy, apart from me, who was in his late fifties passed out copies of this latest work. A long 5 page prose-poem about his friend dying. He began reading. Half way through the poem he stopped and shouted ‘They are making too much noise downstairs!’, and stomped out to see if could get the music turned down. At that point I made my excuses, gathered my things, and left. I’ve never been to a writing group since. 

London is a city of a thousand places to hold a reading, performance, or meeting. Find one the suits you and embrace it. Make it part of whatever you are doing. The best stories would have been those told by the barmaids.  

I’m going to go to the next Brautigan Book Club - Vera is lovely and I imagine that the book club reflects her passion and love for Brautigan. 

While talking to her about the Brautigan Salad, and the results of yesterday’s experiment, she asked how far away am I going to leave the plants and flowers? I hadn’t really thought about how big a playing field I have at my feet - I’ve just been focused on the growing. London is a city of a thousand perfect places to leave things to be found. I’m just going to have to go and find them.