Day 135

Day 135 of my THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTEEFIVE challenge has me inside this Realm T-shirt, purchased from a TKMaxx store several years ago. The theory goes that TKMaxx is the Purgatory of clothing – garments wind up here if they don’t quite justify their original retail price tags, but aren’t so bad that they belong on a Guy Fawkes dummy. Essentially they’re all quality items, but with a slight quirk or defect that has them shunned from the limelight. I believe this Realm number didn’t quite make the cut as a portion of the elaborate print has perished around the neckline – a minor discrepancy but seemingly enough to deny its entry into the high-end surf-wear outlets.

There are two prints in play on this tee; a pale blue one and a dark blue one, both intertwined from top to bottom spanning the entire canvas. They each simply spell “The Realm” in an exaggerated cursive font, littered with flourishes and splash effects and then magnified to fill the space.

I very much like this tee; it’s a good colour and the design is exactly the level of ‘messed up’ that I wish to portray to onlookers. I’m lucky to have found this overlooked gem hidden in the bowels of TKMaxx’s rails of doom and plucked it from the edge of the slop-bucket precipice. Had I have not, this tee would most likely be washing windows right now, or securing an oil leak, or acting as a drip tray at the mercy of a careless painter and decorator.

Don’t worry little Realm T-shirt, Andi has accepted you.

Day 134

AGGHHHH!!! I just saw great big condom-shaped UFO full of giant hostile slug-like creatures waving banners professing their desire to re-culture their home world colonies on a strict diet of human eyeballs…

OK, OK, I didn’t just see that, but I did just see the billowing silhouette of a fifteen foot tall hairy snake with luminous mercury flowing through its veins, stood on its hind legs and seeking the virginity of scantily clad young girls collecting posies in the woods…

Fine, I didn’t see that either, but I did just see endless room after room of rotting corpses lead by a procession of blood-thirsty decapitated, piked, charlatans who sung of murderous creatures bearing tools of torture stalking the darkened passages of foggy midnight London…

Happy now?

Associating with malcontents was once a crime punishable by death in this country’s capital. Fortunately times are different now; otherwise I’d be bound for the noose for spending the day out and about with the Dennis Publishing crew at the London Dungeons.
For the most part, I have spent today trudging through mud, throwing off cretins, staving off the leprosy of said cretins, plucking leeches from my skin, strafing round murderers and then, like I said, had a tour of the London Dungeons.

To mark the spectacle of heinous deaths and controversial practices, and to appease Dennis Publishing’s finest motley gaggle, I have opted to wear this donation to my THREEHUNDREDANDSIXTEEFIVE challenge from Fortean Times magazine – celebrating the world of strange phenomena. The T-shirt features a design by illustrator Jonathan Edwards encompassing several hot-topics that frequently grace the pages of Fortean Times, including Big Foot and his elusive world-wide clan, extra-terrestrial beings of unknown calibre and impeccable time-keeping chaps with curiously large moustaches. See more from Fortean Times via their Twitter account