VAPE SHOP FORTY
Friday, 3rd April 2026 GMT - CATA LOGG INFO - INDX
- INTRODUCTION - Friday, 30th January 2026
- SOUTHGATE, PALMERS GREEN & NORTH FINCHLEY - Friday, 30th January 2026 - 1/40
- BARNET (High, New, East & Friern) - Friday, 6th February 2026 - 2/40
- DALSTON & STOKE NEWINGTON - Friday, 13th February 2026 - 3/40
- ENFIELD - Friday, 20th February 2026 - 4/40
- MUSWELL HILL - Friday, 27th February 2026 - 5/40
- UPPER STREET, ISLINGTON - Friday, 6th March 2026 - 6/40
- FORD CORTINA, BURMA ROAD - Friday, 13th March 2026 - 7/40
- HOLLOWAY ROAD - Friday, 20th March 2026 - 8/40
- WALTHAMSTOW E17 - Friday, 27th March 2026 - 9/40
- FRANCHISE FIVE - Friday, 3rd April 2026 - 10/40
INTRODUCTION
Friday the 30th of January 2026
Spoke by Tam Dean Burn in character as The Managing Director
SPOKE
WRIT
Dear Concerned Parties,
Further to whatever else you may have understood...
Or even been told...
VAPE SHOP FORTY, are 40 Fridays in the year of 2026, where we have commissioned VAPE SHOP to show us evidence of which charity shops that he has distributed a copy of the long-playing record EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to. This is to be done while he, as in VAPE SHOP, trudges his way across London, doing whatever else he does with his life now that he does next to nothing.
Part of our ‘understanding’ with VAPE SHOP was that from time to time he might want us to publish a photograph he has taken of a drain hole cover or a Turkish / Kurdish Barber Shop that he has stopped off at to have a hot towel wet shave.
We cannot guarantee that VAPE SHOP will deliver on what we have commissioned him to do. Or even if the photographs he has provided us with stands up as evidence that he delivered a copy of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to the charity shops in question, in the previous week, or even in the previous month. VAPE SHOP is difficult; he has his issues. But he was the only living person in the Penkiln Burn Universe we could find to do the job.
Yours Faithfully,
The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings
Post Script:
And if you don’t know what EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands is click HERE
And if you want a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands find one of these charity shops and get one before they throw them out with all the other stuff that charity shops have to throw out because nobody wants whatever it is.
And if you do actually buy a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands, please let VAPE SHOP know. It is those little things in his life that seem to make his trudging have purpose. You can contact him at vape@penkilnburn.com
SOUTHGATE, PALMERS GREEN & NORTH FINCHLEY
1/40
Friday, 30th January 2026
BARNET (High, New, East & Friern)
2/40
Friday, 6th February 2026
DALSTON & STOKE NEWINGTON
3/40
Friday, 13th February 2026
ENFIELD
4/40
Friday, 20th February 2026
MUSWELL HILL
5/40
Friday, 27th February 2026
UPPER STREET, ISLINGTON
6/40
Friday, 6th March 2026
SPOKE
WRIT
I mean...
What the fuck?
This is VAPE SHOP here.
But I guess you knew that.
Have you read that ‘Introduction’ of the supposed novella or memoir or whatever it is supposed to be? The one that goes by the name of Famous People I Have Shagged, I said none of that.
I have never shagged anybody famous in my life. And now that I am approaching my mid-seventies, I don’t think that I am going to start doing that now. I mean nobody famous would want to shag me anyway.
But I have been told by those that seem to be in control of this place, that I have to ‘pretend’ to be the protagonist of a novella by that William E. Drummond, that in turn is pretending to be a memoir by William E. Drummond, where it is me that has to go out there and do the leg work or they will kick me out of the Penkiln Burn Universe.
I mean...
From what I understand, William E. Drummond did not even want to write this novella pretending to be his memoir, but they said he had to write it to prove something before they let him write his follow up to I Have Just Murdered My Wife. His follow up was to be called I Have Just Murdered My Husband. But because that first one was not that successful out there, they told him he had to write a more headline grabbing novella this time, and depending on the success of this one, they will decide if he can go back to writing his Murdering My Husband one.
And the thing is they are just putting all these words into my mouth, as in William E. Drummond is having to cut and paste all of them from what you might have been reading in all those different bits of FOOT NOTE.
Last week I was reading Albert Camus book The Stranger or is it The Outsider...
Like...
I mean...
Did the bloke in the book, did he get a choice if he was going to shoot the Arab, or was it just this Albert Camus that was pulling the strings.
I mean...
Did the protagonist know when he agreed to be in that book that by the end he was going to have to have his head in the guillotine, while Albert Camus gets a Nobel Prize for Literature.
And yeah, what about the Arab and his mates and the girl? It is all that typical back drop of rather threatening but exotic people that we see again and again in these sort of films and books, be it Apocalypse Now, or Darjeeling Limited, or The Power & The Glory by Graham Greene or even Burmese Days by George Orwell. All of them and hundreds more like them pulling the same trick. As in we the white western male punters getting almost a hardon imagining ourselves out there with all these exotic people without names getting killed or their kit off.
Anyway...
And then that Robert Smith comes along and writes that song based on the book I just read – you know – Killing An Arab. And Robert Smith has just won those Grammys for the latest Cure album. Has any musician from Algeria ever won a Grammy?
But anyway back to me, and me being the protagonist in this book where I am supposed have shagged all these famous people, and if not, that is what I am supposed to be doing – one a month for the rest of this year, or whenever. And if I don’t they kick me out of the Penkiln Burn Universe.
I mean...
I had these ideas that I could just spend what time I had left using my bus pass, to catch buses to places I had never been before in London, so I could climb the stairs, while I still can, and look out at the world from the top deck. And maybe stop off some place and go for a cheese omelette chips and beans, and take photos of cracked pavements and litter and manhole covers and cigarette ends and laughing gas cannisters and squashed energy drink cans and go for a hot towel wet shave at a Turkish / Kurdish barbers that I have never been to before, and if no one is looking spray one of my forty VAPE SHOP tags up on a wall.
And yes...
I did have and still do have fantasies about all of this – not the shagging bit – but all the other things being the ingredients for some sort of biopic from my perspective. A coming-of-age film for the over 70s. You know... Late Middle Age into Early Old Age. John Hughes should be turning in his grave.
Right now, as in when I am being this protagonist in someone else’s novella that he does not even want to be writing, I am sitting on the top deck of the 263 down to Highbury & Islington. In my rucksack I have ten copies of some record, that I am supposed to be delivering to ten charity shops there.
I agreed to do this in the hope that, it might make those that pull the strings in this Penkiln Burn Universe think more favourably about that biopic that I was going on about. And yes I have my two cans of spray paint – one white and one black. I plan to do my tag on some wall down there.
Actually we are already there.
I will catch up with you next Friday when I am out delivering the next batch of these records.
Later...
VAPE SHOP
FORD CORTINA, BURMA ROAD
7/40
Friday, 13th March 2026
SPOKE
WRIT
Like I said...
I am not happy with the situation.
Me having to go and find these famous people that are then supposed to want to shag me. Not that I could anyway.
I did think I should try Kemi Badenoch.
I mean you did hear how she was willing to put a price tag on herself. As in if you wanted to have dinner with her you could pay her fifty thousand quid, and she would spend the evening with you listening to what you had to say, while you had your starters and your desert and whatever else in-between.
I mean...
If she was already willing to compromise whatever she stood for politically, to raise cash for her party, then you just need to turn things up a few notches and she would have her price for her to...
Anyway, I don’t want to say anything I should not say...
But you get what I mean.
I mean she is the most physically attractive leader the Torys have ever had.
I mean...
It was either that or I go and copy and paste some of the pages from the new Lisa Minneli memoir that has just come out that is totally a rip off, of Famous People I Have Shagged. I mean it sounds like she just ripped off what they, as in here in the PBU have been trying to get me to do. You never know who has been looking at this website...
Are you following me...
Or am I doing the delusional thing?
Anyway...
This week, I felt I had to make some sort of protest about all of this, and so I refused to go out and do the charity shop run. It’s just so ‘Charity Washing’, like a low-rent Silicon Valley Billionaire type thing with them being philanthropists and everything.
Instead, I went and did one of the things I have been doing once a month, every month for the past so-many years. As in all the time that I had my first brain seizure in 2020.
As you know...
I like things falling apart, be it lives or houses or relationships or even institutions that I have been party to. Especially myself. My growing pain in my knees. My loss of hair on my head. My hearing. My shrinking left bollock. My memories that will never return. But if those things are not falling apart enough, I like to experience vehicles falling apart, but in slow motion. Watch the rust creep, the tires flatten, the mould grow, the leather seats crack, the gears grind, the gaskets blow. It is what I loved most about the Land Rover that I once owned. Whatever was done with it while it was being serviced, would never prevent is from it slowly but determinedly falling apart. But that Land Rover is long gone.
For these past few years, as in since November 2020, I have found myself living in a part of London, where one’s car is the ultimate male status cymbal. This is largely down to the Albanian culture that the majority of my neighbours are steeped in. And don’t get me wrong I love so much of all this Albanian stuff. I would not have used the name VAPE SHOP, if it was not for their huge cultural influence on me. But anyway, all this car culture around me here means there are no rusting and falling apart cars in Southgate. Albanian men love their cars in the way that my generation and demographic loved their electric guitars as a stand in for their cock.
So...
Today, I took the Piccadilly Line from Southgate Station down to Manor House Station, then the 141 down to the Petherton Road Stop on Green Lanes and then walked down Burma Road, to what I consider to be one of the greatest works of art currently on display for all to see in London. It ticks all the boxes for me – it has never been commodified, curated, galleried, academified and not even signed nor stolen. Let alone sold to the highest bidder. And as I write these words (Thursday the 12th of March) it is still there right now where it has been ever since I had to get rid of my Land Rover.
I love a work of art that is not just some sort of extension of an artist’s ego. Something they can list in their biog or have in their retrospective. A work of art that you find in the real world. The real living and dying world.
This thing that I have been doing every month for the past six years, is to go to this Burma Road and lean against a wall for forty minutes and stare at a Ford Cortina (Mark Two) with a 1970 / 71 number plate. And over those forty minutes I try not just to look but actually see it corrode and fall apart, at the same time as trying to sense my body and my mind corroding and falling apart in unison with this Ford Cortina.
I used to hate Ford Cortinas back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They symbolised for some sort of low rent aspiration. An aspiration that would trap you for the rest of your life. But this Ford Cortina on Burma Road seems to have escaped whatever those aspirations were in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
If you are reading these words and not just listening to me telling you about all of this, you should be able to look at some of the photographs of it that I have taken on my handheld device.
I had never taken photographs of it before. It almost feels like I am undermining something about the purity of it as a work of art to do this. But today I could not stop myself.
The other thing that I did out of a sense of guilt, because of not doing the charity shop run, is take one of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands albums, put it in a white mailing sleeve. Then using a black marker pen write the words For You on the cover. And then put the white mailing sleeve with the album inside, under the Ford Cortina on Burma Road. I am now sitting in Kurdish Café suping from a bowl of soup while writing these words to you to let you know.
Next week, I will attempt to get back out there delivering the said albums to charity shops somewhere, even if I don’t email Kemi Badenoch with my proposition.
In the meantime, if you find the record under the Ford Cortina on Burma Road, let me know please.
Later...
VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com
HOLLOWAY ROAD
8/40
Friday, 20th March 2026
SPOKE
WRIT
VAPE SHOP – The Franchise
Morning you...
Are you a Franchise?
Am I a Franchise?
Are we all just Franchises?
As in none of us are actually ourselves but just some Franchise for some would be global brand.
Maybe the only way to not be a franchise is to franchise oneself to others.
The above was my thinking while I was on the top deck of the 43 down Holloway Road this morning (Thursday the 19th of March).
Yeah, I know I am supposed to be thinking about how I can get famous people to be interested in me shagging them but...
Some years ago, the former Bill Drummond called a meeting with a select few of his other selves, as in The Elderly Gentleman, a local artist, Brush (Your Shop Steward) and A Part Time Painter, William E. Drummond and the rest.
This was before the era of VAPE SHOP...
As in before I was here fully formed and on the scene.
But...
Once I was here and started to pick up on some of the rumours swishing around the perimeter fences of the Penkiln Burn Universe. Rumours that ‘they’ were going to collectively head out into your real world using the tag 10 FOOT, as in knowingly knowing they were not 10 FOOT or even to pretend they were 10 FOOT, or even as a tribute to 10 FOOT, but somehow to add to the world of Fake News.
I am glad to say, those other selves wanted nothing to do with this, as in the world was at the time awash with fake news, and anyway it would be an insult to the real 10 FOOT.
But...
It is now March 2026 and although my life has been given a twisted form of meaning, with me here right now, being the protagonist in a novella written by someone else and me going out with my Freedom Pass and a box of fresh copies of the album EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and heading off to find another post code in this Bleak City, to then trudge those streets looking for charity shops that I can donate one of these fresh copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to. And then celebrate by finding a wall I can mark my ever-expanding territory with my tag VAPE SHOP.
But...
Then, last night I got an email from Rupert W. Service – fuck knows if that is his real name or if they have ever gone up the Yukon. Anyway this Rupert W. Service was wanting to know how they could get hold of a copy of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands album. And they explained that seeing as they lived in Canada there is no way they could get to any of these charity shops in this Bleak City. My instant reaction was – No! I mean this whole thing is about being where it is and not just anywhere.
But then...
In the early hours of this morning, when the virus on my lungs was preventing me from sleeping, an idea started to invade my mind.
Maybe I should do a side deal with this Rupert W. Service, where they can become the VAPE SHOP Franchise for where they live in Canada, be it up the Yukon or not. But to become that Franchise of me, this Rupert W. Service had to first go out and do a VAPE SHOP tag in their local town and send me a photo of that tag, so I know they mean it. And then I will send them ten copies of the EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands album, and they then distribute the ten copies to wherever or however (charity shops an option) in their town. And of course, send me photos of each of those locations (be they charity shops or not). This means I, as in VAPE SHOP might become a global brand. And I can tell all those others in the Penkiln Burn Universe to fuck themselves. And I don’t have to go out and pretend to do all that shagging famous people, vicariously or not, for them. And kids around the globe might start wearing VAPE SHOP t-shirts, and trainers, and...
But with all deals there is a darker side to it...
If you were to become aware of a copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands being available for purchase on eBay, Discogs, Amazon, Rough Trade or the like, in whatever is left of the time in your life, and you hear about a war going on in the world, you have to directly connect the underlying motives of that war, and all that war’s war dead, to that copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands being sold on whatever Western Cultural Imperialism is using to sell you stuff that you don’t need.
As in...
That those people in that war that got killed, would not have been killed if that copy of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands had not ended up on eBay or Discogs or any of those other corners of the evil empire...
So like I am implying...
If you want to be a Franchise of me, as in the VAPE SHOP in your town / country / corner of the globe, email me today and don’t forget to attach the photo of your VAPE SHOP tag on a wall near you. And none of that AI shite. This has to be for real or more people will get killed in that war. And before you know that war will be knocking on your door.
And if you want you can go and do that shagging famous people for all those that are interested in reading about those sorts of things.
For now...
VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com
Post Script:
Like...
Just so you know, W. E. Drummond, as in the Managing fucking Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings, was furious with me for not doing my charity shop run last week. I told him to “Fuck off”. Anyway... We came to some sort of agreement. I told him, I would get my weekly run only if they agreed to start ‘posting’ the images my handheld device has been taking of what I consider to be the only real beauty to be found in this Bleak City. As in The Cracked Paving Stones, The Fag End Parties, The Flattened Cans of Energy Drinks. And the Dead Bikes.
And...
They have to start developing the coming-of-age biopic that I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. Or I am out of here. And fuck being the protagonist in someone else’s story.
You get me?
Post the postscript, I thought I should start doing screen grabs of where these Charity Shops are, so you know where to go. And the God’s Covenant Life Centre one was closed. Thus I only got five delivered this week.
WALTHAMSTOW E17
9/40
Friday, 27th March 2026
SPOKE
WRIT
The date does not matter or not to me right now...
So like...
I went to see Brush, our supposed shop steward, I have been paying my union subs, so theoretically she is supposed to represent me and the issues I have with all of this shite about just being a protagonist in someone else’s comic or whatever this is, and the words coming out of my mouth just words this William E. Drummond has just taken from other words that have already been used elsewhere and me having to pretend to try and go and get Kemi Badenoch to shag me, just to keep your attention.
Anyway...
This Brush, seemed to empathise with my position, she told me stories about how she had been used over the years to paint pictures by a local artist, The Part Time Painter and even the former Bill Drummond. And she thought these paintings were shite and even if they were good, she never got the credit for them.
So like...
Brush went and had a meeting with whoever pulls the strings around here. And the next morning she called me in, and it seems that a new deal has been struck with The String Puller and The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings.
So like...
As long as I carry on with my Forty Week Run of attempting to distribute copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to charity shops across this Bleak City, and show them the evidence, they will continue to publish my (and not someone else’s) passing thoughts and some of the images that my handheld device captures. But at the same time, I have to accept that when whatever this is gets presented to the public, I will just be the protagonist in someone else’s story about me.
Does that stack up?
Anyway...
I packed my haversack with ten copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and a can of spray paint. And headed for Southgate Tube Station.
I always stand at exactly the same spot on the station platform, however crowded, and I look down to make sure my feet are within millimetres of where they stood yesterday and stood five years ago when I would have first stood here and then the hand held device takes an image of it. As in that spot on the platform. And then I look up at the advert on the wall the far side of the track and the hand held device takes a photograph of that. And I wonder how those adverts have changed over these past five years. And how four years ago it was all about mixed marriages, as in inclusive on the ethnic front, but not about a Presbyterian like me marrying a Catholic like Mary McElwee. And then there were the larger female models. But then Lizzo got cancelled a couple of years ago, and suddenly there were no more larger female models featured in these posters. And now it is all about you being able to start your own business or going wherever the fuck you want in the world, all you had to do was buy the right app.
But anyway...
The tube pulls in.
And I change to the Victoria Line at Finsbury Park. And I see an advert for a new film called EPIC, so Hand Held Device took an image of that as well. Maybe the former Bill Drummond might be interested. But I doubt it will capture what Mr Nobody Against Putin captures. I watched that last night. I won’t deny I was jealous. I know if that biopic about me ever gets made it won’t contain any of that hero’s journey that Mr Nobody Against Putin contains let alone the one that I SWEAR contains. I mean I SWEAR makes you cry, there is nothing about me that could make you cry.
But like...
I get to Walthamstow on the Victoria Line and then begin my trudge down the High Street Market there – it claims to be the second longest street market in Europe. I won’t go into why the markets in this Bleak City are better a thousand-fold than any of the Art Galleries this city has to offer the tourists and aspirational would bes, who like to think that they know how to appreciate, when they don’t even have it in them to appreciate a squashed can of energy drink in the gutter.
And...
I deliver seven copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands to seven different charity shops and Hand Held Device took the photographs we are contracted to do.
But...
While doing this I was attempting to have conversations with those other loves of my life – mannequin heads in shop windows. I can’t pass one without attempting to have a conversation with them. I don’t think there has been a time in my life when I have not attempted to have one of these conversations. It used to embarrass my mum when I was a wee lad, and she would take me doing the messages with her. I guess you would call ‘doing the messages’ ‘doing the shopping’, but back then...
Anyway...
Maybe in the biopic, the Mannequin Heads can talk back to me, tell me what has been going on in their lives.
I did a deal with Hand Held Device. As in Hand Held Device would take 40 photographs of these Mannequin Heads over the rest of these VAPE SHOP FORTY Fridays. I mean they can take as many as they want, but I will select 40 to ‘share’ with you. Maybe today there will be some of those forty.
Until next Friday that is it...
VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com
FRANCHISE FIVE
10/40
Friday, 3rd April 2026
Yeah like...
It seems that I am NOT being nailed to a cross...
Yet...
Anyway while we wait for that nailing to happen, I’ve been told to take a break from trudging the streets, and bake some Hot Cross Buns or something. But I think that is just them trying to control me, be it the Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings or even Brush, I mean she is supposed to represent me, but at times it feels the opposite.
The thing is...
They have told me that I cannot have any more than five franchises. They said, anymore than that and things could get out of hand – the market would be flooded. Not that I agreed with them but...
Anyway...
The Franchise Five are based in...
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
Edinburgh, Scotland
Pontypridd / Tonypandy / Porth / Trehopcyn, Cymru
Bristol, Wessex
Granville, France
And what follows are the first of the photographic evidence done by the Franchise Five of their VAPE SHOP tags and donation drop-off locations...
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada:
Seafield, Edinburgh, Scotland
Pontypridd / Tonypandy / Porth / Trehopcyn, Cymru
Bristol, Wessex
I will endeavour to ‘share’ with you further photographic evidence of their tags and of where they have left / donated each of their ten copies of EMOTIONS by The Tied Hands and in the coming Fridays.
But...
In the meantime, I won’t deny that as VAPE SHOP, as in the brand and not the real trudging me, takes the first steps in Going Global, I find it interesting how the charity shops in the ‘new world’ present themselves to the world in a completely different way than they do in the ‘old world’.
And I am loving the tags, I mean is there one 10 FOOT tag in Pontypridd let alone Mississauga, Canada?
And did you notice the Red Bull truck in the background of the second tag photo in Mussissauga? If that is there does that mean, there are also squashed cans of Red Bull in the gutter?
Maybe Red Bull would be up for sponsoring all of this.
What do you think?
Later...
VAPE SHOP
vape@penkilnburn.com
