Wednesday 3 February 2016

Murray Lachlan Young has written a book.

Murray has taken time out from writing and performing in order to put an anthology together. Click on the 'support this book' button and Murray will tell you about it himself.



As a schoolboy I was bored to tears by the poetry I was obliged to digest (apart from Betjeman) It took a visit to the Roundhouse to hear Brian Patten (he published a poem called: 'Tristan waking in his wood panics) in the 70's to spark an interest in the art form and to understand that it is, after music, communication at its best. Murray is, I think, one of the best practitioners of the bardic art (stories well told with gallons of humour, alliteration, rhythm, intelligence and out of the box nous). I am happy to rank him up there with Patten. I bought into this book, not to stick it unread on a shelf and say: 'I know him' but to take it down off the shelf to read to my children in order that they see how much fun poetry can be. Go on, buy one, get one, free your humour ducts of Auden clogs.


Saturday 26 December 2015

Cheap Red Knickers.

Rusty called from Lizard Bend. Idaho.

I said hello Rusty how is your Christmas?
He said Tristan it's good, Babs has taken the triplets to Montana and left me home alone. Home alone I can de-frost the fridge, clean the kitchen. do all the washing in the house, clear out the kids rooms, polish the floors and stuff like that.

I said Rusty that sounds like a great present for Babs.

He said No. All she ever wants is a pair of red knickers and an ill fitting bra from Anne Summers.

After all Christmas is just about cheap red knickers.

I said NO Rusty. Christmas is about demonstration of wealth. Buy her expensive red knickers.

Rusty said there ain't no expensive red knickers in Lizard Bend Idaho.

I said rusty buy a cheap pair and then make out you are giving them to someone else, suddenly they will increase in value.

Rusty said thanks.

I said you're welcome Rusty. Happy Christmas.

Wednesday 2 December 2015

Trainspotting at night.

Beside my bed I keep a little book
in which I jot down the details of
those trains of thought which
travel nightly the subconscious network.
Occasionally it will be the midnight express
screaming through nightmare tunnels
(its headlight mimicking hope)
towards oblivion.
But more often it is a
benign milk train
with it's churned up cargo  of memories
stopping regularly
at the village halts that
line my past.

My nights spent
supine upon an embankment of pillow
counting wheels
marveling at their locomotion
but no longer curious
about their destination.

Sunday 29 November 2015

Cameron is a weak little man.

David Cameron is a weak little man. When a nation needs a great leader Cameron wont be there, Cameron will be hiding from responsibility because that is what cameron does best. David Cameron is a nasty little shit busy snorting cocaine and then wondering why he runs out of ideas. He has no ideas now because he never had any ideas in the first place. David Cameron will kill Britain.

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Cameron declares dog shit 'edible' and the end to world hunger.

David Cameron has announced, after extensive studies by the health department, that dog shit is edible. He goes on to say that judging by the amount of shit in the world today the poor need not go hungry.


I am told that he has instructed his Whitehall minions to come up with what he wants titled: 'Cameron's shit cookbook" which will be given to all poor people in lieu of support or benefit. Cameron has stated that: 'Shit is universal, almost as universal as poverty. As soon as we can make rich folks shit edible the starvation crisis is over because us rich folk is full of shit and we will never run out of poor folk to eat it.

You heard it here first.

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Wisdom from Le Peuple de l'herbe.






Jonathan Pandy writes: Written in 2002/2003 for Le Peuple de l'Herbe. Released in 2005. Respect to the people that made the video. The full lyrics are quite poignant, and rather sadly true now I think.

Sunday 22 November 2015

Church of England bans Star Wars trailer.

The producers of the new Star Wars movie say they are disappointed with the Church after it was announced that their trailer for the film would not be screened in churches during services.




A spokesperson for the C of E explained that: ' The films use of imaginary warring people in imaginary places did not fit the down to earth realism of the Christian ethos'.


Friday 20 November 2015

The Westway Trust: Asset stripping spivs.






Well. It is a fine state of affairs:

Angela McConville and her team refused to turn up, as agreed, to a public meeting regarding their plans for the land they manage (land gifted to the community) on the grounds that she feared for their safety. Good grief.

The meeting was held at the Tabernacle; a venue close to the heart of the community which is professionally run as an Arts Centre/restaurant/bar and as such has ample security staff during large gatherings. McConville's fears were of course spurious. What she wanted to avoid was being asked to explain Westway Trust's cavalier attitude to the very people they claim to work on behalf of: the community.

Westway Trust, with the enthusiastic backing of Local Government, plan to further eviscerate our community in order to serve the needs of the upwardly mobile social immigrants, including criminal money launderers buying up property, who they see as a better bet in the future. In essence they want to turn a unique part of London, which frightens them, into something they can feel comfortable in (and feel very comfortably off).

RBKC and Westway Trust have a completely erroneous notion of what a community is, actually they have no idea what a community is. The one group of people who can define a community is the community itself and this is the one group of people that they are avoiding, it seems, at all costs.

The community is right not to trust the Westway Trust, they are a bunch of property developers and Asset Stripping spivs and the asset they are raping is the genuine community.

Rather than being concerned over her safety at the meeting it is more likely that McConville and her team simply cannot be arsed to consult the very people she claims to care about.


Sunday 15 November 2015

Why I will not be overlaying a French flag on my social media photographs.

I feel I am being beseeched to plant a tricolor on my photographs by the facebook sheepdogs who like nothing more than worrying their flock whilst chasing them hither and thither.

I'm still thinking about superimposing the North Vietnam flag on my box Brownie snaps from the 60's and 70's and then there is the Argentine flag from the Falklands gung-hoism. I should probably have overlaid the Iraq flag at some point and most certainly should be peering from behind a Palestine flag right now.... You see my dilema.

What this planet needs now is a symbol or banner (not the Christian dove nor a 6 armed elephant or the flag of the planet's 4th largest arms supplier) which unites mankind in turning his/her back on religions, isms and other methods of mass control.
Without freedom there can be no peace.


Friday 13 November 2015

Avant Garde painting discovered beneath Dutch masterpiece.

Experts in Holland using X-ray have discovered a previously unknown Avant Garde painting beneath an equally as unknown masterpiece by the Artist Jan Nieupjur.




Black Square No. 1 Painted by 'Abstract Depressionist'  Nieupjur in 1915  was found to be concealing his earlier work White Square No. 12. Painted during the artists not so depressed period.

It was later discovered that an earlier work entitled: Primer No.7 lay beneath the white painting.

Terry Wogan pulls out of Children in Need after threats from Damian Hirst.

Terry Wogan  has announced that he is pulling out of Children in Need after threats were received from Damian Hirst over the use of his 'Spot' painting on Pudsy's bandage.

Hirst is reported to claim that: 'I fucking invented spots, how dare they use them to raise money for children in need. If you don't want needy children don't fucking fuck. Don't go nicking my ideas without adding to my millions.'

Thursday 12 November 2015

Unseen Bronte poem in full.

Jan Nieupjur writes...



A boozy night in Haworth led to a 'private glimpse' of the previously unknown Charlotte Bronte poem recently discovered. My photographic memory did not fail me, here it is in full:

Out on the wiley, windy moors
We'd roll and fall in green.
You had a temper like my jealousy:
Too hot, too greedy.
How could you leave me,
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you. I loved you, too.

Bad dreams in the night.
They told me I was going to lose the fight,
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Ooh, it gets dark! It gets lonely,
On the other side from you.
I pine a lot. I find the lot
Falls through without you.
I'm coming back, love.
Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream,
My only master.

Too long I roam in the night.
I'm coming back to his side, to put it right.
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering,
Wuthering Heights,

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away.
Ooh! Let me have it.
Let me grab your soul away.
You know it's me Cathy!

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window.

Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy.
I've come home. I'm so cold!

Of course it is the Kate Bush classic.

Right to Buy. How it works.

1. You live in social housing in an upwardly mobile area of London with an Index linked rent of X pounds per Month.



2. You are gulled into buying your property at a slight discount in order that you may own your own castle and that the Housing Association/Local Authority has the funds to build new Social housing elsewhere in order to socially cleanse the upwardly mobile area in which you live. The repayments on the loan you take out to buy your property cost you 2X pounds per Month.

3. Interest rates rise as they inevitably do in our 'Boom & Bust' economy. Your repayments rise to 3X per Month.

4. When your repayments reach 4X per Month; an amount you can no longer afford. Either the Mortgage Company forecloses forcing a 'Fire-sale' or you sell hurriedly.

5. Your property is bought by an investment company which then lets it at a full market rate thus aiding the social cleansing process.

6. You 'downscale' by buying a smaller, cheaper property in a less affluent area or more likely move back into rented property elsewhere placing yourself back on the Local Authority housing list when you lose your job and health due to the stresses of home ownership.

7. You die in a homeless hostel in Wigan.

8. The investment company eventually sells its entire property portfolio of ex Social homes to the Chinese for billions thus ensuring that in future an Englishman's home will be someone else's pagoda.

Wednesday 11 November 2015

Why I am grumpy.

I have COPD; chronic obstructional lung disease according to my doctor. But I don't. I have lost 50% of the oxygen producing cells in my lungs due to contracting a strange virus some years ago. I am now told that standard drug procedures for someone suffering from Emphysemia is the way to go, not because I have emphysemia but because it is the easy answer.

I've been grumpy for a while, I'm grumpy with myself for being grumpy. I'm beating myself up for being a grumpy old man.

For the past six weeks I have been unable to do anything other than try to breath and do nothing and while doing nothing I have been indulging in grumpyness. I promise you, living with me has been hell and I am the first to admit that I have considered hiring a hit man to take me out.

I saw a new GP today.

A new day a new dawn.  I had been prescribed steroids, knowing that steroids fuck up the immune system, without the essential antibiotics to protect a vulnerable body. Ergo: I have been getting every nasty little bug known to man so that my GP can remain happy in the fact that he is not over-prescribing expensive drugs.

My new GP diagnosed a long present lung infection and prescribed antibiotics as well as the steroids necessary for tissue growth.  If the drugs don't work I'm looking at a trip to hospital for intravenous antibiotics before the pneumonia kills me. All because a doctor didn't want to prescribe the right drugs at the right time. He was probably too busy thinking about his golfing holiday courtesaey of the drugs reps.

350,000 people die from respiratory diseases every year, a lot of them unnecessarily.  863,000 GP's go on drug company funded holidays in return for prescribing their wares... Unnecessarily.

That is why I am grumpy.

I'm so fucking grumpy that I am staying alive for the next 60 years to complain about it.


Thursday 5 November 2015

Million Mask March bollocks.

A few hundred 'anti capitalism' bods are marching in London as I write this.

Photograph: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images

Such is their blind determination to champion the rights of the underclass that they fail to see the irony in the fact that they are all wearing masks made by children in sweat shops in the far East. Thus making a tidy sum for the capitalist masters that they claim to despise.

Wednesday 4 November 2015

Vegan Black Pudding.

WARNING. This post may go beyond the realm of good taste.

From Rusty McGlint's soon to be published 'Christian Creationist Feminist Vegan Cookbook'.




As a transgender feminist Vegan I am often asked about acceptable alternatives to pork products. After much consultation with fellow feminists, Chief Rabbi's, Vicars and hippy mothers I can safely say that this recipe answers the breakfast needs of all vegetarians and Vegans.

It is important to point out that as a creationist I absolutely believe that Man was created separately from all animals and stands alone as a class; human flesh is therefore safe from all vegetarian/Vegan rules.

It is easy to make; look up any black-pudding recipe, substitute human blood for pigs blood and spare adipose tissue ( cleverly recycling the by-product of liposuction) for the fat. Hippy Earth Mothers will find this a delicious and simple way of cooking that placenta.

There are many non-animal sausage tubes on the market which are perfectly good for stuffing the mixture into but I prefer to use the tube bits of the placenta, which I tightly stuff before forming into a neat vagina shape.



Friday 30 October 2015

British police to be allowed to look up womens skirts.

Theresa May is about to announce that British police will be allowed to look up women's skirts in future either by using their highly polished toe-caps or by using cameras concealed in their turn-ups.

Ms May, when questioned, stated: I have to look up David Cameron's arse every time I kiss it and I have no problem with that, neither am I offended when described as the contents of my underpants; if I am going to be openly scrutinised as primary female genitalia so should every-one else.


Wednesday 28 October 2015

Transparent bags reduce recycling among drunken middle class homes.

My domestic science corespondent Rusty McGlint informs me that people are embarrassed to put all their wine and spirits bottles along with beer cans in the transparent council recycling bags as it opens them to accusations of alcoholism from neighbours.




This is a middle class phenomenon as most working class people are proud of their alcohol intake as well as their ability to afford copious quantities of booze; some poor households are known to collect bottles and cans from the street in order to 'bulk out' their recycling bags. Dom Perignon bottles are highly desirable in certain areas where a well filled recycling bag can have a marked affect on house prices.

Why can we not have bags that hide our drinking habits?

Saturday 24 October 2015

Michael Woods - Surrealist: Interview.

Second Pier deserts Mr Whippy.

Blackpool pier announced today that it will no longer allow Labourite 'Mr Whippy' to sell his 'mad' ice cream on the victorian structure. 'Lordy Grabbit; owner of the decaying structure explained that the pier was used mostly by courting couples looking for a quiet place for an al fresco shag and that 'We have nothing in common whatever with Mr Whippy – and I don’t believe his product which is both working class and dated is ever going to cause an erection.”

Shock and horror among fans as Bob Dylan goes eclectic.

There were cries of 'Judas' at the Royal Albert Hall when Dylan opened his residency there a couple of days ago etc etc etc...

                              

                               Photo nicked from: www.theartsdesk.com

Wednesday 21 October 2015

facebook is the Social Network crack dealer. Real friends come free.

He tells you his product is cool
he tell you it's hip:
'hey come take a trip'
it's on me, I'm buying, it's cool.

Once you are hooked he owns you.

He tells you if I leave you you'll die
you'll have no friends
you'll get the social bends
but I'll give them back if you buy

The friends that used to come free: In the days when we didn't measure our popularity by the number of strangers we now consider friends. All at the expense of friends we now consider strangers because they ain't on facebook.

If you want to remain friends with your facebook strangers it will cost you $10.00 per month.

I think you will find that your real friends come free.



Monday 19 October 2015

Reigning Days, Friendly Fire. & at The Garage. Highbury.

I've been following this band for a few years now. It' great to see them doing as well as I thought they might.

They are playing The Garage in Highbury on the 28th of this month. Best catch them before you cannot buy a ticket.

Sunday 18 October 2015

RBKC about to unveil new plans for Portobello and Golborne Roads.



My mole in Kensington Town Hall 'phoned this morning with alarming news of the latest 'alleged proposals' for North Kensington.  Here is a brief outline:

Portobello and Golborne Roads are to be gated at either end and at all intersections. The area is to be 'rebranded' as The Portobello Experience, tourists will be obliged to buy a Day Ticket which will allow them free entry to the tourist tat shops and the coffee shops. There will be a surcharge applied at all other establishments. Residents will be obliged to carry ID cards at all times, Homeowners with properties valued at over three million will be given gold 'priority' cards.

Security will be provided by thugs'

All market traders will be obliged to wear Pearly King/Queen style uniforms and to greet all customers with: 'Ello darlin'. 

Selfie sticks will be obligatory for all tourists and 'Selfie Opportunities' will be staged throughout the area including 'homeless drunks' and 'waiting for an ambulance' tableaux. The remaining bohemian artists in the area will be obliged to gather at various cafes each weekend entertaining the tourists with intense arguments over the importance of Surrealism in 21st Century London while being photographed.

The Portobello Green area will be renamed Bond Street West.

Seriously though...


There is a petition to stop RBKC messing about with Golborne Road HERE




Wednesday 14 October 2015

Stepfather.

I am the intruder
parasite on the broken home
I step in when he steps out
and the family is left alone
I can do no right
in the eyes of the kids
I have no right in law
I can do no right when breathing
and when I die...

 (I'll be respected for my tolerance in a very difficult situation but I'll never be as good as dad even though the two faced shit was shagging anything with tits and stealing money from the kids piggy banks to buy gay porn and donuts.)

I can do no more.


Monday 12 October 2015

Wild West 10 - Golborne Stories of Struggle and Resistance

This is a great documentary made last year by Year 5 pupils from Bevington Primary School. W10. A must see for any resident of Golborne Ward and North Kensington in general. It explores the development of our community over the past 60 years from bomb ravaged slums through to gentrification.



Tuesday 6 October 2015

Tories promise full employment by 2016.

Whatshisname hunt, you know the Tory toy boy has just announced that 'By 2016  nearly all British adults will be in full time employment in the Government sponsored sweat shops producing dreamcatchers and velvet dildo's for the elite few.  Those people too pathetic to do a days work will be expected to attend daily meetings in the house of Westminster.

Saturday 3 October 2015

How to cook immigrants. No 1

I caught these immigrants living in the garden, stealing our sunlight. I cut them in half, scooped out the core, filled them with a mixture of garlic, anchovies, black pepper, sugar and olive oil then baked them for as long as it took. They eventually confessed to being delicious.

Friday 25 September 2015

Kenny Zulu Whitmore and a London Taxi.


























Walking to the pub last night I found this London taxi on Portobello Road. This kind of thing is what makes this place so special and of course I stopped and asked the people about their amazing vehicle, It is not a paint job it is covered with individual mosaaic tiles, is truly beautiful and is designed to raise awareness for the plight of Kenny Zulu Whitmore, someone I was not aware of until I saw this cab and asked.

I do not yet know enough about the man to be able to comment further on his predicament but it sounds shitty by any-ones standards. There is some connection to the Black Panthers which I guess is enough for American white folks to lock him up and throw away the key.

This taxi and the people working long and hard to make something beautiful in order to raise awareness of a single human's plight is the best example of its kind (on every level) I have ever encountered.


There is a website HERE


Sunday 20 September 2015

Tertius Peat. The last true Englishman.

Tertius Peat is on his deathbed in a secure hospital in Wiltshire. Tertius Peat is the last true Englishman, by that I mean that he is the sole remaining Englishman without an ounce of foreign blood. Tertius Peat (in his lucid moments) puts this down to  the fact that incest protected the family bloodline from immigrant corruption.

It is true that incest deprived the bloodline of mental ability and physical stability as well as reproductive reliability but incest kept the bloodline English.

The Peat family motto states: 'We may be inbred but we are pure'.




Tertius Peats great great grandfather and second cousin twice inbred Primo.



Tertius told me recently: Well my brother was my dad and my ma was my sister and my grandpa's were my mothers older brother and there is a family book that goes back to domesday that says no foreign blood runs in our veins nor no foreign sperm in our women.

He went on to say: We was shagging our siblings as we built stonehenge and we was still shagging them in 1066 (much to the horror of the French). At Agincourt there was non of us lot there, we was all at home shagging.

Ensuring true English blood untainted by immigrants.

Our early forebears were ugly, so ugly that none would touch us, save each other and save each other we did from the evils of masturbation and cross breeding.

We had no surname until the first census and then took our name from the fact that our ancestors dug peat. Since then all us Peats have, well, you know, just dug Peats.






Monday 14 September 2015

Prime Minister surgically removed from Man's arse.


















The prime minister was surgically removed from David Cameron's arse earlier today in an operation later described as 'a piece of shit' by surgeons.

A NHS specialist stated that there had been a number of reports of someone talking out of Cameron's arse and tests had shown, without a doubt, that it was Cameron himself (a keen ventriloquist) lodged firmly up his own jacksie.

Mrs Cameron has issued a statement claiming that it was just wind.

Sunday 13 September 2015

Advice to Vegans on arriving in Hell. Meat your maker.

Believe it or not quite a lot of vegans go to hell. Percentage wise there is no difference between vegans, vegetarians and omnivores (all carnivores naturally go to hell).


















On arrival in the inferno the average vegan might think that he/she had arrived in heaven because the only food available is quinoa and brown rice with occasional tofu which is always out of stock.  Let me tell you, quinoa and brown rice day after day, year after year is hell.

There are barbekew pits in hell but, as no animals go to hell the only meat available is human flesh and rule 17 of the terms and conditions of entry states that only volunteers may be roasted for human consumption.

Lucifer, at his waggish best, informs all vegan arrivals that, should they give themselves willingly to the barbekew pit, they will be reborn in Vegas. Vegans queue to be barbed only to discover, on incineration and human consumption, that they find themselves reborn in Las Vegas with a chronic gambling habit, no money and a craving for pork. Therefore condemned to an eternity of scouring the sidewalks for dropped coins to feed slot machines and hot dog leftovers while they stew in guilt.

At this point Vegans often turn to meat. To meat their maker so to speak. To speak of the injustice of judging man by his diet.

Wednesday 9 September 2015

Dole scroungers have it hard enough without Immigrants.

A guest blog by Jan Nieupjur.


As a dole scrounger of 50 years I find it sickening that my way of life is being threatened by these immigrant johnnies muscling in on my hand outs. My Jewish grandfather did not come to this country from Holland to see it overrun by families on the run from tyranny and war.... No, he thought: Let me be the only one for I am chosen.

Send the immigrants to Antarctica, they have not taken a single one yet. Oh, and Atlantis could take a couple of thousand.

God bless mankind for he has cast evil in his own likeness and then blamed God.

Friday 4 September 2015

Nitrous Oxide and how it works.

As a layman I am frequently asked: "How does laughing gas work?"

It is simple really. You decant the cylinder into a balloon then inhale the contents of said balloon while all your mates look on laughing like drains. The resultant feeling of being the centre of attention is said to be euphoric. The euphoria is, however, short lived, soon being replaced by a sense of utter stupidity.






















Carnival detritus.


Recreational use of the gas is not a recent phenomenon. It was discovered in 1772 by British scientist Joseph Priestley and within 30 years the chemist Humphry Davy was using it recreationally.
Davy began inviting his friends round to inhale the gas from oiled silk bags and in doing so started a craze. "The nitrous oxyd [sic], or laughing gas was inhaled by a gentleman who after laughing sprung up in the air to the astonishing height of six feet from the ground," wrote a correspondent in the Times in 1819, describing a popular stage show.

Monday 31 August 2015

Notting Hill Carnival 2015.

Apres Ska.
























The real stars of Carnival, after the bands and dancers, are of course the street cleaners who work through the night to remove the tons of debris. They do a brilliant job. Oh and they are mostly immigrants who are happy to do the jobs that we turn our noses up at.

Sunday 30 August 2015

Notting Hill Carnival 2015.

There is always one idiot.



















As the hoarding go up in Notting Hill the graffiti guys arrive like a swarm of wasps at a jam pot. Sadly there is always one moron who tarnishes the whole thing.

Carnival. What Carnival?




















St Luke's Mews in the heart of Carnival is a surreal place today. A totally dead street yet the air reeks of sound systems and everything vibrates to the abundant frequency of jerk chicken.

Observation. 


























All Saints Road. Riot police at the ready.

 

Sunday 23 August 2015

Compulsory smoking for the obese and other government wheezes.

A guest blog from Jan Nieupjur. As usual Jan's views do not necessarily reflect my own. He is completely senile now but that do say that  insanity often spawns the truth.


MY mole in Whitehall recently disclosed to me (over a pink gin or two in the Wheeltappers Arms) a number of proposals being considered by David Cameron to deal with the growing problem of obesity in Great Britain. They include:

1. Compulsory smoking for the obese. This works on many levels; one of the benefits of smoking is loss of appetite so a pre-prandial gasper whenever hunger sets in should reduce food consumption, the tax on their cigarettes could offset the current vast drain on NHS resources caused by obesity, the Government endorsement of smoking would be an enormous fillip to the often criticised 'healthy smokers' and finally an outlet would be created for the millions of packets of Capstan Full Strength currently stockpiled in Kineton Warwickshire.



















2. All branches of Greggs and other purveyors of donuts should be forced to reduce the width of their door openings in order to exclude those with an unhealthy BMI.

3. Supermarkets should be instructed to Narrow the width of ailses in which buns, cakes, sweets, sugar and other fattening stuff is sold to a width that would only allow access to the healthy. Obviously parents with buggies would be inconvenienced but in view of the child obesity situation this would be no bad thing..

4. supermarkets should introduce scales at checkouts whereby customers could be weighed and those found to be obese and buying unsuitable products would be charged an extra tax on those items which would go directly to the NHS. This would both encourage the purchase of healthy items as well as bolster up the beleagured health service.


Friday 21 August 2015

Immigrants. An analogy.

Talking with the kids the other day we got onto the subject of immigrants and their positive effects. I found a perfect analogy in the garden:

We have a blackberry 'bramble' that leans into our garden through the ivy and over the wall from a neighbouring garden. We did not plant the thing, we did not invite it in but we have come to welcome its presence. Each year we enjoy blackberry and apple pies, blackberry jam (2 1/2 Lbs this year and counting) and blackberry ice cream. It costs us nothing but adds to our lives. all we have to do is keep the ivy at bay and ensure it has room to thrive.



It got me thinking about the other plants in the garden... Yes. A lot of them immigrants and some of them sneaking in via the digestive tracts of birds (tunnels of sorts) visiting from elsewhere, appearing to shit on us from a great height yet bringing forth bounty.


Banksy speaks about his drab 'Dismaland'.


















Banksy, the Entrepreneur, chancer and snake oil salesman formerly known as a vandal has finally decided to crawl up his own aerosol and talk out of it regarding his latest con trick.

'Yes it is not very good'. He told me. 'But if thousands of gullible fools are prepared to part with good money for a chance to walk round a dump I'm the man to pocket the dosh.'

He then ran out of gas.

Sunday 31 May 2015

Lard.



I am a worshipper of noble lard
alabaster queen of fat
the renderings of the regal pig
in a half pound grease proofed pat
lard has none of the pretentiousness
of sunflower or olive oil
her origins are humbly rooting about
in Anglo Saxon soil.

Sing hey to lard
sing ho to lard
sing nonny nonny no to the olive

etc...







Thursday 28 May 2015

Post 'sleepover' narcolepsy explained.

I am frequently mistaken for a child psychologist, probably because of my empathy with both dogs and children. Treat them the same is my way of thinking but be more gentle with dogs, they don't know better.

Frequently, when mistaken for a child therapist, I am asked: 'What is post sleepover narcolepsy?'

Post sleepover narcolepsy (PSN) is very common among children between the ages of 6 and 13. It is a virus which attacks the child 12 to 18 hours before symptoms manifest themselves. The virus lives in someone else's house and has the appearance of a well meaning parent (sometimes working in pairs; one male, one female). The virus bombards the child with fizzy sugar laden drinks, MSG pizza and copious quantities of blue sweets and then bullies the child into playing computer games until the early hours of the morning. Stage two of the attack takes place at the following breakfast time when left over MSG pizza is re-introduced to the child.

Symptoms of PSN are obvious: Surliness and disobedience combined with drooping eyelids and shoulders leads on to a desire to sleep.  The desire to sleep soon overtakes all cognitive reasoning.

A child in later stages of PSN

The cure for PSN is straightforward. The child must be prodded, goaded and frequently shaken in to wakefulness for 8 to 10 hours followed by bed rest for 12 hours. Nintendo, Playstation, TV and film should be avoided at all costs. This treatment may need to be repeated for a further 24 hours.

That will be 100 guineas. Thank you.






Wednesday 27 May 2015

America. A poem.

SPIT!

Molly and John had been childhood sweethearts
Shared sodas at picnics

in the meadow by the Big Loving
as it snaked easily through the county.
Shared illicit beers beneath the bleachers

when she cut cheerleading and he cut track.
Shared moonlit skinny dips in the same old Big Loving

at the sand bar on the bend
where the turtles basked back in the day.
She had run naked laughing through poison ivy;

he had spat in his hand and rubbed it in the itching places.
Later she did not need the ivy to make the itch,
she had an itch of her own 
and he rubbed his spit onto that itch 
but that itch never completely went away.

Molly took that itch to New York.
John took his spit to LA.
Molly found music in the cafes at night, 

revolution in the air. 
‘New York City, imagine that’. 
She wrote him - as she itched at a sidewalk café 
– in an early westbound letter.
‘Yes I can imagine that’. 

He had replied. 
But he couldn’t.
So she itched in the city 

closed her eyes to the viscous string of men 
while he spat on the coast at a succession of starlets 
who practiced the Stanislavski itch  
tunelessly singing the Hollywood orgasm.

Fast forward… 

The two of them came together again, 
out of boredom most likely. 
Boredom and guilt, 
prompted on her part by the metronomic click of the clock, 
on his part by the young guns on the boulevard 
the fear that he was all spat out.
When they married the orange blossom was already dead. 

The children when they arrived 
trod the rotting petals into the floorboards 
of their Chicago brownstone.

He made money; she spent it. 
The American dream.

Molly sat on her itch for twenty years, 

took a course in etching early on 
never looked back and couldn’t look forward. 
Her life etched itself into her face. 
She got a part time job 
filling condom machines at railway stations.
Twenty years of itching and etching on molly’s part 

as she watched john occasionally drool diddle his secretary 
(did he buy his condoms at the station?) 
was enough.
 
 
 
Molly came to Spain 

change of life, 
change of continent, 
change of tense. 
for a week.
John had grudgingly agreed that she could take a vacation, 

a break from the shattered life they now shared. 
She would visit a friend in Toledo  
maybe take in an El Greco or two.
On her last day of work prior to traveling 
the itch had slipped a dozen condoms into her purse  
then dragged her into Victoria’s Secret on the way home.
The flight was uneventful; 

she sat between the two overweight boors 
each airline is obliged to provide. 

Marta met her at the airport.  
The Spanish air crackled.
The bullfight was - to Marta - an odd choice 

for an afternoon’s entertainment 
but Molly had read Hemingway,  
wanted to sit ringside  
black beret scarlet lipped 
as Eva Gardner had once done. 
She had little experience of bloodshed save her own; 
but blood in the afternoon held no fear.

Manolo arched his back,

flicked a disdainful cape 
at the snorting bull  
an ubiquitous sneer at the crowd,
stood in his black slippers
stained with blood and dust 
hawked a glistening gob of spit 
that sizzled as it hit the sun scorched clay. 
The bull died bravely as bulls in such tales do. 
The spit dried to a disc of mother of pearl 
that shimmered against the blood red earth 
as the bulls ear parted unhearing from the head; 
arcing it’s way into the stands, 
into the lap of Molly. 
An unrecognizable Molly. 
Molly lost, Molly found. Molly free, Molly bound.

‘Manolo.’ 

She whispered much later 
when the sun had gone down 
and the fiesta had dissolved itself 
into the barrios and tourist hotels. 
‘Manolo.’

I took up the dog eared copy of THE TIN DRUM. 

It fell open at the chapter titled ‘fizz powder’  
I read to her again of little Oskar 
spitting into the navel of Maria.
 
Molly flew to Boston four days later  

made her morning connection to Chicago 
.....in good time.
 
The fire-fighter moved dazed 

through the rubble of what had once been the World Trade Centre. 
The dust was thick and acrid  
he wished he had some kind of mask or respirator. 
He hawked and spat into the debris at his feet, 
onto a small black slipper. 
A slipper stained with blood, dust and tears.

America.
 

Tuesday 26 May 2015

If Longfellow lived now. Hya Amy Winehouse.



Should you ask me, whence the bullshit? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the stinking of the ghetto 
With the dew and damp of homelessness,
With the curling smoke of guilt,
With the rushing of great kettling,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
  I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the ghettos and the high streets,
From the great lakes of the Hampstead,
From the land of the Cockneys,
From the land of the hipsters,
From the coffeeshops, shoe shops, and feng shui-lands
Where the heroin addict, the crack head,
Feeds among the reeds and bushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Amy Winehouse,
The musician, the sweet singer.
  Should you ask where Amy winehouse
Found these songs so wild and wayward,
Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you,
"In the coffee shops of the Angel,
In the boozers of Camden Town,
In the hoof-prints of the banker,
In the eyry of the pigeon!
  "All the immigrants sang them to her,
In the moorgate and the feng shui-lands,
In the melancholy Hackney marshes;
Barney, the cabbie, sang them,
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa,
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah,
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
  If still further you should ask me,
Saying, "Who was Amy Winehouse?
Tell us of this Amy Winehouse,"
I should answer your inquiries
Straightway in such words as follow.
  "In the vale of Hampstead,
In the green and silent valley,
By the pleasant water-courses,
Dwelt the singer Amy Winehouse.
Round about the Hampstead village
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields,
And beyond them stood the forest,
Stood the groves of singing Kenwood,
Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
  "And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley,
By the rushing in the Spring-time,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn,
By the black line in the Winter;
And beside them dwelt the singer,
In the vale of Chalk Farm,
In the green and silent valley.
  "There she sang of rehabilitation,
Sang the Song of rehab, no no no.
Sang of her wondrous birth and being,
How she played fast and how she lost,
How she lived, and toiled, and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,

That she might advance her people!"

Saturday 23 May 2015

The Schadenfreudian slip.

We all came out to Montreux
and when the smoke on the water had cleared
I met the woman of my dreams
and met the end that I had most feared

among the poets convening was fraulein
Schaden Freude a German by birth
she was my sun my moon my Venus
I feared I was the scum of her earth

but I'm a poet and poets are dogged
wouldn't take no for an answer
having seen her on the nightclub floor
wrote my ode to a disco dancer
I had some stiff competition
in a doggeralist from France
he couldn't rhyme for the price of a lime
but boy the bugger could dance

now dancing is fine in the hours after nine
but daylight offers other parameters
I wood her with elevenses
(you know food like what heavens is)
and un-pedantic hexameters

the girl was mine
I felt sublime
I gave up rhymes or reasons
then went round to see the cad
at his room in the four Seasons

I reached his door
I took a grip
I vowed to punch him on the lip
but as the door swung slowly in
I saw Fraulein Schaden Freude
in her silken slip

I slunk away I was distraught what of the ring that I had bought

the following day in the concert hall
as the Frenchman decried his crocodile tears
and told the tale of his dead love
I drank innumerable beers
when he got to the crux of his inordinate grief
the burial of his dog
I dialled his mobile number
and it rang to the sound of the laughing frog

it rang to the sound of the laughing frog

it rang to the sound of the laughing frog but the frenchman never laughed.

I did.

fraulein Schaden Freude never forgave me
but her hatred ran hot to cold
she married the bassist from Deep Purple
together they grow stylishly old

Me I gave up poetry
I joined the devil-may-cares
underwent gender re-alignment
and changed my name to Pam ayres










Tuesday 19 May 2015

Carnivorous Pandas




Nom Nom the carnivorous panda
was the least kid friendly petting zoo beast
for while he considered bamboo a duty
a three year old child was a feast
Nom Nom, born in far away China
at first was the star of the zoo
but quickly out-stayed his welcome
when he ate a female gnu
The gnu was a present from Kenya
so to Nairobi Nom Nom was sent
but quickly moved on to Paris
when he ate three kids in a tent
In Paris he munched through two orphans
before moving on to New York
where once weaned off his taste for kids
he was fed on a diet of pork
Nom Nom the carnivorous Panda
is living the American dream
eating hot dogs for lunch and for dinner
beside a bamboo shaded stream.

Saturday 16 May 2015

Pissers in the sky. With apologies to Norman Greenbaum.

when I’m dry and I can't wash my vest
gonna go to the place that is best
before I lay it down to dry
going up to the pissers in the sky
going up to the pissers in the sky
that’s where I’m going to go before I dry
before I dry and lay out my vest
going to go to the pissers that are best

prepare yourself you know it’s a given
you gotta have a brand of cheeses
so that you know when the water runs out
you got something to sell
we are the pissers in the sky
gotta recommend ourselves
we’re the pissers in the sky
and we’re where you gotta go when you’re dry
before you dry and lay out your vest
you gotta go to the brand that is best

we’ve never been givers, we’ve never gived
We’ve got a brand of cheeses
so you know that when you die
your only hope in hell is
the pisser in the sky
so tie yourself to the pisser in the sky
that’s where you’re gonna go if you don’t buy
if you don’t buy then sonny you die
you gotta come to the prices that are best

yeah, the water prices that are best.

Saturday 9 May 2015

Why Britain's women war heroes are responsible for the election result.... An anarchist writes.

A guest blog from 'Steve'. Leader of the Russel Brand Anarchy on the dole brigade.





Look. Russel was right! If no-one voted there wouldn't be a Tory government in power.

Women died in order to get the vote.

The memorial was to dead women.

If they hadn't died there wouldn't be a memorial and no-one would vote and Russel Brand would be Emperor or something like that and we could all smoke pot on the dole and that monument would have just been a wall and Banksy would have got there first and an American would have bought it and shipped it to Texas and it wouldn't have got in our way on our march for democracy.

Or something like that you know man.