A Christmas tragedy.

Regents Park Christmas, not a mouse stirred
the fondue burned on the hob
setting alight the zoological caff
the meerkats were not doing their job...

No alarm was raised by any a beast
not gecko lion llama nor gnu
they all slept on contentedly
as an aardvark died in the zoo.

Yes an aardvark died in the zoo
an aardvark died in the zoo
while the keepers were listening to Flanders and Swann
an aardvark died in the zoo.

By the time the fire brigade got there
by an extremely circuitous route
the aardvark had met an untimely end
perfectly roasted en croute.

Now it's hungry work putting fires out
as any a fire crew will attest
so they fell upon that poor aardvark
in a mob of high visibility vests.

Yes an aardvark died in the zoo
an aardvark died in the zoo
it was not consumed by the ravaging fire
but by the ravenous Camden fire crew.

At the end of the meal, the aardvark all ate
they belatedly decided to thank it
so toasts were drunk and cheers went up
for that perfect pig in fire blanket.



Apologies to McGonagall.

The muse with a Borderline Personality Disorder.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote: “All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

For the muse her secret life makes a mockery of both her public and private lives which are nothing more than a facade created in order to conceal the real person.

What follows is a sad tale of how mental health problems can cause profound misery to all who come into contact with one individual who is probably unaware of her illness.

Divorcing parents could lose children if they try to turn them against partner

Interesting article in the Guardian:

Divorcing parents could be denied contact with their children if they try to turn them against their former partner, under a “groundbreaking” process being trialled by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass).

The phenomenon where one parent poisons their child against the other is known as parental alienation, the ultimate aim of which is to persuade the child to permanently exclude that parent from their life.

Cafcass said it had recently realised parental alienation occured in significant numbers of the 125,000 cases it dealt with each year. 

Sarah Parsons, the assistant director of Cafcass, said: “We are increasingly recognising that parental alienation is a feature in many of our cases and have realised that it’s absolutely vital that we take the initiative. Our new approach is groundbreaking.”

The new approach will initially give parents the chance to change their behaviour with the help of intense therapy. Alienating parents who do not respond will not be allowed to have their children live with them. 

In addition, contact between the parent and child could be restricted or refused for a number of months. In the most extreme cases, the alienating parent will be permanently banned from any contact with their child.

Read on HERE

Amanda Palmer - Mother.

I've taken the following from Amanda Palmers Facebook. Worth a read:

i've need to share a thread that i just wrote on twitter. listen.
first of all, i’ve never seen a more overwhelmingly emotional & respectful high-five reaction & from my community for *anything* i’ve made. so thank you. but something is really freaking me out:

in my entire career, i’ve never heard such silence from the press. a few of my personal allies covered this video (thanks to Xeni Jardin at boing boing and Holly Cara Price at huffington post) but despite doing my usualpress-release to the US and UK the day this video came out, the non-response has been deafening. not one single major press outlet will cover it.

i’m like: is it me? am i old and irrelevant? is it the video too hard for people? are there really *no journalists* anymore, like some of my writer friends have been telling me? is it really possible to make a project so massive and not even get a mention from a single music blog? it’s so WEIRD.

and i find myself thinking: what if i didn’t have the patreon? i would be SO FUCKED. i have never believed more than NOW that my community is becoming the Media Itself and that i have to turn my fragile-ego-self away from the idea that the press is going to validate my hard work.

and how ironic, given my vide & all of trump’s hatred of the Fake News Media. but maybe it’s like the death of anything dear. maybe we have to collectively grieve the death of Old Media and celebrate whatever is taking its place, and make that thing work.

in closing: this platform you are reading right now is strangling my reach, the media won’t alert you, i’m not on a record label. so if you want to support me, there is only one channel left to assure i can still work and connect and survive, and it’s the patreon. please, join. the end.

it looks like i'm going to need you more than i thought.

and fuck it.

we can do this ourselves, it's always better that way anyway.

i'm pro-webcasting tonight from a super-sold-out show at london's union chapel, start time is 7:15 and i'll post here. come join me and the rest of the weirdos.