Mangrove steel band rehearsal All Saints Road. Carnival 2019

Setting up for tomorrow night in All Saints Road. For me and many others the best part of carnival. A pre-party party.

Defying medical science with a trombone.

Ten years ago, when I first became ill with lung disease, I lay on a hospital bed irrigated and oxidised by tubes, fussy nurses drawing blood and being fed miserable things.
A doctor sat, tears in his eyes, at the foot of the bed and informed me that I would never play the trombone again.

I am not one to take this kind of thing lying down and within weeks I started the process of proving him wrong and now, ten years later I am able to share this photograph with you:


I am about to go on stage to perform John Cage's 4'33.




How wrong was that doctor.

The Bishop admits to his domestic habits.

Once the subject of egg quality had been exhausted.

Bishop: I enjoy nothing more of an evening than mulling over my sermons whilst washing the dishes but often find that the maid has beaten me to it.

William Spooner: Your wishes dashed so to speak.

Bishop: I often imagine that one day there will be a machine invented for wish dashing. One would just fill it up then sit back in dissapointment. Of course I would still have the fine crystal and Wedgewood.

Spooner: Ah yes, Wedgewood, there are no two ways about that.

With apologies to Gerald Du Maurier.

Graveside phantosmia

 

Imagined scents, 
spring magnolia walks
missed birthdays
vanilla
wet dog after rainy walks
pine needles and orange of lost christmasses
bicycle oil
antiseptic cream
playdo, paint and glue
summer gardens
caged tigers
autumn woods

that a child, dancing, scattering confetti on her mothers grave
makes real.

The elastic in my ironic pants.

The elastic in my ironic pants is broken
I call them my ironic pants
because they are my favourite pants
but were given to me
by the person I dislike most on this planet
the pants are dark blue with pink spots
and fitted well when new
I cannot say that they are lucky pants
for I have had not much luck of late
pants on or otherwise
save her departing from my life

Walking home this evening
the elastic broke
they do not fit at all well now

I have thrown them in the bin

Closure

Zion filming the video for 'Lay you down'.

A poke in the eye for Britains Celts.

 Taken from QUORA.

 

 

Are the Celts of the British Isles familiar and comfortable with the theory that the original Celts come from Central Europe, like Bohemia and Austria?

Eamon O'Kelly, History enthusiast

Answered Jun 27, 2019 · Author has 1.6k answers and 2.5m answer views

Your question is based on a mistaken assumption. There are no Celts in the British Isles. Celtic culture flourished in continental Europe from about 800 BC until the beginning of the Common Era, by which time most of the Celts had been Romanized to varying degrees. In other words, the Celts have been dead and gone for about two thousand years.

More

The Nero complex.*

It seems that everyone is now on the fiddle
politicians are fiddling the facts
Catholics priests fiddling with choirboys
most of us fiddling our tax
Boris is fiddling with everything
including other men's wives
while the cuckolds at home in their kitchens
are fiddling with very sharp knives
the orchestra's are all on the fiddle
including those without violins
unlike poor maligned Nero
(fiddling was not one of his sins)
brexiteers are fiddling with figures
remainers playing with sums
all of them fiddling with cushions
beneath uncomfortable bums
violinists are legitimately fiddling
as are children with all of their food
unlike poor maligned Nero*
(who was frankly not in the mood).

As society now burns with resentment
as are the genuinely revolting youth
The rest of them just fiddle on fiddle on
to avoid stating the horrible truth.



* Nero did not fiddle while Rome burned. violins did not arrive until 1500 years later. If he was playing an instrument it would have been a harp, he was known for his virtuosity on the instrument.

Source: Gyles, Mary Francis. "Nero fiddled while Rome burned."­ The Classical Journal. January 1947.

Muse know thyself.

Work in progress


All evil has, within itself, the seed of that which will destroy it.
I will not hate you, evil feeds on hate.
I will pity you, pity nourishes the seed.
The seed of doubt that germinates within you
feeds off your flesh
leaving nothing but a hollow skin
as that discarded by a snake
pock marked, scabbed, livid.

Sad. 

Fraudulent beauty.

all colour and no scent
the bloom of a suicides freshly cut wrist
look at me
but don't look too closely

email archaology.

sherds of broken promises
shadows of dreams
shattered tesserae of hope and joy

the meadow where we were once happy
now scarred and unrecognisable
hides shared archaology beneath

Impossible to delete

THE BOX. A six year olds tale.

Murder in Notting Hill.

Murder in Notting Hill – A book by Mark Olden

Police and council workmen search a drain for the murder weapon.
Copyright: Mirrorpix.

"For anyone interested in justice in modern Britain this is an important book." Brian Cathcart, author The Case of Stephen Lawrence

At around midnight on May 17, 1959, a white gang ambushed Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane on the corner of a Notting Hill slum street. One of them plunged a knife into his heart. He was never caught. Murder in Notting Hill is a tale of crumbling tenements transformed into a millionaires’ playground, of the district’s fading white working class, and of a veil finally being lifted on the past.
Mark Olden is a London-based print and broadcast journalist. He has worked for Channel 4 and the BBC and written for publications including The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The New Statesman and The Sunday Times.
Click to buy: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Notting-Hill-Mark-Olden/dp/1846945364