Granny had a heart attack.

Granny's had a heart attack
in the outside loo
she wouldn't use the inside one
it simply wouldn't do.

She went and had a heart attack
in the outside crapper
built by grandpa Charlie
who used to be a sapper;
he built them in the Army
built them for the Royal Marines
standard M O D design
(other ranks) latrines.

The walls were rough cut timber
the roof, corrugated tin
and like all Army crappers
the doorway opened in.

Granny had her heart attack
door wedged against her knees
in the khasi in the garden
amid the courgettes and the peas.

We couldn't get in through the door
not even skinny Hilda
we had to take the roof off
so called in Pete the builder
who climbed upon the dunny roof
and peeled off all the tin

but

By the time he got to Granny
rigor mortis had set in.

He couldn't get her out of there
without cutting off her legs
and how Pete cussed that afternoon
about Army Khazi building regs.

You'll have to hoist her out of there
a local wag observed
not an elegant way to go...
And less than Gran deserved

for

Granny was a Christian soul
worshipped every Sunday
but granny had her heart attack
upon a secular monday.

So Mummy called the Fire Brigade
they came round with a crane
not an easy thing to do within
the confines of Pottery Lane.

They hoisted granny up and out
and over number seven...
It was not god but the Fire Brigade
who took Granny up to heaven.

Dark Night of the Soul ●▬๑۩۩๑▬● Featuring marycigarettes

Baby's first tattoo.

Rusty McGlint writes from Lizard Bend, Idaho:

Hey tristan.  Babs got liquored up last week with Fangio the pool guy and ended up in the tattoo parlour. she decided to get little Morgan his first tattoo!

I reckin that by the time he is done growing up that sucker will be the size of an eagle.

Cool huh!

By the way the changing mat is from the Damian Hirst babycare range in the Sears catalogue.

Tracey Bovington - Croisette. The unsung heroine of the royal birth.

From our Royal birth correspondent Rusty McGlint. As usual his views are his own and I certainly do not endorse all of them.

There is one name that will not be mentioned during all this royal baby hullaballoo and that is 'Tracey Bovington - Croisette'.

Tracey is the 'Queens screamer '; present at all royal births in order to give voice to the proceedings when things come to the shove. Obviously royal personages are above cussing and screaming, indeed, they have neither the temperament nor the vocabulary.

When I spoke to Tracey she informed me that it had been a fairly easy delivery requiring no more than a dozen or so F words and a rudimentary grunt or two. "A piece of piss". Tracey said. "Not like some I could mention had I not signed an NDA, but not the easiest neither - that was Fergie, who insisted on doing her own screaming and bloody good she was too!

When asked to describe the royal fruit of the womb Tracey said: "They all look like monkeys don't they".

A poem for the new prince... Husband to be of Morgana princess of Wales!

A poem written during a thunderstorm to celebrate the arrival of the husband to be of Morgana princess of Wales:

Rotund booming thunder
echoing the obesity of cloud

the light is flashy
but the darkness is enlightening

we lit a candle
there was no wind

until

Morgana farted.

Peter Hitchens... A religious experience at the Tabernacle.

Peter Hutchence... Religious fanatic.

Matthew Stadlen very kindly invited me to attend his 'head to head' with Peter Hitchens this evening at the Tanernacle W11.

It looked like a good idea!

I haven't been back to the Tabernacle since manager Chris Scholey left earlier this year and was curious to see how things fared... the courtyard is fabulous and the best lunchtime or evening spot by a country mile. The planting (for which we must thank Chris) is reaching puberty and softening the architecture splendidly.

I received a lovely welcome from the staff and JJ's new hairstyle behind the bar cheered the place up no end.

In the auditorium the air conditioning worked well.

I can see why Matthew Stadlen does what he does, he's good at his job and with another interviewee I would be happy to stay for the duration and would recommend it to anyone as a refreshing addition to what's happening in the area....

...But sadly I have no time for attention seeking religious bigots like Mr Hutchence (I can only assume that he is still reeling from the death of Paula Wilcox) who like the sound of their own self importance above all else, so I left to buy washing up liquid and soft brown sugar from Tesco.

Full marks to Matthew and the Tabernacle...

Matthew Stadlen head to head with Peter Hitchens at the Tabernacle.

I'm a bit late posting this. It's a new event at the Tabernacle tonight.

In a new series at The Tabernacle Matthew Stadlen interviews public figures before opening the interview up to the floor where the audience will be encouraged to ask questions themselves.

Stadlen is a journalist and documentary film-maker and has interviewed more than 200 guests for the BBC series Five Minutes With -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/20066560. 

The well-known journalist and author Peter Hitchens will be the first guest to go Head2Head with Stadlen. Hitchens is a columnist for The Mail On Sunday, a frequent contributor to news programmes on TV and has written six books including The Abolition of Britain. He describes himself as a Burkean Conservative.

Details HERE

Glastonbury: Ist Nations of a festival tipi encampment..

A guest blog from Jan Nieupjur. Tribal name: Dances with vowels.

Glossary of 1^st nations of the Glastonbury tipi's:  

NATION                     Description

Indig	The easily Riled people of the shared loo
Fulmi	The short tempered loo queuers
Stag	Dwellers of the mud
Sali	Dwellers of the saltmarshes
Pug	The fighting tribe also known as the Angels of Hell
Conster	The puzzled people (chief Kevin Conster)
peregri	The wanderers who cannot find their tents
Desti	The people who have arrived
Predesti	The people who know they will arrive
Assassi	The back stabbers
Rumi	The thinking people who stayed at home
Procrasti	Those who dally in the mud
Emi	The great tribe in the VIP encampment
Abomi	The awful people (in the next tent)
Insubordi	The tribe that heckles in the poetry tipi
Impreg	The successful fuckers
Resig	The people without tickets who sigh
Indoctri	The brainwashed people who think it is fun
Artificialinsemi	The petridish people
Contami	The tribe that is unclean (All become members of the Contami by the end of the festival)
Imagi	The fantasists who watch at home then pretend to have been

The royal kitkat, common poo.

The muse played a gig at Buckingham Palace recently. she was delighted to find that the queen had popped down to Tesco Metro for a box of Kitkats for the band.

This is the royal Kitkat before we ate it... It tasted regal Ma'am!

The royal Kitkat is now sadly common poo.

Sic biscuittus disintegrat.

The seagull man of Bath. What a tosser.

Charlie Dancey, who made the video, writes: This is the Seagull Man, he turns up at Pulteney Weir each Sunday at 7am and feeds the gulls, who are a menace and have been grabbing the atention of the press.

Permission is granted for this video to be freely used by the media, provided that it is credited to me. I don't much like confrontation, but the gulls are a real menace, and they also kill ducks, and we all know how I feel about ducks.

This is a higher resolution shot of the best identifying picture of the Seagull man I can find in my video...

Charlie Lives aboard the 'Northern Sun' with Cleopatra the duck presently moored at Pulteney Weir and is a driving force behind the South Quay Community Arts Project in Bath: Details HERE

Does anyone recognise the seagull man? Let me know if you do.

Portobello crime scene. RBKC guilty!

Gosh! I'm a criminal...

Yes I did it, I put my hands up, caught bang to rights etc etc.

On Thursday evening I put out a number of bags of garden waste for collection by RBKC the following morning. I had researched the methodology (a word local authorities are very fond of) for disposal of garden waste, I bought the green bags as required, I made sure the day was correct for collection on this street. I did everything asked of by RBKC.

The following morning the RBKC crew turned up, removed one bag of waste and left the remainder on the pavement.... Sheer idiocy! Why on earth could they not take it all?

This morning I found that the good people of RBKC had visited and declared the situation an 'Environmental Crime Scene'. The garbage added to the garden waste by the morons visiting the market doesn't help.

But am I the criminal?  My actions were those of a law abiding resident following instructions from the RBKC website. RBKC however (or it's minions) did not follow the instructions on their website. Surely this makes them the criminal.

I have telephoned the number on the sticker placed on the bags and have been fobbed off with the promise of a call at some time from the environmental officer... I await the call with enthusiasm.

At exactly the same time as my supposed crime the following photographs were taken directly opposite the house.

 As you can see from the lack of yellow stickers RBKC do not consider this a crime yet this scene is repeated weekly in this street due to a total absence of waste bins or skips within the market area of Portobello Green resulting in post market detritus being dumped on the streets and in our gardens. Oh, and if we should leave the litter in our gardens we are threatened by RBKC with prosecution.

Come on RBKC sort it out and clean your shit up!

The Theatre of Small Convenience. A short film by Angelica Landry.

Angelica has made a lovely little film about the wonderful Dennis Neale and his theatre in what was once a Gents lavatory in Great Malvern... English eccentricity at its best.


The Theatre of Small Convenience from Angelica Landry on Vimeo.

visiting the theatre is now high on my 'to do' list.

Urban fox No: 3

This little chap has been visiting us for some time, she checks out the dog bowl for food and if it is empty pretends to limp to get a bit of sympathy. For my part I am happy to see the little chap... The bastard squirrels keep away!