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

BBC news website airs fake video of multiple lightning strike.

Naughty BBC or gullible BBC?

Click on the link and watch the video of supposed multiple lightning strikes on the same spot. Look closely and you will see that it is the same strike repeated a number of times.

Sloppy BBC.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-48235462/lightning-strikes-twice-and-again-and-again

An ormolu stool for the new Royal baby.

From the archive.

A nation rejoices
a nation is happy
for a baby from Wales
has filled up her nappy

no signs of austerity
in her posterior dexterity
yet for her no diamond
or other rare jewel

no silver
no pearls
but the perfectly formed whirls
of a
golden hued,
curlicued
ormolu stool.

We wrapped it in tissue
sent it off to the issue
of the issue
of our dear Queen's eldest son
With a brief covering word
to authenticate the turd
as a born and bred, dressed in red,
Welsh number one.

Suggesting that
when they unwrap it
they have Gilbert and George snap it
for in turd matters they
are certainly no fool
And will quickly identify
reasons aplenty why
(in the words of the hip)
it is undeniably cool...

To be blissfully happy
with the contents of a nappy:

A golden hued, curlicued, ormolu stool.

Lines written on failing to become poet laureate.

Passed over for the laureateship again
god knows I've tried

written poems about royal weddings and babies
odes to wildlife, urns and joy
tedious blank verse self indulgencies
doggerel
mentioned Amy Winehouse
declared my black moods mixed race
allowed my inner child a voice
played fast and loose with convention
written stuff that rhymes
churned it out by the metre
and the foot:  iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee, and pyrrhic

all to no avail 

Dart morning.

Fat lazy salty whore
Rolls brassily into the river’s maw.

Under a counterpane of mist
A blanket of oaks cloak the valley
Down to limpet pocked rocks
Teased by the lardy tarts petticoats.

On, in, swell diminishes to lap.
Fox and otter quarter the shore
The rising tide and sun
dressing the mud in sequins.

Working boats steam seaward
Gulls dogging ploughed wakes.
Sip and plat of my oars
As they turn the meaty water like spaded sods.

Rare Sumatran pygmy elephant discovered trapped in Notting hill basement.

A very rare pygmy elephant has been discovered 'trapped' in a Notting Hill basement. the animal is unharmed and seemingly quite relaxed about the situation.

Due to the rarity of the creature and the fact that no such animal is registered in any UK zoo it is assumed that the elephant has escaped from one of the many illegal sub-basement menageries that are suspected to exist in the affluent west London area. This would also explain the animal's laid back attitude to its current situation. It is assumed that the owner will not come forward to claim the illegally imported beast.

Sumatran pygmy elephants are only found in Sumatra and on the island of Mauritius where they have been kept for centuries as an ornament to the famed bonsai Baobab gardens, where they stand motionless for much of the time, that are unique to the Indian ocean island.

The owner of the house where the elephant was found and who prefers to remain annonymous stated that she would prefer it if passers by would refrain from feeding the animal buns as the crumbs were difficult to clean up.

Although the creature, now named Elaphant n daroum by local schoolchildren, seems happy enough a rescue attempt will be made in the next few days.

I became your mirror.

I remembered your conversations

about a child losing innocence

as we walked on the heath that day

long after he had gone

I instinctively picked up a stick

pointed it at you

shouted bang

and killed the woman who chased him away

you snapped then

snapped the stick, snapped at me

you would not blame yourself of course not

that day I did not lose my innocence

YOU gave me guilt.

and I became your mirror.

Selfie dance.

Discerning mice give thumbs up to local bakery.

This made me chuckle, found on the MyLondon site:


"A Ladbroke Grove bakery was given the worst possible hygiene rating after an inspector found "one of the heaviest and mouse extensive mouse infestations" they had ever seen.
After an inspection on February 21, St Helen's Bakery was given a 0 out of 5 food hygiene rating by Kensington and Chelseacouncil, meaning that urgent improvement is required.

There is more HERE

I imagine that the mice gave it a very high rating.

The Portobello Gold has had a facelift.

A few weeks ago I was asked to sign a petition to RBKC regarding the facade of the gold which is currently undergoing refurbishment. I was happy  to sign the petition, the building is an unattractive piece of 20th century utilitarian architecture totally out of place on Portobello road. I was also surprised to recieve an email of thanks from the new owner.

I assumed from looking at the proposal that the brick facade was to be painted with a fragmented looking mural, nothing remarkable but an improvement all the same.

I walked up  to take a look at the progress today and was very pleasantly surprised, far from painted bricks the entire face has been rendered and painted then the render nibbled away to form the image. I imagine a port fed stitlon attacked by a bunch of artistic mice might look similar.

Well worth stopping to have a look. Now we must wait to see what incarnation a well liked local pub returns as. It opens soon I understand.

Meaningful Vote 3: The legal implications of separating the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration

Found this on the interweb on the Public law for everyone blog by Professor Mark Elliot:

 'The Government has confirmed that tomorrow, Friday 29 March, it will lay a motion before the House of Commons seeking its approval of the Withdrawal Agreement — but not of the Political Declaration concerning the UK’s future relationship with the EU. It has further indicated that if the Withdrawal Agreement is approved, it will introduce into Parliament the long-awaited ‘Implementation Bill’, which would be needed in order to give effect in domestic law to the Withdrawal Agreement. As far as the legal implications of this proposed course of action are concerned, three issues are worth mentioning."

More HERE

Brexistential angst.

"Brexistential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or anguish, is a term that is common to manybrexistentialist thinkers. It is generally held to be a negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. The archetypical example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom. Angst, according to the modern existentialist, Adam Fong, is the sudden realization of a lack of meaning, often while one completes a task that initially seems to have intrinsic meaning.
It can also be seen in relation to the previous point how angst is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear that has an object. While in the case of fear, one can take definitive measures to remove the object of fear, in the case of angst, no such "constructive" measures are possible. The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates both to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions, and to the fact that, in experiencing freedom as angst, one also realizes that one is fully responsible for these consequences. There is nothing in people (genetically, for instance) that acts in their stead—that they can blame if something goes wrong. Therefore, not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, human lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread). However, this doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.

The greatest poet the world has ever seen.

For Jan Nieupjur. RIP.


Dressed in ermine he ransacked wardrobes for rags,
combed hedgehogs for fleas.
Eviscerated boots for spores of poets foot
and got down with the homeless and the poor.
He shaved Schrodingers cat with Occams razor
then taught it Braille
in order to better understand his acne
acne that did not respond to Keats or Byron or any of the other guitarless lyricists
but responded to his doggerel
as he slavered on the ointment labelled 'keep away from children, they grow into critics'
and watched as the pustules subsided.

How many other poets, he mused, can cure acne with verse
I must be
The greatest poet the world has ever seen.

The forlorn hopes of the brides parents.

The forlorn hopes of the brides parents were crushed when the groom arrived with a chop saw and they realised that they were giving their daughter to the man they had spent a lifetime warning her about.

Pendulum

She asked me: 'What do you do?'
I said I am a pendulum.
She said: 'So am I'.
We held hands full of hope....

A tale of two West London pubs.

I used to live next door but one to the Cow on Westbourne Park Road. It was my local for12 years and I still pop in from time to time.

I pop in because it is, for many reasons, the best pub in West London.

I pop in because Petro or Luti will always be pleased, or pretend to be pleased, to see me, Petro especially knows what I want before I do. Mid week there will always be people I know from years back who have the same liking for the place and the food is the best in any pub that I know of; it is not 'gastro bollocks' it is good food.

Tom, who owns the place has a very good idea of what is what and what should be. He has made it a destination rather than just a local. This can be annoying at weekends when the place is rammed, but I guess that is the price you pay for a bloody good pub down the road.

I called in tonight, walked in after a long absence to see that all was as is should be and on top of that Ian has grown facial hair, Janek looks even younger, Colette has cut her hair but it is still the colour of new pennies and Jake looks the same as ever and the place was full and vibrant.

Later, after a trip to Tesco I popped into the Italian Job on All Saints Road, just off Portobello Road, surely a 'cool' place for a pub but without any soul. Of course it is a 'chain' pub.

I'm going to let a picture tell a thousand words:

There is a dog

 

Got up, dressed to kill and someone to kill but Someone whispered 'NO'.

I knew none of this until I took another look at this photograph. There is a dog.

There is a dog. And the dog whispered : ''No Tristan no, I know the woman you want to kill  deserves to die but she should not die by your hand.

There is a dog

Sent from my iPhone

Phoenix - Lisztomania - Boston University Brat Pack Mashup

White pebbles.

 


I watched you being led into that dark place
led by a creature forged from lies and hate
In time you will find the first of many
white pebbles
that will lead you into the light.

Brexit to cause shortage of contract killers in UK.

According to a goverment source Britain will experience a dire shortage of skilled assassins as a result of our departure from europe.

Since the 1990's both MI5 and the Army have stopped training programmes for hit men preferring to use freelancers, the majority of whom are from Eastern Europe. The idea of a tuxedo clad old Etonian armed with an automatic, a martini and a smooth line of patter is pure fantasy.

Such is the concern within government circles that plans are well advanced for producing home grown killers.

My source told me:

'Department of education and DWP heads have been approached and asked to come up with a viable scheme for fast tracking competent killers within the next few years. It is hoped that more women can be trained up. 'After all'. He said. 'Women have innate skills that make them first class Assassins''

                                       Villanelle

The government recently commissioned the BBC to produce the Series 'Killing Eve' complete with female killer Villanelle in order to make the occupation more attractive to women.

I understand that applicants with personality disorders will be extremely welcome.

Interested individuals should contact their nearest Job Centre.

A bag for life... After death.

It will not be the cough
that carries me off
nor will I go down
in a coffin
But a bag for life
... After death
that I shall finally
go off in.    

Portobello Panto 2018 at the Tabernacle.

 

Yes it is that time of the year again.

Early Bird tickets for this year's Portobello Panto Presents: "Snow White and the Seven Runaways" are now available to purchase via this link:
https://www.tabernaclew11.com/whats-on
Grab them while they're hot!

The Trouble Notes & JC001 - Never Again

Is Banksy a woman?

 

The brainwashing of children.

From an article on the BBC website today:

"When parents separate, where the children live, how much time they spend with Mum or Dad, can be hard to agree.

Sometimes a child starts refusing to see their other parent.
This autumn, social workers who look after a child's interests in the family courts are being given new guidelines to help with these cases.
For the first time this will consider the possibility a child has been deliberately turned against one parent, by the other
 Parental alienation, as it's called, will be just one of the options a social worker might consider.
It's a controversial concept which the courts have been trying to grapple with for years in cases where the parents are locked into entrenched legal action over contact.
There is no consensus and not a great deal of research, so how might it be considered by courts here?
The intensity or frequency of behaviour might be one of the ways this is set apart from the disagreements that are often part of separation.
"Think of a child experiencing a separation, the mother or father bad mouthing, or withholding warmth and affection unless they agree with an argument," says Sarah Parsons of the Children and Families Court Advisory Service.
"If it's repeated it can have an invasive, intrusive effect on wellbeing. A child can think the only way to stay safe is to side with one parent and reject the other."
".

See more HERE

UK Panorama 2018

Carnival 2018 in full swing.

Ready for Carnival.

Owl at sunset.

Proms

Andrew O'Hagan: Grenfell Tower. Piss poor journalism.

The publication of this thing does no one any favours except RBKC councilors, Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen in particular and  of course O'Hagans bank account.

What is wrong with it:

The timing of this publication, before any inquiry has been concluded and before any results are published demonstrates an arrogance of monumental proportions on the part of O'Hagan.

It is biased conjecture at best.

It fails to acknowledge absolute facts regarding the cladding of the building in favour of defending the councilors who. for whatever reasons, allowed the work to be carried out. The argument that RBKC's use of dangerous cladding was ok because everyone else was doing it is laughable.

It casually lays blame on the Fire Service for the number of deaths. It does not point out that, but for the cladding mistakes, the Fire Service, having put out the fire on the fourth floor would have gone home. Job Done.

O'Hagan is so keen to defend and praise Pagett Brown and Fielding Mellen and others that he has completely missed the big story. I would point him in the direction of Companies House records.

I could go on and on but I won't beyond saying that the entire thing is so flawed and biased that it even casts doubt on the facts that it gets right.

It is a monumental piece of 'up my own arse, look how clever I am, journalism' with no concern for truth or justice and a very keen enthusiasm for Town Hall brown nosing.

For the record, I lived in the shadow of Grenfell at the time of the fire. I watched it from the start. I experienced first hand the horrors and I experienced first hand the inadequacy of RBKC in its response.

Tesco to remove dates from stores.

Tesco is to stop stocking dates in its stores.

A spokesperson said that this would stop uneaten dates being thrown away by consumers.

etc etc etc

The many faces of tax and benefits fraud.

It is easy to assume that benefit fraud is perpetrated by 'pond life and scum'.
This is not the case.

I've spent the past 12 months looking into the abuse of benefits in this area and find that the benefit cheat is more likely to be someone in work, who, rather than being on the breadline feels that they deserve more than they earn and to that end fiddles council tax or single parent childcare benefits.

Benefit frauds and council tax frauds are frequently carried out by individuals who think that they are above suspicion and therefore free from detection.  They are 'nice' educated folk whose nasty habits (they hope) will never come to light.

The chances are that someone standing next to you at the school gates, sitting accross the table at a dinner party, living two doors away or up the street is abusing the system. Even that nice police officer next door.

It is easy to do.

Thanks to the internet and Open Source information it is now getting easier to detect.

more later....

Fleur Dumal, the muse from hell.

 
 Illustration for Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. Odilon Redon 1890.

Jan Nieupjur paid a rare visit yesterday. We sat in the sun, shared a few beers and a few memories but it wasn't long before he turned our thoughts to the muse:

"I've met a new muse ." He informed me.

"Her name is Fleur Dumal, she is the most selfish human being I have ever met; lies constantly, would sell her mother for a glass of wine and is totally untrustworthy... In essence the perfect muse.

She is an artist without a shred of creativity or talent but has a phenomenal delusional self belief in her greatness."

Hmmmm. Sounds familiar

"She wants to write Tristan and to that end could she perhaps pen an occasional post for the blog. Would you indulge her, it might be fun."

I of course, in the interests of equality, agreed and will be posting her occasional thread entitled: 'Life in the pits'.

Should be interesting.

The smallest library in the world.

Love only bicycle.

It is without doubt the most photographed bicycle in London: parked outside the pink mews house that served as Kiera Knightly's home in 'Love actually' it has featured in thousands of photographs and selfies by tourists from around the planet.

Sent from my iPhone

Snow shoes in Notting Hill.

Fly fishing for hare in Kensington Gardens.

A guest blog by Jan Nieupjur.

Country pursuits are few and far between in London so you can imagine my delight on being invited to an evening's fly fishing in Kensington Gardens by my old pal Buffy.

Imagining trout rising in the Serpentine I packed my rod and favourite flies and headed west to his mews pied a terre in Notting Hill. Buffy answered the door with tears streaming down his cheeks.
"My god Buffy, what on earth is the matter". I exclaimed.
"Just cutting bait, old chap". Was his reply and he went on to explain that far from stalking trout in the Serpentine we would be after the Husk of hares that had colonized Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Apparently Princess Diana had released a breeding pair from Kensington Palace in order to piss off Charles, they were his favourite pets and she felt received more affection than she, shortly after their marriage.

The hares bred like rabbits and today there are more than 2,000 of the critters living in the meadows. Early on the Hares developed nocturnal habits and are rarely seen during daylight hours. An annual cull takes place in February, carried out by the Coldstream Guards armed with high powered air rifles fitted with night sights, as the local communities blithely sleep on unaware of the ongoing carnage nearby.

Buffy has set up the Kensington hare fishing club in order to take advantage of this bounty. fishing is of course banned in the Serpentine but there is no such constraint to fishing in the grass. Twilight was the optimum time for catching the hares which came out to gambol as the park quietened for the night.

The cause of Buffy's tears was laid out on the butchers block in his well equipped kitchen.

 

Preparing bait.

 "Horse radish". Buffy exclaimed with relish. Apparently, through much trial and error, this was the best bait for the job. A 'tail' of horse radish was wound into the fly and proved to be irresistible to the animals. Buffy went on to tell me that he had previously used asparagus but found that it often disintegrated on casting. The fibrous horse radish however, grown on his roof, not only had the required stringiness to stay on the hook but also the whiteness of its flesh made it easy for the hares to spot in the gloaming.

After preparing a dozen flies, more lure than a fly to my mind, we filled our hip flasks with cherry brandy and set out.

Kensington gardens at dusk is a magical place, lit by the amber metropolitan glow and swathed in a faint winter mist, silent but for the cough of foxes, grunts of alfresco lovers and the rustle of rough sleepers bedding. we arrived at Buffy's chosen spot, close to the Diana memorial ditch on the southern bank of the serpentine.

"They seem to congregate here, probably where the first pair were released". Said buffy.

I remember, long ago stocking the memorial with a dozen rainbow trout for a spot of sport many years ago after I had been arrested for fishing in the Serpentine. I was arrested for that too.



Illegally fishing the Serpentine.

We set up our rigs and, with some scepticism on my part,  cast our lures. to my astonishment and joy the hares rose to our bait as cast after cast we snagged them. Once hooked the animals fought hard, cutting zigzag courses through the meadow, one or two were lost when the line snagged on a tree. I was using a 10lb mono filament line and made a mental note to upgrade to a 20lb braided line next time.

By 10.00 pm we had a decent bag of 17 animals, no specimens but all of a good size, and as the last of the cherry brandy slid down our gullets decided to call it a night.

"Just time to catch the Cow before last orders'. Exclaimed Buffy.

Later, back at Buffy's house we hung the beasts on olive trees for the night ready for butchering the following day. We sat late into the night, celebrating our success with a bottle or two, listening the urban foxes as they congregated beneath the hung hares, salivating frustration.



Hare in an olive tree.



Line caught Kensington hare.
"Je weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt". I muttered in my drunkenness.
Well I Know now!

The lies that bind us.

I love you, she told me
I know, I replied
we held each other closely
each knowing we lied....

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.

Obese children to be banned from 'Trick or treating' on Halloween.

It was announced today that obese children will be barred from the annual begging and gorging festival.

Extra police officers will be on duty on Saturday evening checking the BMI's of all suspect kids. Those who are seen to be overweight will be sent home with a stern warning to their parents.

It has been suggested by health experts that appetite suppressants such as cigarettes or amphetamines should be provided as an alternative to sweets.

Many parents are furious, especially those who have spent a fortune on 'Fat Donald Trump' costumes for their thin children. They fear that their children will be wrongly penalised and may turn to donuts as a means of relieving stress.

Boris Johnson failed to comment.




Disappointment at Halloween.

HOPE.

The bottom line is hope.

Without hope there is nothing; no ambition, no desire, nothing.

Hope is an horizon painted on a sheet of glass and seemingly forever out of reach; something to aim for, a goal...

Until you find yourself forced up against that sheet of glass.

There is nothing beyond it.