here’s a poem

..I wrote a while ago and forgot about.

Things ain’t what they used to be

Since I grew up an age ago

The world has changed its name

And everything is different now

But I’m still just the same

Chorus:

I’ve got a Tangyanika temperature

Got the British Guyana blues

Got rheumatics in me Rhodesias

You don’t want to be in my shoes

I’m suffering from Soviet Union syndrome

I’ve got the Stalingrad stutters

I’ve got the Siam shakes

I’m one of the Nyasaland nutters

I’ve got Constantinople difficile

I’ve got the South Yorkshire spots

I’m flushed with Finisterre fever

I’m seeing Dalmatia dots

I’ve got a pain all down me Balkans

I’ve got Volgagrad vertigo

I’ve got a fractured Yugoslavia

I just don’t know where to go

Chorus

I’ve got the Mongolia measles

And a huge Gondwanaland goitre

I’ve got the Leningrad leprosy

In a place you don’t wanna loiter

I’ve got the Humberside hives

I’ve got Greater London grumps

I’ve got a lot of Wessex wind

I’ve got the Mercia mumps

I’ve got Peking pneumonia

I’m really in a fix

On top of all this I’ve gone

And contracted the Bombay mix!

Chorus

I’ve got North-East London Polytechnic apoplexy

I’ve got the Prussian pox

I’ve got Pangaea panic

I’ve got Soke of Peterborough shell-shock

Chorus

I’ve caught the bug of Bohemia

I’ve got Cumberland constipation

But it’s more than places that have changed

To my rising consternation

I’ve got Spastics Society spasms

I’ve got manic depressive ….manic depression

I’ve got Beta-Max boils on me unmentionables

I’ve got an On-digital obsession

I’ve got Transport and Haulage hot flushes

I’ve got Midland Bank M.E.

And my lachrymal gland still gushes

When I remember Thames TV

Chorus

Me General Municipal Boiler Makers and Other Trades Union

Has made me unable to pee

I’ve got USDAWs erupting all over

Thank god I’m still in the NUT!

Chorus

I don’t know what I’m going to do

I can’t take it on the chin

Cos a name like British Shoe

Did exactly what it said on the tin

But what the hell is Centrica?

I think we should be told

And what in god’s name are logistics?

It makes my blood run cold

Chorus

I shall sit on my Ottoman Empire

Like an Empress I’ll let it pass by

For what can’t be cured must be endured

So I’ll say “Ceylon, Abyssinia! Goodbye!”

Poor, nasty, British and short

I’m trying to think of someone who fits this description. Why? You may ask. Go on, ask. I’ll tell you in a mo. Now, I can think of people who are British and nasty, as I’m sure you can – and maybe Alan Sugar is also short, though on the telly it’s hard to tell. Not that I ever watch it… But I’m sure he isn’t poor. That’s sort of the point. And Heston Blumenthal – again, three out of four. Anne Robinson might not even be short. So I’m forced to fall back on people who aren’t famous. But still I’m struggling. Maybe there’s a correlation here – maybe you can be short and nasty but not poor, or poor and British but not nasty… anyway, I can’t think of anyone.

Can you?

Spring has sprung, the grass is ris; I wonder where my novel is?

Oh yeah – that’s right, I haven’t written it yet. But I have written a draft proposal and started a sample chapter. When these are all polished I shall send them to agents and the lengthy process of waiting and rejection and sending off and waiting again, begins. Good job my life isn’t, like many of my forebears’, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Which is pretty much where we came in…

Pip pip!

Is the Pope a Catholic?

That’s normally a rhetorical question – but I mean it.  To be more precise, what I mean is, does the Pope represent Catholics the world over?  Surely the answer has to be “no”: not only do many practising Catholics disagree with his stance (inter  alia) on condoms – as someone on the radio helpfully pointed out the other day, a  Roman Catholic is not the only kind of Catholic.  I don’t know what other kinds there are but it’s heartening to know that there are others out there for whom the Pope does not – and cannot – speak.  So, what’s he done now?  Well, surprise surprise, it’s still not ok to use a condom – and if you are poor and African and die of AIDS as a result – oh, well – God still loves you.  So far, so predictable.  But this time he has gone even further and said that condoms can make the problem of AIDS worse.  As I’ve said before, I don’t know what planet he is inhabiting but its orbit is taking him increasingly further from earth.

On a lighter note – literally! – I’ve written a literary version of the Element Song called the Modernist Song.  here’s the chorus:

I am the very model of a fairly major modernist

I might be homosexual but don’t call me a sodomist

my form is free and daring and I write experimentally

I might do a nice sonnet but that’s just coincidentally

If you wanna come see me do it, come to Word – Tuesday 7th April, Y Theatre Leicester

See you there!

TT

The god Illusion

The story has been writ.  I’m quite pleased with it so far:  Mark thinks it’s great.  Here’s a taste.

The God Illusion

Saul Bellamy smoothed down the hair at the back of his head as he waited in the Green Room for his third interview that day. He was dressed, as always, in a suit and tie, not ostentatious but impeccably tailored: it was his fifth TV appearance that week to promote his latest book, Who Does God Think He Is? His interviewers were generally unsurprised when they gained little insight into the mind of God, but a great deal into that of Saul Bellamy – God did not exist, therefore His thoughts counted for little, whilst Saul Bellamy manifestly did exist; and his theories were the hottest, the most talked-about, the most dogmatic and scurrilous or the most sane and enlightened, depending on the view you took. Rarely had a book on anthropology received such publicity: even more rarely had it been the subject of so much conversation amongst non-academics: Bellamy had the gift of communicating with intellectuals and people in the street alike. His views were accessible equally to men and women (he did not make the mistake, like some, of adopting a “cave-man” approach to biology) and his arguments were compelling. Even the most committed (and dismayed) priests couldn’t put the book down.

Bonjour, mes petits

Hallo, my little blogospheres and welcome to a long-overdue update.  Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while: I’ve been busy writing poems and short stories and sending them off.  Haven’t heard about the audition so I guess I didn’t get it.  Feeling a bit fed up today: it’s so hard to get anywhere.  Getting the audition would have been a tiny bit of progress, a small speck of recognition in the desert of oblivion…  I totally sympathise with unemployed people at the moment: it must be just as hard trying to find a job.  We should all write begging letters to that git (I’m being very restrained here) who has a £700,00-a year pension from whatever bank it is.  It’s not my bank, otherwise I would probably switch my account.  Oh, except that – er – I owe them some money.  A mere drop in the ocean compared to the bonuses they pay these people – I’m obviously in the wrong profession.  Anyway, to cheer us all up, here’s a taste of song wot I wrote.  It’s a literary take on The Element Song (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFIvXVMbII0 and it’s about modernism. I shall do it at Word next month.  April is the cruellest month… Incidentally, did I mention Wendy Cope’s version of the Wasteland?  I can’t believe she came to Leicester and I missed her!

I am the very model of a fairly major modernist

I might be homosexual but don’t call me a sodomist

my form is free and daring and I write experimentally

I might do a nice sonnet – but just coincidentally

The characters of Forster are behaving rather bitterly

they’re sexually frustrated and they need to go to Italy

while Dubliners are thirsty and the Wasteland’s running dry

Virginia’s stream of consciousness is flowing gently by

TTFN!

Help! I’ve come to audition by mistake!

Last night I turned up to Word having misunderstood Lydia’s email (Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia? She’s not tattooed but does sport a lovely head of red hair) did not realise that by virtue of taking the open mic I would be auditioning for something (doctor, doctor, I think I’m auditioning for something!) Once it was explained to me that I would have to do six workshops, be paid £200 and take part in an installation as part of the Special Olympics, I was raring to go – although in order for this to happen I have to be selected as one of the seven participants. I did three poems, Classified, Camp and November, all of which can be found on this blog. I realised after I’d chosen them that they all had the theme of death!

Cross fingers for me!

PS wondering about the title?  It’s a reference to the classic film, “Withnail and I” – the original line goes “Help!  We’ve come on holiday by mistake!”

W at the Y

Word tonight at the Y theatre Leicester. I shall be reading a couple I sent off for the Mslexia poetry comp, judged by Ruth Padel. She is apparently a descendant of Darwin – which brings me beautifully to a short story I’m going to write about Richard Dawkins, in which he is going to have a road-to-Damascus conversion and become a born-again Christian. It could happen! In fact I think it’s more likely that people who cling tightly to dogmatic views can turn around and embrace the exact opposite view. And I tell you this: Richard Dawkins the evangelical Christian is going to be ten times the pain in the arse that R D the atheist ever was.

If you haven’t read The God Delusion, it’s an interesting rant – I mean, read. I can’t argue with anything he says about religion: it’s the things he doesn’t say that I object to. Yes, religions have been guilty of corruption – but so has politics and business. Yes, religions are guilty of indoctrination – but so is politics – and no, there isn’t any evidence for the existence of God – but how could there be? As Mary Midgely points out in her article, A Plague on Both Your Houses, science does not and cannot concern itself with metaphysics. To say there is no scientific evidence for God is like – like – like an octopus saying there is no sky. Which reminds me of Blake’s Newton, trying to measure the world with compasses, which in turn reminds me that some time in April Peter and I (and possibly the daughter) are going to London to see the Picasso exhibition. Can’t ask the daughter at the mo’, because she is still in Wales. If she ever comes back, I’ll talk to her. Or if she reads this blog…

Ho ho ho.

Here’s the new plan…

Slept badly, woke up this morning – and now I have a new plan! I think I’m finally ready to start writing my novel. OK so I’ve already written a novel and a half (literally – I don’t mean that my first one was so brilliant that it was a “novel and a half”). The first one was called Seven Days and was about a woman spending a week in a nuclear bunker (yes, it was a long time ago); the second, called “M”, was about a man who changes sex half way through, but I couldn’t make it work. Writing both of these was like blundering about in a dark forest with only the vaguest idea of what a path should look like. I’m still blundering about in a dark forest, but now I’ve learnt the names of some of the trees, and the squirrels are my friends. Some of them even bring me nuts. Speaking of which…

Retaining one’s sanity (as regular readers of this blog will know) can be a bit of an issue, so I need to do plenty of gardening, cleaning, decorating etc to keep me in touch with the physical world. Other than that I am spending my leisure time (as are we all) ploughing through the ten series of Friends which we are acquiring on DVD (we used to have the whole lot on video but they took up half the living-room.) Whether this will help on the sanity front, I don’t know (could I be any more sane?) but it sure is fun. And now, on with the day. I am so gonna write that novel!

Pride comes before a … stumble

Yesterday was unusual for me. Or rather, it was unusual for the fifty-one year old me – the thirty-one year old me would have found it perfectly normal. To cut to the chase – I went drinking at lunchtime. The Phoenix in Leicester has risen once from the ashes but sadly, is unlikely to do so again, due to the birth of a monstrosity called The Curve (I have a rant about this somewhere) – and yesterday saw – or rather, heard – the swan-song there of Chris Conway, a local folk musician. Due to a problem with the draught beer, I was drinking bottled London Pride. Pride is brewed in Chiswick (I think) and used to be my beer of choice when I lived in London. Go out of Hounslow West tube station, turn left and keep walking about half a mile, there’s a pub on the left called the Queen Victoria (we had it first!) which serves – or used to serve – London Pride. So yesterday I had 4 or 5 bottles of the stuff (it comes in pint bottles) and was just drunk enough not to realise I was drunk, but sufficiently so to stagger home and fall asleep on the sofa. Thankfully, one child is away, leaving only one to say with a smirk, at half-hourly intervals, “Are you still drunk, Mum?”

I was.