Tuesday 1 December 2015

EVENSONG, HOSANNAH IN SUSPENDED FOURTHS. THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, Traditional: Ding Dong! Merrily On High

19 comments:

mikem said...

Sorry, Ishmael, this isn't about Evensong. I just Googled Randal Clarke, my old HM from BGS, looking for evidence of his brutality, and I came across your writings on that subject from 2013. What I'm wondering is, were we at BGS at the same time - I was there 1960 to '67? I'm looking for tales out of school for a memoir of sorts - more an account of the perpetual culture of violence that was Bangor in the 60s.

call me ishmael said...

I was only there briefly, mr mikem, and don't think I can much expand on what I said in the commentary you mention. Clarke was a child-beating monster. He offered me violence, which I cordially offered in return and which the wretched sadist declined. I often wish that I had insisted he accept.

I sincerely wish you well with your memoir.

SG said...

Silent nights indeed Mr I - most apposite as we are, apparently, upon the eve of war and it is almost Christmas to boot! Fair brought a tear to my eye and this to mind...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LusH_kJxsmQ

Caratacus said...

You do yourself great credit, Mr. I. The one time I burned and writhed with indecision was when the appalling Mr. Fosdyck took a bamboo cane (the split ends of which had been carefully wrapped with sellotape into wickedly sharp edges) to the legs of my young companion in the school playground , sufficiently for blood to run freely down his socks. He gave not a murmur as this was carried out. I should have leapt to his defence and gone down with twice the punishment ... but did nothing, and I have lived with it for over fifty years without mentioning it until today. I was nine years old at the time and I do believe it has been one of the guiding lights which has led me to the implacable and unforgiving old bastard I have become. Mr. F. may, in some strange way, have laid the foundations for the protection of innocent folk in so far as I may have any influence one way or the other.

Bungalow Bill said...

Rather lovely that and unexpectedly touching. Tonight of all nights as Winston's Flying Machines make ready.

Mike said...

Mr BB: I'm staggered by the absurdity of that debate. Pygmies: the intellectual equivalent of the Stoke Manderville Games.

What in their tiny minds thinks any of this is remotely legal. At least Blair got his mate Goldsmith to say it was; no such pretense this time. If pilots obey illegal orders they deserve all that coming their way - and it will.

If I were Assad I would say this is a declaration of war on Syria and give the Russians carte blanche to shoot em down, which they may well do anyway.

SG said...

That 'powerful' Hilary Benn speech to Parliament in full:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRvafKSJ1ls

Bungalow Bill said...

I feel unutterably sad, Mr Mike. A paltry, disgraceful business all round; Cameron is intolerable and the lack of insight in Parliament is, as you say, astonishing. We should not be surprised but I do not recognise this dark circus as my country any more.

Mike said...

Quite apt, Mr SG.

Alphons said...

Well something had to be done to create an excuse/smokescreen for the enormous "National Debt", that has been created by our beloved chancellor of the piggybanks, when it is finally announced in a couple of year time.

call me ishmael said...

I simply can no longer set even my toe in the sewer waters of MediaMinster, preferring, traitorously, RT and alJay but only in small doses and these evenings I have been listening, surprisingly, to Classic FM. After nine o'clock they play lengthy, uninterrupted pieces, last night I heard the St Martins in the Field live performance of Mozart's 40th symphony, followed by a dazzling, hitherto unknown to me, Haydn's Keyboard Concerto in F, the second movement, largo cantabile, surely written by God to soothe the troubled mind and heart. The previous night, interjected between longer pieces, was this Ding-dong Merrily and although it plays quite crudely, I think, with what on the guitar would be suspended fourths, and with the odd dissonant note, I, too, mr bungalow bill, was very moved.

I feel it is akin to stopping smoking,jumping ship from HMS News - there is nothing to give up, it is true that sometimes the NewsMonster in my head demands feeding, GimmeSome, GimmeSome, GimmeSome but just as the nicotine monster demands feeding, every time you do feed him, With both tobacco and news I speak as a once-hopeless addict - three broadsheets a day and all the Radio Four and BBC2 FilthSpeaka a man could digest. One day, for Christ's sake, about ten years back, I had letters published, different letters, all on the same day - I just wanted to see if I could,play that game, frame an exhortory critical comment, acceptable to the letters editors and thus their readers, of three differering political organs, piece of piss, it was - in the Guardian, the Filtho-O-Graph and the Glasgow Herald, that's a truly sick NewsJunky for you, trying to shape it as well as gobble it up; sick, sick, sick.

I mention this because I am sorry that I haven't opened a discussion, here, about the new horror, but I will. I have just been sickened by the evident appetite, across MediaMinster, for War as Clickbait.

call me ishmael said...
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call me ishmael said...

Ah, king caratacus; there was a Jack Watson, at King Edwards, mr jgm2 would recall him, had I not driven him away, and he crafted obsessively wicked devices like your Mr Fosdyck's; other teacher migh fling a bit of chalk at you but Watson split a bunsen burner tube into six or eight fine tails, tying a knot in the end of each, the better to sting and imprint the victims' buttocks, he stroked and wielded a twelve-inch ebony ruler, acting-out some dire porno-fantasy, and this scrawny, overdressed, Oxbridge degenerate indulged his filthy vices in one of the finest grammar schools in the country, one which I had the misfortune to attend.

Do not reproach yourself, therefore, we were children and they were the grown-ups. Randall Clarke, at Bangor Grammar School, had intended to beat me, shortly after the sudden, premature death of my mother, and whilst I was still settling into his dreadful, sectarian school, the family having moved back to Northern Ireland from Birmingham. His scenting for victims of his depravity, on that occasion, let him down, for I squared-up to him and invited him to just you fucking try. I kinda knew that, whatever happened, my Dad'd be alright, he had never struck me, this ghastly superscilious, fucked-up teacher wasn't going to. Today, the horrible fucking bastard'd go to jail and rightly so.

I am sorry for your distress, then and now, I was just trying to encourage mr mikem. You are correct, though, your exposure to the likes of Fosdyck has helped forge, for all it's faults, a society where it is, at least notionally, illegal to better children by beating them.

call me ishmael said...

It is, indeed, mr sg, a bleak midwinter of the national soul, a Christmas war on the Children of the Heathen.

And mr mike often has the courage which others among us lack - to say that those who actually perform these dreadful, immoral, infanticidal, incendiary acts cannot grumble should Vengeance send them, shrieking and unshriven, straight to Hell, themselves collateralised.

call me ishmael said...
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call me ishmael said...

That old national debt voodoo, eh, mr alphons. After the Hitler War, it was 180% of GDP and so we built homes and the welfare state, in order to clear it; now, tutored by drug addict zombies, we do the opposite.

call me ishmael said...
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Mike said...

"We must support low income people and the most vulnerable people in society, including in making benefits more targeted, improving things for people with disabilities, and investing in education." Vladimir Putin, today.

call me ishmael said...

Typical Marxist rot, eh, mr mike, ggod job we have no truck with rubbish like that in our country. Off now to see the Mikado, from some posh place in London. Back later.