call me ishmael

Sunday, 29 June 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 29/06/2025

Orkney, Best Part of England

There I was, minding my own business - an increasingly rare phenomenon, since we are now required to mind each others' business and then report them - when the sound of saucepan lids being beaten, football rattles and hooters presaged the approach, looming through the summer haar, of a Blackening. As Wiki tells us:

Blackening is a traditional wedding custom performed in the days prior to marriage in rural areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland. The bride and/or groom are "captured" by friends and family, covered in food, or a variety of other – preferably adhesive – substances, then paraded publicly for the community to see .... driven in the back of an open-backed truck, accompanied by the clattering and banging of pots and pans."

Here's one. You can see the fun they are having. The bride is the particularly filthy one, sitting up against the back of the cab.

Back to me, minding my own business, that freezing afternoon in summer, wreathed in thick sea-fog. The lorry did a U-turn in front of me, stopped to allow one of the ladies aboard to disembark over the side of the lorry. The banging, hooting and cat-calling recommenced and the lady in question turned, bent over and exposed her lily-white arse to her companions, giving them the finger and scampering off into her house. The rest of the blackeners noticed I was watching and waved cheerily to me, so I waved back. Safest, really. The lorry sped off, on its way to the harbour, where it reverses down the slip and the blackeners slide off into the sea.

This is a bloke's blackening. At some point in the proceedings, the groom is attached to a handy lamppost by industrial cling film and his chums do a lot of shouting before they get bored or the booze wears off.

Orkney is hosting the Island Games this year. Not heard of the Island Games? It is a week long event, from the 18th to the 25th July 2025, when athletes from up to 24 island groups across the world compete in 12 exciting sports. It is going to be hell. They are expecting 2,500 to 3000 visitors. God knows where they are all going to stay.

Around town signs are sprouting up saying Road Closed. Plan Ahead.

Here are some of the exciting sports featured on the Island Games' website. Below left - bike riding into a standing stone. Below Middle - jumping on sheep. Below right - head butting a standing stone, very fast.

Middle left - falling into the sea. Middle middle - driving golf balls at a standing stone. Middle right - competitive pee retention next to a standing stone.

Bottom left - leaning on a standing stone. Bottom middle - holding a ball near some standing stones. Bottom right - shooting arrows at standing stones.
You're getting the theme here? Yah, Boo, Sucks, Bermuda, we've got standing stones. Got any standing stones, Isle of Wight? Where are your standing stones, Guernsey? Did we mention we have Standing Stones? Well we have. Lots.

We've only just recovered from the International St. Magnus Festival, with its customary so pleased with itself, up its own arse middle-class smuggery. Retired teachers flock annually to Orkney to worship Sir Peter Maxwell-Bumhole's festival for the lower-paid professional classes. You know the sort - they go to Stratford to show off their erudition, sniggering at Shakespeare's lame and unfunny dirty jokes to show how clever they are: "What country, friends, is this?" (Twelfth Night, Act 1, scene 2) and they fall about laughing, like fourth-formers. He said cunt, ho ho. Or Year 9, as they say nowadays.

As the Festival website tells us:

Running from Friday 20 June to Friday 27 June 2025, one of Scotland’s most distinctive midsummer arts celebrations, the festival this year takes “Earth” as its guiding theme, with a packed programme spanning music, poetry, storytelling, visual art, and performance, all anchored in the elemental landscapes of Orkney. Dear Gods and little tiddlers, this Festival really can't get over itself - we are just so unbelievably right-on, as Festival Director Alasdair Nicolson explained, “This year we look at how we interact with the place we live, how much artistic creativity has taken the earth as its starting point, and even how we recycle.” Jolly Good. A Festival about recycling. Again, from the blurb:

A highlight was Deep Wheel Orcadia, "based on the award-winning verse novel by Harry Josephine Giles. A fusion of performance, music and image tells the story of Astrid – who, on return from art school on Mars, meets Darling, a Martian hiding on a space station struggling for survival. Written in Orkney dialect, this spellbinding production includes music by BAFTA-winning composer Atzi Muramatsu with direction by Susan Worsfold."

You can't make this shit up. Well, someone did. This bloke.

Here's the award winning Harry Josephine Giles, educated at St. Andrew's; Scotland's finest University.

Nope, it's not an incredibly ugly woman. Harry's embracing his gender fluidity, and plays the part of the female protagonist in this moving love story in space written in undecipherable Orcadian. Subtitles weren't available. How precious can you get?

Talking of gender fluidity, have you heard the sad story of Jay Hulme, a volunteer at St Nicholas Church in Leicester? Them is a Christian. (Have I got that right? They/Them, not Its?). Jay attracted the sexual interest of another Christian, a lay preacher by name of Venessa Pinto. Jay likes sex with blokes, having been born a biological female and it being quite usual for females to be sexually oriented to blokes. Venessa, however, was not a bloke and did not understand why Jay rejected her advances. Is it because I is black, she mournfully wondered? Because, you see, in a truly Shakespearian cross-dressing plot twist, here's Jay.

Venessa, doing the whole hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, set about a campaign of on-line abuse which left Jay feeling pretty upset. "I felt like she was in my pocket, and in my house, and in my brain all of the time, saying these horrendous things and I couldn't get away," he says. The Leicester police weren't interested and Jay's Bishop, Martyn Snow - who is in the running to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England, not only didn't believe them/they, but accused Jay of being a witch - really! Honest, not invent! Because Jay had been seen in the dark with a candle in church and had a tarot-reading friend. These Christians, what are they like? The tension is getting pretty unbearable here, so I'll cut through and let you know that Leicestershire Police acknowledged their initial response fell short of the standards expected, and said it would continue "to develop its knowledge and training in relation to preventing and detecting stalking offences". Venessa was charged and in May 2024 she pleaded guilty to stalking, involving serious distress or harm and was given an 18-month community order and banned from contacting Jay for a year.

There'll probably be a film. Baby Black Reindeer? Jay has garnered lots of publicity which will help his career as a poet, author and blogger no end. Hell, even I went on his/they's website so I could bring you a taste of his/them's poetry:

Jesus at the Gay Bar

He's here in the midst of it -

right at the centre of the dance floor,

robes hitched up to His knees...

I can't give you any more, on account of copyright stuff, but you can read it for yourself: Jesus at the Gay Bar — Jay Hulme There's a little explanatory sermon that goes with it, but basically it is saying Jesus is cool with sex that happens outwith marriage between a man and a woman. Church of England, you see. Couldn't get away with these heretical ideas in the Catholic Church.

It reminds one of the last successful blasphemy trial in the UK, in relation to the poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name by James Kirkup, poet, writer, and teacher. It was published in Gay News in 1976 and caused outrage amongst Christians, its subject matter being homosexual sex between Jesus and a great many people, including all the apostles and the centurion who takes Christ's body down from the cross and who speaks in this little extract:

For the last time

I laid my lips around the tip

of that great cock, the instrument

of our salvation, our eternal joy.

The shaft, still throbbed, anointed

with death’s final ejaculation

The prosecution was brought against Gay News and its publisher, David Lemon in 1977. Both were found guilty: Gay News Ltd was fined £1,000 and Denis Lemon was fined £500 and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment suspended. It had been "touch and go", said the judge, whether he would actually send Denis Lemon to jail. That'll teach publishers to actually read what's in their magazines.

On appeal, in 1978, the Court of Appeal quashed Denis Lemon's suspended prison sentence but upheld the convictions. It went up to the House of Lords, where the Law Lords heard the appeal against conviction and delivered their judgment on 21 February 1979.

At issue was whether or not the offence of blasphemous libel required specific intent of committing such a blasphemy. By a majority of 3 to 2, the Lords concluded that intention was not required. Lord Scarman was of the opinion that blasphemy laws should cover all religions and not just Christianity and sought strict liability for those who "cause grave offence to the religious feelings of some of their fellow citizens or are such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read them". The appeal was lost.

Moving on from all of this cock-talk, gorgeous, pouting Wes Streeting was on the politics programmes this morning. Have you noticed how he always likes to wear a blue suit or a blue tie to match his eyes? Probably his husband dresses him up nice before the cameras. Sorry, that's straying into more cock-talk.

It's a bit of a bad time for Labour at the moment, as you probably noticed and charming, relatable Wes made a good fist (sorry!) of not defending the indefensible (that's U-turn Keir and PIP-snatcher Reeves), whilst letting us all know that things are going to get better and the NHS will give us all Monjaro injections if his preferred strategy of everyone leaving out one bottle of Coca-Cola per day doesn't cut the mustard ( again, apologies). Coca-Cola executives were not available to refute these accusations that they have single-handedly rendered the UK into an obese nation.

It got fun when Victoria Substitute

tempted him into commenting on Bob Vylan's Glastonbury stunt, inciting murder of the armed forces of Britain's ally, Israel, with his invitation to the useful idiots to join his chant of Death, Death to the IDF. (Somerset Police are reviewing footage of the offence). Wes, god bless him, found it distasteful - appalling, even, stating his strongly-held belief: "All life is sacred." Best tell the boss. Actually, to be fair, he has told Starmer that the NHS can't afford to kill all the people who will queue up to kill themselves once the Assisted ~~Suicide~~ Dying Bill is enacted in law. Then there's the Dead Babies Bill. Don't misunderstand me - I think there's far too many people on the planet, and they can't all move to the Highlands of Scotland - but I don't go round declaring passionately that all life is sacred. Bollocks.

I need a little lie down now and perhaps a few strewing herbs:

The Dutch traveller Levimus Leminius, whilst visiting England in 1560 wrote in his diary:

“Their chambers and parlours strawed over with sweet herbes refreshed mee; their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragraunt floures, in their bed chambers and privy rooms with comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delygted all my senses.”

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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

Sunday, 22 June 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 22/06/2025

They are not a protest group. On its own website, Palestine Action describes itself thusly: "Direct action, which we employ, bypasses our complicit government and forces the necessary change ourselves – it doesn’t involve appealing to those who perpetrate Palestinian oppression."

I daresay there are a few idealistic and insufficiently informed students who are useful idiots within their ranks, but, in essence, this is a Fifth Column organisation, which has pitted itself against the British Government, its foreign policy and its allies. The suggestion is that it is funded and supported by a foreign government.

Palestine Action boasts on its website:

Through sustained direct action, Palestine Action has forced Elbit to shut down weapons factories, lose lucrative contracts and partnerships with several other firms.

 So, Palestine Action cares not at all about the jobs of British working people, nor about legitimate business. It is wholly committed to advancing the interests of Britain's enemies and reducing the capacity of our ally, Israel, to defend itself from invasion, incursion and missile attack from Iran and its proxies who have clearly stated, multiple times, their intent to eradicate the Jewish people and wipe the state of Israel from the map.

The latest direct action, better described as treasonous sabotage, was to attack Britain's defence capability. Again, from their website and in their own words;

"Palestine Action have damaged two military planes at RAF Brize Norton..... Two activists broke into the largest air force base in Britain and used electric scooters to swiftly manoeuvre towards the planes. They used repurposed fire extinguishers to spray red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyagers and caused further damage using crowbars. Red paint.... was also sprayed across the runway and a Palestine flag was left on the scene. Both activists managed to evade security and arrest. "

They boast that they put the planes out of service. God knows, Britain's air force, fleet and soldiers are scant enough - and these traitorous "activists" have further reduced our capacity at a time of war. They are either utter charlies or traitors - I'm not accepting idealist humanitarians as a defence here. It is too serious.

Wiki defines Fifth Column as: "A fifth column is a group of people who undermine a larger group or nation from within, usually in favour of an enemy group or another nation. The activities of a fifth column can be overt or clandestine. Forces gathered in secret can mobilize openly to assist an external attack. The term is also applied to organized actions by military personnel. Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, espionage or terrorism executed within defence lines by secret sympathizers with an external force."

Time to proscribe the organisation, remove its website, arrest its members and freeze its funding. There's a world of difference between going on a march whilst mouthing offensive platitudes about Gaza and disabling Britain's Air Force.

As for the foolish young people who have enjoyed dressing in red boiler suits and letting off smoke bombs - is there anywhere we can deport them to? Where they may feel more culturally aligned with the regime? At least can we show them the unedited footage of the October 7th massacre, as recorded by Hamas terrorist body cameras so Hamas could boast about what they had done in pursuit of their goal to eradicate Jews? Excuse me, isn't that genocide? The film that Self Publicist Dwarf Thunderberg and her disciples refused to watch after being apprehended by Israeli Defence Forces during their laughable, publicity seeking attempt to bring in by boat a token quantity of aid, for fuck's sake, into Gaza? Defence Minister Israel Katz said he'd instructed IDF officials to show the activists the full, unedited footage of the October 7 attacks. "It is appropriate that the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas supporters see exactly who the Hamas terrorist organization they came to support and for whom they work is, what atrocities they committed against women, the elderly, and children, and against whom Israel is fighting to defend itself,' he said.

"Greta and her flotilla companions were taken into a room upon their arrival to the screening of the horror film of the October 7 massacre... when they saw what it was about, they refused to continue watching. The anti-Semitic flotilla members are turning a blind eye to the truth and have proven once again that they prefer the murderers to the murdered and continue to ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas against Jewish and Israeli women, adults, and children."

The Middle East, apart from Iran, natch, is breathing a collective sigh of relief and quietly thanking President Trump and Allah ( the merciful, etc), who directed that assassin's bullet to clip the presidential ear and not plough into the presidential brain. As Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and former Minister of State for Security, pointed out this morning - not one of the Middle Eastern neighbours of Iran has condemned American action in removing Iran's nuclear capabilities with extreme prejudice. Everyone is delighted. No-one wants a nuked-up Iran. Apart from the appalling Coventry MP Zarah Sultana,

appearing on the Laura Kuenssberg politics show this morning, to sneer at everyone, and tell us it was just like 2003 again, and, of course, the hysterical Iranian Ambassador; there was dignified jubilating.

Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade and President of the Board of Trade, was trotted out on the politics programmes to comment on the Trumpian development. Odd that. You'd think Government would have punted a spokesman with a more active defence role in theses parlous times - but maybe they want the nation to consider the business aspects of these Middle Eastern adventures. Anyway, don't you think he looks like a minor royal now he's grown the beard? Albeit with a Durham accent. He can certainly summon regal gravitas when he wants to - as when he informed us that “not a week goes by” without Iran targeting cyber attacks on the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and that 20 state-backed plots by Iran in Britain have been foiled since 2022. We'll just have to take that on trust, I suppose, as it would be a breach of national security to tell us just how much of a threat we are living under. And this is the legacy of the lies the Labour Government told us back in 2003 to persuade the nation to wage war on Iraq on account of their "weapons of mass destruction" - Sultana can call in aid the Alistair Campbell fake dossier to cast doubt on the threat that Iran now poses -well, posed, until the US took out three nuclear sites in Iran at midnight yesterday. Trouble is, Beardie Jonathan is known for being a little economical with the actualité : back in February he was facing calls to resign after falsely claiming to be a solicitor on his online C.V. He subsequently updated his profile to say that he was a "trainee solicitor", not a solicitor, in the Manchester Branch of the Addleshaw Goddard law firm between 2009 and 2010.

I think he's telling the truth about Iran - but, as ever, we just have to take it on trust.

By the way, the Israeli Defence Forces have just recovered the dead bodies of three hostages captured without provocation or declaration of war on Israeli territory and held prisoner, illegally, since October 2023, in the Hamas hell hole of tunnels created with stolen Western aid. There are 50 more hostages still held by Hamas. Hamas, just to remind ourselves, is a terrorist organisation funded and supported by Iran, as are Hezbollah and the Houthis. All committed to murdering the entirety of the Jewish people in Israel. Again, Genocide, much?

These gentlemen are Houthis. Yemen’s Houthi-led rebel government has announced its full backing for the group’s armed wing, which vowed to target American ships in the Red Sea following the United States having bombed Iran's nuclear facilities. The Houthis declared in a statement issued on Saturday: “We affirm the Republic of Yemen’s commitment to the armed forces’ declaration that they were ready to target US ships and warships in the Red Sea.”

They really shouldn't. President Trump won't like that.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Sunday, 15 June 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 15/06/2025

"Let's ask the cook what he thinks."

"Well, Laura, thank you for having me and I think that we shouldn't forget the people of Gaza. And we should ask the people of Israel what they think about Netanyahu."

In what alternative universe do I give two flying fucks what the frigging cook thinks? But, believe it or not, there he was on the Kuenssberg Politics Show this morning, right up there with half-way serious people, giving us the benefit of his studied reflections on the Middle East situation. Specifically, Israel having done the civilised world - indeed the world - a massive favour by taking out Iran's nuclear capability. Dear God, I sincerely hope they have taken out Iran's nuclear capability. And so cleverly and courageously, hand in glove with President Trump, backing up his ultimatum that Iran had 60 days to agree to a new deal on nuclear development and military activity. And in Israel went on Day 61, Iran, of course having never had the slightest intention of agreeing to anything. As Trump said, laconically, "they should have done a deal".

I can see why the BBC might have thought that the cook could make a useful contribution to the discussion. Laura introduced him as a green activist, and you'd think someone who self-publicises as caring about the environment could have some pithy things to say about the impact of a nuclear winter. Like you wouldn't be able to do a ten-bird roast on account of there won't be ten birds left not already charred into a smoking heap. But no, he needed to swing his pro-Hamas credentials at the viewers. Couldn't be shifted to consider the possibilities inherent in Iran tooling itself up with nukes, despite the BBC giving a platform to a cold-eyed spokesman for the Iranian regime, who told us that if Britain involves itself then it becomes a target. So, time for a short sharp extract from mr. ishmael's:

HOW TO KILL AND EAT A TV COOK.

They're everywhere, useless fucking bastards, cooks, in the bookshops and all over the telly. Used to be cops, doctors, lawyers, cowboys and Panorama, now it's fucking cooks, although they call themselves chefs, even if, not counting soufflé and sauté, none of them can speak a word of French, apart from the French fuckers. Why don't those fucking Roux brother bastards stay in France, if they're so good at la belle cuisine. Frog wankers. Probably wouldn't get a job washing the pots in a French transport café but pop over here on Eurostar and people're falling all over themselves to pay hundreds of pounds for their fucking rubbish, Ees zee apple pie, 'ow my Mama used to make eet, Ah, I can steel smell zee apples and zee cinnamon, eet ees tres deliceueueueueuese, zat weel be twenty five pounds, s'il vous plait, you Anglaise pig, Non, ees not for zee 'ole pie, ees for zis tiny leedle portion. Time to kill the gobby fag bastards, and eat them. Frog, English, Spic, Wop, Dago or Chink, take your pick. What sort of a job is it, for a bloke, fucking about with egg whites? Country's hurtling down the toilet and you can't turn on the telly without some fucking mouthy cook with an Equity card, larging it, with fucking fresh chilies, is it chilies or chilis, I don't know, not the sort of thing a decent Briton should know.

For a special treat, catch your Hugh Fearnly-Wanker - if you just stand there with a camera, he'll march up to you and start trying to make you feel guilty or stupid or both, for not being a pretend farmer and pretend restaurateur, like he isn't, at least not without a C4 production crew of scores - seedsmen, food technicians, gardeners, labourers, drivers, all perpetuating this myth that clever, resourceful, industrious and ethical Hugh does all this, just him and his ghastly family and his pretend neighbours, the horrible fucking bastard.

and tie him by his lank, greasy hair, the dirty fucking bastard, to a centrifuge, spin at 5,000 rpm for three hours, until he's dead. If you want to hit him with a big stick as he spins around, that's all very well and will help tenderise the meat. When he's dead, chop off his arms and legs and head and throw in the stockpot, this makes a really good mediaeval stock, if you add enough OXO cubes and monosodium glutamate, put all his guts and organs in the bin for the dogs, and leave him to marinade in a mixture of fennel and beetroot and freshly picked privet leaves and store in a fridge until required.

When it's time to cook, roast in a hot oven until the juices run clear, or it's all burnt to fuck, like Jamie does.

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Right, that's out of my system, so back to politics. None of the politicians doing the rounds this morning on the various politics shows would be drawn on where the fighter jets that Britain has deployed to the Middle East are actually going, what they will be used for, and on whose side they will be fighting. Rachel Reeves said they were there as a "precautionary measure". You can bet the house, though, that they are not there to defend Tehran. Mel Stride, Shadow Chancellor, said he supported the Israeli action against Iran as the intelligence showed that Iran was close to a viable nuclear weapon. Well, duh, that's why America was negotiating with Iran. Reeves said the UK government is "very concerned" about Iran building nuclear weapons. Good to know. Both Reeves and Stride and everyone else urged "the need for de-escalation in the region." I wonder how they are going to do that?

In amongst the careful diplomatic language, it is pretty clear that Israel's initiative has caused approval and relief. No-one in Britain, especially in the Labour administration, is saying thanks, however, because, I suspect, of this:

These chaps are Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan and Iranian President Dr Masoud Pezeshkian. According to PTV News, Shehbaz Sharif got straight on the phone to Pezeshkian to assure him that Pakistan stands in complete solidarity with the “brotherly people of Iran against Israel’s unprovoked and unjustified aggression”. He condemned Israel's "provocations and adventurism," calling them a serious threat to regional and global peace and stability. As reported on Radio Pakistan, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said on Saturday that Pakistan will “safeguard Iran’s interests”.

Condemning the Israeli attack on Pakistan’s “neighbour and fraternal country” during a session of parliament, the defence minister urged that a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation be convened to launch an initiative that “manifests the unity of [the] Muslim Ummah. He said: “Pakistan stands firm on its traditional stance, as it has neither recognised Israel nor established relations with it. “Pakistan will safeguard Iran’s interests at all international fora, including the United Nations.”

So what has that got to do with Sir Steer Calmer, mrs ishmael? Oh, come on. The man is in hock to the Muslim vote. He is terrified of losing his Muslim support. He is terrified of civil unrest and another hot summer of rioting on the streets of Britain's cities. He's only just given in and agreed a national inquiry into the euphemistically-named "grooming gangs". And which Muslims is our Prime Minister so concerned not to offend? Muslims of Pakistani origin.

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For how long will the Labour Government continue to tell the nation that they inherited a "financial blackhole" of £22 billion? It is already old. Rachel Reeves took it out for a walk again this week with her Spending Review. Here's a plan to plug it.

The San José galleon was carrying an estimated £16 billion in treasure on its homeward journey to Spain to finance a war against Britain when it was sunk just outside the Columbian city of Cartagena by the British Royal Navy in 1708 (yeay us). 600 crew members went down with the ship (okay, maybe not yeay, us).

Colombia announced the discovery of the wreckage in 2015 and is setting about conducting an inventory of the contents "to inform academic studies" the Columbian Institute of Anthropology and History said. The project will use remote sensors to generate images of the site and underwater robots to take readings. But the thing is, it isn't theirs. Just because it went down in Columbian waters doesn't make it theirs. Does it? Spain says it's theirs - which it most certainly was and wants the Columbians to keep their hands off, as does the U.S. Salvage company, Sea Search Armada, whose predecessor organisation found the wreck. That case is still going through the courts - Sea Search-Armada, LLC v. Republic of Colombia, PCA Case No. 2023-37.

But hey - really, its ours. The Royal Navy defeated it, and had it not sunk, it would have been sailed back to Britain, as a prize of war, relieved of its treasure which would have funded the war against Spain, would have been renamed and brought into service in the Royal Navy.

There you go, Rachel. Get on the phone to some adventurous lawyers and start plugging that black hole.

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Talking of adventurous lawyers,

Yes, I know he looks like Dracula

Aamer Anwar, the amazing Glaswegian lawyer who took on the case on a pro bono basis of Sheku Bayoh, killed by the police, has now interested himself in the appeal of Michael Ross. Convicted of murdering a waiter in an Indian restaurant, in Kirkwall, Orkney, Ross, then a child of 15, donned a balaclava, equipped himself with a gun and ammunition supposedly from his father's stash, but never recovered, entered the restaurant in full view of diners, shot the waiter with deadly and fatal accuracy, then left. He was not apprehended until 14 years later, by which time he had become a decorated soldier in the British Army, married and fathered two children. He and his family have maintained his innocence. As we know, it does you no good when serving a life sentence to say you didn't do it, because that means you cannot address your offending behaviour and reduce the risk of committing further offences. You end up serving your whole sentence. There's a new Prime documentary The Orkney Assassin which has interviews with the families of Ross and his victim, Shamsuddin Mahood. Worth having a look - the whole thing is very odd, not least the fact that Ross' father, Eddie, a serving police officer at the time, deeply involved in the investigation of the murder, was convicted of Perverting the Course of Justice and sentenced to four years, of which he served two. See what you think.

If Department Q and The Outrun haven't put you off island life, The Orkney Assassin certainly will.

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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of Stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Thursday, 12 June 2025

Some More Incredibly Old Buggers Die

As I'm edging inexorably onwards to becoming an incredibly old bastard myself, I think we should speak out against this conspiracy which seems to be offing people when they reach a certain age. I mean, what's going on? Is it part of the generational war which sees the young coming for our incomes, houses, free prescriptions, bus passes and comfortable footwear?

Here's mr ishmael, on Brian Wilson, the latest dead bastard.

Brian Wilson June 20, 1942 – June 11, 2025

It's said that Ludwig van Beethoven, mad and deaf, had to be turned around to see the applause of the audience at the first performance of his Ninth Symphony; it is a poignant example of Art really being created for its own sake, written over decades, never to be heard by its composer; if you cried, you know you'd fill a lake with tears.

Biographies have revealed that he was stone mad, as well as stone deaf, how could he not be? His diaries read, Monday: engaged housekeeper, Monday afternoon, dismissed housekeeper; Tuesday morning: engaged housekeeper, Tuesday morning, dismissed housekeeper, just couldn't get the staff, those days - I know how he felt, it has been a long time since I have been even content with the efforts of anyone I have engaged to do anything for me, and if I ever was, it was only because I was stupider then than I am now.

Outside his muses, Beethoven's relationships were shit, nobody really knows who Elise was and his closest known relationship was up and down, one-sided, with his nephew, he infuriated friends and patrons alike and sank, eventually, into tragic, lonely deafness. Doesn't matter a fuck, at least not to us - sonatas, quartets, concerti, symphonies, opera, among the greatest ever to be pulled from whoknowswhere and written down, sometimes sixteen lines at a time, for the rest of us to hear, to weep and wonder at, the quality of genius, troubled, ailing, non-conformity bursting out of the shadows, outshining wretched normalcy, provoking, captivating and enchanting the Earthbound.

I listen to the Beach Boys now and again, normally in the Summer - Little Deuce Coupe, I Get Around, Barbara Ann, Help Me Rhonda; Fun, Fun, Fun and on into the sublime God Only Knows, Good Vibrations, Heroes and Villains; perfect pop songs, albeit snippets of white, verging on redneck, Americana; Chuck Berry, sanitised in four-part harmony, carsangirls, loveanmarriage, California girls and beach parties, all summer long......Before he became too much for himself and disappeared into bed, sandpits, drugs and therapy, Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' composer, arranger, and producer, pissed all over everybody, including the Beatles, crafting his pet sounds into popular songs and albums rated as among the best ever. Ever.

Jools Holland, however, is rubbish. He suits the BBC, though, what with his clunking, faux Edwardianism, his midget suits with too many buttons and pockets and his arse-clenchingly embarrassing interviewing style, ladeezangennulmen; he wasn't even the main man of his original band, Squeeze, a no-account bunch of Cockney wankers, still, sans Jools, performing their handful of miserable chart-toppers, in tiny concerts, unplugged, at any opportunity. Christ allfuckingmighty, bad enough we endlessly revisit the 'sixties - although there were hugely important societal changes in that overfluffed celebrity decade - the 'Seventies and 'Seventies' ensembles don't bear thinking about. Squeeze and Jools Holland, who the fuck are they?

I don't know many people but I must have known a good half-dozen who could play better barrelhouse piano than Holland - and as for his R and B Orchestra, well, you wouldn't go and see them if they were playing in your back garden. Jools sings, but he shouldn't, he has no voice. He's like a Bruce Forsyth-lite, for our times, doing duets with the proper stars, only he can't sing or dance, like Brucie does. Rock icon, Carol Vorderman, was on the show, tonight, often it's the bints from AbsFabs, R and B legends like Krishnan Guru Murty, off Channel Four News, a charmed circle of Celebrity shits, drinking our money and cheering any old rubbish, as though any of them gave a fuck about music. Time it was scrapped and Joolsie sent off to his wardrobe studies, producer Mark Cooper sent to work on the Archers. There have been seriously important artists on the show, for sure, - although Seasick Steve isn't one of them - but Holland is an intolerable, smirking, over-promoted prick and the format - of us watching liggers, media whores and Z-list celebrity cocksuckers cheering to order - makes tabloid the occasionally excellent. Who says that this little tosser must be the vehicle through which popular music is presented, this isn't intelligent music broadcasting, this is Goddamned fucking Hobbitry.

Brian Wilson was on the Jools show tonight and he shouldn't have been. Fronting his own Beach Boys tribute band, a slew of session men, singing all the parts and playing most of them, Wilson perched on a stool, gutty and goitred, playing nothing, barely singing, waving his arms like a loony at the mental hospital long-term residents' Christmas Party, making wavey gestures with his fingers, in time to Good-good-goo-ood-Vibrations, an offence against Man and God. Lord, how the studio crowd loved it.

It doesn't matter, much, that Bob Dylan grunts and wheezes his way through his own repertoire; instrumental flawlessness, sophisticated arrangements and heavenly harmonies were never his stock-in-trade, on the contrary, swift Chaos, unrehearsed, wrought his ensemble meisterwerks, often first takes, recorded live and people, maybe too young to know any better, still visit his dreary concerts, it doesn't matter, man's a legend, people have bootlegs of his kettle boiling, his dog barking. In concert, Paul McCartney plays Beatles' songs much better than did the Beatles, and generally that's saying something. The Rolling Stones do what they've always done, play a load of old dross, illuminated by selections from their two or three exceptional albums, nobody overvalues the Stones, just as long as they get to hear Keef Richards riffing in open-G, like he was a bluesman, or something.

But Brian Wilson, tonight, (14/05/2011) a madman in an empty room full of heartless strangers; a third-rate, jive-talking emcee, who believes that his being there, gobbing, dignifies the unforgiveable, is all; and one of the very few musical classics of our times is trashed by its composer.

Watch it and weep.

mrs. ishmael - Unfortunately, you can't watch it, as it has been removed from Youtube. You can get the flavour of the horridness in this clip, a year later, instead, in which Brian Wilson is slightly more animated:

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And here we go with the second dead bastard. Here's mr ishmael's piece on Frederick Forsyth. It is extracted from The Book of Common Pulp, genius stuff, but too long to reproduce here.

No, Forsyth's not the one wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I thought initially - well, it is an understandable mistake - both their surnames began with an eff.) No, this eff wrote Day of the Jackal, Dogs of War, The Odessa File, fourteen other books, a memoir (that's like an autobiography, but not chronological and with frilly bits as far as I can make out) and a load of short stories. None of which I have read, because they are all bloke's books.

Frederick Forsyth 25 August 1938 – 9 June 2025

In his Berkshire manor house, bristling with state-of security and anti-surv measures, he had just completed his briefing of the PM and his Joint Chiefs of Staff; a body of men known, by those cruising along Horse Guards Parade, as the JERCOFS.

His manservant, a former US Navy Seal captain, his housekeeper, a former lieutenant-colonel in Mossad, the elite, shadowy Israeli counter-terror regiment and his driver, a former sergeant-major in the SAS, had withdrawn for the night and he was alone, sipping frugally on his rare, sixty-year old single malt, the last existing case of which had been a gift from a senior royal, grateful for his assistance in thwarting a potential scandal which might have rocked the nation of Greater Ruritania, brought it to its knees.

It had been a long day, he had briefed MI6, the CIA, the French Surete, the White House, Downing Street, Bonn, Paris, Tel Aviv, Karachi and the Daily Express; the free world was safe for an hour or two. In his time he had saved the life of the French president, destroyed a post-war Nazi network, defeated the KGB and killed several highly-skilled international conspirators against the West. Time now, he reflected, for prayer. Kneeling on his prayer mat - a finely woven facsimile of Sir Charles Moore's Daily Filthograph obituary of her - he gazed at her serene, resolute, blue-suited image and began his five-times-daily prayers to Margaret Thatcher.

Now in his nineties, the greatest espionage commander in history showed no signs of slowing down, she wouldn't have,
why should he?

Let them come, wielding rusty Czech Kalashnikovs;
let them come, with their kitchen table chemistry-set bombs,
let them come, holding hands, like the degenerates they were, wailing that their God was good.

Even in his nineties, Frederick Forsyth was ready for them. And his God was better.

Five hours away, in Maryland, in his wooded estate, ringed with state-of security, a solid, rangy Irish-American sat at his Colonial oaken desk briefing President Obama, wondering what the Last Great American President, LA Ronnie, would have thought of it all, a neegra boy, - alright, he may be a decent, white supremacist at heart but a neegra boy's always a neegra boy - sitting in the Oval Office, playing President.

He had turned, made defector, a wife-beating Russian-Scottish submarine commander,

who sailed his top-secret, state-of vessel right into Boston Naval Dockyard; when 9/11 made Irish terrorism - the best kind - uncool, he had single-handedly defeated the IRA militarily, paving the way for his fellow-Republican, Tony Blair's, famous Peace and Get Out Of Jail Process and after that he had masterminded the foiling of large numbers of nigger-muslim-bastard terror plots, any of which could have DestroyedCivilisationAsWhiteFolksKnowItShouldBe. Without him, successive Nine-Elevens would have swept the nation like a Kansas tornado. Senators and Congressmen, Kings and Sheiks, Princes and Prime Ministers, Security Chiefs, Field Marshals and Generals, all of them were on speed-dial in his solid platinum LimitedEdition WogSmash iPhone.

A grateful Defence department had ringed the space above his sprawling estate with the latest MusWaster satellite-directed drones. Any Muslim, be he snooper or assassin, even a kebab delivery boy, seen approaching his boundaries would be instantly taken-out, turned to ashes, not even his prayer beads would survive.

In recognition of his service in saving the world several times over, making it safe for his company to develop the Chinese child slavery arm of his enterprise, Apple's chief executive, the almost mythical inventor and ontraprenewer, Steve Skinflint, had designed a one-off, world-saving-novel word-processing programme. And his was the only copy. The ruddy Irish-American, sitting pensive, in his baseball cap, had only to click on the icons for ex-Navy Seals, Mossad, ex-SAS, KGB, Karachi, Tel Aviv, Moscow, London, Washington, Sniper's Rifle and Stealth Bomber, in any order or combination and a three-hundred page novel would be wireless-printed in the office of his publisher, and then in the office of the agent of Hollywood megastar, Harrison Wood,

who acted in the films of the books. The programme, known as BigBogPulp has already, several times over, flooded the world's airport bookstores with millions of copies of BigBogPulp stories, sometimes at three for the price of two, most of which had been turned into BigBogBlockbuster films. Alright, he'd had to deal with Jews, in Hollywood, and fags, too, but better them than the Ayatollah-lovin' sonsabitches in the TeeVee networks.
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In Summer 2015, for a medical treatment, I went, four days a week, to Aberdeen, determined to do some proper reading, worthy books, some on my shelves for years, others recommended to me, here. John Julius Norwich's Venice, for instance, some Lapham's Quarterlys, Paradise Lost, The Man In The High Castle - but being away from home, in a hotel-cum-hostel among strangers, savage wee groups of terrified and bitter Shetlanders, skulking together against the Big City, I couldn't find the right frame of mind.
I wound-up reading shite. Thrillers. Hotel and hospital shelves are filled with them. I never knew there were so many, nor that everything ever written by these innumerable assemblers of cliches proved, without even having been read, an outstanding, blockbusting, international, number one bestseller, half a billion copies sold in hardback, translated into four thousand languages - often, even before they were published - never knew that as far as Tom Clancy was concerned, Clive Cussler was the master, the man he read; that as far as Clive Cussler was concerned Tom Clancy was the master, the man he read and so on, in a disturbing daisy chain of fulsome praise, one hack for another; yes, like Martin Amis-Teeth and Salman Rushdie-Fuck used to do. About their prize-winning tripe.

I had last read these things a lifetime ago, the spy and military thrillers, when Quiller's and Bond's and Harry Palmer's enemies had been the Reds, the Soviet Union, when the action went down in Berlin and Washington, not Kabul and Baghdad - WASPs, grammar school boys and above, fighting Slavs, the Christian Capitalist fighting the Heathen Communist from inside a Ford Zephyr or a Zil or a smokey Trabant, with a laconic, self-deprecatory flippancy. How the thriller fiction world has changed.

In Aberdeen, I got right into them, frenziedly reading three and four at a time, into the wee, small hours. I durst not leave my room, you see, so anxious and paranoid were my fellow guests about my presence among them, it reminded me of a Sunday School holiday on Anglesey, when my visit to the local shop brought utter, chilly silence to gossipy wives, mothers, presumably, shocked and irritated by the appearance of an alien ten-year old. It was just the same atmosphere in this Aberdeen situation, but this time I was a big grown-up, with a glance that could strip paint. They were a parody, this gang, like something from Whisky Galore. Archie, from Lerwick, and his wee wife, Morag, accompanying him, week after week to make sure that her man, who, at sixty, couldnae cook, got his six beefy sausage sandwich snack and his Jaffa Cakes, him down from the North for bowel cancer treatment, she force-feeding him red meat and sugar, watching protectively, leaving only to make him mugs of sweet tea, those two and endless other of their fellow islanders, scowling and fucking muttering, as though they had washed up in Hell, among foreign devils, like me.

There was a residents' lounge, which they colonised in bitter silence, wherein they took it in turns, standing around a central table, to do a jigsaw, grunting happily as another piece was fitted into something like Noddy's Christmas Party or A Big Boat On The Sea - baby stuff, but they took it in paired turns, Norman and Ettie, Susan and Lawrence, Mhari and Donald, guarding it from non-Shetlanders, like treasure.

I was tempted to tell them that this facility in which they slept and gorged on animal fat, that this, their accommodation, their transport over hundreds of miles, their health care, all fabulously expensive, were paid for by the mainland savages whom they despised, that their islandness was only possible through the as yet unchallenged sentiment of the wider nation which supported them but there is no point in casting pearls before swine, for they believe that tomorrow they could return to living off seabird eggs, their lives lit and warmed by lantern, selling jumpers for a living, even though, fat, lazy, stupid and drunken babies, they would starve in a month.

I found them difficult and graceless people, anyway, the Shetlanders, best left where they are, imagining themselves bold Viking. A Viking, myself, I consider them welcome to it, their rocky redoubt. They did drive me, however, to a fiendish amount of reading, cloistered-away from their repulsive, pampered infantilism. And I did discover a whole world with which I was only vaguely acquainted, and for that I am grateful.

Read your book and lose yourself

In another's thoughts
He might tell you 'bout what is
Or even 'bout what is not

And if he's kind and gentle too
And he loves the world a lot
His twilight words may melt the slush
Of what you have been taught.

(Mike Heron, 1966.)

Wither, then, the popular, mainstream thriller, the pulp fiction?

There is, actually, only one Book of Common Pulp.
It comes as the illuminated Lindisfarne Gospel and the Book of Kells; as the Compleat Works of Shakespeare and the gilded, leather-bound King James Bible; the dog-eared Penguin Lady Chatterley's Lover and the intangible, Kindle-ised Fifty Shades of Grey, and it comes, lonely, lewd and lustful, written on the cyber toilet-wall.
We tell each other the same story, over and over and over again, of war and peace, of life and death, love and hate, feast and famine, vice and virtue, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to and the lifting-up of our eyes unto the hills.
There is a however, however.

Never mind the plagiaristic re-hashings of whore-writers, we need not re-publish Ovid, as though we had made him up; let us leave the Book of Common Pulp on the shelf and let us build a new library. Much as there is in the Book of Common Pulp there needs must be more;
if we would trip Ruin in his stride we must write our own stories.
Thank you for reading mine.

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Sunday, 8 June 2025

The Sunday Ishmael: 08/06/2025

You know how distressing it is, right? when you are working some fine embroidery on white linen and whoops, the needle slips into your finger and hits a minor blood vessel. There's a blood spot in the middle of the work, you can't use chemicals on it and you can't throw it in the washing machine. No? Not happened to you? Well, how about you're shaving, nick yourself and a spot lands on your crisply white work shirt. Ok, talking the same language here.

Happened to me this morning - stabbed myself with a pin and you wouldn't believe the blood that ended up on the Tuscan hills I was appliquéing. The Tuscan hills are well-soaked in blood, what with all the Medici wars on the city states and the wild boar shooting.

A Tuscan family. That's a shotgun the girl on the right is toting.

But I was doing pretty, not real, hills.

We textile artists have the remedy to hand, however, and now, so have you next time you are doing whatever and have to deal with a small quantity of blood. Spit on it. Not great lung-rattling phlegmy expectorations from the crusty bottom of your lungs. Just mouth spit - lots. Then rub it with the corner of your hankie - remember hankies? Or any bit of natural fibre fabric you have to hand - and hey presto - blood all gone. It is truly amazing. It fades away before your very eyes. If you don't like spitting, then put your hankie corner in your mouth, thoroughly wet it, then rub away. It has to be your spit on your blood, though - you can't get your wife to spit on it. The enzymes in your spit will digest away your blood.

You're welcome.

John Swinney is making heavy work of spinning the Hamilton by-election defeat into a victory for the SNP, but, by God, the boy's having a good go at it. We'll have to try him out with spinning straw into gold. For our overseas readers and those who haven't been paying much attention to Scottish politics, and, as usual, who can blame you, John Swine is the SNP First Minister of Scotland, Scotland having a devolved administration that it likes to call a government, the Scottish National Party having been in charge since 2007, on the pretend platform of wanting independence for Scotland.

You wouldn't believe he's only 61 - it's a hard and disappointing life in the SNP. John nobly stepped forward to take over the helm of the SNP after the glorious leader - Nicola Sturgeon - resigned from the job when she and her husband were arrested on charges of fraud.(Camper van, missing £600,000, forensic tent in the front garden). You couldn't make it up. Business as usual, though, on with the show, until last Thursday when the voters of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse defeated Swiney's expectations by returning Labour to the seat. The by-election was triggered by the death of the incumbent, Christina McKelvie, who had held the seat for the SNP in the 2021 Holyrood election with a majority of 4,582. Since then, of course, scandal and disgrace have been best pals with the SNP, providing the most amusing politics this century. Swiney really didn't see it coming - he thought that the threat was Reform, not Labour. Before the election, he said that it would be a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK, a party he described as racist. What's he saying now? “We must recognise I came into office a year ago with an inheritance of difficulties for the SNP and we are in the process of recovery - we have not recovered, we are recovering....What I said transpired - the Labour vote collapsed. A year ago [in the general election] Labour commanded 50 per cent in this constituency and on Thursday that fell to just over 30 per cent.” Way to go, John, spin away - Labour still won the seat, maybe because Reform split the SNP vote, but Labour won. Maybe there's hope yet for Scotland escaping the heel of the SNP. He's decided that the voters were not racist, nor gullible, but angry - with the SNP? No, of course not, he reckons the issues were the cost of living and the NHS, and he's now going to sort them out. Get a move on with that, John, there's a Holyrood election just around the corner.

Meanwhile, in England, the well-connected Sir Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt, better known as Jeremy Cunt, has written a book. (Well, of course he has. Don't you dare buy it - it will only encourage him.) The once, but not future, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Health Secretary (so multi-talented) has appeared on the Laura Kuenssberg show, promoting it.

Here's Amazon's blurb:

Hunt observes how Britain has continued to exert global influence despite losing its empire and economic dominance. Where does our influence lie - in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights? Or climate change, promoting global health security and dealing with the excesses of the internet? He argues we have acquired authority on the global stage that is about much more than history and informs a positive vision of the future. He writes with passion and clarity, interweaving stories about his time in Government with questions he can now ask publicly about our attitude to China, Tech, Security, Climate Change and all aspects of our global role.

Now it's that sort of thinking that has landed us in this mess. The only sensible thing to do, if you are an unfortunate citizen of the U.K, is to find a quiet corner - of England, preferably, and keep your head down. None of this passion and clarity, Jeremy, old bean - that has led us to being Putin's Enemy No. 1. As for those questions about China - well, he could try asking the wife - Hunt's wife, Lucia Guo, comes from China. They met in 2008, when she was working at Warwick University recruiting Chinese students. She presented a segment on Sky's China Hour, a show co-produced by state-owned broadcaster China International Television Corporation.
They married the following year and have a son and two daughters.

Back to the wild boar - you've not forgotten them?

They revere them in Tuscany - put up statues to them. The form their worship also takes is shooting and eating them. I had wild boar ragu - which was rather good - but that was probably the garlic and red wine, which makes everything better - although, thinking about it, probably not fish fingers. Now, down in the Forest of Dean, which is proper ooh arr country, the wild boar seem to have the same status as cows in India. Wild Boar became extinct around 300 years ago in the UK, but re-established themselves in the Forest of Dean after escaping from a wild boar farm in the area during the 1990’s. In 2004 around 60 farm-reared wild boar were dumped in an illegal release near the village of Staunton on the western edge of the Forest and the two populations merged. My Forest of Dean ooh-arr acquaintance tells me that there are almost a thousand of them now, living in the Forest and predating upon the villages. They stroll down the village streets, upending dustbins and sorting through the contents for snacks. They are very big and very clever, can open garden gates with their noses, holding open the gate for their relatives to pile into the garden and eat all the nice greenery. If you leave your bi-fold doors open they will stroll into your kitchen/diner. The wolves released in the Scottish Highlands haven't done near as well, but give them time.

Give me strength - there was a reason that wild boar and wolves were hunted to extinction, a reason that probably remains valid today. I wouldn't want to come home to find a wild boar in my kitchen. The day the cows came in was bad enough. They jumped over the wall, having kicked it down first, and rampaged round the garden, made their way into the delectable kitchen garden and helped themselves. They reckoned without me and Harris running round like lunatics, shouting at them until they galloped back the way they came, leaving destruction, deep, deep hoof prints and cow pats behind.

Oh yes - Orkney. It is buttercup time now.

And iris time

And Boat Time:

Talking of boats, do watch the BBC offering: Dept. Q. It features our very own Pentolina pretending to be a car ferry between the Scottish Mainland and some fictional island and a plot line that resolves into it were the island nutters wot done it. It will cure you of any island longings you may be secretly harbouring.