OLD GARGOYLES, OFF BLAIR'S CATHEDRAL.*

Speaking on the non strategic defence review, Lord Roberston of Dunblane, aka ArseFace,  introduced himself by declaring, in his dreadful, self-important whine,  an interest: I am wholly owned by a US Defence Corporation.  The ghastly little shit, Lord Boateng of Gob and Bullying, didn't speak. For a fucking change. Both, as befits NewLabour Grandees, were expensively clad, obnoxious, know-it-alls, unrepentant, though the country lies Ruined, at their greedy, bloody hands; stalwarts of  the Byers-Hoon-Hewitt shame-free, post-retirement activities industry - ugly,  warmongering, degenerate, thieving fucking bastards.

It is pure coincidence, on a historical note, that George ArseFace, was suddenly whipped away from  being a Westminster MP to become Nato supremo, just as peeople were asking questions about his connections to the author of the Dunblane School Massacre, the nonce, Thomas Hamilton, whose firearms certificate application he supported. Pure coincidence. That'll be why the Dunblane papers are sealed for seventy-five years.

*Old gargoyles, off Thatcher's cathedral, a phrase from mr yardarm describing the ghastly old toads, Heseltine, Young and the dreadful Maude, now rehabilitated by CallHimDave, the famous Eton fuckwit.

ULSTER, AN ENDLESS BLACK COMEDY. BURST PIPES, NOW, UPSETTING THE BIG MEN.

PETE CUCKOLD ROBINSHITE 

AND MARTY KNEECAPS McGUINNESS.

A lying, thieving, absurd, ridiculed  Presbyterian gabshite and a mass murderer, torturer, extorionist and arsonist - the cream of Ulster's political caste, Jesus fucking wept - get all angry, in a manly way, dearies,  about Northern Ireland's burst water pipes, so they do, fucking monsters.

We're fed-up with this, said Robinshite, but at least it doesn't involve my slag of a Mrs fucking an eighteen year old boy, fiddling her exes,  diverting public funds to the wee fucker and me having to lie my scabby, Orange arse off about it, being forced to investigate myself and pronounce myself ignorant of every fucking thing and pure as the driven snow,  and her hiding away on pretend suicide watch,  the mad slut, even though I have amassed a huge personal fortune from the people of Northern Ireland, so it doesn't.  These eejits at the Water Board, we don't know what we can do about them, but we'll find something, or maybe we won't.  Looking resolute and manly for the camers, that's the thing, so it is.

Aye,  Peter's right, so he is, they're pure eejits, them fellas from the Water Board, and if they don't watch out, they'll be getting a visit from a man with a Black and Decker, so they will, said Marty Kneecaps, angrily, through gritted teeth.  I mean, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, when me and the Men wanted to upset the population we'd just, in the interest of promoting a modern, pluralist democracy,  blow them to fuck up, leave their guts hanging from the ceiling, so we would, maybe bury some of them alive, but that was the exception, and we normally only did it to women, dirty whores who'd spoken out of turn. In all our years of killing three thousand citizens and maiming thirty thousand and razing the rotten stinkling shithole to the ground, I don't think we ever made folks go without water. No, firebombs, nailbombs, fertiliser bombs, guns, Semtex and in the case of the odd British officer, we'd feed the bastard, alive,  into a big fuck-off mincing machine,  so we would;  this business with water pipes bursting, though, and the people having to queue up, it's just plain un fucking civilised. So it is.

One hopes that in years to come people will properly examine the impact of Blair's annointing the monster McGuinness as deputy first minister of Ulster, instead of  throwing the horrible fucking bastard in jail.  Not tough on crime, not tough on the causes of crime. Conflict resolution, they call it.

THE PIG SOCIETY. A MESSAGE FROM HEREDITARY TORY COCKSUCKER, MR FRANCIS FRAUD

WO IST MEIN PANZER?

NASTY TORY PIECE OF SHIT, MAUDE.

The public will know that as a minister in  the unelected govament I do my bit for charity, a five per cent cut in my salary of £140k is quite a blow, let me tell you,  one which I can only absorb by judicious management of my expenses, otherwise the loss would come out of my pocket and not theirs, as it so clearly should.  But like all politicians, I like to lead not by  example, but by insisting that  people do as I say and not as I do. Fuck me, no, where would we be if the whole country carried on like us. 

Many of the public,  it is true, once we get going, won't have any salaries or indeed benefits from which to make charitable deductions but we are giving them an opportunity, nevertheless, to make a contribution to charity. Govament  servants, lightly armed with Tasers and CS gas and cattle prods will be touring groups of unemployed and homeless people and taking from them their wedding rings, nose piercings  and suchlike  - rather like those AnyOldGold adverts on the telly, except that in this case they won't even get the derisory tenner in return - and we will then melt them down to help fund the royal wedding, about  which the whole country is so excited. We have a thousand year tradition, at least, of the poor giving to the rich and we in the unelected govament of shit-eating arse bandits, flagellators, necrophiliacs, child molesters and Simon Hughes are committed to maintaining and extending the opportunities for people to give. Sieg Heil!

(gets cock out and sings: Tories, Tories, uber alles.........)

.

Maude, the cunt, and his thieving chums in the banks have announced that when withdrawing their cash, those who have any, people will be able to simultaneously make a donation to charity. You have to laugh because if you cried you know you'd fill a lake with tears.

GIVE THIS MAN A MINISTRY.

 

Zac Fishpaste was last seen bullying Jon Snow on C4 News, every inch the obnoxious, braying, hysterical, Don't-You-Know-Who-I-Am Tory pig. Channel Four had shown the temerity of  questionting his election expenses and the nasty spoiled brat couldn't  bear being questioned, I'll have you, he blustered, all of you, almost adding, I'll have you horsewhipped, Sir.  On 22nd December the Electoral Commission ruled that Fishyboy's expenses WERE irregular but not, in the time honoured Establishment way, irregular enough to involve  the cops, fuck me, no, the man's an MP, albeit for the swinefields of Richmond Park. 

Although the EC was sharply critical of  Herr Fishpaste, the golden child himself saw its failure to call in the filth as a complete exoneration of he and his gang of rich bullies, we are completely vindicated, he crowed, even though they weren't, not by any means. Must be the Eton education which brings out this quality, cuntishness,  that and  the fact that although he claims to be variously a journalist, an activist and a politician, his old man, Sir Jams Fishpaste, a bucaneering business type, left the little prick three hundred million. A Cameron Conservative A-List Tory fuckpig, Zac even betrays his old man completey, Sir James it was, who founded the Referendum Party, as far away from Cast-Iron  Dave as it is possible to be;  that's what they're like, these A-listers, scum.

Zac is exactly the type of rich, grotesque, vicious, unprincipled  bastard characteristic of the cabinet - apart from poor Mr Spit-Gove, of course, and Dr Cable, who are paupers - why hasn't fellow rotter and stupefyingly incompetent charatan, Cameron, found room on the front bench, surely they can find space for one more Flashman;  it's what the country needs, a useless prick like Goldsmith.

THERE OUGHTA BE A LAW AGAINST IT.

MUMS AN' DADS, MUMS AN' DADS,

LET'S PLAY MUMS AN' DADS.

THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS.

Lady Sir Elton and his husband, Mrs David Furnish, an independent film-maker who makes films about Lady Sir Elton, have bought themselves a child from a surrogate mother in the USA. Lady Sir Reg, 65, and Mrs Furnish, 48, look forward to being just like any any other normal parents.  Kicked out of Rumania, last year,  for trying to adopt an orphan, the revolting millionaire arseholes have shown that when Decency stands in your way, there is always the free market. 

WHAT THE MONARCH SAYS, GOOD QUEEN BRENDA, THE TEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE.

Well, of course, I have no time for Gay Bibles or any of that fucking rubbish.  King James's Authorised, that's the version for me. Proper fucking English.  The Queen's English, actually. Knowwhaddamean, subjects? Tell you the truth, one is not at all sure what to say, this year.  One means, everything's fucked, isn't it, country gone down the toilet.  That it should happen on one's fucking watch,  that's the shit of it, never put a foot wrong, me, and now, when I should be relaxing a bit, counting my money, like a proper senior citizen,  the fucking place has been taken over by crazy, shit-eating lunatics, last time one saw anyone like Cameron he was sitting on top of a fucking Panzer.

Oh, one knows that the junior moron's getting married but it's to some fucking gold-digger, a chav, they call them, mother doesn't know her arse from a hole in the fucking ground, thinks breeding's something one does with animals, common bloody trollop, and the bint, herself,  looks like she's strolled off the set of EastEnders and if you ask me she'll turn out like Gormless's own mother, banging like a shithouse door in a gale, working her way through the Household Cavalry, or was it the NHS, I think Diana was doing both of them. And that's not to mention the wog playboy and his oily pater. Dodgy ground, that, the way these family marriages turn out.  Diana. Nuff said, as they say in the Commonwealth. Anne's bloke, that stuttering, stupid bastard, wossisname, Phillips.  And Fergie, Jesus fucking wept, Fergie, fuck me gently, flogging off introductions to number-two son like she was a whore at a hockey match, which would probably be a step-up for the useless,  drunken,  fat pig. Needs a visit from the royal social services, she does, bringing-up MY princesses in shit like this. Bankrupt, she is, the cow, and  one doesn't just mean skint, one means not a thought, not a scruple, not a value in her empty head, just a vile, churning mess of greed and stupidity, she should have gone into politics.  These two tossers, Clegg and  Cameron, isn't it, prime fucking minister and deputy prime fucking minister, more like the two fucking Ronnies, they are, only not funny;  shouldn't be surprised if we have the troops on the street, shooting one's  subjects, stronganstablegovament, my royal arse.

One could talk about the Heir and his horsefaced Nazi baggage, FagAsh Lil, the Prince's comfort, nearly getting strung-up the other day but frankly one gets a bit pissed off with Brian, one means, he just never grew up, sits around, still, making Goon noises, off the wireless, and that was over fifty fucking years ago. And as for all that Tampax nonsense, well, Jesus fucking Christ, what a prat one has raised. Wasn't me, really, brought him up, just the usual sinister below stairs plotters and poofters, no wonder he's a Grade A Berkely Hunt.  Couldn't hardly write his name on the Cambridge exams,  good job we own the examiners or he'd look even more of dummy than he already does, crashing his aircraft, running aground in his minesweeper  and marrying a disturbed teenager from a family of pisshead nutters. And don't fucking well start me about the Duchy of Cornwall Digestive biscuit enterprise, gonna be King and Head of the Commonfuckingwealth and he's buggering about, saving the planet,  with fucking biscuits.

But sport, that's the thing, can't really go wrong talking about sport, or can one,  the prime minister did, didn't he, along with Will Gormless and that fucking ladyman footballer, the one covered in tattoos and adverts, Christ, he makes my skin crawl, grovelling and arse-licking, It's the very bestest honour wots ever bin imposed on me, playing for my country, No, I actually heard him say that,  and his scrawny tramp of a wife,  Jesus, what a fucking ree-tard, Essex, isn't it, she comes from, like the future fucking Queen Katy,  a consumer witch, fucking country's over-run with  them, I suppose they'll be wanting me to knight the fucker, next, Arise, Sir David Beckham of Vodafone.  Over my dead body.  Brooklyn, that's what he calls his brat, isn't it, and Romeo, fucking Romeo, one asks you.

It says here that it encourages teamwork, one would say esprit de corps, except that no fucker'd know, these days, what one was talking about . And it's a bit rich, anyway, what with the govament of merchant bankers cutting all the sport money and shutting down the programmes  to be banging on about sport in school, now that it's been abolished, along with civilisation, by that ghastly little prig, Spit-Gove, horrid fucking know-it-all, how many times is it, he's U-turned, or apologised? Adopted, wasn't he, real parents probably knew what was coming with the little fucker. Wish I had, with mine.

Well, that's it, the Bible and Sport, best I can do, as I said, the place is fucked; Tories, I fucking hate 'em, that mad, old crow, Thatcher, shoulda punched her in the fucking gob.  See you all next year, if we haven't been taken over by Europe. Or China, Or some other bastard.

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY, CHRISTIAN TODAY, ARCHBISHOP BEARD, MORE MUMBLING.

Archbishop calls on nation to ‘bear the load together, without getting too carried away with things’

by Jenna LylePosted: Saturday, December 25, 2010, 9:15 (GMT)

 
The Archbishop of Canterbury called on the wealthy in particular
not to share the load PA

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury will use his Christmas sermon to call on rich and poor alike to share in the hardships brought on by the financial crisis and cuts in public spending. But mainly the poor, who will, as promised  in the greatest teaching of the Established Church, after all, get their reward in Heaven. And if they believe that, then, fuck me, Jesus, they'll believe anything.

Reflecting on the mutual dependence of humans, Dr Rowan Beard will urge people not to give in to the temptation of abandoning others to suffering, whilst they secure their own safety. But not, obviously, so that rich people have to give up their hard-stolen wealth.

“Faced with the hardship that quite clearly lies ahead for so many in the wake of the financial crisis and public spending cuts, how far are we able to sustain a living sense of loyalty to each other, a real willingness to bear the load together?” he will say.

“How eager are we to find some spot where we feel safe from the pressures that are crippling and terrifying others? Not very, would be my my best guess."

“As has more than once been said, we can and will as a society bear hardship if we are confident that it is being fairly shafted, I mean fully shared.” continued the dreadful old hypocrite, dribbling into his apostolic  beard.

The Archbishop will say that people need to show commitment to their neighbours and that there was no single interest group or pressure group that could “opt out” of carrying the load. Apart from the rich,  of course, traditionally benefactors of the Church and traditionally able to  opt out of Decency, buy themselves indulgences, cathedral funerals and the best seats in Heaven.

He will say that confidence can only be restored if people shared in the burden of “constructive” work together - ie, applaud the coalition as it slashes living standards.

He will call upon the wealthy in particular not to carry part of the load.

“That confidence isn’t in huge supply at the moment, given the massive crises of trust that have shaken us all in the last couple of years and the lasting sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load,” he will say. "But, you know, as the Saviour says, in the New Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Bible, the Poor ye have with ye always. And what this means, in a very real sense is Fuck 'em, if they wanna stand for the three-card trick, that's their look-out. In my Father's house there are many mansions, but not for the Poor, who must sleep on the streets, if they fall behind in their mortgage payments.  Consider the lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin but the poor must work their arses off."

  

“If we are ready, if we are all ready, to meet the challenge represented by the language of the ‘big society’, we may yet restore some mutual trust. And a proper conservative govament.”

The Archbishop speaks of his anticipation of the royal wedding next year between Prince William Dunce and Kate Middleton.

He will say Christian marriage was a “sign of hope” and express his own hope that the royal wedding will encourage people to think about marriage. Not in a judgemental way, of course, for arse bandits and carpet munchers and ladymen are equally sacred in God's eyes, and make up, of course, most of the clergy. Apart from in Africa, where for fucks sake, they carry on like cannibals, as though decent white missionaries never went out there and civilised them, in the name of the One True God, Money.

“It would be good to think that in this coming year, we, as a society, might want to think through, carefully and imaginatively, why lifelong faithfulness and the mutual surrender of selfishness are such great gifts,” he will say." And why bishops and archbishops set such a good example by living in palaces on huge salaries and pensions."

"You may think that as the unelected, Devil-worshipping, heathen bastard, public school  bullyboys and toilet creeping hypocrites are dragging the country backwards to the nineteen-thirties, robbing the sick and the blind and turning to shit everything they touch, that it was high time for a turbulent priest   to get up there in the pulpit and do some cunting of the UnFuckingGodly.  But you'd be wrong. As it says in the Book of Money, Render ye unto Caesar, or in this case, the Chancellor, Brother  Spunkface, that which Caesar wants and be fucking quick about it, if Ye don't want thy Heavenly Father to roast your arse with his fiery finger.  The Mess is over, make the sign of Ruin to your neighbour and fuck off, until next year."

Oh yes, fuck me, I nearly forgot, as I mentioned in my sermon of doom, the future King, Prince Gormless,  is getting married next year and as the unelected prime minister, Brother Bullingdon says, This is just so incredibly good for the nation and the coalition that he can't believe his luck, again.  This will obviously cost a fucking fortune, I mean, my time doesn't come cheap, and there's all the Crowned Arses of Europe to be flown in and put up in splendour, so maybe you can all make a significant contribution to the offertory plates now coming amongst you.  We are all,  very much like the early Christian martyrs,  in this shit together, or some of you are. Amen."

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY. THE HINDU (HONEST)

Pope leads midnight Christmas Mass, prays for peace.  And a watertight alibi.


RATSO. GOT THEM OLD FEEL LIKE I'M FIXIN TO DIE BLUES.

Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Christmas midnight Mass on Friday and in a sombre reflection during his homily noted how the promise of peace brought by Jesus’ birth has yet to be fulfilled. Just like the proper prosecution of the millions of nonces employed by Benny the Nazi.

Thousands of people flocked to St. Peter’s Basilica for the ceremony, while many more followed the proceedings on giant video screens in St Peter’s Square, on a mild but wet winter’s night.

“This child (Jesus) has ignited the light of goodness in men and has given them strength to overcome the tyranny of might,” the pontiff said in his homily." Und zat is vy ve must fuck ze little children up ze arse und in ze mouth. Happy Beastmas und Heil Hitler"

Part of the significance of Christmas night is “simply joy at God’s closeness” to mankind, he said.

“But this joy is also prayer: Lord, make your promise come fully true. Break the rods of the oppressors. Burn the tramping boots. Let the time of the garments rolled in blood come to an end.” He cited the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “Fulfill the prophecy that ‘of peace there will be no end.” The homily was followed by a few moments of silent masturbation.

Later, during Holy Communion, the pontiff joined other clerics in handing  out free johnnies  to the faithful.

The mass took place amid tightened security measures following last year’s intrusion by a mentally disturbed woman aka a woman enraged by all the filthy noncing bastards getting away with it.

It began with Benedict, wearing gold—embroidered robes and his bishop’s mitre, walking into the Basilica in procession with other clerics. The pontiff stopped occasionally, briefly greeting well— wishers, many of them holding each others cocks.

During the same procession in 2009, a Swiss—born woman, Susanna Maiolo, leapt over a barrier and lunged at the pontiff, knocking him down. Benedict was unhurt in the resulting fracas, but an elderly cardinal suffered a broken leg. And serve him fucking right.

Maiolo had already tried to accost the pontiff during the 2008 Christmas Mass but was blocked by security guards.

As in 2009, Friday’s midnight Mass began at 10 pm (2100 GMT) instead of midnight — an earlier slot aimed to give the 83—year—old pontiff a few extra hours of sleep before his Christmas Day duties, the Vatican said. It is hard work for the old bastard, shepherding all these beasts out of Harm's way and into noncing pastures new.

MATINS, GLORY DAYS . Originally a part of the Handel oratorio Judas Maccabaeus as "See here the conqu'ring hero comes". Music adapted in 1884 by Edmond Budry for the well known hymn.

IT'S CHRISTMAS, PLAY IT LOUDLY.

MATINS. WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD TUNES? Handel: Messiah, For unto us a child is born (Sir Colin Davis, Tenebrae,...

OUTBREAK OF SANITY IN SCOTTISH COURT.

COKE FIEND, POSEUR,  BULLY, RACIST, SEXIST PIG AND BIG BROTHER CONTESTANT FOUND GUILTY OF BEING A LYING  ARSEHOLE.

 An Edinburgh jury has found Mr Tommy Sheridan guilty of perjury, deciding that he lied on oath in his victorious libel case against Poxy Rupert & skymadeupnewsandfilth. Almost single-handedly, therefore, this gobby prick - although aided by his consigliere, another gobby prick, Scotland is overblessed with them, Mr John Aberdein, an author of dirty books - has not only destroyed the left in Scotland but handed Murdoch another victory.

  Bailed until January and blustering outside court, today,  Sheridan  maintained his innocence, even though sixty people gave evidence against him, former friends, former comrades, his best man, strangers;  hoping to repeat his amazing and barely credible  earlier victory,  the preening gabshite insisted on representing himself;  happily, he did so all too well.  He will be a hero in  jail and a media darling on release, too thick, too self-obsessed for considerations  like repentance.

He tried to run the Scottish Socialist Party like the Russian Communist Party,  nasty little henchmen despatched to tell local people what Tommy's line was on this or that;  if his much vaunted adulterous marriage was conducted anything like his political affairs then Gail - herself a gobby unkown, blown-up with conceit and self-righteousness -  against whom charges were dropped,  may well find  standing by her man a hypocrisy too far, even for her.

YEAH, WE'S HAVE WON TWO HUNNERD GRAND.

MISS MATALAND IN HAPPIER TIMES.

If only scabby old Rupert would set his dogs, now, on the likes of Smirking Jim Wallace, former Scottish LibDem leader,   Tavish McHooter, the current leader, Useless Jack McConnell, former first minister and the revolting and doomed  lard bucket, Salmond,  Oh what fun we should have;  that gang, though, better adjusted than Sheridan, know which cocks not to bite.

DOWN IN THE PALACE OF THIEVES.

Well, Mr Deputy Poof, sorry, Mr  Deputy Speaker, Clearly,  it is all incredibly Labour's fault. Look, thirteen years, they had. To sort the fucking weather out and what happens? As usual, it's down to my elected coalition - which, Clearly,  more people didn't vote for than didn't vote for the party opposite - two parties working for the common good of each other, it's just  incrediby down to this stronganstablegovament to sort out all this snow bollocks.  I am pleased to announce, therefore, Mr Deputy BrownHatter,  that I am sending the Justice Seckatry, Mr FagAsh Ken, the right honourable member for British American Tobacco, and the Not-Now Business Seckatry, Mr Silly Old Dancing Queen, to take up their shovels and start clearing the runways at Heathwick, or wherever all these moaning bastards are holed-up. And finally, dearie, Clearly, it's just incredibly time the party opposite apologised to the nation for all this snow which is stopping them getting to the shops and buying Chinese trash by the  carload to fend off the horrors of this coming season of shortages, chaos, strikes and  riots. And of course incredible food and underwear from the nation's favourite store, Marks an' Tories. The honourable and right honourable ladies and gentlemen opposite should know that Clearly when we start shooting the population on the streets it will be just so incredibly the fault of the Labour party.

Tory cheers, Way to go, Dave! Shoot the proles! It's the only way! Stop 'em breeding! Incredible!

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER EVANS

DOES MY ARSE LOOK BIG IN THIS?

Order-order! The gentleman for Sheffield, the Deputy Prime minister. And before you start,  sweetie, let me remind you, look you, isn't it, 'sonly so many people you can fool with that  married man shit. Hardly worked for the Foreign Seckatry, has it? No wonder the poor sow keeps having miscarriages, is it, married to a big, butch  predatory queen like him, it's enough, as we say in the valleys, to make your fucking eyes bleed, isn't it, look you. And, by the way, I would just like to reassure the House that when I was voting for all those anti-queer measures, before, like, that was because I didn't want  to upset my parents, my Mum and Dad, like, they can't stand queers. Like me. But now that I'm deputy speaker, earning a fortune and on a King's pension it hardly matters, does it, hypocrisy and cowardice. Leastways, I'm not shacked up with a drunken, gobby baggage, like the proper speaker   is, had more cock than I have, Mrs Speaker, and that, as the house will know, is saying something, dirty fucking tramps. No. I was scared like, before,  and that's why I was happy to make other people scared, too, dirty fucking  poofs. Noblest traditions of the House, like, the oppression of Otherness, even if, like the member for Bermondsey, one is an  Other oneself. Mind, they're all bent as arseholes, aren't they, look you, isn't it, the LibDems, always were. Now they're in govament they'll be making it fucking compulsory; shit-eating on the national curriculum, I shouldn't wonder.

The house applauds. Hear-hear! Well said! Kiss me quick! Who's a pretty boy?

Order-order!  The house will come to order and hear Mr Nick Noddy, the deputy prime minister, A-ha-ha-ha. Deputy prime minister, my arse, so to speak. Mr Nick Noddy, leader of the Toiletmen.

No, no, Mr Deputy Sphincter,  when we said we wouldn't lend the money to Messrs Forgemasters, what we meant was that we would lend the money to them because they are in my constituency. And govament, Mr Deputy Twink, is about making choices for oneself.  And I would just like to associate myself with the prime minister Mr Dave Incredibly,  the member for the City of London; it's not even as though my former right honourable friend, Dr Vince Two-Step, even went to a proper school. Is it Christmas, yet?  Can I go home now, to Spain, for a nice holiday, before we have to start shooting people, in  our own  interests, I mean theirs?

PORTENTS OF DOOM. LAST TIME THIS SHIT HAPPENED THE VIKINGS INVADED.

TOTAL LUNAR  ECLIPSE ON MID-WINTER'S DAY.

BLIZZARD CHAOS.

METEOR SHOWERS

AND NOW A FUCKING EARTHQUAKE IN THE LAKE DISTRICT.

THE DEVIL COMES AMONG US.

MID-DAY IN THE NORTH

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.

I was down  the charity shop, one time ago and I lit on what looked like the contents, the partial contents, of somebody's shed, some old bloke, probably dead and his relatives, if he had any, couldn't give a fuck about his things, just wanted them gone;  maybe , unusually, his wife had predeceased him but even if not, these things would not appeal, immediately, as spousal keepsakes,  mementoes; they represented the things men do, generally alone, a few old-fashioned screwdrivers, a punch or two, nothing  of the master craftsman but one could sense his care and his  skill;  they were just little things you'd have on your workbench;  some small, compartmentalised, open top boxes, made from re-used plywood, for nails and pins, trays, really.  They were all precisely sawn, glued and pinned as if by machine,  just fragments of  flimsy junk, tiny but  hand-sawn, butt-jointed  as neatly as an oaken,  mediaeval coffer.

I've been trying for twenty-five years, to find the time, invent the time to make some of these things for myself but have always been too driven by the real work, not the ju-ju;  I know people of my age who do make such things, who sharpen their tools fastidiously, even make their own restoration agents - mustard and sugar and piss and Christ knows what else - but Rustins make a perfectly good product  - lots of them - at three or four quid a bottle, and they and their workers have to make a living, too. So, though impatient as I have been with the Old Boys, who have the time to piss about I, nevertheless  was wounded by the sight of these fragments of his life, discarded. Oh, fucking Woe, I thought, this is what happens to our lives, however carefully wrought,  nobody gives a fuck. Down the charity shop with his rubbish. I bought them for ten or twenty pence.

I know this from before before, how, once you're dead, all your wine is water, all your pearls are clay.

I had a Victorian furniture business and every now and again somebody'd come in one of the shops.  My mother or father is dead and there's  a houseful of old furniture, it's really old, can you come and make me an offer?  No, sorry, I don't do that.  After a while, you see, you get tired of grasping for inoffensive words to tell the greedy, stupid bastard that the entire contents of their parent's home is worthless, worthless to me, worthless to anyone, and only of imaginary,  greedybastard  fantasy monetary value to them, theirs a grasping stupidity fuelled by the Antiques Roadshow and its myriad spin-offs.   You'd turn up to find a houseful of dreadful 'fifties or 'sixties tat,  not even any good as firewood, made of ply and varnish and cardboard,  in their whole lives, aside from any savings they may have had, the deceased had  acquired nothing of any value or quality or even interest. Christ, it was depressing. I am comfortable in Grey's short and simple annals of the poor, I am poor myself,  and often, these deathhouses were spic and span, testament to, I don't know, industry, guilt, obedience, maybe, cleanliness being next to Godliness, it wasn't that the deceased had worked all their lives for nothing that bugged me, 'twas ever, until very recently, thus, and may well soon be again,  it was the expectation of the relatives which was blood-curdling;  that and them having chosen me to be part of their what....their hopeful, post mortem jamboree-that-never-was. Never gonna buy a Vauxhall Tigra on the proceeds of Mum's home. Or a holiday in Benidorm.

They'd enter my premises all iffy and  suspicious, the would-be inheritors, as though my mission in  life was to rob people, as though every morning I leapt from my bed rubbing my hands in anticipation of a day's larceny.  One day I pulled some prick outside. He hadn't come to buy or sell anything, just come in to try and take the piss in front of his totty.  You're like Lovejoy, he smirked, everybody knows what you people are like. He'll never do that again.  You see that, that sign up there, I said, when I got him outside, Ishmael Turn Of The Century Furniture,  that's my name,  you see that lady standing there, that's my daughter, that's her name, too;  you see my name of the invoices, and you see the VAT registration, you see where it says proprietor, you see my name there, you see my home phone number? Now,  you think I'm gonna put my name over the door and behave badly, do you?  My name is over three sets of premises and there'll all legitimate, I'm legitimate. Whaddayathink I am, a fucking lawyer.  You're a cheeky fucking bastard, now fuck off and if you ever come here again you'll need some very expensive dentistry. Now, tell me again, what people like me are like.

It's necessary, once in a while, a mental hygiene factor. Most people are fine, treated with courtesy and interest and I never objected to the underying, social role of the shopkeeper;  sometimes people just want to have a chat about the piece in the window, maybe just want some advice, who knows why people go into shops?  I had a regular non-customer, Phil the Desk;  he came in most Saturdays, looking for a desk and over a year or so I showed him mahogany partners desks, oak rolltop desks, just like the sherrifs have in the westerns, railway clerks' desks,  teachers desks, 1920s oak office desks with single or twin pedestals, ladies' kneehole desks, bureaux, bureau bookcases, bonheurs de jour, leather-topped library tables - none of them was ever quite right, and one day I said to him, You, don't want a desk do you, Phil?  You just wanna look at desks,  the desk you want doesn't exist, can't exist;  if you needed a desk you would have bought one of the ones I've shown you,  because you've seen all the desks there are,  there aren't any more, different desks, know what I mean, if somebody needs a bed,  they buy a fucking bed, might not buy the first one they see but they're not gonna sleep on the fucking floor for a year, are they? You don't want a desk,  you obviously don't need a desk, you just wanna be on the lookout for a desk.  I think you might be right, Ishmael.  OK, Phil, Iook in next week, might be a new desk in, one that's just right for you.  Didn't matter to me that Phil didn't buy a desk, lots of other people bought the desks, couldn't ever have too many desks, everybody wanted one, for the studies that everybody all of a sudden had to have.  To put their Amstrad word processors in.  Sometimes I'd deliver a desk and people'd say, Oh, can you just put it in my study, pointing at the space under the stairs. Phil was just, I don't know, harmless, looking  at stuff  and doing desktalk. Even though he didn't want one. All sorts of people, came in the shops,  some of the pieces, dressers, breakfront bookcases, compactum wardrobes,  were stunning, like miniature cathedrals, made of ash and oak and mahogany,  I would have wanted to go in and talk about them.

But sometimes, too, Ruin comes in a bad mannered arsehole, an alpha male bully, licensed, he thinks, by Whisky Maggie and her spivs, to strut the land, being rude, parking his BMW on yellow lines.  I always explained to the daughter of the business that my little bits of theatre were  attempts to make the world a better place, and I believe they did.  This was all a long time ago,  an early manifestation of Up against the wall, motherfuckerism. 

There was one example of  bereavement avarice which sticks in my mind, for the sheer, unavoidable pathos of it. It was a daughter and her own little daughter, single mum, I guess, and  she was in a bit of a state, if she didn't get her late mum's  property cleared-out  - by this afternoon - the housing association or whoever it was would charge her for getting her mum's stuff removed, hard-nosed they are, in the caring sector, and she hadn't got a pot to piss in, herself.  How can I put this,  I said to her, it's really not worth anything. None of it? None of it.  What about the sideboard, that's really old.  It's just post-war, late forties, early fifties, look, it's only plywood, and it's all wormy,  there isn't a proper piece of wood in it, it's called Beautility, it's a wartime idea, looks like furniture, works like furniture but it's made of rubbish.  Don't get me wrong, I'd say, feeling her hurt, your mum probably paid all the money for it, it's just that, well, I'd say, desperate not to cause any more offence, it's sort of gone out of fashion, thinking to myself, it's not even worth burning, not worth the effort of breaking it up. The only way I can help you is I'll get my bloke and my van and I'll spend the afternoon taking it down the tip for you, OK? That way it's gone and you're off the hook and don't have to pay anything,  I said, relishing the idea of piss-stained mattresses and greasy lino all over my new van.  To this day, I don't know if she believed me or not, I guess, like the DSS and the absent Men, I became another on her list of villains;  better that, I suppose, than the reality of her Mum's Poverty Unto Death.  I had to pay a tenner at the tip. Trade waste.

So I stopped doing it, valuations of wortless house contents, and left it to Man With Van, House Clearances Undertaken, Rubbish Removed, No Job Too Small, No Insult Too Vile.  But there was no escape from Life's casual indifference. Sometimes, in pieces bought at auction or through my trade suppliers, I'd find biscuit tins filled with photographs, somebody's entire life,  you could sit and piece it all together, moments of fleeting nuptial grandeur and happiness, accomplishment, birthdays, sport, holidays,  children - fifty, sixty years of images, junked, worthless; fuck me Jesus, there was a time I could have papered the walls with other people's memories.

I bought a lovely little late Georgian mahogany chest of drawers, two-over-two, not an inlaid serpentine-front masterpiece, just plain but beautifully made, nice proportions, gorgeous colour, Cuban mahogany, I think;  it was in the window about five minutes, a screech of BMW brakes, Is that for sale, Ishmael,  I'll have it.  It'll be nice to put my stereo on.  Just the thing. This guy was a regular client, lived in a bijou waterside apartment in Alcester, about as big as my verandah, playing Pavarotti at full blast and adoring himself,  The Quartets and Arias guy, I called him, and he did put his stereo on the chest, with the CDs in the drawers below. Don't you do any rockandroll, I said to him, one time, young bloke like you. Nah,  Opera's the thing, he said, flexing his red braces, a proper Thatcher lad, with his noisy, football opera.  Vulgar rubbish, most of it, I thought,  to the sound of some spics warbling a duet from  Pearl Fishers, or some such. But before I sold him this little jewel - for a lousy six hundred quid, the rent must have been due or the VAT or the fucking accountant or some other parasite  or else I'd have kept it for myself - before I sold it, I cleaned and polished it  and replaced  a couple of drawer stops and found, taped to a drawer bottom, a beautifully hand-written note, from an aunt, I think, vouchsaving this piece to her nephew, Anthony Howard, with affection and so on. Never having been left anything in my life, not even a curse, I thought that such a note would be a treasure in itself, discarded in error;  could this be the Anthony Howard, prominent British journalist, Oxbridge, the Guardian and the BBC, one of our premier political groupies, one of those who explains to us, contextualises,  the different fragrances of shit, cascading into our faces from his chums perched on the Great Latrine of State? It was the very same toothy, bibulous hack.  And yes, he knew of the note but it didn't matter, thanks, no, no need to send it on.

I saw Howard, a couple of years later, one sunny morning in Ludlow, he was hangover made human, looked like he'd slept in his suit, grey and unshaven, all sweaty, staggering out of one of those fabulously over-priced, ancient, Ludlow townhouses, gulping orange juice from a carton like a man lost in the Sahara, he stunk of booze and guilt and fear and piss, you know what it's like. Judging by the number of hands which that chest went through before coming into mine, I guess he would have got a hundred quid for it, at the most.  Maybe he needed the room.  That's what they say on those awful daytime TeeVee shows - Oh, I need the room -  even if the family heirloom being flogged-off for twenty quid, less commission,  is a cup and saucer; Haven't got room for it any more,  they lie.  Don't talk to me about Ruin,  that's Ruin, people throwing away their unique, family  treasures,  for the price of a meal and a few minutes on Losers' TeeVee.  Maybe Howard needed the room.  Or maybe he needed a drink. Whichever, he didn't give a fuck about his aunty's hand-written note. Might not have been an aunt, might have been a Godmother, doesn't matter. You see, if he was anywhere near as clever as he cracks-on to be, reminiscing about Anthony Eden and Harold Wilson,   he would have thought, This bloke's taken the trouble to track me down, no harm in him forwarding me the note from the dreadful old biddy, no harm in being courteous in return, gracious, even....makes the world go round.

I was thinking about Howard, the other day,  and the sentimentality, or in  his case, not, of ownership, as I was moving these fucking nail boxes around my bench.  I had been sawing and sanding and having no lids on, they were filled with sawdust, couldn't see what was in them, could be anything.  Tip 'em out, I thought, one compartment at a time and pick up the nails, from the sawdust, with a magnet.  And then I thought, Ah, fuck it;  I have far better means of storage than those fucking things. 

 

Like these, I have loads of  these

What the fuck am I doing,  anyway, recycling, cherishing these home-made  things, which some other bloke home made?  I never knew the old bastard, not as though he was my father or anything. And even if he was I wouldn't have got anything, my rotten brother and sister having stripped his dwelling before he was cold, not that he would have had any of these wee boxes, a rusty Quality Street tin was more like it, full of  bent, rusty nails and nuts and bolts all rusted the fuck together, good for fuck all, and one of those fucking huge,  wooden-handled hammers that you think the head is going to fall off of and launch itself straight into your eye,  you know, the ones with little wedges in, which fall out, or shrink, late stone age technology. A qualified motor mechanic and a TT racer, my Dad, in his youth but somewhere something went wrong and when I knew him, although he still knew the stuff, tools were just a memory.

Maybe, hang about, maybe he's not even dead, this box-maker;  maybe he just got pissed-off with a lifetime of getting sawdust in among his panel pins, like I have, after a year or so;  maybe he didn't have a magnet, to sort them out from the dust and the shavings, maybe, every time they got fucked-up or he dropped them,  he just picked them all out, one at a fucking time,  like he was autistic, maybe he was autistic, maybe it's because I'm not autistic that I never made any of these fucking things. Do autistic people do woodwork? Or do they just sit around fuming, in a bad temper? I think they just need a punch in the gob, three times a day, until cured. Maybe, at long last, he bought himself some fancy new storage systems, with lids on, like mine,  the sawdust doesn't get in and you can carry 'em around from project to project, like a briefcase and not like an altar offering, held out before you, gingerly, like a fucking supplicant, praying you don't drop the whole lot on the floor and have to spend all afternoon sorting them out, back into their compartments where they can get covered in sawdust again, or fall out again, all over the floor, all mixed up. And then I understood why I  had never found the time to make any of these things,  it's because they're shit.

They went in the Rayburn, anyway, lasted about forty five seconds.

And if I ever find out who he was, assuming he was dead, and find out who his relations are, assuming he had any and it wasn't just the housing association people junked his gear down the charity shop, I'll give 'em a good talking to. 

Howard, unfortunately, well, for him unfortunately, has just died,  just a moment before I was about to press this publish button;  missed my chance with him, too;   and  I wonder if, carefully and thoughtfully,  he has hand written notes, bequeathing his possessions as keepsakes, to nephews or Godchildren, who'll flog them on, regardless.

Both of the old boys, though, Howard and the unknown, autistic handyman, prompt and amplify the thought sic transit gloris mundi, which the scholars here would translate as, So passeth the glories of the world but which you and I might render as It's shit, all of it.

WOTSONTELLY, BBC, HERB ALPERT, HIS TIJUANA BRASS AND STEVEN FRY.

If anyone said to me, Mr Ishmael, what are your first five thousand Desert Island Discs, Herb Alpert's recordings would not be among them,  not in his Tee-you-wanna Brass  or his Disco incarnation;  if somebody said OK, then, your first fifty thousand Desert Island Discs,  Herby still wouldn't be there.  I would rather hear nothing than Herb's jaunty trumpeting;  I think I would rather be deaf than hear Herb Alpert. Or even dead. Dead  can't be as bad as  Herb's A Taste of Honey or Thees Guy's In Love Weeth You.

Kenny Ball and His Paramount Jazzmen,  I can tolerate them, whistle along to Midnight in Moscow;  Chris Barber,  I quite like him, too, well, I like Petite Fleur;  trumpets, jazz or martial,  just don't do much for me and  Mexican trumpeting is one of those noises I imagine to be leaking up from Hell. It's not Mexicans per se, any nation which enrages Uncle Sam as much as they do can't be all bad, it's just their fucking awful music. Mariache or Trini Lopez or Herb Alpert, doesn't matter, it's all shit.  The only decent Mexican music is Romance in Durango, and that's by Bob Dylan. And Herb isn't even Mexican  and nor were his Tijuana brass players, Gringos all; don't know if that's worse or better, pretending to be Wetbacks, taking the piss, I suppose, a bit like the Black and White Minstrel Show, only with sombreros. And donkeys.

Herby got the idea for his wee brass band whilst watching a bullfight in Mexico, seems about right, and never looked back.  Sold millions of trumpet records, founded and sold-on A&M records, whose roster included the insufferable Mr Gordon Sting and his Policemen  and is now making a  new name for himself as a sculptor. All looked like rubbish, to me, but art and showbiz and politics and religion are whatever you can get away with, just big lumps of black stuff, they were, some of them were white, anybody could do them, if they could afford the lorry and the cranes which must be involved. Maybe he paid illegal Mexican immigrants to hump them around on their backs. It's what showbiz types  do, giving something back, they call it, to the little people.

Anyway, there's an exhibition of Herb's Totem poles and who's there, among the US musical and sculptural cognoscenti, but our very own, much loathed, national untreasure, Steven Fag, simpering  about what a great artist Herby is. That's him, Herby, on the left, with the wee beard.

  

Darlings, do you like sperm, I simply adore it? Anyone know any good arse jokes?

Por favor, senorita, thees greengo shirtlifter, ee ees not weeth me.

Ee ees weeth the leedle fairy over there.

Essentially Senor Alpert's  work speaks to me of ejaculate.

Yes, he is truly a very great artist, and I gather he plays the mouthorgan too. 

I was just minding my own business.  I drifted into the tail end of this programme, thinking, how can there be a programme's worth of material in the career of this greasy trumpet player, when,  fuck me, entirely incongruously, up  pops Fry. Not in a million years, you'd think, Herb Alpert and Steven Fry.

When the Christians came, former worshippers of the Old Gods, now ostensibly converts to the one true faith,   surreptitiously carved the pagan Green Man in  church timbers,  keeping one foot in the Old Religion, just to be on the safe side, and a bit of a nod and a wink to each other, fellow travellers. Maybe the gay, heterophobic cabal at the BBC is doing something similar with the ghastly Fry, putting him everywhere,  a nod and a wink to each other, fellow travellers, an emissary of the Devil.

I think it's part of a conspiracy to rob us of our minds, like most things media.

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART IS DEAD.

I met Don van Vliet just the once, in the gents at Warwick University. I offered him a pull on a joint. Ah, No, sir, people have paid good money to see us tonight and I like to be straight for them. Thirty years later, I still don't know whether he was shitting me or not. He was certainly, albeit on the basis of a brief encounter, one of the gentlest men I have ever met, even though Maestro Ry Cooder insists that Beefheart got the best from him by pointing a gun at his head. He hadn't recorded for a long time, instead painting in, I believe, the Mojave Desert. Last time I saw him he was playing two saxophones at the same time, threatening to sack his drummer and raising the roof. May he have been in Blues Heaven half an hour before the Devil knew he was dead.

WOTSONTHERADIO. QUESTION TIME, BBC R4, I AGREE WITH PAUL.

GIVE THIS MAN A JOB IN THE COALITION.

"Angry" Paul Staines, formerly known as Guido Fawkes.
On Question Time, with lying bastard, Oliver Letwin, some tongue-tied  Millibandian
and a wee girl who put them  all to shame.

Well, the NHS, it's just too big.  And the doctors are always complaining. Students?  They should get 'paper rounds, my wife says so. Dead Tree Press, that's the thing for them. Wikileaks?  Mainly gossip, isn't it?

That's it.  Hear it Saturday lunchtime on R4. Or better still, build  a snowman.

HOW TO SPEAK COALITION, LORD CECIL SPIV, BBC FOUR, PM PROGRAMME

  Cecil Parkinson was one of Whisky Maggie's spiv bumboys, a useless, contemptible,  oily bastard, a member of the organised crime fraternity which is merchant banking, a bully, a panderer, a cowardly, braying, pinstripe shitbag.

We have mentioned before that Cecil set the thugs at MI5 on his abandoned mistress and child, Sara and Flora Keays,  and they were only repelled by Sara's Dad,  a former army officer.  So awful, so illegal was Cecil's bullying of mother and child that even Thatcher  - the notorious racist and Pinochet lover - could not keep him in govament and he drifted away for a while, although not towards any paternal responsibility.  Old, now and hopeful of the nation's amnesia, the disgraceful bastard  pops up, now, like Jacqui Schmidt,  on, well, anything that'll have him. 

This evening he was in concert with the despicable and wholly incompetent overdressed dwarf, Lord Mr Sir David Steel, the odious litte creep who, with political giants like Shirley Williams and David Owen,  split the left  and gave us, what, over thirty years of insane  Brown-Blatcherism, his feeble antics - go back tae yer con-stit-you-encies and prepare for govament - the stuff of satire and ridicule, one of the longest standing political jokes in British history, David Steel.  For his catastrophic mishandling of the   Scottish paliament building project - it went ten times over budget -  Steel,  in a decent society,  would be in Barlinnie prison, instead, like determinedly floating turds, the likes of he and Parkinson  can ever find a berth and a few quid at the BBC, unflushable, non-degradeable, turding about until they fuck off and die.

Cecil was on fine, shit-mouthed, cack-handed, dunderhead,  self-revealing form tonight. Anyone who wants to know why people hate those Tories so much should just listen to him.  This year, he opined, was just headline-grabbing,  the real test of the govament's nerve would come next year, next year would be   a year of attrition. 

at·tri·tion  (-trshn)n.

1. A rubbing away or wearing down by friction.

2. A gradual diminution in number or strength because of constant stress.

3. A gradual, natural reduction in membership or personnel, as through retirement, resignation, or death

Attrition is what he tried with Sara, of course, and his disabled daughter - how many times must we tell these ageing  Casanovas that their manky old sperm should stay in a condom? - and now he feels that the right remedy for the country's ills is not properly taxing the super rich, regulating their banks, abandoning stupid unwinnable wars, making the politicians work for a living and paying them an average wage, no, attrition,  that's the thing, war on the people.

This,  below, by Angela Levin, is from the Daily Mail, a couple of years back,  lest we forget.

A couple of days ago, while they sat at home together as they have done for so many years, Flora Keays asked her mother Sara a question that made her heart miss a beat: 'How old is my dad?'

'I think she was feeling anxious about me,' Sara explains, 'and so her mind is turning to the idea of who will care for her when I'm not around any more. Then she asked me outright: "What is going to happen to me when you die, Mummy? Will my father be kind to me? Will he help me?" I had to reply honestly: "I don't think so."'

It may have been of little comfort to Flora, but to Sara it is simply the truth  -  and that is not something she is prepared to shy away from when it comes to the man who sired her daughter: the same man who told Sara when she was pregnant that if she did not abort their baby he would have nothing to do with the child.

Unbreakable Bond: Sara Keays with daughter Flora, who is approaching her 25th birthday.

That man was, of course, Tory Party grandee Cecil Parkinson, and his callous stance has remained resolutely  -  many would say heartlessly  -  unchanged for a quarter of a century.

In that time, Flora, whose mother was Parkinson's Parliamentary secretary, has borne the most appalling illness and suffering with unbending courage.

From the age of 18 months, she endured almost constant epileptic fits. At four-and-a-half she had a five-hour operation to remove a benign brain tumour. As a consequence she lost part of her brain, including the right frontal lobe, which deals with reasoning and deduction. It has left her with serious social and learning difficulties. She also suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

Today Flora, who will be 25 on New Year's Eve, continues to defy the staggering medical obstacles which have been placed in her path almost since she was born.

She is learning to drive, has worked as a volunteer in a children's nursery, and was even nominated last year for a Young Person of the Year award in Gloucestershire, where she now lives with her mother.

And yet, as Sara Keays reveals in this exclusive interview, Flora has been forced to endure terrible trials in the past ten years  -  trials which her father, Lord Parkinson, knows nothing about.

Shockingly, Sara says, Flora was raped as a teenager when she was attacked by a teacher at her school, the result of which was years of post-traumatic stress that came to dominate Flora's life.

And in the past few months, after being admitted to hospital with a stomach bug, Flora was given the wrong drugs by nurses, which left her screaming hysterically and unable to recognise her own mother for weeks on end.

Throughout these ordeals, compounded by the daily challenges her autism and other physical problems present, her mother Sara has been at her side, nursing, encouraging and loving her only child.

Hers has, for 25 years, been a life of sacrifice  -  and if she now looks noticeably older than she did even a few years ago, then she should take comfort in the fact that her dedication has made Flora's a life worth living.

I have met Sara and Flora Keays on several occasions over the past 11 years. This time, however, having heard how ill Flora had been in recent months, I wondered whether the late arrival of my train would affect her meticulous sense of  timing  -  a symptom of her autism.

I rang Sara when I arrived at the station, but to my surprise Flora answered her mobile.

'Please don't worry,' she said. 'We are very much looking forward to seeing you.' Her calm politeness surprised even her mother.

'It is the first time since she's been ill that she's answered the phone,' she said proudly. 'Perhaps we are at last getting there.'

'Getting there' has been the focus of Sara's life since Flora was born. Merely keeping Flora's life on an even keel is like walking the thinnest of tightropes because even a late train can throw everything out of kilter in her mind. No wonder Sara says: 'At times I feel I am running fast just to stand still.'

She is understandably extremely protective of her only child and made it clear, as she has done every time we have met, that her main concern is not to upset or worry her in any way.

'Everything has to be in Flora's best interest,' she tells me firmly, 'particularly as, when she is better, she will read what you have written.'

Absent Father: Lord Parkinson with his wife Ann in 1997 

With her ruddy complexion, white hair and solid stature, Sara has always struck me as a formidable woman, who, if she had become a constituency MP or a minister would have Got Things Done. And yet for a woman who has had to develop a core of steel, she is incredibly gentle, with endless patience that has nurtured Flora's progress against all odds.

A colonel's daughter, Sara had ambitions to eventually be an MP. At 24 she became House of Commons secretary to Cecil Parkinson, then 39.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of having an affair with a married man, she believed him when he said he would marry her, and genuinely loved him dearly.

But when he discovered she was pregnant, Parkinson, now 77, wanted Sara to have an abortion, something she couldn't contemplate. The scandal of the 12-year affair cost Parkinson his job. He was Party Chairman but was made Trade and Industry Secretary after the 1983 General Election. Four months later, the fact that Sara was carrying his baby came out and he was forced to resign.

Flora's subsequent birth saw Sara cast out of the inner Tory Party circle and then subjected to hate mail and even death threats.

Worse was to come. A year after he was elevated to the Lords in 1992, Parkinson secured a Draconian injunction that meant no one could discuss Flora's life in public.

Despite serious questions over his rights as a parent to impose such a sweeping restriction, Sara initially agreed to it, but then fought unsuccessfully all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, where she was turned down on a technicality in 1997. The injunction effectively made Flora a non-person, and also silenced her and her mother.

The result was that Flora's schools went to the extreme of not letting her appear in school photographs, take part in school shows or have any of her achievements put up on the noticeboards  -  just some of the small ways in which Flora has suffered for the sake of her father's desire to airbrush her from the public consciousness  -  and no doubt that of his wife and three other children.

Yet for all the adversity, there are moments of brightness and humour that offer a glimpse of how Flora, who is 5ft 10in tall, could have been if fate had not been so cruel.

I know from past meetings that she loves to paint her nails, so this time I bought her some nail polish. She thanked me politely, then struggled to remove the thick plastic packaging. 'Goodness me,' she laughed, 'this is harder than a workout at the gym.'

'You see,' Sara laughed proudly. 'She has a really good brain, it's just that it's a brain with things missing.'

When I arrive, we settle in the kitchen of her four-bedroom 18th-century, Grade-I listed house and warm ourselves by the Aga.

In attendance are two black cats, a mother and a daughter, Bella and Eclipse. 'They love each other most of the time and are then at each other hammer and tongs,' explains Sara, who then looks at Flora and adds, 'Just like us, really.' Flora laughs warmly and nods with conviction.

Sara doesn't want to talk about Parkinson when I bring up his name in conversation, saying only: 'I've never talked about my feelings towards him, and I don't want to start now.'

But she has learned to accept his hard-line position of ignoring Flora's existence. It does, however, understandably baffle Flora.

When I interviewed her for the Daily Mail just after the injunction was lifted on her 18th birthday, she told me she was disappointed that he hadn't sent her a present or even a card on her special day. 'The hardest part is not being able to see my dad,' she said at the time. 'It's so upsetting I try not to think about it.'

Sara last went to court in 1992 to increase Parkinson's payments to support Flora to help cope with her continual difficulties, and I ask if she has gone back since.

'I haven't,' she says reluctantly, 'partly because I can't afford to. Nor do I have the energy to find a solicitor, then do battle with him.

'I have to keep my energy for the things that matter  -  being with Flora, getting her as many skills as possible so that when the time comes and she has to be on her own she is as well equipped as I can make her. My priority is to give her courage, confidence and humour.'

Glamour: Sara was Cecil Parkinson's Commons secretary in the Eighties 

Flora has been largely educated at home and her brief forays into school have ranged from unsuccessful to desperately traumatic.

Most horrific of all, it now emerges, is the fact that in her teens, Flora was subjected to a brutal sexual assault in a toilet by a male teacher.

Sara, her face suddenly pale, says quietly: 'This vile man attacked Flora, and then threatened that if she told anyone he would do it again.'

For a woman who has dedicated her life to her daughter's welfare, the anguish of discovering what had happened must have been almost too much to bear.

'She had only been at the school for three weeks but I could tell something terrible had happened when I collected her that day because she was terribly agitated. I asked her what was wrong, and it was very brave of her to try to explain to me with less vocabulary and ability than she has today, but it wasn't very clear.

'I immediately rang the school where she was a pupil, and they were incredibly unhelpful and told me that Flora was never left alone. I decided to remove her from the school.

'I didn't discover what really happened until she talked more fully to me three years later. It nearly destroyed me because I felt that I, her mother, had been unable to protect her.

'At that point, I contacted the police, but to be honest they have been hopeless from the outset at conducting an investigation  -  I believe because of the injunction that was in place concerning Flora's life. It was never designed to protect her: it was designed to protect her father.

'A doctor saw her privately at my request, and her description to him of what happened did not vary in any detail from what she had told me.

'Flora wants to bring the man who raped her to justice for what he has done.'

With those words, Sara becomes so distressed she can no longer speak. Eventually she composes herself.

'It was one of our darkest times. The subsequent post-traumatic stress disorder that Flora suffered was devastating. She panicked a lot and couldn't bear anyone to touch her for a long time afterwards.'

In the years that followed, Sara tried other schools  -  including one in Jerusalem run by a professor pioneering revolutionary ways of teaching children with special needs  -  and also taught Flora at home.

At 18, and officially an adult, Flora tried to make a new start at Star College for disabled youth in Cheltenham, but her time there was short-lived.

Flora herself explains what went wrong: 'They refused to mark my written work because they said it was so much better than in class that I couldn't have done it  -  but I did. I was so fed up, I left.'

But gradually, with the constant support of her mother, she gained confidence and skills. When I met her around that time, I was struck by Flora's optimism and generosity of spirit. But she would need all her reserves of courage to face the medical crises of her early 20s.

She suffered glandular fever, toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by undercooked meat or contact with cats, and ME, the chronic fatigue syndrome. In 2003, she also suffered a severe allergic reaction to an over-thecounter antihistamine for hay fever.

'She only had three tablets but they scrambled her mind and left her so agitated and confused that for more than two weeks she didn't recognise me,' Sara recalls.

If that wasn't enough, in March 2004, Flora had a titanium plate inserted in her skull. 'One of the drill holes made to enable her tumour to be removed didn't close,' Sara explains.

'Understandably, Flora felt self-conscious about the hole. When the surgeon opened her up, he discovered she had a fracture that had originally occurred when she was a child and had grown as she had.'

Yet by the spring of this year, against all the odds, Flora learned to drive  -  she failed her theory test by just one mark  -  worked as a volunteer at a holiday club and went to a trampoline class twice a week. She was also looking forward to starting a course in childcare this autumn.

Sara says: 'Four years ago we moved from a rural area of the West Country to a town in Gloucestershire so she could gradually have more independence.'

So encouraging was her development, that in July, Sara felt she could undertake what amounted to a monumental landmark in their lives: along with a couple of friends, she went for a swim and lunch  -  leaving Flora to return home alone from the nursery and occupy herself.

'It was the first time I was able to have a treat for myself since Flora was born nearly 25 years ago,' she says with a simplicity that would make the busiest mother feel utterly humbled. 'It showed how confident I was that she would cope alone for a couple of hours.'

It is an anecdote that illustrates all too plainly just how much Sara Keays has sacrificed for her daughter  -  it was also a staging post that promised much for the future.

'I felt confident that while I was out on my treat she could make herself a cup of tea and watch ER, the American medical drama series, which she loves, until I got home,' says Sara.

'I thought that at last, after nearly 25 years, I was getting my life together.'

Sadly, that hope evaporated within hours. The following day, Flora developed what eventually turned out to be a nasty bug. A doctor was so concerned about her symptoms of severe headache and violent sickness that she was taken to hospital with suspected meningitis.

'I took my wonderful daughter into hospital on July 19,' says Sara. 'She came out on July 30 in a wheelchair, incontinent and traumatised.

'Initially Flora was seen in the acute assessment unit and was then admitted,' says Sara. 'I made sure I told every doctor I saw about her allergy to antihistamine.

As a result, a doctor fixed a red warning band round Flora's wrist. The same message was written in large letters at the top of her notes. Sara says: 'Although some of the staff were caring and concerned, her overall care was terrible.They never treated her as a person with special needs.

'Like everyone, I had heard about hospitals nowadays, but it was worse than anything I imagined. I specifically asked for Flora to be in an all-female ward because of what she went through with that teacher, but there were male patients in the ward, too. One lay on his bed with legs apart not caring how much of himself was on display and Flora had to pass his bed on her way to the bathroom.

'Each day she became increasingly confused and agitated. I was with her from about 7am until late at night but she would also ring me during the night when she felt distressed. They did various tests but no one discussed her drug treatment with me.

'After a few days I looked at her drug chart and saw she had been given cyclizine to combat vomiting. I looked it up when I got home and to my horror read that is was an antihistamine, the very drug that her wristband and medical notes stated she must not have.

'I immediately rang the hospital and told them not to give her any more. I knew it would have an increasingly devastating effect on her brain.

'My fears were confirmed as soon as I returned to the hospital. Flora had become agitated and frightened by the shape of her saline drip stand. I genuinely believe that if I hadn't been there they would have given her more of that drug and she could easily have died of neglect, and nobody would have cared.'

Loving Support: From early on, Flora, here aged six, had health problems

She is forced to stop, takes a deep breath and tries to compose herself. 'I wanted to take her home immediately but I couldn't because she was on intravenous antibiotics. I got home at about midnight and Flora rang me again at 1.30am, terribly distressed that she had wet the bed. I told her I would come back immediately.

'When I arrived I could hear terrible screaming and knew immediately that it was Flora. When I got to the ward, I found her pinned to the floor by two or three nurses. She was struggling violently to get away. Her drip had been yanked out, which left blood everywhere.

'I begged them to let her go, but they told me it was for her own good because she might harm herself. So I knelt by her on the floor and kept saying: "It's all right darling, Mummy's with you," and tried to calm her.

'Restraining her brought back memories of her abuse at school. She was terrified. A duty doctor eventually appeared and injected her with a tranquilliser. From that day, which was July 25, until we left on July 30, I basically looked after her myself. I had to help her drink through a straw. She was incontinent and didn't know who I was.'

Sara emits an exasperated sigh. 'I would like to sue whoever was responsible for this grotesque thing, but I haven't had a chance yet. Since she's been home I have been busy with her 24 hours a day. There has been no let-up.

'Fortunately, she is no longer incontinent, but she needs to have me close by. My siblings and close friends all live too far away to help and have their own lives, so it's just us. I don't have any help at all.

'Flora can't watch TV or listen to her music because it is too much data to process at the moment. She is also still very fearful all the time, so since July I haven't been apart from her for a moment and she has to have both bedroom doors open and I have to keep my light on so she can see me at night.'

Sara suddenly collapses in tears. When we have met before, she has not shown the slightest weakness. Yet now this poor woman is crumpling before my eyes, the immense responsibility of her daughter's wellbeing weighing heavy upon her.

Eventually, she gathers herself, blows her nose and apologises. 'I am so tired,' she says, her voice faltering, 'and Flora has had to bear so much.

'At least I have had some experiences and happiness in my life that she will never know. It is so awful that people who have so little get such a raw deal. My experience with the Health Service felt like being run over by a juggernaut. I haven't had one word of regret or apology from anyone in the hospital.'

It took Flora more than two weeks before she recognised her mother. Meanwhile, another effect of the catastrophe in the hospital, says Sara, is that all the autistic features of Flora's childhood reappeared.

'It was heartbreaking. In fact, the past four months have been the worst of my life, even worse than when she was a baby and had continual epileptic fits. It was as if everything I had done for her and she had done herself had been crushed in a stroke.

'Her repetitive behaviour became desperate and she couldn't bear anything to be changed. Those leaves,' she says, pointing to a carefully arranged selection of autumn leaves on the kitchen table, 'have been there for three weeks. I didn't want to risk moving them in case I upset her before you arrived.'

Sara says her own experiences have made her all the more determined to help other parents with children similar to Flora who get little support.

'Children with Asperger's feel such isolation. They have the same hopes and aspirations as everyone else but it is so difficult for them to form relationships and be understood, that they feel they don't fit in.

'Flora, for example, has lots of acquaintances but no close friends. I would like to share the strategies I've developed to give her confidence and skills and explain how to behave in public. Sometimes Flora asks if she will ever get married and have children. I say: "I don't know, darling. No one has any way of knowing what life has in store."'

To her enormous credit, Flora remains ambitious. 'The illness and experience in hospital has really knocked my confidence,' she says.

'It's made me very anxious. Before I was ill, I went trampolining twice a week and even won a competition. I also went swimming regularly and drove every day but I haven't done any of it since I was ill in July.

'I am a real fighter and want to become a fully qualified driver and meet people who have the same interest in sport, gentle people, not those who are raucous. I also want to go back to the nursery and do a course in childcare that I wasn't well enough to start in September. 

'But since July all my ambitions have been put on hold. I miss going shopping and listening to my favourite music, Strauss waltzes and Elvis, but I can tell I'm getting better. I am now starting to look at magazines, which I couldn't do a few weeks ago because the images were too confusing for me to process.

'It gives me hope that I will soon start using my own mobile rather than just answer Mummy's, as I did with you.' She laughs.

As Flora speaks, Sara watches her intently with a look of quiet pride. She is right to celebrate the enthusiasm of this remarkable young woman.

'Her life has been a series of enormous efforts to overcome her difficulties and constant setbacks,' says Sara. 'But she is so strong, and has such courage and determination. I admire her so much. She always wants to try again.'

I do not need to ask Flora from which of her parents she feels she has inherited such admirable qualities.

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Attrition, Aye, right, Cecil. See how they  treat their own kin - bullying, neglect, tight-fistedness, injunctions - and imagine what they think of us.