Friday 1 November 2019

The falling leaves....

Sorry, again, about my absence, friends. What they thought was heart trouble is something much worse, from which there is neither recovery or relief - and just when we had finally bought a Mercedes S class limo, to tour the cathedrals of gay England. We managed Gloucester and Hereford and might yet manage a couple more.

On top of that we had visitors, people I have known forever but whose Remainerism I found insulting, I think unforgivably so, graceless and fascistic; four generations of public sector workers, happy to  condemn as stupid the very people who have paid for theirs, their parents', their children's and now their grandchildren's training, careers and pensions; even if there was time they would never darken my door again; together with the illness it made for a shocking time.

Sorry, anyway. I will try to clear that lunatic from the last post and to review events post-Mr Tiny Speaker.

49 comments:

Mike said...

Mr I: I'm sure I'm not alone in offering heart felt condolences on your bad news. A positive spirit is essential.

Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one shocked by the state into which the once-Great Britain has descended. Its become a clown show, with the dwarf bercow just one of the actors.

Bonne chance.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, mr mike, I am generally positive.

Mr tiny speaker and the govament of national unity, MediaMinster, the Ruritanian sideshow gang of ponces and paedophiles, the whole scabby circus, it is difficult to believe, had we not been forecasting it for years.

I fear there is no remedy for it, votes will be rigged and some combination of Obedientiaries installed in notional power; there is no spirit, no appetite for revolution, the accursed social media parasites, from the NaziPig, Zuckerberg, to the money-grubbing, fat fuck, Fawkes, short-circuit Outrage and sell her to advertisers; even Satire is toothless, numbed by a tsunami of Impertinence.

Maybe if the Frogs or the Eyeties properly took to the streets we might find ourselves inspired, if, that is, MediaMinster allowed us to know about it.

Mike said...

Its an amazing state of affairs when we (I mean you) have to look to the Frogs and the Eyeties for salvation. It seems the Eyeties have been put in their place with Salvini sidelined; Monsieur Macron will obey his elders.

Sid is put in a difficult place. His heart tells him to oppose Bojo's "deal" but in doing so he risks BREXIT. Shakespearean.

call me ishmael said...

Yes, tragi-comedy, Sid, a mixture of vacillation and showy bombast, he is not going to risk his MEP perks and his radio shows for something as worthless as principle. I never cared for him, as you know and getting Anne Widdecombe and a few other artless dodgers onto the gravy train is a different kettle of fish from mobilising 17 million; to me he occupies the same septic space as Al the Nonce Salmond and the ancient revolutionary, George Hairaway, waving their cocks on Russia Today, a broadcaster probably even now warming-up a seat for Jerry Cornyn, should former state prosecutor, Starmer, manage to frame him over Brexit. Speaking of the verminous Salmond this election date is in advance of Salmond's trial, something for which Madam Krankie will be hugely grateful, her famed, snarling feminism apparently somewhat undermined by the existence of some dodgy emails between her and Fatso on the matter of his beasting, what a shame, no-one in politics will leak them or call her out for, as we know, they are all at it.

Much as I applauded the referendum result I always knew it would be ignored, like the IndyRef, up here, like the Rape of Iraq, the MPs thieving scandal, like the decades of noncing by Prince Brian and his half-brother, like the rapsheet of Swinson's filthy crew, all the way back to Jeremy Dogshooter. No, take a bigger man than Sid, in his pimp coat, to cleanse them stabled

mongoose said...

I am truly sorry to hear, old friend, that a further trial has been added to your burden. Some of us had thought that you were carrying around quite enough medical rocks on your back. I don't know what else to say. There is probably nothing worth saying but it is anyway good to see you back.

It is obvious to the dogs in the street that anyone seriously intent upon an opportunity Brexit would institute what I believe is called a "deal" between the Boris and Sid gangs this December. With nearly 40% Boris plus about 10% Sid, and the Labour vote shredded, we are in landslide territory. You could tell Angela to stick her Withdrawal Agreement where the sun doesn't shine, repeal everything with and E or a U in it and you'd be done. Clean and quick and with a clear mandate. I am still assuming (in my dreams) that such a convenience will come about on deadline day in the middle of the week after next.

BTW the Shooters have are pushing out a full-blown idiot called Layla Something MP. Catch her while you can. Never have so many half sentences been uttered in so short a space of time. She is quite clearly aimed at the kiddie voters but I have had more articulate cats. Not so much inarticulate as deliberately and childishly credulous of the most absurd notions that will never come to pass.

Anonymous said...

courage, mon vieux...

your friend in the South of the North

verge./

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about the health issues Mr Ishmael, but it's great to come to this site and find a posting from you on here. A relief in the present state of affairs for which thank you.

Oldrightie said...

It is just so difficult to know what to say when a "friend" or someone close faces terrible illnesses. All that is possible is to just feel great unhappiness and think long on the people who are good and deserving of being human. That is very much you, Ishmael.

call me ishmael said...

It does all seem straightforward, doesn't it, a Brexit Alliance, unless we view BoJo for what he is, someone who used the idea merely to get into Number 10. The worst that can happen to him is that he loses and has to make do on his half mill a year from the FilthOGraph, his PM's pension and perks and like his mate, Dave Pigfucker, travel the Middle East, sucking Arab cock for money and if Trump should be re-elected then the worthless turd can go and peddle his cod latin horseshit to dumbfuck Americans, who will think he is King Solomon; he has nothing to worry about, here, where we sit, tongues out, 'neath the Great Latrine of State. I doubt, mr mongoose, that BoJo had any intention of effecting Brexit, if he had he would be doing as you suggest.

You will remember and back up the road can still view my demand, just after Grenfell, that the ghastly, stupid FireChief "Dany" be sacked at the very least but I also suggested that the slimy newt-fingerer, Livingstone, the gabshite Bojo - as former mayors - and Osborne, chief cashier to the Russian money launderers be prosecuted for criminal negligence, all remain untouched, nobody will be prosecuted and eventually some cunt will be wheeled-out bleating that lessons have been learned. Since Blair we are ruled by serious, Organised Crime, the idea that Johnson or Sid are remotely interested in anything but their own wealth is, well, a quaint notion, from another time.

Thank you for your kind words and as you say nothing to say.

I will look at Layla and, I suspect, pray for Deiverance.

the noblest prospect said...

Best wishes, Mr Smith. Thoughtsandprayers and all that guff.
tnp

call me ishmael said...

I thought I'd better say something without turning these commentaries into a deathblog, there's enough of that stuff going on. Thanks, mr o.r., mr verge, mr t.n.p. and mr anonymous. I am sure it is difficult knowing what to say and I am sorry for any distress caused. In the midst of life....that's what I always say...in the midst of life we are in death. There it is, nuff said.

Yardarm said...

Good Evening Mr Ishmael. Wishing you many more evenings in your Orcadian fastness, the Dancing Ladies reflected in the Flow.

call me ishmael said...

It's wild here, tonight, mr yardarm, blow-you-over winds, driving rain, cowering indoors conditions, behind metre-thick walls, humming: dark the night and long 'til day, do not bid us further stray. Drove the Northern end of Scapa Flow an hour ago and it was deathly quiet, waiting to pounce.

Hope you are well.

Bungalow Bill said...

Ah, Mr I, fuck it. Get to those cathedrals; if there’s hope anywhere it’s in them. Hold fast.

call me ishmael said...

Thank you, mr bungalow bill. The Norman cathedrals, commissioned or built or worshipped in by my invading ancestors are deeply affecting, even to a Godlessheathenbastard such as I, their soaring grandeur undermined only by the clergy, more of which later.

Mike said...

Ely Cathedral well worth a visit. Down the A1 (if my memory serves) in the limo.

Alexius said...

Dreadful news Mr Ismael, We need our Juvenal more than ever now. Savour every hour, every minute - there is still life to be lived.

May the Cathedrals give you strength and joy. I shall pray for you in St. Mary`s. Warwick.

Alexius

Caratacus said...

Thinking of you Mr. I - this physical plane can be a bitch at times.

If you venture as far as Exeter Cathedral please let me know and I'll stand you a bottle or two in the Ship Inn (within staggering distance of Cathedral Green).

Caratacus

Dick the Prick said...

Ah, fuck, Mr I, that all sounds a bit pants, frankly. You of course have my best wishes and what with human bodies being so weird then.....

Oooh, fancy old grand tourer to go err...grand touring - how very laa!Assume it's 2nd or 3rd hand but you can really tell why their so expensive. I got a lift up to Edingburgh in someone's dad's top of the range BMW limo and fuck me, being in the back was very 1st class - even had a skinning up tray which was very advanced for our German cousins, thinking of me like that. Luxury - as the 4 Yorkshiremen may say.

Always found Lincoln a bit of a fire and brimstone wrath of God type cathedral but then may be that was the intention.

To be continued, no doubt....

DtP

SG said...

I am very sorry to hear your news Mr I, but salute your resilience in the face of it. I heard that wee Krankie woman’s ranting oration at some rally in Glasgow the other day. The hate filled invective and summoning of demons brought an earlier orator to mind, the only things missing were the torches and searchlights. Layla Moran ‘represents’, indeed positively channels, the Bourgeois Bohemes of West Oxford and is just as Mongoose describes. I hope you remain well enough for your grand tour. I only know Salisbury and Wells cathedrals, both are magnificent.

Anonymous said...

"Nuff said", indeed, Mr Smith - a good headstone for the Godless. But in the meantime, long may you remain pre-posthumous.

v./

mongoose said...

That's the one, Mr SG, Layla Moran. She seems at first listen a pretty decent woman but as her sentences get past the verb, she just fucking abandons them and starts another one. By God, anything more complex than throwing a stick for a dog would be beyond her.

As it happens BTW I was gently carousing said west Oxford, in Jericho, last weekend and the bohemes were thick on the ground. Fortunately they haven't for the most part discovered the decent watering holes but, alas, they have now despoiled the old shebeen that used to be had in St Pauls. I hadn't been in for years but it's an awful fucking place now. I-know-besties walking around in beards and boat-shoes. I remember when a massive Rasta used to dispense lukewarm cans of Red Stripe and just chuck the cash offered into a bucket under the ad hoc counter. Change, mon? You jestin. He'd set you up with a twist too if he liked the look of you. Now it's a fiver for a half-pint bottle of piss, and a sneer to go with it. Fuck 'em.

Lincoln, Ely, Norwich to the East. Lincoln is astonishing. In the West, Gloucester is magnificent but it's in Gloucester. Exeter, Winchester... Salisbury is impressive but lacks a something, I think. There are plenty to be seen and wondered at yet, mr ishmael. Get to it, Sir.

I haven't been in the Ship for years, Mr Caractacus.

Anonymous said...

There`s a story Drake used to drink in the Ship, Mr Caractacus

call me ishmael said...

Ah, mr alexius, St Mary's in Warwick, fabulous, I know it well, thank you.

call me ishmael said...

Gald to see you still walk cyberspace, mr dick, is Mrs WOAr still living?

It's a one owner and I wish I'd bought one twenty years ago,when i was deep in hi-spec Volvo land but I thought I needed the Volvo estate utility. We only use the \Merc for travelling, the Honda CRV does the donkey work. I am trying to do a blg about this just further on up the road, can't stay here in Death's ante-room, can we.

Lincoln is on the list, with Ely.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, mr sg, and I think Krankie's administration's fuck ups may render her a busted flush, it would only require her losing a Westminstr seat or two to burst her bubble. RuthBoy Davidson was a frightful disappointment, what are they like, lesbians, hissyfits and drama queen fallings-out,Labour's Kescia Dugdale the same. RuthBoy's predecessor, ghoulish matron, Annabell Gouldie the same, Krankie as bent as can be with a beard husband, Salmond with a hundred year old beard wife; did anyone else notice how he denied doing anythng "criminal"? you only gotta look at him on Rt to see a a self-adoring narcissist, I mean, what woman would not want him fingering her uninvited?

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, King Caratacus. Only made it as far as Bath, recently, so Exeter is still on the list athough we were there twenty years ago. It's funny, a poor boy like me, but it's the cathedrals I've missed since moving to Orkney, even Coventry's, a simpering temple to showy, overhasty forgiveness, is drenched with wonder.

call me ishmael said...

we will speak of Gloucester, mr mongoose, soon, as soon as I can manag, and Lord, it will make your blood boil.

call me ishmael said...

Thanks, mr verge but let nothing restrain you from foul anagram m and Satanic, scatalogical Depravity; h, it is partly why people come here.

inmate said...

Sad news mr I but we all get there eventually.

If I could recommend Durham for one of those magnificent tributes to the craftsmen who built the impossible. Not my part of the world but I have visited the once, there is a presence inside which defies my limited imagination to describe, a truly spiritual place.

York is wonderful building but is just a tribute inside to the great and good military and monied local burghers.

mrs narcolept said...

Fine things to be seen, mr ishmael. So glad you have come back to us.

mongoose said...

Winchester is wonderful. Squattish, and almost saxon, but you are certainly in Wessex. The crypt conveys every one of its years but is despoiled now by a Gormless statue, unless some pilgrim has done the decent thing. "I know! We could have a wee statue there of a person a-praying or a-reading from one of those boooks. If we light it all eerie like, it'll be a smash." As if going there were not a clue, and that once there, there were not ghosts enough.

I must though one day go back and live in the west.

Coventry? Good grief, mr i. I attended in Fr Diamond days his vanity project of Holy Family, a 1/4 size homage. Up the Beake Avenue on the way to nowhere.

call me ishmael said...

I agree, mr inmate, Durham left me speechless, too. I will return. Been to York a lot, spoiled for me by grinning Johnny Sentanyu, Bishop of York, he wasn't going to change his underpants until Bob Mugabe'd been fucked off, must be some olfactory relief in the cloisters and chapels.

call me ishmael said...

My dear mrs narcolept, lovely to see you. Hope mr n is not still cleaning Harley Davidsons in the bath.

call me ishmael said...

I will try Winchester if I can mr mongoose, yes and Salisbury. I should say that the cathedral tour is long planned and not a bit Lourdesish, at least that's what I think.

There is something about Coventry, that Nazi bombed-out shell of Mediaeval St Michael's linked to Spence's stark, brick circularity. Mebbe you should try it just one time more, before you go. 'Twas, after all, in another lifetime.

mongoose said...

If I pass that way again. But I don't like the Spence thing, the clumsy brute. The roof is at best a dreary disgrace, although there is majesty to be had on the inside. The tediously renamed Chapel of Unity is fantastic when the sun shines.

I have climbed the tower of St Michael's though more times than I can count. We'd skip the bus from school to Pool Meadow and use the proceeds more wisely. We'd often climb the tower to eat ice creams at the top. Lollies and stuff were fine but cornets would melt down (down? up?) our arms by the time we were halfway to the top. Innocent days.

call me ishmael said...

I was an adult when I came to know it well, a young adult, maybe just starting to appreciate buildings and space and purpose, it was, therefore, in effect, my first cathedral and I used to wander its ruins contrasting their fire-blackened stones with the massive glass doors of the new building, its curves, its garish tapestry. The chapels, as you say, aped, with some success, the elaborate, quiet spaces of their Norman predecessors. Despite its modernity it was a space in which to just be. Even then, though, I was irritated by the ladled-on mush of Forgiveness, the older I grow the more convinced I am that the Nazi terrorists were let off very lightly, especially so by career fucking clergymen and gobby congregants talking out of their arses. Oh, my, if we forgive the Germans it will never happen again and aren't we all great Christians, Smile, for the camera. Aye, right, Forgiveness, tell that to the Vietnamese and the Iraqis.The clergy are a bad lot, even the ones who are not beasts are oily, opportunistic shape shifters; you can rest assured that even Jesus would never forgive what they do.

Anonymous said...

Lincoln Cathedral is a remarkable sight to see Mr Ishmael. The land in that part of the world being very flat, it can be seen from a great distance, built as it is on one of the few hills in the locality. Visited it some twenty five years or more ago, when working in the city around this time of year, and can still remember the sound of the choir singing when I went in to look around in the very late afternoon. On the way, you might visit Beverley Minster, which is also a wonderful building.

call me ishmael said...

It is unknown to me, mr anonymous, that part of the land; so I should go; I was in Norfolk and Suffolk once but never Lincolnshire. It is always the choir, isn't it? In Brittany, at an Easter Mass, I was thrilled by a half a dozen ancient, local, scratchy sopranos, singing their hearts out, farmers wives -or widows - busting their lungs for Sakvation. Somehow it didn't matter that the singing was actually atrocious, The Lord moves in mysterious ways....

Doug Shoulders said...

Nuff said above Mr Ishmael as you said. But from me, sorry and thanks.

Caratacus said...

Mr. I - even a godless old heathen like me can appreciate the wonder of those huge buildings. I read 'Pillars of the Earth' by Ken Follett some years ago at my aged mother's insistence (and found it a little soap-operatic, if I'm truthful) but the descriptions of how men achieved so much with what we would consider almost primitive tools were very good and made me appreciate the structures all the more.

mr. mongoose and anonymous - the Ship Inn was indeed frequented by Francis Drake (a gentleman still referred to in parts of Spain as Il Diablo); there's a poem on the wall, supposedly written by Drake in 1587:

"Next to my own shippe I do most love that old Shippe in Exon, a tavern in Fyshe Street, as the people call it, or as the clergy will have it, St. Martin's Lane"...."There yester'en I had some speech with a mariner fresh come hither from Plymouth. The power of Spain is already afloat, so in the morning please God, I am for Plymouth and for another shippe than this".

Whether Drake actually wrote this is disputed, of course, and it is perhaps more likely that his kinsman Walter Raleigh, who hailed from nearby Budleigh Salterton was the one who could be found tacking to windward after a few scoops come chucking out time.

call me ishmael said...

No, thank you, mr doug, for your cinstancy and enthusiasm.

call me ishmael said...

Always the tools, King Caratacus. I have an arsenal now of Mr DeWalt's best cordless devices, as well as jacks and ramps, generators and welders, laser lines and spirit levels and yet could not raise high a single roofbeam. I have seen shows wherein they recreate the building of castles and such but York, say, or Gloucester or Westminster Abbey, massive, hand-hewn blocks raised by eye, with ropes and muscle, these would defy belief were they not still so present.

Yardarm said...

Thinking of this thread, Mr Caractacus I walked past the Ship on the way home from work. It would be so easy to go into on a cold winter`s night; very difficult to leave.

mongoose said...

Who knew, Your Maj, that one spelled Caratacus so? Is it new like Boudicca, or have I just been wrong all these years? Whichever - I shall take a care to address you properly from now on.

Mongosling 2 is having a pint in the Ship on Wednesday evening. Do not frighten the quiet one in her interview suit.

call me ishmael said...

Pees'nQueues mr mongoose, respect for his Majesty always a watchword here. One of yours, quiet? Right. I do envy you having all the ancient watering holes, there are nonesuch here, just a few deathly, deserted hovels. Went on a pub crawl a few years back, across the Southern, mainland isles, it was about this time of year and in five pubs we counted thirteen people, including staff.

There is just nowhere up here like Coventry's Dyers Arms used to be or the Earlsdon Cottage centralish and characterful.

SG said...

Down with all the ‘newspeak’, I’m in Boadicea‘s camp! Also, I may visit Bombay and Peking, pollution levels permitting, As for the name of the seventh planet, well, I know how to pronounce that too...

mongoose said...

Quiet and 5'2" on the outside, Mr I. 6'5" and a cage fighter trained by her mother on the inside. And just maybe she is going to outshine the gobby rest of us by stealth. I do hope so.

The NightJack said...

Damn.