The Sunday Ishmael 10/10/2021

 

Rowan - Sorbus Aucuparia

It is definitely Autumn,  Ishmaelites, the foraging, hedgewitchery  season, but let us still look to the sunlit uplands, under the blue sky thinking and gaze out onto the clear blue waters, which are not full of migrants come to England to make better life. 

Oops, maybe we'd better give the French the £30 million they have requested to pay for increased patrols along the French coast to turn back migrants. Apparently, 12,500 migrants have crossed the Channel and made safe landing this year.  The £30 million could pay for more rubber bullets to stop the problem at source: on September 22nd, allegedly, French police fired rubber bullets at migrants attempting to cross the English Channel. One chap described the shooting, which allegedly took place on September 22, at point blank range. “When the police saw us, they shouted stop. We stopped and they still shot us. Then we ran away as best we could”. It was reported by the Daily Mail that two Iranian Kurds were hospitalised by their injuries, one with a fractured leg, the other with a broken hand. The shooting allegedly occurred on a Dunkirk beach five miles from an area where hundreds of migrants live in camps among the woods awaiting their turn to cross into England. Investigations by French national police authorities into the incident are ongoing. A full and far-reaching cover-up will, no doubt, ensue.

 

So it seems we now have a UK Health Security Agency. Wow. Will they be armed, this new security agency, all the better to conduct stop, search and insert long probes up nostrils? What sort of uniform? 

Not white, as it shows all the stains. 

Maybe blood red. Or pus yellow.

 Who would be best placed to lead the new agency into containment and control of bio hazards? 

A new career adventure for Dame Watercress Cock – even more citizen-suspects to secure and neutralize with maximum and extreme force.

 

All the Economist Pundits are saying Boris doesn’t understand economics, that his efforts to level up and stop the owners  of companies from growing their British Business Profits through cheap foreign labour are as wrong headed as the repeal of the Corn Laws, that having low-paid workers actually helps the British working man to be prosperous, healthy, well-clothed, shod and fed, and that what needs to happen is that the British working man and woman are employed in highly skilled middleclass jobs whilst foreign labour toils away for tuppence an hour harvesting, waiting tables, making beds for tourists (and jumping into them for a tip), changing nappies and wiping drool off the geriatric population.

 

Hah! I say to the Economist Pundits – get yourselves into the social housing hinterlands of our Great British Cities and observe for yourselves the generational unemployment and the wholly Alternative Culture in which crime is as normal and accepted as breathing, and is funded in its contrarian attitudes by the state. Observe the breeding grounds of abuse. See uncontrolled  psychopathy stalking the corridors and hallways of tower blocks. See neglected, illiterate, but very clean children reared by American gangsta rap culture and Influencers. Then go away and do some proper economic thinking that will replace this pestilence with full employment, the dignity of work, self-respect and honour.

 

I’m not saying that this dire state of affairs has been brought about by the welfare state, the nhs and youtube over the last 70 years. After all, Hogarth showed us gin-sodden London reality 

Not much change here, then

 in the eighteenth century, babies falling from the breast, women evicted into the street through the fecklessness of their husbands who owned them, their dowries and their bodies. 

In the nineteenth century Dickens exposed the miseries of the poor. 

And in the twentieth century Hitler undertook slum clearance of our major cities, which, incidentally exposed the dreadful living conditions of the majority of the urban population. 

Of course there's been progress: we have social media and TV with pretend murders as entertainment rather than public executions. And Food Banks.

I’m complaining that the massive state expenditure aimed at lifting people out of poverty actually seems to have had the reverse effect and there should be a better solution – one that fits together like a dovetail joint the vacant posts with unemployed people in this country. 

Maybe not that.

Like the rest of Britain, Orkney cannot fully staff its care homes. Even before Brexit, there were large numbers of vacancies. Agency staff at great expense are brought in, willing enough to work when their housing is provided free of charge, their trips home are paid for and their hourly rate is such that the permanently employed are spitting blood in the local press. You will remonstrate with me and say – mrs ishmael, the unemployed people live in the cities of the south and they don’t want to move to Bloody Orkney.* They are comfortable where they are, surrounded by their families. Well, how come there are Polish people willing to leave their families and travel the length of continental Europe to work in England? How about imbuing British people with some of that spirit of adventure and self-improvement? And provide the financial rewards that will fund that adventure? (As with the agency staff).

*Bloody Orkney

This bloody town's a bloody cuss No bloody trains, no bloody bus, And no one cares for bloody us In bloody Orkney.

The bloody roads are bloody bad,The bloody folks are bloody mad, They'd make the brightest bloody sad,In bloody Orkney.

All bloody clouds,and bloody rains,No bloody kerbs, no bloody drains,The Council's got no bloody brains,In bloody Orkney.

Everything's so bloody dear,A bloody bob, for bloody beer,
And is it good? - no bloody fear,In bloody Orkney.

The bloody 'flicks'are bloody old,The bloody seats are bloody cold,You can't get in for bloody gold In bloody Orkney.

The bloody dances make you smile,The bloody band is bloody vile,It only cramps your bloody style,In bloody Orkney.

No bloody sport, no bloody games,No bloody fun, the bloody dames Won't even give their bloody names In bloody Orkney.

Best bloody place is bloody bed,With bloody ice on bloody head,You might as well be bloody dead,In bloody Orkney.

There's nothing greets your bloody eye But bloody sea and bloody sky,'Roll on demob!' we bloody cry In bloody Orkney.

 

by Captain Hamish Blair - Written whilst on service in Orkney during the Second World War and prompting this response from an Orcadian, which kind of proves Captain Blair's point:

 

Captain Hamish 'Bloody' Blair
Isnae posted here nae mair
But no-one seems tae bloody care
In bloody Orkney.

 

 

No sense of irony, some people. Huge confidence, though.

I see that American Christian fundamentalist attempts to force women to have babies against their will have suffered a setback. No doubt they will fight back, as they seem to think there’s a people shortage or something.

 

And, in other news, the Army has been called in to help deal with what the Tories have taken to calling the EFFing issues (Energy, Food, Fuel). So we're alright, then, as mr ishmael reported in 2011:

 

A FERAL UNDERCLASS 8/9/2011 

 

THE QUEEN'S OWN LANCASHIRE NANCYBOYS.

Brigadier-General Rupert Golightly-Jockstrap today insisted that his men were all splendid fellows, to a manjack of them they do a magnificent job, with great professionalism, grunted the useless bastard. You know, people sitting at home in comfort have no idea how hard it is for heavily armed psychobastards to kick a defenceless civilian to death, dragging entirely blameless nigger individuals from their homes and workplaces, beating them, starving them, sexually assaulting them  and jumping on their heads is real man's work and I'm happy to say that all the men under my command are either capable of doing it to the best of their abilities or of covering it all up and fixing the courts martial; which amounts to the same thing. God Save The Queen.

...................................................................................

 Returning to the EFFing issues, Andrew Marr today interviewed a most personable young man, Stephen Fitzpatrick, who explained simply and clearly how the energy industry is fucked. The cheap energy suppliers, to whom all the clever, I-know-best consumers switched their business to save a bob or two, were insufficiently hedged. I shall set about explaining this industry term by way of an unnecessarily complicated analogy, with the help of Donald Rumsfeld, in order to establish my credentials as an Economist Pundit.

The BlogDog, Harris, eats two chickens per week, to liven up his Royal Canin Diabetic kibble. This is a knownknown. I can either buy him a chicken at the point of consumption at £4.00 per chicken, or, when mr Tesco sells chickens at £2.00 each, because they have reached their use by date, I can buy all that are on offer at that price and stick them in the freezer, knowing that tomorrow chicken pricing will revert to the status quo ante. That is another knownknown. As chicken supplier to the Blog Dog, it is in my interests to buy in the chicken at the best available price. If the BlogDog was paying me for supplying chicken, it would be economically illiterate of me to charge him the reduced rate, as, once the cheap chicken had run out, I would have to buy chicken at the normal rate, and if I then start charging him at the normal rate he would bite me. So I could add up the cheap chicken price and the normal chicken price, divide by two and charge that, whilst constantly searching for more cheap chicken. Here come the variables. Should the BlogDog acquire a foster brother or sister with a liking for chicken, the chicken consumer base instantly increases, the cheap chickens run out faster and I have to buy more chickens at the increased price. This is a knownunknown (I think). Having bought in more chickens to fill my freezer, I find another source of cheap chickens at Lidl, calculate that the cost is only going to go up, what with all these EFFing issues, (knownknowns) buy up all Lidl's chickens, pop down the Co-op and buy theirs, go to the white goods store and buy a big chest freezer and fill it with cheap chickens, thus hedging my chicken investment against my known and increased consumer base.

 Meanwhile, the BlogDog and his fictional sibling have gone off chicken and want fish as it is better for the planet. (unknownunknown). I have two freezers full of chicken, no consumer base and I need to buy in quantities of fish and another freezer, thus increasing my costs which I cannot hand on as the market has dropped out of chicken and I'm still paying energy costs to keep the damn stuff from thawing. Then there's a big gale causing a week-long power cut and all the chickens rot - they were on their use-by date, remember. This is another unknown unknown. Then the lieges throw milkbottles full of petrol and a lit fuse at my house because I've cornered the market in chickens and they want to do some panic buying. At least this placates my neighbours, as it cooks the rotting chickens which were stinking. The BlogDog and his putative sibling have left home, gone to find Better Life. And I have moved beyond unknown unknowns to absolutely fucked.

There, that's all you could possibly wish to unknown about hedging. Apart from this snippet by mr ishmael:

 

The Hedging News:

This hedge, a hundred metres long and two and a half metres high, is outside the walled garden and cruelly battered by salty, gale-force winds; an escallonia, it is spreading, above two metres, into tree-like branches, as seen below, from a distance, and there is much dead wood, both inside and on the surface.
Having cut back only a little I am deep in green blood and insects and birds rebuke me. What do other hedgers think? There are no nests, the birds, brown ones, just chill out there and return when the clipping is done. Should I continue to remove a couple of feet, whilst the weather is nice, or should I await early winter, and freeze my bollocks off?

Another mixed hedge, of thorn, rosa rugosa, hebe and escallonia is planted on the left hand, seaward side of the lane and both within a 

year or two should give each other some protection from the howling winds.

See? Definition of Hedging : protection from the howling gales.

Wot's on Telly

The Blair Brown years - do watch it, the whole thing is available on i-Player, rammed with archive footage interspersed with current interviews with  the ageing four horsemen of the Apocalypse - Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Campbell: how do these people manage to stay out of jail, year after year? Somehow, though, the director missed this photo:

 

Back to mr ishmael and his ambivalent relationship with Bob Dylan:

 

RECORD REVIEW, STORM IN AN OLD MAN'S TEACUP. 28/09/12

warning by mrs ishmael - only click the link if you have full immunity 

 

A DRONING TEMPEST.

Bob Dylan, as a young man, wrote some of the most hurtful and unlovely  songs ever recorded and the Love Generation, well, in a spirit of PeaceandLoveMan,  loved them. The world of Yoof, joined in a spiteful, bilious community sing-song. How does it feel, taunted wee Bob, to be not as clever as me in a musical short man syndrome.

Obvious candidates for the All-Time Nastiest Grammy are Like A Rolling Stone and Positively Fourth Street but there are many more lurking in the albums, the bootlegs, the outtakes;  Ballad in Plain D savages the sister and mother of the girl he was unable to dominate, as though it was their fault that she had a mind of her own and eschewed the dwarf gunslinger's eternal bitching.

Ballad in Plain D
I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze, with the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn. I courted her proudly but now she is gone, gone as the season she's taken. In a young summer's youth, I stole her away from her mother and sister, though close did they stay, each one of them suffering from the failures of their day. With strings of guilt they tried hard to guide us. Of the two sisters, I loved the young with sensitive instincts, she was the creative one. The constant scapegoat, she was easily undone by the jealousy of others around her. For her parasite sister, I had no respect. Bound by her boredom, her pride to protect countless visions of the other she'd reflect as a crutch for her scenes and her society. Myself, for what I did, I cannot be excused, the changes I was going through can't even be used. For the lies that I told her in hopes not to lose the could-be dream-lover of my lifetime. With unseen consciousness, I possessed in my grip a magnificent mantelpiece, though its heart being chipped, noticing not that I'd already slipped to the sin of love's false security. From silhouetted anger to manufactured peace answers of emptiness, voice vacancies 'till the tombstones of damage read me no questions but, "Please what's wrong and what's exactly the matter?" And so it did happen like it could have been foreseen the timeless explosion of fantasy's dream. At the peak of the night, the king and the queen tumbled all down into pieces. "The tragic figure!" her sister did shout "Leave her alone, god damn you, get out!" And I in my armor, turning about and nailing her in the ruins of her pettiness. Beneath a bare light bulb the plaster did pound her sister and I in a screaming battleground and she in between, the victim of sound soon shattered as a child to the shadows. All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight I gagged in contradiction, tears blinding my sight. My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night leaving all of love's ashes behind me. The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet, the words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet, I think of her often and hope whoever she's met will be fully aware of how precious she is.
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me "How good, how good does it feel to be free?" And I answer them most mysteriously "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?"

(reproduced in full for the purposes of personal study and enlightenment.)

 

mr ishmael's essays today are:

A Feral Underclass                                               drafted  8.9.2011 

The Hedging News                                                drafted 14.7.2009
Record Review, Storm in an Old Man's Teacup     drafted 28.9.12

.......................................................................

"Why don't you write a book, my friend said to me, for forty years. There's enough books, don't need any more fucking books, books're the last thing we need more of. The last time he asked, a couple of years back, I wanted to say Well, in a sense, I have, it's called stanislav, a young Polish plumber."

And you can buy both anthologies of the books of mr ishmael and Stanislav :  Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack from Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Register an account with Lulu to save a couple of quid, as going straight into the link provided below seems to make paypal think it's ok to charge in dollars, and apply their own conversion rate, which will put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow our link; a pop-up box asks for age confirmation - simply set the date to (say) 1 January 1960, and proceed. (If you type the title, the anthology will not appear as a search result until the "show explicit content" box - found at the bottom left by scrolling down - has been checked.  You may also see the age verification box, as above, at this point.) 

Link for the paperback:

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Or...

shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to paste it into an email and tell a friend:

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 Honest, Not Invent is available in paperback or hardback.

Link for Hard Back : 

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Link for Paper Back : 

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At checkout, try PROWRITINGAID15, WELCOME15 or TREAT15 in the coupon box, which  takes 15% off the price before postage.  If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.  

With the 15% voucher, the book (including delivery to a UK address) should cost £10.89

 

Blair, Brown, Mandelson and Campbell