Back in June, the Queen attempted to tell Boris Johnson that Matt Hancock is full of shit, during their first face to face briefing in 15 months, prevented only by Bojo, in an unaccustomedly diplomatic spirit, substituting the word beans, by talking over her - a solecism that would have his head removed from his shoulders in Good King Henry's court. Anyway, she's at it again, criticising the world's leaders for their hmm, I'm not sure I'm going yet, approach to the Weegie Cop26 conference. Apparently, she's "irritated." She's flying there herself, and hang the carbon footprint. Here we go, throwing a massive party for the world, and the invitees are just not RSVPing. Maybe its Glasgow. Maybe they've heard about the crime rates, drug deaths and rampant covid, and they would have preferred to go to Solihull. I could warm to this new, effing and blinding queen, her own woman after 73 years of naval discipline. Time was, the news that the Monarch was irritated would have had the lieges trembling, especially when the Monarch's words were revealed by semi-covert surveillance....
mr ishmael knew of her inner barrow-boy - Lahndunner, in't she? On the 6th April 2010, the
prime minister, Gordon Brown, having run out of alternatives, went to Buckingham Palace and
asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament on 12 April, confirming in a live
press conference in Downing Street that the general election would be
held on 6 May, five years since the previous election on 5 May 2005. Simultaneously, the world's air travel had been brought to a standstill as the air was thick with ash and debris spewed out in volcanic eruptions over 6 days at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. mr ishmael was a fly on the wall at Brown's meeting with the monarch:
Good Queen Brenda 16/4/2010
A great result for the Dark Lord of Snot and could be better only if Good Queen Brenda said:
Oi,
Mr Snot, We Like You Ever So and you can't have an election after all,
best that you stay and give your wise counsel on Vaaal-ewes and
Sol-you-shuns to poor, stupid Lilibet and anyway, Mr Snot, We say fuck
the people, fuck 'em..........
Me, too, your Majesty, that's what I say, all the time ........
They
are so tiresome, Mr Snot, the people, wanting elections all the time
and they're always wanting We to pay taxes, like We was one of them,
well, Mr Snot, let We tell you, that there's not much point in them
having a monarch if they want to treat Her like just anybody else, like
common people. Fuck We, Mr Snot, it's a diabolical liberty......
You
know, your Majesty, as I go around this great country in my bulletproof
vest and underpants, in my armoured limousine, with my team of
sharpshooters, meeting everyday, ordinary, carefully chosen, cheering
people, they all say to me, Prime Minister Snot, you have saved the
world, why can't you just stay as prime minister for ever and I have to
disappoint them by saying No, my people - Your people, actually, your
Majesty but you know what I mean - I cannae serve you for more than five
years at a time, even if I had been elected, because we must have
elections. No, they cry, Boo to elections, but there it is, my election
for a fourth term is certain, that I may carry forward the necessary
reforms in order that the money may in future just combust before it
gets into people's pockets and save me the trouble of keeping the
furnace going down below Downing Street; they only spend it unwisely if
we let them keep it.
Quite right, Mr Snot, We are not amused by them.....
While I am here, your Majesty, or Brenda, if I may, I do feel we have a lot in common, since neither of us is elected...
No, your Majesty is fine, We are the fucking Queen......
I
would like to discuss the volcano-terrorism being perpetrated on us by
the Eskimos, who all, by the way, seem to be called Thorsen
ThorsensenThorensensensensen ......
Yes, dreadful little bastards, run around naked in the snow, We understand, jumping into hot spas........
Quite, your Majesty, or Eyjafjallajoekull glacier.
.......................................................
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Queen Victoria
The frankly terrifying Queen Victoria was anointed Queen of most of the world (well, the important bits) in 1837, aged 18. There was then no formal intelligence operation (intelligence in this context meaning spies, not being clever), so Victoria set up her own, initially by breeding her own network of nine children by her first* husband, Albert, and placing them in the Royal Houses of Europe:
Victoria married Frederick III of Germany
Edward married Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and got the top job
Alice married Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse Alfred married Marie Alexandrovna, Grand Duchess, Russia
Helena married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein
Louise married John Campbell, Duke of Argyll, Marquis of Lorne
Arthur married Duchess Louise Margaret of Prussia
Leopold married Princess Helena Frederica of Waldeck and Pyrmont
Beatrice married Prince Henry of Battenberg.
Just a reminder that the First World War was a family squabble.
So Victoria set up her own Circus, running her network of agents across Europe. “Queen Victoria selected the most intelligent
member of each European royal family, and ‘on any question . . . she obtained
an opinion’.”* Her daily correspondence was mammoth. She had been instructed in surveillance techniques by Uncle Leopold, and was adept at reading and resealing
letters and sending misinformation to foreign powers through her Circus.
Queen Victoria's most valuable field agent was
her eldest daughter Vicky, married to
the German crown prince. Vicky sent crates of sensitive documents to England from
the Prussian court, and wrote to her mother in cypher to foil Bismarck’s counterintelligence efforts. After the Second World
War, Anthony Blunt visited her ancestral home in Germany and smuggled Vicky’s
personal papers back to Windsor. Blunt, surveyor of the King's pictures (are these jobs ever advertised? I could look at pictures), was a self-confessed KGB agent, pretty familiar with the dark arts, and clearly an excellent choice for wrangling sensitive documents.
The intelligence community and methodology instituted by Victoria is now a commonplace, but it is amusing to note how far the Royal Family has itself been under surveillance: a foreign office report on the Duke of Windsor stated: he "is notoriously pro-Nazi. He is also a heavy drinker,
and what few wits he had have wilted.” Nazi Germany thought the Duke could be a puppet sovereign-in-exile. So a Nazi agent attempted to prevent the Windsors leaving Lisbon for Bermuda at the instruction of the King when Edward's pro-Nazi proclivities had become just too embarrassing in Europe - by sabotaging the car containing the couple’s extensive wardrobe as it was thought they couldn’t leave without their clothes.
George
VI asked Special Branch to vet his potential son-in-law, because his family had Nazi connections. The Queen Mother allegedly referred to Philip as "the Hun". MI5 reported
that his rooms were messy, his language “coarse” and that he enjoyed late-night
drinking. Princess Diana and her butler, Paul Burrell, searched her residence for surveillance devices, the two of them rolling up carpets and taking down mirrors. All this and more is revealed in
*The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown, from Victoria to Diana by Richard J
Aldrich and Rory Cormac.
*Victoria's
second, morganatic (and hotly denied) marriage to John Brown,
foul-mouthed, heavy drinking Highland commoner, allegedly resulted in an
unspecified number, but no more than three, unacknowledged children, brought
up in America or Paris or both, depending on the rumour.
Victoria and mr ishmael both considered the Highlands to be worth lingering in. Here's a travelogue, extracted from a longer piece posted in 2015:
North-west of Pitlochry into Victorian, hunting
and fishing Scotland, here's Dame Judi Dench and Dame Billy Connolly, at her own wee postbox.
This is the hated A9.
More accustomed, previously, to the M42, I love it.
It is my own Route 66, my own Highway 61,
running from up in the hovel-sprinkled
Badlands of Caithness
down to sparkling Inverness
and Perthshire.
Driving northwards from Dundee
we
entered the Tay Forest Park. It was gorgeous; trees, water, and
mountains, trembling on the edge of Spring, the odd sheep, some Highland
cattle,
just like the Beasts, Drinking at Sunset, in all those Victorian water colours.
There
was no traffic and we travelled about fifteen miles, as fast as the
road would allow, which was approaching thirty miles an hour, until we
reached our hotel for the night. We passed a farmer now and again,
coming the other way on a quad bike, going between his jobs, giving us a
brief wave; I am sure one could work a life away there, in the country, nestling in the mountains, watching the seasons.
When
I was an infant, sitting on her knee, my mother lullabied me with a
song which I now know to be The Road To The Isles; her father's family
were Orange Glaswegian and she, like many in Belfast, had absorbed
Glasgow street slang and idiom and was fiercely sectarian. The song of
The Road To The Isles, though, in her voicing, was rhythmically wistful
-
Sure, by Tummel and Loch Rannoch
And Lochaber I will go,
By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles;
If it's thinkin' in your inner heart
Braggart's in my step,
You've never smelt the tangle o' the Isles.
It
was just a couple of years back, I discovered that not only were
Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Lochaber real places but that quite as a
result of an accidental departure from the A9 I was actually standing
beside Loch Rannoch reading a signpost to Tummel, Lochaber and to the
Isles.
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The approach to Loch Rannoch
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The view from the hotel window
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On
this trip we were heading back home, looking just for an overnight
stay, and for the river- and loch-side journey through the still-snowy
glens. Any half-way decent hotel would have served that purpose but this
was an establishment in which you would expect to find George Clooney,
being rich, debonaire, handsome and gipped out of his coffee. Inside,
it was a fairly typical Highlands hunting lodge - tartan carpets,
antlers on the wall, fireplaces, settees and oak sideboards, all
perfectly fine; the food and the service were nigh-on perfect and the tariff half that of Dundee's Malmaison Knocking Shop. But it was the
view outwards which electrified; in Dundee I had looked-out over a
depressed, grubby street, strewn with food containers, fragranced,
occasionally, with happy hash smoke; in Loch Rannoch, a vast, crisp
Creation bid me Welcome, have a nice day, and meant it.
Here,
in the Highlands, in the distant, off-road Wilderness, is the
Scotland for which people say they would die; here is the prompting of
my own thought that Scotland is the very best part of England.
It
is oddly encouraging that those of us who reside and wrench a living in
rural and remote Scotland are the least likely to vote with a
road-locked and ranting urban minority cult, inebriated, embittered
and too lazy to even visit the lands over which they claim Lordship.
If
Scotland's natural, fierce, soaring grandeur could speak it would say,
Ye've never, wee Gnasher, smelt the tangle o' the Isles, awa' then and
boil yer heid.
Cookery Corner
Make Chip with Stanislav, young Polish Plumber, chef and connoisseur, busy Making Better Life.
National dish of Great Britons, chip, but rubbish is
usually. Even esteemed missus of Stanislav old friend and mentor, ishmael
smith, is problem with chip. Ishmael come round my gaff, desperate for proper
chip. Stanislav, she did it again. Raw inside and black burnt outside.
Why not teach her, Old
Friend and Mentor? Here is instruction, as delivered to Scottish Women’s
Volunteer Service in chip demonstration in Clackmacfuckery Village Hall.
Go down in garden, find
where planted potato, called tatty in
Jockbastard language in smart successful Scotland, best part of England, the
noo. Locate tattyplant, hiding in weed and maverick turnip. Kick weed aside and
pull out tatties. Search vigorously for leaf of dock, as bastard nettle not
weed; grind leafs of dock into arms until have green arm, not finger. This is
English joke or pune, as green finger is good at gardening, but not
nettling. Howling and cursing like bastard,
as leaf of dock is horse and cart economy rubbish alternative to proper
medicine, prise slugs out of little holes drilled in side of scabbytatties,
throw away and go down Tesco to get weedkilled tatties with no additional slimy
protein.
In Tesco, many, many, many sort of potatoes are. Best for
chip is Maris Piper and Edward King, but most will do, if no slug living
inside or if not poison green or if no long wavy white sproutings like octopus arms
have.
Stand at sink, peel tatties under running cold water.
Get
front of jeans wet, so tell everyone this cold water not piss. Proper bloke not wear pinnie. Better get meat and potatoes frozen and wrinkly with cold
water as more manly is. Pinnie is for happy bride and lady boy and jockbastard
in kilt. We plumbers is used to torrents of cold water, with soluble but not
very, sanitary towels, toilet paper, bits of poo and diced carrot. And
sweetcorn.
Use Big, Fuck off knife to cut tatties into slices.
First cut a bit off tattie and place tattie on cut side to stop it rolling like bastard. Cut
slices into sensible width of chip. If not expert like stanislav, do not show off knife skills, or deep fry finger ends.
Ratio of surface to chip interior is
important. Big fat chip useless as not possible to cook inside and not burn
outside. Throw raw chip in running cold water.
Wedding tackle already soaking so no problem. Running cold water
remove starch and make crisper chip. Science. Ask Esther Blumenthal. Dry chip
in teatowel. Clean, not teatowel of death. Discard wet teatowel and line a
roasting tin with fresh dry teatowel. Spread chip to air-dry.
Prepare oil bath. Very Important not use chip pan or chip
basket of set-on-fire-burn-down-house. Fire Brigade had Amnesty to hand in chip
basket in caring Scotland but is possible chip basket is still hiding in
Witness Protection Programme in cupboard under sink. Throw away immediately in
special recycling containers for hazardous domestic waste in local dump.
Returning from expedition to highly technical biohazard recycling centre,
rummage under sink for Big Saucepan, which is best for chip. One third fill
with Rape Seed oil. Do not use Pig Fat to fry chip. Disgusting. Pig religion say Humans is Great Satan. Do not use Extra Virgins Olive Oil as they not get hot enough and give steamy, oily chip. Heat
up oil. Not too much. If blue haze form, you is fucked. Throw away start again. Insert trial chip. If rise to surface, with pretty bubbles,
okay to put in
more chip. Not too many or steam not fry. When chip blanched, take out with
fishandchip slice. Spread in cold roasting pan, single layer. Blanched chip will
continue cooking gently in its insides without heat. Blanch second batch as same way. Sprinkle salt over blanched chip to draw out
water.
Take oilpan off stove and go and do something else.
When ready to eat, fire up oil bath to hotter than before
but not blue haze hot. Add blanched chip, which should bend, not snap. Briskly fry
until golden brown.
Remove from oil with chipslice
onto kitchen paper.
Serve
on hot plates. Can put mayonnaise on side of plate if from Amsterdam, like in
Pulp Fiction, but proper bloke tomato ketchup has and white bread spread with
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Petroleum By-Product.
Proper Chip crisply rustle like golden autumn leaf. Not greasy. Not
black. Not wet, limp and white. Not
Fries To Go. When cold, filter and funnel oil into bottle and store in cool
dark place. Do not keep reusing it like
UnHappy Haddock or CodULike chippy shop or contract Grumpy Bowel Syndrome.
Anyway, good happy
cooking with love from Stanislav.
.......................................................................................
"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:
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/vent-stack/paperback/product-q8jzk2.html?page=1&pageSize=4
Or...
shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to
paste it into an email and tell a friend:
https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu
Honest, Not Invent is available in
paperback or hardback.
Link for Hard Back :
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html
Link for Paper Back :
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html
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
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I stamp on you British. I do, I do (image created by mr verge | )
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mrs ishmael is on holiday for the next two weeks. Yep, I'll be taking the route described so beautifully by mr ishmael in the travelogue above - through the Badlands of Caithness, where even grass struggles to grow and on dark wet nights the demons come rolling out of the gorse-covered hills; down into Sutherland, so named by the Vikings, as only the north men could consider Sutherland even a little bit south; passing through the stony Victorian town of Golspie, over which the massive monument to the First Duke of Sutherland broods, and his gaff, Dunrobin Castle, squats on a gorgeous stretch of coastland; then down to sparkling Inverness, city of the sea and river, Gateway to the Highlands.
21 comments:
Bon voyage, Mrs I. Make sure to keep us posted. Its a regret I have that I never, and never will (as I have forsworn to never set foot in the UK again), explored Jockland - apart from long ago business trips to Edinburgh, and an overnight stay in Glasgow and a close encounter with extra-terrestrials in a pub. Not quite as scary as an encounter in a Liverpool pub where the clientele were like extras from Mad Max, or that Star Wars movies where the babe had 3 tits. Other than that, and I seldom wish my fellows ill will, I look forward to reading Gordon Snot's obituary in the Filth-o-graph. It will be a hard one to write - to strike the balance between civility and the fact (to use one of Mr I's sobriquets) that the man was a cunt. I might even subscribe to the Filth-o-graph so I can post my last comment.
I was once in Largs, mr mike, on a dark and wet February night. Got there after dark, left there before the sun was up. Little, dark, stone sheds on either side of the road. Doubtless populated by mr i's ginger mutants going about their dastardly business.
The COP26 business is going to be a trial. Quite why we are trying to beggar the nation as quickly as we can is beyond me.
Mr mongoose: the nation, and the West in general, will be beggared long before its beggared by the COP26 business. China isn't going so what is the point?
Pedantic point of order, mr mike - the 3-tits lass may have been from Total Recall. Star Yawns was family friendly.
stanislav's hoped-for hospital-horror demise of Spunky Bill almost came to pass just now, apparently. Urinary tract sepsis. The rest writes itself.
cheers
v./
(google, mr mongoose, claims Largs is "a popular seaside resort". Are they pulling our leg?)
Yes, indeed, Total Recall, very loosely built on Philip K Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for you Wholesale". Tremendous cinematic stuff of the huddled radiation-mutant eccentrics living in constant sight and sound of the huge revolving fan bringing costly air to their enclave. On a more joyous note, we have Douglas Adams offering us Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six.
After a ferry passage (one and a half hours to go 9 miles) and a day's hard driving through the loveliest part of Scotland mr mike - not the CentralBelt where you did your scary business trips, I'm still - still!- in fucking Scotland. Dundee, actually, with another massive drive ahead.
A little climate loon link.
It just shows the company we are keeping. Who is serious and who is mad.
I found Largs somewhat disturbing actually. It was as if they had set The Prisoner in Vladivostok, mr v.
More to the point...
What does this tell you?
It tells me that every 100 thousand years there is a peak in those 3 values at Dome Fuji.
And that we are approaching or are at a peak just now.
That's about the size of it, Mr DS. You would think that in a world that spends 90,000 years in a row getting ten degrees cooler than this a degree or two of warming would be a welcome thing. And all those heat pumps are going to get less and less useful too. It is a rum do and getting rummer.
Mr mongoose: you are not the only one confused by what is going on now in the West. I spoke with my sister the other day; she lives in Canada. She's a rational soul and refuses the jab, but is now under virtual house arrest. Her grand-daughter (4 years) is in tears having to go to school in a mask. We both agreed that something sinister is happening.
Used to be a scientist could tell you something you don’t know and then explain it for your understanding.
Seems, now, a "scientist" will tell you something you don’t believe and has no evidence to back their theory.
I know that we discussed the conspiracy/cock-up explanation business just a couple of weeks ago but things are getting seriously out of hand now. Energy from electricity costs five times what it does when it comes from gas. So what we are going to do is to stop using gas - even to make electricity FFS! - and re-engineer everyone's gaff to use heat pumps which don't pump heat when it gets cold. It doesn't make sense. It isn't evenly remotely feasible. And there isn't enough electricity to keep the lights on now let alone when everyone has electrified their everythings. And it's all going to be cheaper too! Hurrah! It is, I am afraid, a stupid idea and it is doomed to failure.
It is however popular with the young people. They, of course, and famously, don't any longer have a practical bone in any of their bodies. If there isn't an app for it, they can't do it. My youngest tried to make yorkshire pudding at college the other week and assessed 6oz of plain flour by dividing the bag in the appropriate ratio. 6oz being whatever it is in grams, she estimated at about a fifth of the 1kg packet. The uselessness of the rest of the packet of flour - unless we start a system of stock chits - will dawn on her perhaps next time. SWMBO chimed in with "a cup and a bit". Alas, that did not compute. But I digress.
Given that the periodical anture of glaciation is a known matter, the average length of same on earth likewise, the availability of the Greenland ice core data too, the lag of CO2 to temperature hinting at an embarrassing reverse causation... Etc etc. There should be a queue of eminent scientists much cleverer than me shouting warnings from the rooftops. But of course, they hide 'neath the stairs for fear of career ruination. David Bellamy having been about the first to be bayonetted pour encourager the autres.
I cannot bear to discuss the covid lunacy these days. It is too depressing.
TPTB cannot be so serially and consistently stupid. Therefore cock-up it cannot be.
I agree Mr mongoose this isn't a cock-up. Something else is going on. You might be interested in listening to Putin's speech the other day at the Valdai Club in Russia. Its online. He speaks some very searing home truths to the West. A man at the heights of his intellectual powers; Biden....embarrassing, cringe-worthy.
Indeed, I saw some of that, mr mike. I thought it was an extraordinary "the Emperor has got no clothes" moment.
Hope you had a fine absence, Mrs I. The travelling time, the abolition of time therein, mattered for Mr I, I guess. Perhaps for you too.
It's common to believers and scoffers. We're bound for elsewhere.
Thom Gunn in his early, muscular, Nietzchean phase here but a fine thing, even so:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57037/on-the-move
Mr verge: shirley there is enough material in the archives for a Stanislav cookery book?
With photographs and large type, mr mike, you might well be right, especially if we included the "reviews" of young Jamie & Marco P Gob. Probably outside my skill-set, though, incorporating photos between covers.
Meanwhile the material for Ishmaels Blues is coming together - daunting but doable. (With, it now emerges, enough remaining stanislav highlights for a possible further book along the lines of Vent Stack.) And mrs ishmael showed me over a dozen emails that led to youtube comments on music videos, some of which are like brief "stanislav returns" outbursts; suffice to say the Mark Knopfler and Gerry Garcia fans didn't much care for the round of fucks being fired into their idols. Watch this space.
Suppose we all dare a future from our taken routes, mr BB.
cheers
v./
Thanks again for that Gunnsmoke, mr BB - I just noticed that an average American anglophone would likely miss the mischievously contradictory pun available in "future from the taken routes", the tendency there being to pronounce the last word to rhyme with gout. (Nothing so old-fashioned as gout for mr Gunn; according to wikipedia he died at 75 from "acute polysubstance abuse." How dare there be poets, as mr ishmael liked to say.)
v./
He was exemplary, Mr Verge. Technically taut but insatiable. Nothing, only everything, was enough.
PS, sorry to Friedrich, and all on here, for the misspelling of "Nietzschean". The drink, you know. I'm sure the old comedian would understand.
i won't denounce thom gunn's on the move as a cheap rip-off of rainer maria rilke's 8th duino elegy, because i understand that mr gunn's mother committed suicide when he was a teenager, and frankly, i reckon the poor guy suffered enough - however, for those with a taste for repro rilke, i would certainly recommend ted hughes' healthy hetero animal-poetry.
in order to snuff any vicious speculation at source, i would hasten to point out that mrs gunn's death occurred well prior to her son's poetic musings, by-the-way...
but alas, the same defence cannot be mounted in the case of ted hughes.
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