Wednesday 29 June 2022

Evensong: Dowland

 Come again: John Dowland

John Dowland, 1563 to1626 was an English or possibly Irish Renaissance composer, lutenist, singer and spy. This version is by Sting, from his album Songs from the Labyrinth. To properly understand this love song remember that, in Elizabethan slang, "to Die" was a euphemism for sexual climax.
 
Come again: sweet love doth now invite,
Thy graces that refrain,
To do me due delight:
To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die,
To die with thee again in sweetest sympathy.

Come again that I may cease to mourn,
Through thy unkind disdain,
For now left and forlorn:
I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die,
In deadly pain, and endless misery.

All the day the sun that lends me shine,
By frowns do cause me pine,
And feeds me with delay:
Her smiles, my springs, that makes my joys to grow,
Her frowns the winters of my woe:

All the night, my sleeps are full of dreams,
My eyes are full of streams,
My heart takes no delight:
To see the fruits and joys that some do find,
And mark the storms are me assign'd,

Out alas, my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue,
Nor yield me any grace:
Her eyes of fire, her heart of flint is made,
Whom tears nor truth may once invade.

Gentle love draw forth thy wounding dart,
Thou canst not pierce her heart,
For I that do approve:
By sighs and tears more hot then are thy shafts:
Did tempt while she for triumph laughs.

Sunday 26 June 2022

The Sunday Ishmael: 26/06/2022


 Smart Successful, Sick Scotland

Jason Leitch, National Clinical Director of the Scottish "Government" has just allowed himself out of the house, having had Covid, to appear on the Scottish Sunday Show this morning. He tells us that 1 in 20 Scots currently have Covid, compared with 1 in 150 this time last year. There are 900 people in Scottish hospitals, of which 20 are in Intensive Care. 41 Scots died last week. When challenged on these figures by Martin Geissler - how can you possibly know this, Director? Jason told us that across the country, there are clinical teams who  have been randomly testing - showing up on people's doorsteps in order to take PCR tests. Now, that's a bit not liberal. (Sidebar with myself - in America, the word “liberal”  is commonly used to refer to the political left, whereas in Australia “liberal” is used to refer to the political right. In the UK “liberal” means “free”. For example, the UK describes itself as a liberal democracy: that is a free democracy and not a left-wing or right-wing democracy. Which explains the difficulty I have with the word liberal. It just means what you want it to mean.) 
 
So, if someone shows up on your doorstep, all PPE'd up, with a long swab and asks you to present your nose for probing, you are not expected to say, oh do fuck off. The clever statisticians have been extrapolating these random test results to arrive at their 1 in 20 figure. That, and testing wees and poos - the polite term is waste water sampling, which, apparently, is very accurate and will even genetically identify which variants of covid are circulating in the area. As you can see from the Covid map, the North of Scotland and the Isles are particularly hard-hit - and yet, it is back into the workplace, bring on the tourists, let's have another festival, with nary a mask to be seen. This is because the Covid Pandemic Emergency is Officially Over - despite covid being more prevalent now than during Lockdown. So, the question asks itself - if we are sicker now than we were, and that's just fine and dandy-dorey, was Lockdown necessary at all? All those small businesses forced into going bust, all those people paid to stay at home, all that money being printed into existence? All that PPE profiteering, inflation being driven up to 10% - does anybody know what they are doing? And with the public sector pay offer seemingly stuck at 2%, Government, which clearly has no clue, despite all those degrees in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics, not personal protective equipment) is gung-hoing against the trade unions, whipping up public sentiment and preparing to front out the summer of strikes - because they believe that is the way to bring inflation under control. You know things are bad when the lawyers go out on strike. 
 
The SNP is being distracted from its mission to drive its population further into bankruptcy, addiction and despair - sorry - Independence, by the Grady affair. Gnasher published the vision paper, snappily titled:  Independence in the modern world. Wealthier, happier, fairer: why not Scotland? on the 14th June, and on Tuesday will be setting out her proposals to have a legal referendum. I wouldn't care, really, but I live here. 
Anyway, cheery, chubby, bald Patrick Grady has resigned his SNP membership and must sit as an independent for Glasgow North, on account of being a sex pest. He was suspended from Westminster for two days after being found guilty of breaching Parliament's sexual misconduct policy. The 42 year old former SNP Chief Whip was found to have touched and stroked the neck, hair and back of an unwilling 19 year old lad on his staff in a pub in London. Gnasher Sturgeon has undertaken to personally apologise to the victim in a desperate attempt to get the SNP out of this latest sexual mess. Ian Blackford, in a leaked recording, told SNP MPs to "rally round" Grady, saying he looked forward to welcoming Patrick back after the two day suspension. Fatty Blackford's had to change his tune, though, after Gnasher told him to straighten up and fly right, and now has urged Grady to "consider his position". A homosexual assault on a teenager is just so not a good look in Presbyterian Scotland. It might be neither here nor there in the degenerate Metropolis nor even in Gomorrah Glasgie, but that's not how it would be viewed north of Dundee.
 
 Nadine Dorries: “This gov will remain relentlessly focused and continue to deliver for people during a post pandemic, mid-war, global cost of living challenge which no Prime Minister or gov has faced the likes of since WW11.” World War Eleven. Hmmm
 
 What do you suppose Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani thought he was buying with his 3 million euros? Most people might start thinking about money-laundering regulations when urged to accept bags of cash. But the future heir to the British throne is made of more robust material.
 
Send Lawyers, Guns and Money
In consequence of the staggering mismanagement of the economy by the clever fellows from Oxford, around 40,000 railway staff are engaged in strike action. Teachers, Local Authority workers and National Health Service staff are preparing for industrial action as they see inflation reducing their incomes and now the lawyers are at it. Repeated government cuts of the legal aid budget, a record backlog of court cases and falling fees have led to a with respect, m'lud, request for a 15% increase in fees. The Criminal Bar Association says that 80% of its members will take strike action between June 27th and July 22nd. You might say, "and who, pray, would that inconvenience?" Not so, m'learned friend. What greater evidence of a failed state is there when even the lawyers can't make ends meet and  when the Courts can't process the poor? 
 
Here's an extract from Knowing Whispers and Secret Handshakes,  by ishmael smith, on the centenary of the Victoria Law Courts.
Like some malevolent Buddha a terracotta Empress of India squats scowling over the entrance to an imposing building in Birmingham's Corporation Street. Completed in 1891 from a design by Sir Aston Webb, the Victoria Law Courts are in a 15th century French Domestic style. Although roughly corresponding to English Tudor, 'though considerably more ornate, the building, heavy with decoration, stained glass and sculpture suggests perhaps Imperial as well as provincial justice. One imagines that the Victorian poor were more pressingly aware of their station than are today's downwardly mobile. They must have been left breathless by the rich splendour of this building; so fine a structure would surely vouchsafe for them a just hearing. Did it not say on the walls, for those who could read: "None shall justice be denied" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour"?
 
The Courthouse hasn't changed much in a hundred years. The wigged and robed barristers swagger along at a gravity-defying angle, heads and shoulders bent well back, as though the many hours spent addressing the elevated and learned judge had permanently fused their upper vertebrae. It struck me that the busy solicitors should apply to the Law Society for a wheelbarrow to carry their incredible number of case files. They dart, like quick-change artistes from court to court, client to client, sincerity intact. The social work and probation types scurry about earnestly, trying to explain, to reassure and often to pick up the pieces spat out of the gaping maw of the British criminal justice system. The C.I.D., swinging their regulation-issue, black plastic, zippered briefcases, congregate at junctions, muttering corner-mouthed to each other, getting their stories straight and gently flexing their muscles. "Mornin' all". The screws and the lock-up guys, world-weary, seen-it-all-before, joke, shirtsleeved, with their handcuffed charges, trying to take the sting out of things as they escort the murderer or the fine defaulter down to their subterranean, cellular labyrinth.
Mystified, bewildered, confused and angry, the defendants - the bread-and-butter - cower, foot shuffling, nailbiting and chainsmoking, oblivious to the wheeler-dealer professionals, locked speculating, head to head with their dear ones, intimidated by their own advocates, waiting for justice and wondering whether, come lunchtime, they'll be in the Crown across the road, celebrating, or downstairs in the cells trying to scrounge a light for the last Benson & Hedges before months or years of roll-ups and dog-ends.
The lady usher in her open-toed, comfortable shoes and her white-haired, stooped, male counterpart shuffle about, juggling case lists with the clerk and the overstretched solicitors, human in their attitudes to the friendless defendant, after whom they are the lowest in the Court pecking order. After two and one quarter hours waiting, we're on.
Stand in front of the chair. Are you so and so? Speak up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Your Worships, the Prosecution case is that the man did so and so and then, as if that were not enough, he went on to do so and so, and, furthermore, he was drunk at the time. (Not back-slapping, jolly good fellow, mine's a double, Pen and Wig, Gazette Club drunk. He was disgustingly, wretchedly, lying in the gutter, blown-the-giro-bought-no-food-paid-no-bills, self-pityingly, pathetically, agonisingly, self-destructively drunk. That is to say, Your Worships, he was working-class drunk). Your Worships, may the Defence draw to your attention this Social Enquiry Report which says that my client is stupid, weak, sick, inadequate, underachieving, drug and alcohol dependent, the product of a broken home, homosexual and disgustingly poor. But that he has recognised all these vices, is repentant, and will, given an opportunity, address them all with the help of his Probation Officer. We will retire. Stand up. Sit down. During the retiral the two advocates and the clerk performed a weird ritual. The Defence, a stunted misanthrope, his pigmy corpulence squeezed inside a wine-bar double-breasted and with a legally-aided Porsche parked across the road, seemed to be a hybrid of Flashman and a Boost Bar advert. He postured and bombasted his way through the tale of a victory in another court earlier that morning. He'd really pulled the wool over them. Ha ha, ho ho and hee hee. The Prosecutor, court staff and the Defendant were merely his audience. The needs of the gigantic ego bursting out of this midget frame obviously took precedence over his client's need for a reassuring or explanatory word.
 
The Bench were back. Stand up again. After consideration we have decided that you will be placed on Probation, do you agree? You will also pay compensation. How much a week can you pay out of the pittance you receive? Not enough. You will pay double. Starve. Go without. Pay this sum every week or you'll go to prison, it's not our fault that you are unemployed. Mrs Probation Officer, thank you for this report, it was full, well-written and most helpful. The Clerk, an old, grey mind in an old grey face above an old grey suit, 38 going on 70, lounged arrogantly behind his row of justice manuals. Having for half an hour bullied his confused and ailing fellow-citizen, he waved his withered hand at him imperiously, fly-swattingly and contemptuously. Off you go. The ritual of degradation was complete; Justice was seen to be done.
 
The assumed villain of the piece had been sentenced to help, and, for all its limitations, a probation order is the least of many possible evils. I take the gravest exception, however, to the shameless conduct of the legal profession. Many of the solicitors in the Victoria Law Courts hurtle from client to barely-recognised client in a blizzard of green and pink legal aid forms, hand outstretched, how nice to see you, we'll be on in a minute, I've just got another six cases to do, yes, yes, we'll talk about it before we go in, there'll be bags of time, must dash. Relying often on the availability of Social Enquiry Reports written by hard-pressed probation officers on a fraction of their income - a young brief of my acquaintance earns in excess of £50,000 per annum and is forever saying to me: "Thank so-and-so for that S.E.R., did all my work for me" - it is difficult to see how these practitioners are not racked with conscience about their earnings, so little they do, so impoverished is their bankrupt, linguistic stock-in-trade. I know of at least one prominent and wealthy City criminal lawyer who, if he can get away with it, will tell his dissatisfied clients that there is no procedure by which they can transfer their Legal Aid certificate to another lawyer. He often does get away with it and the Law Society looks askance at complaints against its members, as, one presumes, does the Great Architect.
 
The Magistracy, bless their public-spiritedness, blithely hand out licenses for the supply of a drug  which kills thousands a year whilst imprisoning and fining those who consume a harmless weed; they license the pornographer and traduce the prostitute, patriarchally oblivious to the fact that were there no customers there would be no prostitutes, the drunken driver is sentenced to 12 months' inconvenience, the unemployed, semi-literate petty thief to imprisonment, the street girl to a fine which she can only pay by repeating the offence.
 
In the Crown Court, where 2% of our justice is dispensed, the spectacle of arrogant, affluent, arcanely accoutred, pompous, long-winded barristers, bloated with their own importance, addressing ill-informed, elderly ex-public school judges about the condition of the poor is an obscenity; a masonic closed shop, unaccountable, incompetent, cynical, reactionary, sexist, racist  and largely and willfully out of touch with the diversity of interests it claims to be protecting. The ablest of lawyers eschew preferment to the Bench where, despite an almost automatic Knighthood and favourable pension arrangements, a top Silk can see his earnings plummet by 90%. Judges are generally drawn from the "Second Eleven"; unable to scale the dizzy heights of corporate law - where the real money lies - a barrister in middle life with junior members of his chambers snapping at his heels will opt- with the help of his Lodge - for a seat on the Bench, a comfortable living and retirement, and the privilege of being bored out of his skull for ten or eleven months of the year and occasionally being able to help out one of his fellow-masons.
 
For all its grand architecture, its domed ceilings and richly coloured windows, for all its structural optimism, Victoria Law Courts is a place where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; a place of knowing whispers and secret handshakes, a cosy convocation of the brutal, the greedy, the powerful as well as the ineffectual and the stupid; the pumping house of a conspiracy to divert the waters of justice into the marshlands of law. 
ishmael smith, 1991

 Now Available

 Ishmael’s Blues is now published, in both paperback and hardback editions; both editions are immediately available from lulu.com.  The paperback is also listed on amazon.

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

 Unless you’ve done this already, please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box.  Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed. 

The book’s full title is "Ishmael’s Blues – further Chronicles of Ruin", and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of blogdog Buster retiring from the fray, cat gloating from a safe distance. The cover is the same for both editions.

Link for Hardcover :  https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

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

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

 ...........................................................
Noticed at Glastonbury, a disconcerting resemblance. 
Greta
Ed
 



Tuesday 21 June 2022

The Solstice Launch!

 Now Available

mr mike, who kindly agreed to be a beta tester, said: 

"Ishmael’s Blues was a great read and brought back memories of happier times, when we could laugh at stuff as if it wasn’t really important – although I can now see it was leading us to where we are today, in a much darker place. It is an excellent anthology."
 
 Ishmael’s Blues is now published, in both paperback and hardback editions; readers who have copies of Honest, Not Invent or Vent Stack will know that our chosen POD firm is pretty reliable when it comes to production quality. 356 pages, each essay dated in the list of contents. The vast majority of material in this book is in the voice of ishmael smith – we hope to return to stanislav in a companion volume to Vent Stack, possibly later this year. 

 Both editions are immediately available from lulu.com. No one’s billing or delivery address, nor any payment info, will be disclosed to the creator of the book; all this is securely handled by the publishing platform (and Paypal, if used). The paperback is listed on amazon. (HB may follow – for some reason the HB of Honest, Not Invent never appeared on amazon, so maybe the same will happen with Ishmael’s Blues.)

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

 Unless you’ve done this already, please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box.  Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed. 

The book’s full title is "Ishmael’s Blues – further Chronicles of Ruin", and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of blogdog Buster retiring from the fray, cat gloating from a safe distance. The cover is the same for both editions.


Link for Hardcover : 

https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

 

Link for Paperback : 

https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

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

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.

 

 

Sunday 19 June 2022

The Sunday Ishmael: 19/06/2022

 

Pictured on their home world of Planet Sauros

Hiding in plain sight - the grandheir to Britain's throne has released this picture of his spawn clustered around him, baring their horrid little sharks' teeths at us, all the better to gobble us up. That one on the left has quite the piranha look about her.


A Happy Father's Day to the fathers of our nation, wishing you foi gras, champagne and black caviar, with a side of truffles. Or at least a bacon sandwich.

Looks like the Conservative Leaders have declared open war on the working class, provoking a summer of strikes and riots, as major distraction from the Lockdown Blues - Lockdown Fucked the Economy, I Got no Job, and I never got to say goodbye, the Partygate Tango - While you bastards were living it high and the Inflation Quickstep - them bread prices have done reached the sky.

Here in Smart, Successful Scotland, where the electorate has no clue that the Scots Nats are spending way far more than they raise in taxation, because Gnasher has told them that the Westminster thieves, bandits and philanderers have lied, obfuscated the statistics, and kept the whisky revenues, the public sector pay offer for 2022 reveals the pecking order of preferred occupational groups: the NHS has been offered 5% and local authority workers 2%. 
 
The rail workers have been offered 5%. We've got Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Transport and not short of a bob or two with his salary of £71,673 plus £84,144 MP's salary, plus expenses, complaining that rail workers have got a fucking cheek asking for a pay rise to match inflation when they already earn more than nurses (who we all know are angels). With inflation running at 10% and predicted to quickly reach 11%, any pay settlement less than that is  effectively a pay cut. Pay people enough to maintain their standard of living and inflation spirals upwards. Johnson and his chums are happy to have the labouring classes take the hit in the interests of the nation's economic health because they can go to Food Banks. And Community Fridges. And Charity Shops. It's not as if the Johnsonians could - infra dignitatem. 
Keir Starmer, himself not short of a bob or two, has got the Johnsonians bang to rights: "But here's the truth, Boris Johnson and Grant Shapps want the strikes to go ahead. They want the country to grind to a halt so they can feed off the division. Instead of spending their time this week around the negotiating table, they are designing attack ads. Instead of grown-up conversations to take the heat out of the situation, they are pouring petrol on the fire. Instead of bringing people together in the national interest, they are stoking division in their political interest."
It is going to be Boris' Margaret Thatcher summer.
Thank you for coming.
And why couldn't he pick up the phone and just call the belligerent, oops, brave and beleaguered dwarf  Zelensky? 
Shorty Zelensky with a chum


 
Shorty Zelensky with another chum
Nope, Boris figured there were more votes in a Ukrainian photo opportunity than in going to a conference of Northern conservatives in Doncaster, reckoning they were going to lose in Wakefield anyway. And what has he promised now? He's going to have the British Army train 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers every 120 days, to assist them to keep fighting this proxy war against Russia, whilst simultaneously waging war on his own working class, who are being required to pay for the War of  Popular Boris.
Definitely Boris' Margaret Thatcher summer. And we know what happened to her. 
Just when you think they've gone for good, here they come again:
Here they come again - (somebody's got to bleed for them to live)

Thanks, Van. Anyway, here he comes again, like rain falling on my window pane, Baron Hague of Richmond, PC, FRSL, Life Peer, MP for Richmond (posh bit of Yorkshire) from 1989 to 2015, former  Leader of the Conservative Party, Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2001, serving David Cameron as First Secretary of State  from 2010 to 2015, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2010 to 2014 and Leader of the House of Commons from 2014 to 2015.  He's not short of a bob or two, either - in 2015 Hague purchased a £2.5 million country house, Cyfronydd Hall, in Powys, Wales.
Baron Hague, Remainer, ("Brexit campaigners are peddling fantasy economics"),  Cameron's chum, and opposed to Johnsonian politics,  has been putting the boot in.
 “What is going to happen now, I imagine that Boris
Johnson will say ‘it’s business as usual’ and the Cabinet will rally around... (but) more than 40 per cent decided really on their own to vote against him. That is very difficult then to proceed as party leader...... This is like trying to drive along the M1 with two flat tyres. You can say you are at the steering wheel but is it really viable, you are not going to get to the end of the motorway."

Baron Hague was quite correct - the Prime Minister told reporters in Downing Street: “I think it’s an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result which enables us to move on, to unite and to focus on delivery and that is exactly what we are going to do.”
 The public widely regarded Hague as a bit of a wally, from his first embarassing speech in 1977 at the Conservative Party conference:
but the Tories loved him and he was Margaret Thatcher's darling.
At a time when it was a political disadvantage to be gay, unlike now, when it is compulsory, widespread rumours of his sexual orientation led him to refute the stories by revealing his wife's gynaecological records, thus rousing mr ishmael's ire. Even Sasha Swire in her Diary of an MP's Wife condemned him for breaching his wife's privacy and dignity to call in aid her miscarriages to prove his heterosexual credentials.
Editor mr verge has found this piece of Stanislavia from November 2007:

stanislav said...

Was Stanislav's Highland neighbour and famous Polish folksinger Dr Bob Dylan who popularise long "a" but only in song not in speech. Sometimes in song use long "a" for effect - "ay bullet from the back of ay bush... I am ay lonesome hobo ...like ay rolling stone.....etc" Bob just do long "a" for scan and metre and maybe evoke miserable Old Scotchcunt ballad from eighteenth century "I am ay man of constant sorrow," "ay question in your nerves is lit...how many seas must ay white dove sail ...blame it on ay simple twist of fate." Is just poetic license. Is fucking hundreds of example. But not always. Plenty of Bobsong with proper, short "a." If not, some song run in fucking hours not just twenty minute. Long "a" in Bob's case is not a speech impairment. Unlike some people.
Young Master Hague, from Yorkshire, drink fifteen pints of lunchtime beer with manual workers and have mystical experience and make all fucking hair fall out. Become consume with desire in being prime minister and cuntus inter pares, even if bald as coot. After fifteen pint shitsplatter, Sweet William, sitting on pile of cushion and listen to John Wesley Harding, hear Maestro Bob sing "I am ay lonesome hobo without family or friends. I have tried my hand at bribery, blackmail and deceit....." and ever since, William is uplifted that sad young mommy's boy is not alone in big bad world, in homage to Bob cannot say short "a" ever again. Is fixed in mind. Everything is long "a," deep, profound. Just hang on there ay moment, you old codgers, I will still be ay young man when you are all in ay hole in the ground, by 'eck."
 
 Thanks to hearing of Bob Dylan, develop confidence and go in government eventually. One night after few Glenfiddick, prime minister say This little bald arsehole, he talks like a pompous prat -ay very good day to you, prime minister; I will be making ay statement in the house - 
See the source image
sounds like Jimmy fucking Saville, not a minister in my government, fuck him off, bury him in Wales. They all talk shit over there. Dwarves and child molesters and sheep shaggers. He'll fit right in there. Right away prime minister, said Chief of Staff Powell, or Pole, as he would have it. Consider the pompous little cunt buried. In Merthyr fucking Tydfil or some other arsehole slag heap of a place.

And so Sweet William go in Wales, and like all ambitious politician, make Brown marriage with womanperson, even if longing, deep inside, for ay very real accord with ay very nice, athletic, toned man; to make work-out in gym, make judo and karate and kung fu and share hotel room bed to save money, being, in ay very real sense, a Yorkshire-tight-bastard.

Official wife Ffffffion probably say William, you look like a cunt, try this nice baseball cap. 
transl. "I am horny"
Yes, that's right put it on backwards. You know how to do backwards, it's about the only thing you do know. But Fffffffffffion, says Sweet William, this is ay piece of gangster apparel, is it not, Mr Speaker, will not ay dark person approach me, Mister Speaker, with ay phrase not dissimilar to Yo, pussy whipped jive ass mothafucka? And me ay prime minister-in-waiting? You'll wait a long fucking time, now stop talking like a cunt and wear the fucking hat, and I am not Mr Speaker, ya mad bastard.
 
And so begin terrible decline of lonely young slaphead. Get ridiculed, whole nation fall over laughing at pompous Yorkshire cunt in baseball cap, pretend to be niggerbastard from ghetto on Detroit, not wimp nancy from fucking Barnsley. Get thrown from party leader's job and replaced by more slaphead, Ian and Duncan Smith, another mad cunt, The Quiet Man is TURNING UP THE VOLUME. Fuck me, is not exactly Go punk ahead, if you are lucky, and make my fucking day, is it ? Famous words of great Polish law enforcer, Filthy Harry.

Fucked up arse by party, Sweet William take long "a" pomposity show on road with Tony Cup Of Tea-Benn - father of Plagues Minister, Rosemary Benn and grandfather of Spoiled-brat Prodigy Benn - and make fortune. Both sit around and talk like fucking Moses. Do Rotary, Freemasons, Round Table, but not, after teenage experience, working mans club, fuck, no; memory still hurt after thirty years. Talk about life at top, major decisions taken as Wales Secretary, sheep, leeks, rugby, daffodils and Tom Jones, that's it. Oh, and Shirley Bassey. And Ron BadgerMan Davies only he came later. It is, Mister Speaker, ay most significant position in ay government to be ay secretary of state for sheep and vegetables or should that be ay vegetable, Mr Speaker, and it is one I commend to the House as ay small example of my towering experience in British politics, Mr Speaker.
 
 And now Sweet William is back on opposition cunt bench, smarting a little, surrounded by Flashman types but, nevertheless, cosied up to Mr David Two Dicks Willets - (how's that happen? Is birth defect, or surgical augment ?) - ay most distinguished foreign secretary-in-waiting, Mr Speaker.

As I said to my Spad, Sebastian, only this morning, Mr Speaker, Have ay nice day, dear one, have ay very nice day. The times, indeed Mr Speaker, they are ay changing, as we say up North. Icky thump. That'll be fifteen hundred pounds. Plus VAT.
.......................................................................
For mr bungalow bill -
To rest my eyes on shades of green....... 
 
We've had a hot wind blowing these last couple of days, which has crisped leaves and withered flowers, but I captured these photos of  cow parsley and laburnum at their best last week.

 


Ishmael's Blues is not yet available for purchase, but Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack, anthologies of the work of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish plumber - can be purchased  from Amazon or from Lulu. 
 

Lulu Link for Vent Stack:

https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu

 Lulu Link for Honest, Not Invent

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. 
 
Ishmael's Blues - coming soon