The Sunday Ishmael: 08/06/2025

 You know how distressing it is, right? when you are working some fine embroidery on white linen and whoops, the needle slips into your finger and hits a minor blood vessel. There's a blood spot in the middle of the work, you can't use chemicals on it and you can't throw it in the washing machine. No? Not happened to you? Well, how about you're shaving, nick yourself and a spot lands on your crisply white work shirt. Ok, talking the same language here.

Happened to me this morning - stabbed myself with a pin and you wouldn't believe the blood that ended up on the Tuscan hills I was appliquéing. The Tuscan hills are well-soaked in blood, what with all the Medici wars on the city states and the wild boar shooting. 

A Tuscan family. That's a shotgun the girl on the right is toting.
 

But I was doing pretty, not real, hills.

We textile artists have the remedy to hand, however, and now, so have you next time you are doing whatever and have to deal with a small quantity of blood. Spit on it. Not great lung-rattling phlegmy expectorations from the crusty bottom of your lungs. Just mouth spit - lots. Then rub it with the corner of your hankie - remember hankies? Or any bit of natural fibre fabric you have to hand - and hey presto - blood all gone. It is truly amazing. It fades away before your very eyes. If you don't like spitting, then put your hankie corner in your mouth, thoroughly wet it, then rub away. It has to be your spit on your blood, though - you can't get your wife to spit on it. The enzymes in your spit will digest away your blood. 

You're welcome.

John Swinney is making heavy work of spinning the Hamilton by-election defeat into a victory for the SNP, but, by God, the boy's having a good go at it. We'll have to try him out with spinning straw into gold. For our overseas readers and those who haven't been paying much attention to Scottish politics, and, as usual, who can blame you, John Swine is the SNP First Minister of Scotland, Scotland having a devolved administration that it likes to call a government, the Scottish National Party having been in charge since 2007, on the pretend platform of wanting independence for Scotland.

You wouldn't believe he's only 61 - it's a hard and disappointing life in the SNP. John nobly stepped forward to take over the helm of the SNP after the glorious leader - Nicola Sturgeon - resigned from the job when she and her husband were arrested on charges of fraud.(Camper van, missing £600,000, forensic tent in the front garden). You couldn't make it up. Business as usual, though, on with the show, until last Thursday when the voters of Hamilton, Larkhall and  Stonehouse defeated Swiney's expectations by returning Labour to the seat. The by-election was triggered by the death of the incumbent, Christina McKelvie, who had held the seat for the SNP in the 2021 Holyrood election with a majority of 4,582. Since then, of course, scandal and disgrace have been best pals with the SNP, providing the most amusing politics this century. Swiney really didn't see it coming - he thought that the threat was Reform, not Labour. Before the election, he said that it would be a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK, a party he described as racist. What's he saying now? “We must recognise I came into office a year ago with an inheritance of difficulties for the SNP and we are in the process of recovery - we have not recovered, we are recovering....What I said transpired - the Labour vote collapsed. A year ago [in the general election] Labour commanded 50 per cent in this constituency and on Thursday that fell to just over 30 per cent.” Way to go, John, spin away - Labour still won the seat, maybe because Reform split the SNP vote, but Labour won. Maybe there's hope yet for Scotland escaping the heel of the SNP. He's decided that the voters were not racist, nor gullible, but angry - with the SNP? No, of course not, he reckons the issues were the cost of living and the NHS, and he's now going to sort them out. Get a move on with that, John, there's a Holyrood election just around the corner. 

Meanwhile, in England, the well-connected Sir Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt, better known as Jeremy Cunt, has written a book. (Well, of course he has. Don't you dare buy it - it will only encourage him.) The once, but not future, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Health Secretary (so multi-talented) has appeared on the Laura Kuenssberg show, promoting it.

Here's Amazon's blurb:

Hunt observes how Britain has continued to exert global influence despite losing its empire and economic dominance. Where does our influence lie - in democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights? Or climate change, promoting global health security and dealing with the excesses of the internet? He argues we have acquired authority on the global stage that is about much more than history and informs a positive vision of the future. He writes with passion and clarity, interweaving stories about his time in Government with questions he can now ask publicly about our attitude to China, Tech, Security, Climate Change and all aspects of our global role.

Now it's that sort of thinking that has landed us in this mess. The only sensible thing to do, if you are an unfortunate citizen of the U.K,  is to find a quiet corner - of England, preferably, and keep your head down. None of this passion and clarity, Jeremy, old bean - that has led us to being Putin's Enemy No. 1. As for those questions about China - well, he could try asking the wife - Hunt's wife, Lucia Guo, comes from China. They met in 2008, when she was working at Warwick University recruiting Chinese students. She presented a segment on Sky's China Hour, a show co-produced by state-owned broadcaster China International Television Corporation.
They married the following year and have a son and two daughters.

Back to the wild boar - you've not forgotten them?

They revere them in Tuscany - put up statues to them. The form their worship also takes is shooting and eating them. I had wild boar ragu - which was rather good - but that was probably the garlic and red wine, which makes everything better - although, thinking about it, probably not fish fingers. Now, down in the Forest of Dean, which is proper ooh arr country, the wild boar seem to have the same status as cows in India.  Wild Boar became extinct around 300 years ago in the UK, but re-established themselves in the Forest of Dean after escaping from a wild boar farm in the area during the 1990’s. In 2004 around 60 farm-reared wild boar were dumped in an illegal release near the village of Staunton on the western edge of the Forest and   the two populations merged. My Forest of Dean ooh-arr acquaintance tells me that there are almost a thousand of them now, living in the Forest and predating upon the villages. They stroll down the village streets, upending dustbins and sorting through the contents for snacks. They are very big and very clever, can open garden gates with their noses, holding open the gate for their relatives to pile into the garden and eat all the nice greenery. If you leave your bi-fold doors open they will stroll into your kitchen/diner. The wolves released in the Scottish Highlands haven't done near as well, but give them time.

Give me strength - there was a reason that wild boar and wolves were hunted to extinction, a reason that probably remains valid today. I wouldn't want to come home to find a wild boar in my kitchen. The day the cows came in was bad enough. They jumped over the wall, having kicked it down first, and rampaged round the garden, made their way into the delectable kitchen garden and helped themselves. They reckoned without me and Harris running round like lunatics, shouting at them until they galloped back the way they came, leaving destruction, deep, deep hoof prints and cow pats behind.

Oh yes - Orkney. It is buttercup time now.

And iris time

And Boat Time:

Talking of boats, do watch the BBC offering: Dept. Q. It features our very own Pentolina pretending to be a car ferry between the Scottish Mainland and some fictional island and a plot line that resolves into it were the island nutters wot done it. It will cure you of any island longings you may be secretly harbouring.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of Stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

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.

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

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

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

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.