The Sunday Ishmael: 29/06/2025

 

Orkney, Best Part of England

There I was, minding my own business - an increasingly rare phenomenon, since we are now required to mind each others' business and then report them - when the sound of saucepan lids being beaten, football rattles and hooters presaged the approach, looming through the summer haar, of a Blackening. As Wiki tells us: 

Blackening is a traditional wedding custom performed in the days  prior to marriage in rural areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland. The bride and/or groom are "captured" by friends and family, covered in food, or a variety of other – preferably adhesive – substances, then paraded publicly for the community to see .... driven in the back of an open-backed truck, accompanied by the clattering and banging of pots and pans."

Here's one. You can see the fun they are having. The bride is the particularly filthy one, sitting up against the back of the cab.

Back to me, minding my own business, that freezing afternoon in summer, wreathed in thick sea-fog. The lorry did a U-turn in front of me, stopped to allow one of the ladies aboard to disembark over the side of the lorry. The banging, hooting and cat-calling recommenced and the lady in question turned, bent over and exposed her lily-white arse to her companions, giving them the finger and scampering off into her house. The rest of the blackeners noticed I was watching and waved cheerily to me, so I waved back. Safest, really. The lorry sped off, on its way to the harbour, where it reverses down the slip and the blackeners slide off into the sea.

This is a bloke's blackening. At some point in the proceedings, the groom is attached to a handy lamppost by industrial cling film and his chums do a lot of shouting before they get bored or the booze wears off.

Orkney is hosting the Island Games this year. Not heard of the Island Games? It is a week long event, from the 18th to the 25th July 2025, when athletes from up to 24 island groups across the world compete in 12 exciting sports. It is going to be hell. They are expecting 2,500 to 3000 visitors. God knows where they are all going to stay.

 Around town signs are sprouting up saying Road Closed. Plan Ahead.

Here are some of the exciting sports featured on the Island Games' website. Below left - bike riding into a standing stone. Below Middle - jumping on sheep. Below right - head butting a standing stone, very fast.

Middle left - falling into the sea. Middle middle - driving golf balls at a standing stone. Middle right - competitive pee retention next to a standing stone.

Bottom left - leaning on a standing stone. Bottom middle - holding a ball near some standing stones. Bottom right - shooting arrows at standing stones.
You're getting the theme here? Yah, Boo, Sucks, Bermuda, we've got standing stones. Got any standing stones, Isle of Wight? Where are your standing stones, Guernsey? Did we mention we have Standing Stones? Well we have. Lots.

We've only just recovered from the International St. Magnus Festival, with its customary so pleased with itself, up its own arse middle-class smuggery. Retired teachers flock annually to Orkney to worship Sir Peter Maxwell-Bumhole's festival for the lower-paid professional classes. You know the sort - they go to Stratford to show off their erudition, sniggering at Shakespeare's lame and unfunny dirty jokes to show how clever they are: "What country, friends, is this?" (Twelfth Night, Act 1, scene 2) and they fall about laughing, like fourth-formers. He said cunt, ho ho. Or Year 9, as they say nowadays.

As the Festival website tells us: 

Running from Friday 20 June to Friday 27 June 2025, one of Scotland’s most distinctive midsummer arts celebrations, the festival this year takes “Earth” as its guiding theme, with a packed programme spanning music, poetry, storytelling, visual art, and performance, all anchored in the elemental landscapes of Orkney. Dear Gods and little tiddlers, this Festival really can't get over itself - we are just so unbelievably right-on, as Festival Director Alasdair Nicolson explained, “This year we look at how we interact with the place we live, how much artistic creativity has taken the earth as its starting point, and even how we recycle.” Jolly Good. A Festival about recycling. Again, from the blurb:

A highlight was Deep Wheel Orcadia, "based on the award-winning verse novel by Harry Josephine Giles. A fusion of performance, music and image tells the story of Astrid – who, on return from art school on Mars, meets Darling, a Martian hiding on a space station struggling for survival. Written in Orkney dialect, this spellbinding production includes music by BAFTA-winning composer Atzi Muramatsu with direction by Susan Worsfold." 

You can't make this shit up. Well, someone did. This bloke.

Here's the award winning Harry Josephine Giles, educated at St. Andrew's;  Scotland's finest University.

Nope, it's not an incredibly ugly woman. Harry's embracing his gender fluidity, and plays the part of the female protagonist in this moving love story in space written in undecipherable Orcadian. Subtitles weren't available. How precious can you get?

Talking of gender fluidity, have you heard the sad story of Jay Hulme, a volunteer at St Nicholas Church in Leicester? Them is a Christian. (Have I got that right? They/Them, not Its?). Jay attracted the sexual interest of another Christian, a lay preacher by name of Venessa Pinto. Jay likes sex with blokes, having been born a biological female and it being quite usual for females to be sexually oriented to blokes. Venessa, however, was not a bloke and did not understand why Jay rejected her advances. Is it because I is black, she mournfully wondered? Because, you see, in a truly Shakespearian cross-dressing plot twist, here's Jay.

Venessa, doing the whole hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, set about a campaign of on-line abuse which left Jay feeling pretty upset. "I felt like she was in my pocket, and in my house, and in my brain all of the time, saying these horrendous things and I couldn't get away," he says. The Leicester police weren't interested and Jay's Bishop, Martyn Snow - who is in the running to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England, not only didn't believe them/they, but accused Jay of being a witch - really! Honest, not invent! Because Jay had been seen in the dark with a candle in church and had a tarot-reading friend. These Christians, what are they like? The tension is getting pretty unbearable here, so I'll cut through and let you know that  Leicestershire Police acknowledged their initial response fell short of the standards expected, and said it would continue "to develop its knowledge and training in relation to preventing and detecting stalking offences". Venessa was charged and in May 2024  she pleaded guilty to stalking, involving serious distress or harm and was given an 18-month community order and banned from contacting Jay for a year.

There'll probably be a film. Baby Black Reindeer? Jay has garnered lots of publicity which will help his career as a poet, author and blogger no end. Hell, even I went on his/they's website so I could bring you a taste of his/them's poetry:

Jesus at the Gay Bar

He's here in the midst of it -

right at the centre of the dance floor,

robes hitched up to His knees...

I can't give you any more, on account of copyright stuff, but you can read it for yourself: Jesus at the Gay Bar — Jay Hulme There's a little explanatory sermon that goes with it, but basically it is saying Jesus is cool with sex that happens outwith marriage between a man and a woman. Church of England, you see. Couldn't get away with these heretical ideas in the Catholic Church.

It reminds one of the last successful blasphemy trial in the UK, in relation to the poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name by James Kirkup, poet, writer, and teacher. It was published in Gay News in 1976 and caused outrage amongst Christians, its subject matter being homosexual sex between Jesus and a great many people, including all the apostles and the centurion who takes Christ's body down from the cross and who speaks in this little extract: 

For the last time

I laid my lips around the tip

of that great cock, the instrument

of our salvation, our eternal joy.

The shaft, still throbbed, anointed

with death’s final ejaculation

The prosecution was brought against Gay News and its publisher, David Lemon in 1977. Both were found guilty: Gay News Ltd was fined £1,000 and Denis Lemon was fined £500 and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment suspended. It had been "touch and go", said the judge, whether he would actually send Denis Lemon to jail. That'll teach publishers to actually read what's in their magazines.

On appeal, in 1978, the Court of Appeal quashed Denis Lemon's suspended prison sentence but upheld the convictions. It went up to the House of Lords, where the Law Lords heard the appeal against conviction and delivered their judgment on 21 February 1979.

At issue was whether or not the offence of blasphemous libel required specific intent of committing such a blasphemy. By a majority of 3 to 2, the Lords concluded that intention was not required. Lord Scarman was of the opinion that blasphemy laws should cover all religions and not just Christianity and sought strict liability for those who "cause grave offence to the religious feelings of some of their fellow citizens or are such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read them". The appeal was lost.

Moving on from all of this cock-talk, gorgeous, pouting Wes Streeting was on the politics programmes this morning. Have you noticed how he always likes to wear a blue suit or a blue tie to match his eyes? Probably his husband dresses him up nice before the cameras. Sorry, that's straying into more cock-talk.

It's a bit of a bad time for Labour at the moment, as you probably noticed and charming, relatable Wes made a good fist (sorry!) of not defending the indefensible (that's U-turn Keir and PIP-snatcher Reeves), whilst letting us all know that things are going to get better and the NHS will give us all Monjaro injections if his preferred strategy of everyone leaving out one bottle of Coca-Cola per day doesn't cut the mustard ( again, apologies). Coca-Cola executives were not available to refute these accusations that they have single-handedly rendered the UK into an obese nation.

It got fun when Victoria Substitute

tempted him into commenting on Bob Vylan's Glastonbury stunt, inciting murder of the armed forces of Britain's ally, Israel, with his invitation to the useful idiots to join his chant of Death, Death to the IDF. (Somerset Police are reviewing footage of the offence). Wes, god bless him, found it distasteful - appalling, even, stating his strongly-held belief:  "All life is sacred." Best tell the boss. Actually, to be fair, he has told Starmer that the NHS can't afford to kill all the people who will queue up to kill themselves once the Assisted Suicide Dying Bill is enacted in law. Then there's the Dead Babies Bill. Don't misunderstand me - I think there's far too many people on the planet, and they can't all move to the Highlands of Scotland - but I don't go round declaring passionately that all life is sacred. Bollocks. 

I need a little lie down now and perhaps a few strewing herbs:

The Dutch traveller Levimus Leminius, whilst visiting England in 1560 wrote in his diary:

“Their chambers and parlours strawed over with sweet herbes refreshed mee; their nosegays finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragraunt floures, in their bed chambers and privy rooms with comfortable smell cheered me up and entirely delygted all my senses.”

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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.