The Sunday Ishmael: 01/03/2026

 

Happy St. David's day. 1st March. Daffodils, you know. 

Prettier than leeks, and less pungent, the daffodil, especially the variety called the Tenby daffodil, replaced the leek as the national emblem of Wales in the 19th century. Previously, it was well known that your whoreson Welshman had a habit of sticking a leek into his hat, to distinguish himself from non-Welsh people. Here's a comedy Welsh soldier, Fluellen, in Act 4, scene 7 of Henry V:

"Your Majesty says very true. If your Majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps, which, your Majesty know, to this hour is an honourable badge of the service. And I do believe
your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy’s day".

Here's Yuri Andreievitch Zhivago amongst the daffodils, welcoming the Spring at Varykino, feeling the warm sun on his face after the long, agonising, ice-bound winter. Filmed by David Lean and released in 1965, the exquisitely beautiful sequences of the Russian countryside were not what they seemed. The spring scenes at Varykino — including Yuri running joyfully through the daffodils — were filmed near Madrid, where the entire faux‑Russian landscape had been constructed. The crew planted 7,000 daffodil bulbs specifically for that sequence. Unfortunately, nature misbehaved - the Spanish winter that year was unusually mild, so the bulbs started blooming far too early, and the crew had to dig them all up,

store them,  and replant them later so they would flower on cue for David Lean’s camera.

It’s very Lean: obsessive, beautiful, and wildly impractical — all for a few seconds of cinematic transcendence. This was before CGI, of course. Now a Director could summon a continent of daffodils - or an army of leeks, for that matter, in pursuit of his vision.

In his 1954 poem, Church Going, Philip Larkin's protagonist compulsively visits churches, a bit like John Betjeman:

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; 

He wonders what will become of churches, once belief has fled:

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Larkin, who died in 1985, didn't live to see what English churches have actually been turned into - antique wholesale warehouses, all-you-can-eat for a tenner Chinese/Indian/Mexican/Thai fusion canteens, mosques. There's also a thriving trade in converting churches into dwelling houses for committed Sodomite Satanists. Maybe I've been unduly influenced by my recent exposure to Pillion, a sad and depressing study of BDSM, reviewed in these pages on the 15th February, but, judge for yourselves:

They've shoved a bed up the holy end, retained the Communion steps so that subs can kneel fetchingly-

look closer:

 
Or what about this one?

Neatly arranged for a spot of flagellation.

While this one seems to have retained everything you'd need for a Black Mass luxe, with nibbles to follow:

What? I hear you gasp and splutter, what the actual fuck, as the young people say, but, it seems, according to surveys, never actually do. Well, I'm hoping to move house and so Rightmove sends me e-newsletters of "dream properties". The latest offering was of church conversions. Buildings, not religious conversions. I'm not a Christian, as you probably remember, although I was raised by nuns in the whole smells, bells and catechism tradition, but I find that I am offended. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines blasphemy as: "the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God or to something sacred".

I'd rather these decommissioned churches became mosques. Or synagogues. Even though Christians seem to have lost the fire in their arses that drove their religion to sweep through the Roman Empire; Jews and Muslims have retained their belief systems - and all three have the same God of the Old Testament. People of the Book, innit, although the Christians and Muslims branched off with their own Prophets. Which caused two millennia of upset as each branch strove to exert their own supremacy, superiority, spirituality and dietary customs.

Which brings me round to the Middle East, after meandering down those green and leafy primrose paths and byways of conversation. Why would any sane person go to Dubai on holiday? No, really. What's wrong with Scarborough? Or Tuscany, if you are feeling adventurous. I've been to both and can thoroughly recommend them - although you have to be careful not to eat your chips outside in Scarborough because the seagulls are addicted and will rip you apart to get at your chips. Northumberland is lovely at this time of year - great carpets of snowdrops in church yards.

Dubai, though? There was this holiday-making totty on the politics shows this morning, baking her exposed skin in an effort to contract skin cancer and attention from the religious police; complaining about the lack of arrangements for her to register as a holiday maker, and be given immunity from the bombs.

What is the matter with these people? Where else are they demanding the right to go on holiday? Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Syria? Why not Ukraine or Russia?

The Labour Government has been very careful to distance itself from the joint U.S./Israel attack on Iran and the assassination of 

Supreme Leader Khamenei, the army chief of staff, General Abdol Rahim Mousavi,  defence minister General Aziz Nasirzadeh, Major General Mohammad Pakpour, Ali Shamkhani, security adviser to Khamenei, Saleh Asadi, head of the Intelligence Directorate of the Khatam al Anbiya emergency command, Mohammad Shirazi, head of the military bureau, Hossein Jabal Amelian, head of SPND (Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research) and Reza Mozaffari-Nia, a former head of SPND and former deputy defence minister.

I suppose John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, has to weigh his words very carefully, given the indebtedness of Labour to the Muslim vote. And, now, I suppose, that applies to David Paulden, as  his ranks have been swollen by the addition of Hannah, the young English plumber (honest, not invent), 

who swept to victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election having had her election materials printed in Urdu and persuaded the imams to tell their male congregants to make their families vote for her - which they did by dint of entering the polling booth with them and telling them where to put their cross. "Family voting" they call it, and it is illegal, but I suppose they have immunity. Shame about all those yards of bright yellow hair which, doubtless, Hannah will have to cover with a headscarf when talking to her constituents. 

Left to Right (literally) John Healey, Priti Patel and David Paulden

Much though it irks, it looks like the Conservatives, for once, are the party of principle. Makes a change.

Shame then, that in the prophetic words of William Butler Yeats, in The Second Coming:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."

It is all a bit of a worry, with the Middle East in turmoil as Trump's Armada focuses on regime change in Iran and Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince of Persia, waits in the wings to resume his historic Crown as, he assures us, a Constitutional Monarch in a westernised democracy. Like King Charles III. 

Didn't Israel do well, though?

I'll conclude with the ominous ending of Yeats' Second Coming:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

It really is all a bit too, too, Revelations. Well, I suppose we have been warned.

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.