Wet thought

 

 

 

 

 

 

My early-ish swim in the community pool continues, as I find an alternative to my local pool that is closed for annual maintenance.  Apart from two Dutch visitors who looked shocked to be at the pool so early in the morning and equally shocked to find someone else there, I have swum alone.  Which is good.  Not because I am misanthropic, but because the pool is too small to do reasonable lengths and the only way to get value for money for your effort is to swim in circles.  When you are swimming in rapid circles in a smallish pool, there really isn’t room for anyone else, not that that would stop me, as avoiding people gives an added interest to the almost terminal boredom of straight-line swimming.

     And, I’m saving money!  My original plan was to go and swim in the municipal pool in Gavà, where you have to buy a pre-paid card for a certain number of swims.  This plan may yet come into operation as I am watching the temperature and the weather: I don’t swim in the cold or the rain.  I may be a dedicated swimmer but I am not fanatical!

 

 

 

Yesterday evening was another meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.  This time we had two Americans, two Indians, a Catalan and a Welshman and a dog.

     I had a relatively clear run through from Castelldefels to get to the meeting and, arriving early I was told about the medical issues that have recently been affecting the dog.  Today a further visit to the vet and hopefully some good news about how to proceed with her treatment.  She is now 11 years old, but looks younger and is still spritely.  We live in hope!

     The next meeting will be in October (we have a meeting a month, though a few years ago they were weekly) and I am responsible for choosing the topic and selecting a couple of poems for reading and discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

“Dreams and Nightmares” was the theme for last night’s meeting and the discussion was wide ranging, thoughtful and thought making!  I realise that this group is the only opportunity I have for an in-depth consideration of literary topics, and I truly value it.

     The poems we read were “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes – a fairly famous poem and one surely known by generations of American school children – and “Scarecrow on Fire” by another American poet called Dean Young.

     The title of Young’s poem was immediately arresting and put me in mind of Dalí’s painting “The Burning Giraffe” which haunted my as a kid after seeing it in (I think) The Story of Art for the first time, and Hughes’ poem has Surrealistic touches throughout.  It may also be significant that the image of the scarecrow is often used as a metaphor for Man, “an empty coat upon a stick” in Yeats phrase, a worthless thing unless “soul clap its hands and sing” to give meaning to existence.

     There is a great deal of negative language in this poem: disappearing, alleyways, small, graveyard, black angel, goodbye, last, winter, nothingness, stitching, vomiting, nightmare, illusion, dirt, wound, but there is also the assertion of “Hell, even now I love life” and the last words of the poem “This is my soul, freed.”  But there are no exclamation marks after either statement and that omission lessens the force of the positive.  And his freed soul is linked to water boiling, to evaporation, to vapour, just like his line where he says that “Maybe poems are made of breath” an exhalation into emptiness, just as earlier in the poem he asserted that, “We all feel / suspended over a drop into nothingness.”

     This is a dense poem, rich in images and associations from a poet about whom I want to know more!

     A key part of the evening is a short meditation on the theme, accompanied by a randomly chosen essential oil.  This is a nod to Californian Hippydom and was instituted by the founder of the group as a defiant reminder of her home state, and is continued because, well, it’s a nice idea.

     After the meditation there is a period allocated for writing.  This can be one the theme or not as the individual desires, and the end results of the writing can be shared or not again as the individual decides.

     I wrote on the theme and came up with the following.

 

 

The Dream

 

It is unnoticed ease,

a facile roll of incidents,

a wave of disparates,

that link and coalesce to make

a comfort carapace

that frames fragile reality.

A passageway located

Nowhere and yet Everywhere.

A known unknown.

A shell, a wall, a hill –

and all, yes all,

within a moment’s touch;

though sense is different.

 

Dimensions wax and wane

to morning’s death.

 

 

Something to work on!

 

     And now to start thinking about the theme for the next poetry meeting.  Among my first thoughts were “Courage” “Fear” and “Food” – gives great scope for the poems that we can talk about.  I will think on!

 

 Barcelona Poetry Group can be reached via this website:

 

 

https://www.meetup.com/es-ES/barcelona-english-speaking-poetry-group/?_cookie-check=XfrmrxLlMnboHNW7

 

The Great & The Good?

 

 

 

Part of the appeal of the disgraced liar of an ex-Prime Minister Johnson was that he assiduously avoided using his first name with its imperial associations of ‘Alexander’ and allowed (and urged) others to call him simply Boris.

     This morning’s Daily Mail front page has the usual sycophantic trash and concentrates on a picture of the Queen and the new Prime Minister with a bubble caption suggesting both of them said, “Hello Liz!” at the same time.  I will never use the Prime Minister’s first name and will always refer to her as “Truss”, (I like the idea of something under stress) there will be no humanising or chummyfying of this far-right ideologue who does not have the support of her MPs, the Country or Humanity. 

     She ‘won’ her election to the top political job with the roughly equivalent number of votes equal to the population of a town like Harlow in Essex. 

  

 

 

 

 

She has no real mandate and I regard her as being foisted on the people of the United Kingdom.  While the democratic [please define, Ed.] rules have been followed, she still appears to be more illegitimate a leader than even the lying buffoon because he, at least, took his beguiling mendacity to a General Election.

     But let us sift through the horror dregs that comprise her cabinet and try and find some morsels of comfort to give some sort of support for the dark days ahead.

     Well, the fact that there are two women and three politicians of colour in the top four offices of state must be something to be boosted by.  Or not.

     I still recall (with bitterness) how little for the rights of women the election of Thatcher to be Prime Minister actually achieved.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a portrayal of genius in her Spitting Image puppet that Thatcher was portrayed as wearing trousers and standing up to pee – with her ministers saying, “I can never ‘go’ when she is there!”  Thatcher was seen as an exception not as an example.  And, much as I loathe (present tense, it will never die) Thatcher, May, and Truss look like the palest of reflections of her command of British Politics – at least her command after using the Falklands Conflict to boost her flagging popularity.

The non-white faces at the top are, Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor; Suella Braverman as Home Secretary, and James Cleverly as Foreign Secretary.  To have, as all the papers have pointed out, no white male in the top four offices of state is a remarkable state of affairs, and on the face of it is commendably positive, but, as with Thatcher and the position of women, it is not who you are, but what you do and achieve with being where you are that counts.

Given the past voting behaviour and statements of Kwarteng, Braverman and Cleverly there is nothing that they have done or said that encourages one to think that they are going to be role models for blacks and Asians aspiring to top jobs.  Braverman especially is a deeply problematic appointment, far from being a breath of fresh air, she seems fixated on being more ruthless than her immediate predecessor and has already reaffirmed her determination to banish some aspects of the problem of immigration to Rwanda.

These politicians will be judged on their actions and how far they are able to influence policy and produce results that mitigate some of the deep harm in our public life and public services that have been inflicted by the past 12 years of Tory misrule.

It is obviously unfair to judge them all when they have only been in post for a matter of hours but let us never forget that they have been in government for a considerably longer time – these people are not unknowns and their past voting records are available for inspection so that anyone can check and see what they have done so far and make informed judgements on their suitability for the future.

One of my friends, in talking about the present political situation, wrote, “I’m frightened!”  A fair reaction to what the Tory leader has said (and not said) in the hustings leading up to her victory.  Her lacklustre speeches since acceding to power have been less than encouraging, but we should, at all times, remember that in theory these politicians represent and serve us, the public.  If we see that our interests are not being put first by the people we pay, then we must take action!

I am fond of repeating the old observation that in the Year of Revolutions in 1848 virtually everywhere underwent a radical change to the way that they were being governed except for Britain.  The Powers That Be managed to give just enough (and freely use force) to keep revolution ‘under control’ and to maintain the status quo so that essentially everything remained the same with the power of the elites safeguarded.

In one disgusting statistic I read TODAY, it turns out that Britain has the most glaring disparity between rich and poor in Europe only outdone by Bulgaria!  And our new Prime Minister wants to use tax cuts to make this disparity even brighter!

It is difficult to know what must happen or be shown to be taking place before the population of Britain says, “Enough!”

I am conscious that I have not given my plan for action and, in truth, given the political situation in which we live, it is difficult to suggest something that says within the bounds of legality that will have real results.  I believe in parliamentary democracy and think that action must be pressure on our elected representatives.  How that ‘action’ and ‘pressure’ is defined in the key to making something positive from the dire negativity that 12 years of Tory Misrule have forced on our country.

If there is one thing to remember as a spur to action in the forthcoming months it is this: space has been found in government for Rees-Mogg, and a place at the Cabinet table for him as well!  As the litmus paper for political inanity anyone who regards him as anything other than a grotesque anachronistic deadweight, must be wrong!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We'll let you know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve always felt that Polonius in Hamlet has had a bad press.  He is usually dismissed as a boringly preachy busybody who voices trite truisms and is eventually killed behind the arras, and who cares?

     In my production of Hamlet, Polonius would be a master of state craft and a more intelligently Machiavellian protagonist than the fussy old father that he usually is.  I think that a lot of the advice that he gives is good and has become unattributed aphorism.  It is particularly pleasing to see that our departing Prime Minister has taken one of his homilies to his tiny little heart.

     In what is probably Polonius’s most famous utterance he says, and he prefaces it with a ranking of its importance (“This above all”) “. . . to thine own self be true” – and with his last speech Johnson has personified that dictum, by using his last public performative vomit of words as Prime Minister to lie, lie and lie again!

     His achievement of the first stage of becoming World King (i.e., Prime Minister of Great Britain and The United Kingdom) was through the lies that seeded the victory in the corrupt Brexit campaign.  Throughout his inglorious stewardship of the Government, he has lied to The Queen, Parliament (repeatedly) and The British Public – as well, of course as various lovers, friends, officials, foreigners, wives, colleagues, bosses.  Everyone, in short, with whom he has ever been in contact.

     Everything in his Last Speech was either an out and out lie, a wilful misinterpretation of accepted reality, or a shading of the truth with intent to mislead.  From his false assurance that he would retire to his plough, knowing as he did that his chosen Classical reference was to a man who was called from rusticity to public life again, to his fulsome assurance of his backing of Truss (an assertion of loyalty from a man who made an entire career out of disloyalty) his statements were, one after the other, disingenuous.

     It is remarkable that being Prime Minister during one of the most turbulent post war times has left his character untainted by any scintilla of self-knowledge.  He started the job on a lie, he has lied through his time in office, and his valedictory speech was also a pack of lies.

     His baseness is so profound that nothing, not a near death experience; unnecessary Covid deaths; divorce; marriage; birth of a child; criminality; public disgust; rejection by colleagues; degradation of Britain’s position in the world; breaking draconian rules and being found out; presiding over a cost of living crisis; threatening the destruction of The Union; breaking the law – and so on, NOTHING has been able to dent, nay, scratch his galactic self-esteem.

     His leaving speech reeked of faux humility – lauding his imaginary achievements and parading his equally imaginary victimhood; praising a woman he hopes will fail, so that he can be seen as a Bonnie Prince Charlie character, the king over the water, waiting for the call to take what is rightfully his.

     Johnson should remember that The Young Pretender’s life ended in bitterness, loneliness, drunkenness, and failure and, something that Johnson can all too easily relate to, dependent on the charity of others for his lifestyle!

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 I am building up my strength to respond to his replacement’s speech in little over an hour or so.  Toni has suggested a coffee in town and perhaps a sugar free ice cream in our favourite gelateria.  Sounds like a good way to separate myself from the political anger that is all too evident in my world view nowadays.

 

Oh, and by the way, the “to thine own self be true” continues:

 

“And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man”

 

And to be fair to Johnson, he has been glaringly true to his debased self from day 1, in his twisted world of alternative facts, the only way in which he could have been false to himself, was to have told the truth occasionally, but he had the strength of character to resist such weakness!

 

Down, down we go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the creepiest speeches that I have heard delivered was by That Bloody Woman when she quoted Saint Francis on the steps of Downing Street.  Absolutely stomach churning to listen to That Hag try and pretend that selfless generosity and inclusivity was anywhere near the core philosophy of The Conservative Party – even then!

     Now we have a resident of Number 10 who probably regards Saint Francis as a twelfth century enemy of the people leftie.  With all the hesitant charm of a broken reel to reel tape recorder, The Creature Truss gave her acceptance speech to the Conservative faithful and left the rest of us thinking of just how low a country has to sink to ‘welcome’ such an inarticulate cypher as even a titular leader.

     Unless she now (tomorrow) performs a series of policy U-turns that would tax the capabilities of a F1 driver, we are going to be stuck with someone whose ideology driven wrecking will demean, bankrupt, and kill.  Someone who has lauded the concept of NOT redistributing wealth in the face of the greatest cost of living crisis since the banking fiasco; who welcomes tax cuts that benefit the wealthy as a way of EVENTUALLY helping those in dire need now; who has shown less than a scintilla of interest in the realities of Global Warming.

     I will leave it to others to list her self-serving non-achievements; her lies; her ‘flexible’ beliefs – but I am preparing myself for the real moment of truth when she takes centre stage in front of Downing Street (or inside in case of rain) and says something real about what she is going to do.

     I am steeling myself for the list of cabinet appointments, but the fact that commentators have written that Dorries and Braverman are being considered for any post in government, let alone the highest positions, without breaking down into hysterical sobbing at the Ship of Fools that will be sailing under her captaincy, is horrific.

     Let’s get one thing straight – I care about my country, and I would rather see an excrescence like Truss succeed and the country thrive than have her fail and bring the country down further than it already has with twelve years of Tory Misrule, in which, let us not forget, she has been an active and maleficent wrecker.

     Truss went out of her way in her speech to laud her ‘friend’ Johnson, her friend the lying, narcissist, criminal Johnson.  If she takes his approach to honesty and responsibility, then we are in for a very rocky couple of years before the scythe of the next general election can do its long-delayed work!