Sartorial Archives • My Dog Errol

359 • My kingdom …

24th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As kids, on the farm in Atlanta
We’d leave strict instructions for Santa:
‘One horse in each stocking
For riding, not rocking,
Their minimum speed set to “canter”.’

It seems that, all things being equal
This story would merit a sequel
The which I shall try,
In due course, to supply:
At present, I’m stumped by the prequel.

One is never too young to begin coveting the unattainable. Readers will readily guess the upshot and, I trust, excuse any inability to pinpoint the root of this parlous state of affairs.

356 • Messiah

21st December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The night I first visited Handel
He was naked except for one sandal.
His minion, Agrippa,
Likewise wore one flipper.
Such greatness cares nothing for scandal.

Of course it would not be Christmas without a Messiah concert, even if the new mutant coronavirus requires the event to be held in a specially-equipped field hospital so that everyone infected during the performance can receive first-class treatment from the very moment the ‘Amen’ begins to fade.

342 • Hard to believe

7th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note, we have film of your bride
In flagrante with Jekyll and Hyde;
All three wear top hats
And extravagant spats
But pretty well nothing beside.

Though the camera-work is cockeyed
Maud’s ardour cannot be denied,
And it’s hard to believe
What the two gents achieve
In the detail our drone has espied.

Your Worship may feel mortified
That he can’t always spot who’s astride
Nor indeed understand
Who has got the whip hand:
But the action is all bona fide.

So unless you are quick to provide
Thirty guineas to [details supplied]
Maud’s countless coitions
In startling positions
Will justly be famous worldwide.

Any husband would surely be disappointed to receive a note of this type, since it reveals the blackmailer not as some harmless voyeur (or voyeuse), but as a hardboiled extortionist who paints a needlessly lurid picture of the young wife’s uninhibited appetite and proclivities. Yet in this particular case the cuckold, addressed as ‘Your Worship’, is clearly a member of The Establishment and, as such, axiomatically more corrupt by far than his unjustly denigrated spouse. It seems probable, therefore, that her two partners-in-film are in fact the blackmailers, and they plan to split the spoils with their vivacious copulee. Let us hope those shares are at least equal.

338 • Assassin (2)

3rd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The one time I served Jack the Ripper
He’d come in my shop for a kipper.
With his dagger and cloak
He seemed quite a good bloke
Till he slew a small poodle named Pippa.

Society encourages us to think badly of a serial killer, yet one recognises this shop-girl’s guilty admiration for her celebrity customer, flaunting the characteristic costume of his profession. Here Jack’s conduct, while admittedly uncivilised, is readily rationalised, inasmuch as any domesticated dog – especially the scion of so ornamental and unnatural a breed – is already Dead to Nature. Had the fish emporium chosen to host a free-range, genetically unmodified cur, the self-styled ‘Ripper’ – like any common-or-garden customer – would doubtless have been torn to pieces a good while before the completion of his intended purchase. But it’s easy to be wise after the event.

334 • Sole-searching

29th November 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I hoped to make sense of your views
By walking a mile in your shoes.
But one glimpse of the soles
Scorched by burning hot coals
Means I need no additional clues.

Let us pause, this morning, to think back over the long, dark history of Western culture. It may perhaps be illuminating to try to pinpoint the moment when the ascetic and the self-harmer ceased to be considered uplifting role-models.

332 • Semen / cement

27th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Said philosopher-poet John Ruskin
On exhuming a half-rotten buskin
‘Hopping round in this boot
Will cement my repute
As an expert in all things Etruscan.’

And revered archæologist Schliemann
Slept out (to discourage a demon)
’Neath a Bacofoil™ awning,
Yet woke every morning
Quite sodden with incubus semen.

Is it something about their preoccupation with the remote past that distorts the mental processes of such famous men? Perhaps they fell into recondite professions precisely because they were unable to relate convincingly to the way ordinary folk make sense of the world? Or, if the above tales are reckless fictions, do they nonetheless ring true because we instinctively sense that a particular echelon, existing in intellectual society, assumes it can get away with murder?

326 • Sagittarius

21st November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I’m sorry to say, Sagittarius,
Your outlook’s still far from hilarious:
They’ll shoot holes in your hat
Or else puncture your cat,
Those nasty new neighbours nefarious.

Waking today under the zodiacal influence of the archer, how can one doubt that it’s solely the astrologer who has the insight to guide us through troubled times: inspired by the crossbow on high, his or her aim is true.

315 • Buckstopper

10th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Oh King! Why reproach us recruits
For such small specks of muck on our boots?’
‘Should the Kaiser detect
Such cosmetic neglect
Then I’ll be the one that he shoots.’

This morning’s bulletin – a parade-ground conversation from long, long ago – exemplifies the generous spirit evinced by great leaders of an all-but forgotten century. ‘The Buck stops here,’ would have been a pithier – yet exactly equivalent – answer from the British monarch. What joy it is, to contemplate a return to those days, when a potentate acknowledged the responsibility that goes with great privilege … and, by example, inspired the highest standards even in his lowliest subjects.

311 • Liar, Liar

6th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“Do tell! What became of that lout
Whose lies you once bandied about?
Did he close down your cult?
Or become an adult?”
“Nah. The fire in his pants fizzled out.”

Overheard this time next year, in the Smithsonian: a former Democrat and an erstwhile Republican chatting as they admire a wittily elegant ‘Tactical Chaos’ exhibit from 2020 [it’s a cloisonné enamel pin, in gold-plated brass, on which portly presidential ‘pants on fire’ are presented with little shifty eyes and a comical golden quiff … I got mine here].

301 • Naked cheek

27th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

We beheld an old Burgher of Calais
Who’d come, without clothes, to The Ballet.
When they called him immoral
He said, ‘Do not quarrel
With me: take it up with my valet.’

As ever, the challenge to a wealthy pervert’s idiosyncrasy is brushed aside, and the onus of explanation – and inevitable blame – falls on the shoulders of his hapless factotum.

296 • Class distinction

22nd October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Stand my bodyguard down,’ cried The Duke
As he strode through the crowds in the Souk.
‘See, the commoners blench,
And recoil from the stench
Of my horseradish-sodden perruque.’

More heart-warming stories of this kind might do much to restore ordinary folk’s admiration for their overlords, who are too often painted by the media as out-of-touch, self-absorbed, and lacking in self-knowledge. This unspecified Duke amply possesses what Shakespeare calls ‘the common touch’, and harbours no illusions about the effect his presence has on the lower orders.

294 • Akhnaten

20th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Akhnaten, my favorite Pharaoh,
Bellowed ‘Blast!’, as we danced the bolero:
His fury was focused
On quite a large locust
Which savaged his silver sombrero.

This bulletin attempts to pinpoint the ‘pistol-shot’ that heralded one of Egypt’s Great Plagues. Had this been confined to insects’ molesting the ostentatious headgear of an entitled plutocracy, the populace would doubtless have considered the whole business a blessing. History tells a different story, but as ever we are at liberty to believe whichsoever version we prefer.

291 • Implants

17th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In LA, a lass named Ludmilla
Got grabbed by a giant gorilla
That bit off her head
And left her for dead
Stripped naked and strapped to a pillar

At which point a serial killer
Embalmed her in pink Polyfilla
While her carcase was whipped …
(I’m just quoting the script:
She’s been cast in a low-budget thriller).

For decades Hollywood has thriven on demeaning women, both off and on the screen. Ludmilla may seem crazy to audition for this clichéd pile of crap, but a girl has to live, no? Mind you, she could have stayed back East on daddy’s farm, dignity intact, and lived a happy and fulfilled life milking lamas, shearing wildebeests and marrying her childhood sweetheart, Sergei. But that’s not the dream our tainted Western culture implanted in her unhappy head, is it?

289 • Born again

15th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Hey presto! One wave of this wand,
And I wake as a Hollywood blonde!
And how fancy it feels
In my falsies and heels
Being hailed the first female James Bond.

Our enlightened times have seen strong and righteous pressure for certain iconic screen roles – which have done untold harm by glorifying repellent machismo and mindless thuggery – to be reinvented as women [Jodie Whitaker as Mrs Who, and Helen Mirren as Prospera, have shown this can be accomplished with stylish conviction]. But while the film industry continues to cast able-bodied actors as persons with disabilities, and uses straight actors to play gay characters, there is – mercifully – no logical reason why a man (namely me!) should not fulfil the feminists’ long-cherished dream of a Lady 007.

287 • For Men!

13th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

My dream is to dance with Grace Kelly
Sharing one rubber glove and one welly,
Sharing one birthday suit,
Two bottles of Brut,
And three jars of cold K-Y Jelly.

Attentive readers may note that this charming, carefully-visualised fantasy fixates on a Screen Queen who has not made a single film in the last 64 years. What is it about the present generation of actresses, then, that so repels our imaginations, focusing them instead on past eras, eras of subtle ambiguity and romance, eras when one could never be sure whether ‘Brut’, for instance, signified a dry, sparkling wine, or a pungent preparation for disinfecting the male armpit.

286 • A-listers

12th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Playing Aleister Crowley at chess,
The outcome is anyone’s guess:
Four bishops on fire
Queens a-quake with desire
Three kings in a state of undress …

For a few golden years the sex-crazed dope-fiend Crowley – born 145 years ago today – was dubbed, by the papers, ‘The Wickedest Man in the World‘. How ignominious, parochial, and inconsequential his Satanism and misogyny appear now, in a world where the barbarous leadership of serial liars and delusional psychopaths is glorified in headlines daily.

268 • Punctured

24th September 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

This has to be grounds for divorce
And she’s not shown the slightest remorse.
What makes me see red
Is stilettos in bed
When they burst my inflatable horse.

I trust loyal readers can endure a brief glimpse of my dirty laundry, as outlined above. Are we looking at ‘unreasonable conduct’ here, or ‘irretrievable breakdown’? (Please don’t alert Pope Clement VII to this matter, or things might end very badly. I live in hope that present-day mores condone divorce more readily than beheading, although – thanks to Unprincipled Egomaniacs in High Places – a new Dark Age beckons incontrovertibly.)

266 • Hot Hot Hot

22nd September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My love, while the weather is warm
(Almost three times the seasonal norm)
Let us sprawl in this field
With our soft parts revealed
Awaiting the imminent storm.

The storm is not ‘imminent’, it’s actual. What did St Greta tell you: ‘Make hay while the sun shines, make love while the world burns, make excuses while you bury your dead’? No, I don’t think it was that, but I wasn’t really listening.

247 • Julie noted

3rd September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

What a jolt, to be jilted by Julie,
An upstart, a pipsqueak, a schoolie!
I am not ‘old and weird
With dead gnats in my beard’
And my pants do not reek of patchouli.

So it’s back to school for the young, and back to the drawing board for others (their elders and betters, by most accounts). You don’t see Daniel Craig getting rejected by Léa Seydoux, do you? Or if you do – I don’t think I’ve seen that film – she surely doesn’t insult him in such vague and unimaginative terms.

242 • Skin Deep

29th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It’s hard to be horrid to Hannah,
That winsome and whimsical manner,
The bugs in her bread,
The bones in her bed,
The blood on her Bunty bandanna.

All readers will surely be familiar with this kind of weekend acquaintance, in the presence of whose surface charms we knowingly turn a blind eye to one or more unsettling indicators of their workaday life.

240 • On reflection

27th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

On the point of removing my shorts
I suddenly had second thoughts:
Maybe keeping them on
Till the newsmen had gone
Would forestall some unhelpful reports?

In a world where the salacious media seem omnipresent, such moments of discretion and insight are to be cherished.

236 • Virgo

23rd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

You may trust, under Virgo the Virgin,
That your boons and your blessings will burgeon:
But such hopes are misplaced
(Like a frog in fishpaste
Or a goat in the garb of a surgeon).

My mother had a fair-sized bee in her bonnet when it came to Mariolatry. Sooner trust an astrologer than a woman, she would often say. For a long while I was blind to the paradox in those words, but recent events in my private life, which I shall not make public here, are forcing me to re-evaluate them.

234 • Escapology (2)

21st August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Spent the night in the park. Not depressed,
Simply giving my Real Life a rest.
Woke with seven huge holes
Gnawn by weapons-grade moles
In my warranted bullet-proof vest.

Aspirations to a bucolic idyll are here outweighed by some dark mental baggage. Humanity’s preoccupation with warmongery is not the easiest aspect of ‘Real Life’ to shrug off. A person who dons body-armour for an excursion to Eden can surely not be wholeheartedly expecting a decent night’s sleep.

224 • Apecraft (3)

11th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My quest for perfection began
When I first met a Renaissance Man
(Namely Fra Lippo Lippi,
Who held up our Chippy
Disguised as an orang-utan ).

Many an unrealisable life-trajectory has been determined by inappropriate fixation on the accomplishments of historical figures: frustration and self-loathing are the invariable consequences. In this brief confessional piece we are shown how ill-founded such hero-worship can be: if Lippi is skilled in all things, how come the ape-suit he relies upon – while fulfilling this gourmet heist – fails to conceal his identity?

185 • Ms Phipps recollected

3rd July 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Our Junior teacher, Ms Phipps,
Wore outfits with thousands of zips:
To combat the moth
She would use only cloth
Bought in very thin Möbius strips.

What better way for a teacher of Math to introduce perplexing concepts in Topology, you might say. But we were older now, and teenage hormones made it impossible not to dwell on the imagined contortions, in her boudoir, as she dressed. Or undressed. A Möbius stripper. I blush to think of it, even now.

178 • Ms Nicholls recollected

26th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

When our Primary teacher, Ms Nicholls
Equipped us with scythes and with sickles
We skipped down the street
Swiping folk off their feet.
She did get us into such pickles!

In a lesson about the Grim Reaper, when I was probably about 7 years old, our teacher brought in her academical robe and some gardening tools, and we took turns to dress up as Death. I owe that school a lot, and return to it often in dreaming. Ms Nicholls seems to have moved on, however.

171 • Deep Fake (6)

19th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The last time I spoke to John Wayne
We were trying to hide from the rain;
I think it was him
But his hat had a brim
And there wasn’t much light in that drain.

Isn’t this the pits, though? How much room can there be in that culvert? Why would a macho idol need to hunker down if he’s already wearing his Stetson? Man up, Wayne: give the other guy the hat, or git the hell out of that spillway.

170 • Deep Fake (5)

18th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The day I joined Phi Beta Kappa
I was kicked down the stairs by Frank Zappa;
I think it was him
Though he’d been to the gym
And was looking uncommonly dapper.

Here our unfortunate narrator is subjected to a cruel assault, on a day that should have been notable for quite different reasons. The wounded ego is naturally keen to recast the humiliation as an encounter with a musical idol, yet the fantasy it supplies casts the object of his veneration in an unsavoury – and wholly improbable – light.

165 • Fakin’ it

13th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A fancy-dress party! Huzzah!
Yet the invite said ‘Come as you are.’
So I went as I was
Which was lucky, because
I was already dressed like a star.

The implication of this paradoxical summons is that we are perpetually in fancy dress … indeed, unless you design and make your own clothes, you’re always partly costumed as someone else. More unsettling, though, is the notion that anyone disguised as a star might wish to attend a gathering where everybody else knows they’re fakin’ it.

164 • Meet the team (18)

12th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

And lastly, your mentor, Bob Cratchit,
Whose cloak is encrusted with bat-shit.
A pipistrelle lurks
Near the desk where he works:
How he longs for the leisure to catch it!

How useful, to be finally introduced to one’s office mentor on the very day one hands in one’s notice. The repulsive colleague one has taken such pains to avoid turns out to be the very person who has supposedly been looking after one’s interests all along. Relieved of my care, perhaps he will now have free time to catch the Corvid-carrier that haunts him like a familiar.

157 • Meet the team (15)

5th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

You may glimpse our Owner, Sir Harold,
In tweedy tuxedo apparelled:
His wife is a Dame,
With a stupid long name,
And his heirs are all quadruple-barrelled.

Ownership, surely the root of all evil. And Sir Harold, so blinded by his own wealth, or that of his privileged partner, that all notions of good taste in tailoring have flown out of the window.

147 • Crinoline Paradox

26th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I owe my continued existence
To this garb, worn at Granny’s insistence.
Yes, work colleagues mock
My huge crinoline frock
But they strongly maintain Social Distance.

Fashions come and fashions go. The widest crinoline in its day was some 2 metres across: hence its re-emergence in the Covid Era as an agent of Social Distancing. Paradoxically, however, the present-day Politics of Cool forbid us to shy away from any man who chooses to flaunt his Granny’s cast-offs in public. So what can a poor boy do?

128 • Agent provocateur

7th May 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

My aunt, up in Appleby Parva,
Has woven a black balaclava:
Defying the veto
She roves, incognito,
Provoking all kinds of palaver.

Incredible though this bulletin may appear, my adopted country genuinely boasts a hamlet named Appleby Parva, rural, remote and right-leaning. Since the time of Lady Godiva, any kind of outgoing behaviour there is received as a scandal, so 2020’s Covid Lockdown is a boon to most residents. My British aunt, however, has the measure of her neighbours and takes a geriatric delight in courting opprobrium.

120 • Humming-bird

29th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I’m beginning my decade-long task
To remain in this humming-bird mask.
As to how I’ll get by
When I can’t even fly
Most folk are too frightened to ask.

The shaman is able to escape humanity – its ailments and anguish – by trance experiences of other species’ lives. The next-best thing, for us regular types, is a mask of some sort. Don’t let the crowd’s pusillanimous gawping unsettle you or cause you to question – for a single moment – the purpose, efficacy, or duration of your chosen path.

106 • Social Distance

15th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I’ve stopped going naked at night:
My beauty deserves direct light.
Yet often, by day,
Viewers hurry away
Which I don’t find entirely polite.

Pandemic guidelines apply to everyone on the planet, no exceptions: and our newsmongers imagine the whole world is listening as they ram the point home. Yet they’re overlooking cases like the present subject who, venturing out after many years of Absolute Isolation, is nonplussed to find Social Distancing in operation, and takes it as a personal affront.

100 • The Thames Look

9th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My effortless elegance stems
From standing so long in the Thames,
Where my girdle and gown
Have been stained sewage-brown
And the narwhals have nibbled my hems.

It takes vision and courage to pursue such a strategy of self-abasement and neglect; but great discoveries in Art (and Fashion) often arise serendipitously from a background of dismal privation.

092 • Poor Tom Foolery

1st April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As I swung – in my skimpiest Speedos
And the loudest of lime-green tuxedos
From the high diving-board –
Some buffoon cut the cord
(This has happened in several Lidos).

For the committed exhibitionist – a burgeoning breed in our benighted times – no stunt is off-limits. The lifeguard above, intervening to frustrate an ill-judged April 1 prank, is surely not the prime ‘buffoon’. (And if outraged libertarians cite Shakespeare’s King Lear – Act IV, where the suicidal Duke of Gloucester asks ‘Is wretchedness deprived that benefit / To end itself by death?‘ – I shall refute them thus: the Duke, at least, is not play-acting.)

078 • The Ominous Snowman

18th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

One burden of being a Roman
Is that, having been mugged by a snowman –
Which was merely an ogre
Wrapped up in a toga –
Great Cæsar must deem it An Omen.

Our Roman week continues. I don’t know if Tacitus or Suetonius or any of that crowd mention the above episode. But if it occurred, those who deny the meaninglessness of this world will undoubtedly have invested it with Weighty Significance.

074 • Hermitwear

14th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A hermit I met in Ostend
Informed me, ‘It’s vain to pretend
That the leaves in your hair
And that sack that you wear
Will ever catch on as a trend.’

Even in the hermit community, peer-pressure is clearly immense. The ‘Hermit Look’, now de rigueur, was initially scorned as too outré. Gullibility lies at the heart of all dress fascism.

072 • Topeka

12th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A trendsetting tot from Topeka
Went to mooch round the mall in one sneaker:
‘It’s a question of style.
I wore three for a while
But one is just so much uniquer.’

The Mall, a suitably soulless setting for this act of fatuous self-flagellation, emblematic of the damage we all endure in the name of ‘style’, however idiotically it manifests itself.

052 • Go, diva

21st February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A message from Lady Godiva:
She wants you to act as her driver.
One thing: have a care
Not to whistle, or stare,
And kindly contain your saliva.

This hokey British legend (adapted) shows how little has changed since the Dark Ages or whenever: an eternal triangle featuring the coy exhibitionist, the willing voyeur, and the disingenuous admonitions of a leering go-between.

040 • Brecon

9th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Said the priest in the parish of Brecon,
‘This God thing is finished, I reckon.
I’ll hang up my cassock
And crouch on this hassock
Till fresh opportunities beckon.’

Disillusion is the mother of liberation, it’s often said. But it’s all too easy to ‘crouch’, in passive expectancy, amid the ruins of an outmoded belief system, rather than seeking out – or forging – a fresh one.

031 • Infiltrator (3)

31st January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Before I arrived in this town
I traded my clothes with a clown.
Written off as a berk,
I may openly work
To turn the whole world upside down.

For the day my adopted country throws out the baby with the bathwater. The guile of the demagogue matching the gullibility of the person in the street. [Related story]

022 • Potus alert

22nd January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Vacationing in The Bahamas
Misfortune befell the Obamas.
On the night she forgot
Where they’d anchored their yacht
A crocodile stole his pyjamas.

It’s a question of scale, no?

012 • The sporran

12th January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Leaving Troon for some tropical place
Feeling shy on account of my race.
So as not to look foreign
I’ll sport a huge sporran
And draw people’s eyes from my face.

An issue that, regrettably, afflicts all travellers and outsiders. The sporran is a kind of oversized ornamental furry purse that puts any wearer, or viewer, in mind of some ungainly marsupial.