A merry young minstrel from Kent
Made music wherever he went,
Smashing bottles in bars,
Hurling hammers at cars,
To an almost obsessive extent.
There’s a little bit of Dionysus in each of us, and there’s no harm in giving it free rein now and then, especially at the end of a cruel year in which the performing arts have ebbed almost to extinction. It’s only the word ‘obsessive’ that gives us pause in the bulletin above. Nobody likes a maniac.
In the mountains beyond Bogota
Five gangsters had opened a spa.
I went once or twice
But it wasn’t that nice:
It needed more je ne sais quoi.
They’d been loading some drugs on a mule
When it panicked and fell in the pool.
Soon that afternoon’s dip
Was a ten-hour trip
And the place seemed a lot less uncool.
To those who protest that ‘drugs mule’ is nowadays a mere metaphor for a human trafficker, I can only counter with the evidence in the bulletin above. The narrator’s first-hand testimony seems incontestable, and critics who urge the contrary are merely drawing attention to their innate misogyny, or a groundless predisposition to doubt the objectivity of individuals who delight in regaling us with accounts of their psychedelic experiences.
The night they invented Champagne
I was fighting the Fascists in Spain.
When they slipped me a slug
(Served in Franco’s own mug)
I just emptied it into a drain.
George Orwell (celebrity author of Dining Out in Paris and London) evidently drew on personal experience when commissioned to write songs for the musical Gigi; but Maurice Chevalier dismissed an early effort (fragment above) as ‘half-hearted’, and the gig was offered to Jean-Paul Sartre instead. In today’s political climate, however, we recommend the resurrection of the Orwellian text, which centres on mendacious boasts and – crucially – the cretinous, offhand actions of a failed fighter who, ultimately, knows himself unfit for anything but illusory greatness.
‘I hear fireworks, and popping of corks,
I hear doves running rings around hawks;
I hear jubilant cries
At a Loser’s demise,’
Said the ghost of a grinning Guy Fawkes.
Guy Fawkes is popularly reviled for lack of success in his ambition to blow up the English Parliament on this day in 1605; as a damp squib, therefore, he’s well-placed to pour derision on other thwarted politicos. Every year, in the UK, his effigy is burnt in celebration on 5 November, and this will surely continue until an even more laughable failed wannabe comes to the public’s attention.
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.
There’s just one more applicant: Gordon,
Well-equipped for the post of church warden.
A total abstainer,
He’s drunk wine in Cana,
And once dipped his nose in the Jordan.
We’re in real danger, here, of seeing a thoroughly unsuitable candidate appointed to a responsible office, thanks to the shortsighted – or perhaps wittingly bogus – recommendations of a silver-tongued sponsor.
Coition continued full-tilt
Till a cobra crawled out of the quilt;
This dampened the heat
In the Honeymoon Suite
And a quart of Veuve Clicquot got spilt.
Ordinary folk have little to fear from the proverbial ‘snake in the grass’, because the snake in the grass is minding his or her own business, in the same way as a bridal couple does on their wedding night. The non-proverbial ‘snake in the bedding’, however, is another story, and its kinship with the Garden of Eden narrative – from which humanity didn’t emerge particularly well – is not easily overlooked. For those who will wish to reflect on this matter a little, until we meet next Sunday, a suggested topic: ‘This House believes we should all be a lot happier if the cobra remained in the quilt next time: out of sight, out of mind.’
I grew up believing Karl Popper
Would choose to say nothing improper
Such as ‘Buy me a pint
And my pal here, Geraint,
Will give you a ride in his chopper.’
It is evident, wheresoever we choose to look, that today’s gullible masses equate celebrity with sanctity. Just as we cast an overgrown TV host as a saviour of the free world, so we picture any Viennese pioneer of critical rationalism as a kind of pious hermit, melancholically meditating in his minimalist penthouse atop some ivory tower. But as this morning’s bulletin suggests, Sir Karl was a mere mortal, like anyone else who likes a drink and is chummy with Welsh helicopterists. His death, 26 years ago today, proves it.
Said Fred to a frizzy-haired floosie,
‘I rather enjoy my jacuzzi:
If I ply you with gin
Will you join me therein?
And cherries as well, if you’re choosy.’
Then Suzy responded, ‘I getcha,
You sad and pedantic old lecher.
Avert thy vile eye
Lest I smite thee thereby
And despatch thee to hell on a stretcher.’
The elderly gentleman’s request to the lady is, on the face of it, civilized enough; yet she takes offense, and appears ready to do him violence. We should be aware that the now-impermissible label ‘floosie’ is not uttered in her hearing, unless she is somehow privy to the word-choices of the narrator from whose brain she has sprung. And her imputation of pedantry (based solely on the gentleman’s use of ‘therein’, which is no longer current in British conversation, yet perfectly justified when there’s a necessary rhyme to complete) seems a tad arch in a young person from whose lips archaisms such as ‘smite’, ‘thee’ and ‘thereby’ spill in such preposterous abundance. [See also #122]
While Tolstoy was crashing chez nous
The vodka caused quite a to-do:
A draft press-release
To announce War and Peace
Was repeatedly flushed down the loo.
When Chekhov was based at our flat
The samovar sizzled and spat
But his brow remained tortured:
A draft Cherry Orchard
Went straight in the tray for the cat.
While Nabokov slept on our floor
His anguish was hard to ignore.
One draft of Lolita
Was burned in the heater
Another lined many a drawer.
Great men these may be, but the example they set is a dangerous one. While ‘Writer’s Block’ may seem a lofty phrase – redolent of restless perfectionism, frustrated dedication, and doomed entanglement with a capricious Muse – the fabric of society will surely unravel when the slothful, uncommitted or incompetent start playing for our sympathy with copycat claims such as ‘Banker’s Block’, ‘Roadmender’s Block’, ‘Republican Presidential Nominee’s Block’ and so on.
What joy to live out in the park,
And skulk in the bushes till dark!
Then catch cocker spaniels
To fry in Jack Daniel’s,
And start forest fires with one spark!
The Pastoral Impulse has a long and healthy history, but this outlaw’s short-sighted manifesto merely catalogues the reckless and ignoble impulses of a vainglorious deviant from whom any genuine Noble Savage would recoil with contempt.
It’s not my position to scold
And I hate to seem prudish, or old,
(And a bath with a friend
I can quite recommend)
But this hot-tubbing cult leaves me cold.
Still, into the maelstrom I go
Where viruses seethe to and fro:
Veruccas and boils,
Private bodily oils
Exuded by folks I don’t know.
A-swill in this scum marinade
I try not to look too dismayed.
I’ll sip my Martini,
Let slip my bikini
And hope pretty soon to get laid.
A modish recreation, its pointless vanity emblematic of our times. The narrative voice here appears conflicted, but peer-pressure – or else indiscriminate carnality – wins the day.
We scattered your ashes, dear Yoko,
On the tides of the great Orinoco.
Then we stood on the bank
Where we mournfully drank
One very small cup of cold cocoa.
Strangely our culture dignifies rivers with names, and admiring soubriquets such as ‘great’. But here that adjective serves to minimise the status of the departed, as does the meagre potation, shared among an unspecified number of mourners.
Last night on the island of Skomer
A cuckoo fell into a coma.
They soon brought him round
With a cup of ‘FreshGround™
With its powerful, distinctive aroma’.
Yes, even in a wildlife paradise it’s impossible to shake off the mind-forged manacles of capitalism, in this case, an inane advertising slogan. Luckily the remedy was effective, but That’s Not The Point.
When summoned to meet the new vicar,
I took him two bottles of liquor:
With a villainous oath
He decanted them both
Saying ‘Bet I can swallow mine quicker.’
We may well ponder the nature of this ‘summons’; less obscure is the motive of the summonee, who exploits the churchman’s weakness by taking the role of tempter. Which, then, is the more culpable party?