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Category: Island

365 • Exile and Extinction

365 • Exile and Extinction

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‘There was never much call for a builder,’
Wrote the last living soul on St Kilda.
Still, that was the trade
Of my aunt, an old maid
Who was known – to the seagulls – as ‘Hilda’.

As she drowsed in her orchard one day
An avalanche swept her away:
A torrent of trash –
Plastic, glitter and ash –
From a culture in final decay.

I never met my Aunt Claudie, who was adopted before birth (both hers and mine) and never left St Kilda (an archipelago I intend never to visit). Quite how she eked a living, after 1930’s evacuation of the island (during which numerous dogs were deliberately drowned), the rhyme does not attempt to explain; as for the ‘orchard’, credulity boggles. Nevertheless it’s impossible not to feel a great sympathy for this imaginary geriatric, unable – even in the remotest isolation from the rest of humanity – to evade obliteration by the filthy forces that shape a ‘civilisation’ she never tasted.

279 • Ax me another

279 • Ax me another

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This ax I acquired near Mauritius,
A purchase both proud and propitious:
One night in the smog
It destroyed a small dog
That might have grown up to be vicious.

Here we are again with a canine spin on the timeless, and deeply tedious, sophomoric conscience-tickler, “If you could travel back to 1946, would you destroy ‘The Donald‘ as he lay puking in his gold-plated crib?” To which the only moral answer must be, “Let us set sail for ‘near Mauritius’ immediately, and acquire a job lot of these proud and propitious axes.”

276 • Escapology (4)

276 • Escapology (4)

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I’ll escape to the Isle of Capri
To the comfort of sandscape and sea
Where the heart-broken herds
Trade their kind, empty words.
Just the world and his widow, and me.

‘Fine words butter no parsnips’ is a particularly oblique and idiotic saying I’ve occasionally heard during my time in Britain. Likewise this bulletin is full of fine words, told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Clearly I shall not escape anywhere: the whole district is suffering another Covid lockdown. Clearly I would never want to escape to any place infested with fellow-divorcees. The only viable escape shall be inward, into the world of my daily blurtings, and into healing correspondence with the thoughtful souls who read them.  

253 • Currency crisis

253 • Currency crisis

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A shifty young slut from Sri Lanka
Had a senseless affair with a banker:
When she paid him for sex
She was forging blank cheques,
And he brought plastic flowers to thank her.

Of course we’re not out to shame this particular slut, nor to heap ignominy on that particular island: any affair with a banker is a priori senseless. Would that I were sufficiently familiar with international finance to understand how the interpersonal circumstances outlined above should conduce to the forging of cheques, let alone blank ones. Doubtless it’s one of the few downsides of commercial coition that are not widely discussed.

184 • Man Friday’s Tale

184 • Man Friday’s Tale

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The day I met Robinson Crusoe
He was halfway through ‘Émile’ by Rousseau,
An excellent book;
If you’ve not had a look
Then I strongly suggest you should do so.

Academics talk about ‘metachronic hyperagonism’ when an imaginary character is caught reading about another imaginary character, in fiction published a full generation after her or his own supposed lifetime (luckily we are not obliged to listen). I leave it to others to imagine in turn what Rousseau’s Émile was reading. Anyway, today is apparently the death-anniversary of Daniel Defoe. On publication, his pioneering ‘Robinsonade’ claimed to have been authored by its imaginary protagonist, which may also be metachronic hyperagonism (ie ‘self-referential bullshit’). Especially since Crusoe was really Kreutznaer in any case.

158 • Manila

158 • Manila

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Our holiday let in Manila
Was owned by a serial killer:
I can still visualise
How his victims – all flies –
Lay vanquished all over the villa.

At this time of year enforced quarantine, or voluntary isolation, inevitably brings up memories of holidays gone by, often polluting them with intimations of mortality. The tininess, as well as the profusion, of the assassinees is deeply shocking.

085 • Danube

085 • Danube

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One night on the island of Lupa
A guillemot fell in a stupor.
On the Danube, I guess
There was no NHS
So I trust someone contacted BUPA.

The British set great store by their ‘NHS’ (National Health System), and this piece explores what will happen when — post-Covid, no doubt — they sell it down the river to US capitalist interests. The difference? One pays for BUPA.

084 • Cuckoo, coffee

084 • Cuckoo, coffee

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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.

060 • Leap lines

060 • Leap lines

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The lemming’s reputed to leap
From clifftops, to die in the deep.
But none of that’s true,
It’s what Britishers do
When they follow some self-serving creep
And vote ‘Leave’ while their minds are asleep.

Leap Day entitles the poet to employ a Leap Line, the better to evoke the Leap of Faith, lately made by our British allies, into the icy depths of worldwide contempt and opprobrium.

030 • Island mentality

030 • Island mentality

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Why, hark! ’Tis the hornet-detector:
‘Intruders at large in this sector!
We don’t want our honey
To taste or smell funny.
Go home, and stop nicking our nectar.’

Island Mentality in a nutshell. The xenophobic bee whose words we report seems to have scant understanding of the mechanisms of his own livelihood. Free movement of ‘outsiders’ is clearly about to end.