Possession Archives • My Dog Errol

365 • Exile and Extinction

30th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

‘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.

363 • Famous Last Words

28th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A monk who had jumped from Ben Nevis
Left his suicide note in a crevice.
Hand-lettered in gold
And five hundred years old
‘Ars longa,’ it claimed, ‘vita brevis’

Illuminated lettering – such as we find in masterpieces such as The Book of Kells – was not normally used for personal communication, but in this instance the author had no choice. An ordinary hand-written message would not have been ‘ars’, so his Latin text would have been irrelevant. Likewise, of course, if the doleful memo had been discovered the following morning, ‘longa’ would not have been apposite. And if he’d simply climbed the mountain, hidden the note, then gone home to the nunnery or wherever he lived, ‘vita brevis’ would have been nonsensical. And the choice of a secure crevice to hide it in, rather than just leaving it to blow about on the mountainside, ensures that it’s not found until ‘longa’ is appropriate. All in all, then, a well-thought out farewell to a no-doubt exemplary life.

361 • Pandora’s Boxing Day

26th December 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

‘These microbes must stay in the flask!’
You begged to be given the task.
But it snowed, and you slipped
Down the steps to the crypt.
‘Will superglue mend it?’ you ask …

When tremors were rocking Qatar
My genie got out of the jar
When I bade him return
And repair his cracked urn
His answer was, ‘Ha bloody ha.’

‘Twas the day after Christmas … and we suddenly had time to try a little remembrance of things past. Back when we all assumed the pandemic was a gambit in the column-inches war. Back when we imagined rogue science might be to blame. Back when the spirit world was obviously exacting vengeance on an iniquitous civilization. But now we know better … if we do … will we predict, prepare, react better? Or have the Genies truly left the building, leaving their self-styled ‘masters’ holding the bottle (that’s ‘fiasco’ in Italian, of course) and counting the cracks?

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.

358 • Stocking-filler

23rd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘Folk guess I’m a big Dylan fan
From the name on my fruiterer’s van.
But I don’t deal in rumours,
I deal in satsumas,’
Said Hamish the Tangerine Man.

The unfortunate costermonger at the heart of this brief report was assassinated, one Manchester market-day, by a maniac brandishing a knife and shouting ‘Judas’. At the funeral, Hamish’s widow justified an unusual choice of music by reading from his last will and testament: ‘As the coffin sinks from sight, Mr Tambourine Man is the last music I want to hear.’ Such wording, infused with ambiguities worthy of the Pied Piper of Hibbing himself, convinced certain mourners that Hamish had been telling the truth … he’d never been a big Dylan fan at all. ‘Untangle that if you can,’ whispered the priest as we left the crematorium.

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.

355 • Take-away (7)

20th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Look honey, a souvenir-seller:
Go pick up a Pilgrim Umbrella!
Hold it up like a guide
As before me you stride:
In a month I may make Compostella.
NOW BRING ME A SEAFOOD PAELLA.

The same problem arises in every country. The gluttonous tourist, too slothful to maintain a normal walking pace, yearns unashamedly for street food and relies, unabashed, on his beleaguered partner to signpost a spiritual path that he’s too self-indulgent to decipher for himself.

354 • Boa sting

19th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

Said a blustering braggart from Bingley,
‘I can swallow ten scorpions, singly,
Then twelve jalapenos
That burn like volcanoes
And still swear my tonsils aren’t tingly.’

I challenged him, ‘Chew on this pie
Packed with gunpowder, chillies, and lye.’
(And gravy so gingery
Permanent injury
Threatened his throat, by the by).

Then I watched the first slice disappear
And his silly fat face lost its sneer:
As his gums glowed red hot, his
Engorged epiglottis
Put paid to his boasting career.

Of course I concede that the above bulletin is not entirely true, and that it was not penned for publication at My Dog Errol, but rather on the ‘Readers’ Homilies’ page in our Parish Magazine. It illustrates something from the Bible, as I recall. It was rejected by the Vicar (on grounds of length, I can only assume).

351 • Take-Away (5)

16th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

Today my old dachshund, Delphine,
Dropped dead in this trendy canteen.
‘You can say au revoir
To your Michelin star,’
I said. ‘So much for Nouvelle Cuisine.’
NOW BRING ME A CHICKEN CHOW MIEN.

The human spirit is infinitely resourceful, it seems. Unwilling to succumb to the grief that typically attends the expiry of a cur, our narrator turns the event to advantage, knowing that – once the press gets hold of the story – the reputation of one more pretentious ‘fooderie’ will be irredeemably trashed. Who wants to eat their supper in some joint where canine corpses are scattered about? Or in a restaurant that welcomes living dogs, come to think of it?

347 • Take-away (3)

12th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It seems that the culprit was Carla,
Who cleaned up the funeral parlor;
Or was it Luigi,
Who wielded the squeegee
Backstage in Milan at La Scala?
NOW BRING ME A CHANA MASSALA.

If today’s bulletin is some kind of post-mortem report, it will strike most sensible readers as annoyingly non-committal. What is certain, however, is that an habitual devourer of carry-out meals runs an enhanced risk of succumbing to food-poisoning; so we should perhaps be more grateful to the Carlas and Luigis of this world, who busy themselves with janitorial hygiene that benefits each and every one of us.

346 • Gold-digger

11th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

She longed for a dance with Disraeli;
Despatched ardent messages daily.
But weeks turned to years
As her cheeks burned with tears
And he never came down to the cèilidh
(Nor played on her pink ukulele).

She longed for a breakfast with Balfour
(As males go, she rated him Alpha):
But his strange emissar
In an accent bizarre
Said ‘He can’t even spare you a half-hour.’

She longed to ensnare Lord Macaulay
But he’d just pretend to be poorly.
Undaunted by failure
She fled to Australia
To marry the mayor of Kalgoorlie.

The lives of the British politicians about whom our predatory protagonist fantasises span the period 1800–1930, albeit in staggered array. Balfour was 11, and Disraeli 55, when Macaulay expired … so it seems scarcely probable that she might have harboured carnal expectations of all of them simultaneously. Readers who possess (and know how to use) a calculator will be ready to compute the probable span of her obsessions, and her likely age when she set her cap at the Antipodean mayor – but should not overlook the fact that gold was not discovered at Hannan’s Find (later called Kalgoorlie) until 1893.

344 • Christmas Market

9th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

We sell mostly flotsam and jetsam
Step in for a moment, and get some:
Our clients buy masses
To mix with molasses
And massage Mama (when she lets ’em).

So the customers wait in a line,
Their patience much greater than mine.
When I shout, ‘Go to hell,
I have nothing to sell,’
They beam at me, bland and benign.

This morning’s bulletin is a triptych depiction of the insanitary madness of Yuletide shopping: first the barker openly declaring the worthlessness of his wares; then the unseemly comfort products foisted on our nearest and/or dearest when other inspiration fails; and finally the line-up – outside a depleted store – of zombie-like shoppers, their wits irremediably stultified by the worthless circus of capitalism.

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.

341 • Droning

6th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The first time I heard of a drone
I coveted one of my own
To take candid snaps
Of philandering chaps
And make their sins generally known.

This is not the sort of Sunday droning one typically hears from the pulpit, and the frank admission of covetousness comes as a surprise. Yet drones – because they move in a mysterious way – are naturally a source of fascination to 21st-century clergymen, just as steam-railways were to their great-grandfathers. We should not be scandalised by the proposed, puritanical plan – it’s a good deal less invidious than molesting choirboys.

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.

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?

314 • National Trust

9th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The groundsman reports to the Duchess:
‘Your lobster needs five pairs of crutches
Having ricked his ten knees
On the flying trapeze
That we built by the pond where his hutch is.

‘And, begging your Ladyship’s pardon
We’ve finished landscaping The Garden:
Your flora and fauna
Are crammed in one corner.
This concrete takes ten years to harden.’

Meanwhile, back in Merrie England, the serfs pay lip-service to the whims of the landed classes, and the needs of their exploited livestock, while covertly expediting the blind March of Progress which tramples all before it.

312 • Failure

7th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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.

304 • In for a penny

30th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The last time I met Ezra Pound
He was dragging a bobsleigh around.
I said, ‘Waiting for snow?’
And he answered me, ‘No,
But my husky was recently drowned.’

Remembering Pound on his 135^th birthday, the person in the street thinks of him as the tone-deaf, fascist crackpot who repeatedly published translations from languages he did not speak. Were his chums right to have him committed? Traveling by bobsleigh (if he did), yet keeping but one husky (if he did), might suggest a certain imbalance. As early as 1958, however, he declared that ‘all America is an insane asylum’. We shall not look upon his like again.

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.

293 • Nefertiti

19th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I flew my cartoon autogyro
To draw Nefertiti in Cairo:
What a look of surprise
When I dotted her *i*s
And crossed both her *t*s with my biro!

It was Tintin, I believe, who introduced my younger self to the possibilities of the autogyro; likewise his creator, Hergé, sparked my lifelong interest in drawing. The summons from a Pharaoh was a pleasant, if predictable, consequence of these twin influences (Akhnaten was gracious enough to approve of the woman I drew for him, and subsequently married her).

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.

284 • Street delicacy

10th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It was carnival evening in Derby:
My shrimps burnt to death on the barbie.
I entered a raffle
And won a falafel
Cooked up from dead wasps and wasabi.

A measure of caution is advisable, during a pandemic, where street-food is concerned. This applies even when an exotic treat appears to have been gifted by fate, in compensation for previous arrangements’ having gone up in smoke. Don’t let the fresh air and cheering crowds blind you to the intrinsically nauseous nature of the fare on offer. Our appetite for a bargain is a severe and culpable weakness.

280 • A Poet’s Blessing

6th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

One day, on a train, I met Tennyson
And offered to give him my benison.
By way of reward
(And because he’s a Lord)
He fed me a fragment of venison.

Dead 118 years ago today, and his tiresome oeuvre justly forgotten, this entitled poetaster’s name lives on as a gift to makers of very short pieces in which sound is a great deal more important than sense. ‘What hope is here for modern rhyme’ etc etc

279 • Ax me another

5th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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.”

275 • Dear John

1st October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The pink billet-doux read ‘Dear John,
I have taken the children and gone.
Accept your comeuppance
’Cos no-one cares twopence;
It’s time to give up and move on.’

I saw it coming, as did my many readers who have been inboxing me with words of support. Thank you, thank you. Nonetheless it’s a bitter blow. She could have got my name right, the cow.

274 • Quondam entanglement

30th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Guess the kettle has run out of cream
And the kitten’s got sick of the steam.
I used to convulse
At the throb of your pulse:
Now I dance to a different dream.

To live outside the law you must be honest, as our Great Poet saith. But it’s not easy to live outside the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which wants us to believe that organised systems tend towards chaos, unless energy is fed in to sustain their structure. Today’s bulletin – not written by me, but slipped under my door by the lovely Angharad – is intended to show me that her vital energy has not ebbed, but is rather being directed elsewhere. I conclude, however, that what has actually ebbed is her ability to organise metaphors convincingly. Unless she mixed those lines up on purpose in a cruel attempt at parody.

273 • All night I cry

29th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I’ve not seen a sign of my spouse
Since she opted to live as a mouse.
All night I cry ‘Please
Don’t you fancy some cheese?
I’ve set trapsful all over the house.’

Can we lure back our spouses with nibbles? Or woo our lost partners with treats? Am I accidentally writing the start of a Music-Hall song? The answer to the first two questions is, regrettably, ‘no’ … not if the morsels in question are elements in a lurid murder plot. Don’t say it couldn’t happen. Do say, ‘How terribly British, to offer such a flippant take on such a desperate scenario.’

270 • Surplus to requirements

26th September 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

A crafty old crook from Pamplona
Once posed as a cardiac donor.
The ad. for his heart
Said ‘Good second-hand part
Unused by its previous owner.’

‘Crafty’, perhaps, in that the familiar language of Classified Ads deftly deflects attention from the more problematical aspects of his offer. But ‘crook’, really? Where’s the crime in seeking to divest oneself of an organ that serves only as memento of a life untouched by true romance?

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.)

265 • Symbolismus

21st September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

One needs to be mentally nimble
To capture a gnat in a thimble
Or one pitiful crumb
In a ten-gallon drum
Or the quest for true love in one symbol.

To answer the poet point-for-point: who are these people who seek to capture gnats, and why do they set themselves up for failure by making thimbles their tool of choice? Who are these crumb-hunters who encumber their travails with such unwieldy and inappropriate canisters? And why oh why would anyone with even a single gram of common-sense waste their time dreaming up a symbol for some pointless and unattainable personal quest? We suddenly need some ersatz sequel to The Song of Solomon, do we?

262 • Idols of clay

18th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Let us live by the anarchists’ credo:
First steal a huge barrel of Playdoh
Then fashion a golem
That looks like Mo Mowlam
To drag through the streets of Laredo.

She’d have been 71 today, Mo Mowlam, had she not died so young. The above bulletin proposes a straightforward method for reviving the plain-talking British MP who, while serving in the Shadow Cabinet, urged the destruction of Buckingham Palace. It’s now the USA that stands in desperate need of such a firebrand radical, and that’s (partly) why today’s lesson in Thaumogenesis is set in a city divided by Trump’s imaginary Mexican wall, a comic symbol of his brainless posturing, and a heartening portent of his imminent demolition.

261 • Right and Popper

17th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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.

255 • Fred ♥ Suzy

11th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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]

253 • Currency crisis

9th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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.

249 • A Voyeur’s Lament

5th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My Andalusian amœba …
I summon her to me: ‘Arriba!’
Yet she sulks in her pool
Coquettish, but cruel:
Unbearable beauty, Bathsheba.

‘You saw her bathing on the roof,’ as Laughing Len sang, ‘Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.’ But am I King David, or Farmer Boldwood, observing my innamorata through a specialist microscope, made by Óptica of Seville, and formerly in the possession of Luis Buñuel? Quite why this flirting – especially since it can scarcely be pursued to consummation – should so annoy a human marital partner is beyond me.

243 • Crim. Con.

30th August 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I observe that your wife has undressed.
My brief telepathic request
Was never expected
To be intercepted …
I trust you don’t think me a pest.

The priest who spouts Mosaic law forbids us to ‘covet’ another man’s wife; the attorney, blethering about ‘criminal conversation’, concerns himself with ‘physical contact with an alien and unlawful organ’. These pests aside, where does blame lie in the present, sad case? The disrobing spouse, responding to a supernaturally-registered suggestion, perhaps believes she is obeying the will of a Higher Power. Can the true issuer of that command really be guilty, if he never expected his libidinous impulses to come to light? Many would consider him no adulterer; but more would consider him a fool, since – by apologising so stiffly to the no-doubt startled husband – he proclaims his otherwise-unprovable involvement. Yet, to the woman, the putative adulterer is a hero, having rescued her from possible charges of wilful exhibitionism, or lewd and wanton provocation. Bravo for him, therefore; and huzzah for such a tiny bulletin, fairly bursting with such sapient doctrine.

239 • Empty nesters

26th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I went to the Garden of Love
To marry my sweet turtle-dove.
But we got so depressed
In that tiny, cramped nest
That we each gave the other the shove.

The first line, above, is appropriated from Our Great Poet; the rest is triteness itself … well-suited to the wearisome scenario it depicts. A cuckoo typically expels its step-siblings, and step-parents, in order to annex their space for itself; but in this instance the nest is left wholly untenanted. One might expect close confines to provide the perfect milieu for connubial satisfaction; but here they promote a different category of physical cooperation. A significant degree of acrobatic rapport must have been required for the partners to achieve simultaneous expulsion.

237 • Wind-up

24th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I have to confess, I’m in shock
At your plan to stop winding our clock.
Are you scared of the chime,
Or the passage of time?
Its tick is much worse than its tock.

You can either stare a looming personal crisis right in the eye, or try to make light of it. A short blast of nonsense – establishing some kind of bogus dualism at the heart of the matter – should be sufficient to test the troubled waters.

235 • Escapology (3)

22nd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My passport still shows the faint stamp
From the night I enrolled as a tramp!
Though I soon swapped ‘The Road’
For my present abode
When the company iPad got damp.

To succeed as a vagrant, one must of necessity eschew the proprieties of office and the allure of corporate cybertrash. In this bulletin, abyssal and humiliating inauthenticity is compounded by the author’s feeble pride in the scarcely-readable documentation of his or her self-delusion.

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.

227 • Bingo!

14th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A pretty good night at the Bingo:
We won the first prize, a flamingo.
I wasn’t too chuffed
When I found it was stuffed.
Next time I’ll opt for the dingo.

A dingo is not a suitable pet, any more than a flamingo is. It should be running about in the tundra or wherever, making its own way, not relying on another, less noble, species for its upkeep.

226 • Howzat!

13th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My son hurled a gobbet of Gouda
At a git riding high in a howdah
Who then toppled down dead,
While the elephant fled.
As a parent, I’ve never felt prouder.

Though many will admire this laudable initiative – and the consequent emancipation of an enslaved animal – others may simply be disgusted at the waste of good cheese. (Still others may suspect that the proud father has embellished the facts, in the interests of procuring an unexpected rhyme; and that his offspring’s actual feat was nothing more remarkable than lobbing a brick at a git on a bike.)

223 • Apecraft (2)

10th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My brother had trained his bonobo
To play a few tunes on the oboe.
I bought my baboon
A good contra-bassoon
Yet that night she eloped with a hobo.

I have been reprimanded (hounded, even) about a ‘misanthropic tone’ that supposedly suffuses this poetical blog. ‘Has mankind accomplished nothing you would consider celebrating?’ writes one disenchanted correspondent. Well, it has: the admirable Great Ape Project has urged that chimps, bonobos and other such anthropoids should be accorded the same basic rights as human beings (exactly which human beings remains open to question). And no less a territory than The Balearic Islands extended personhood rights to the Great Apes as long ago as 2007 (one of that tribe holds temporary sway in my home country). But – cf bulletin #222 here at My Dog Errol – such envelope-stretching can come at a terrible price.

221 • Loris Farewell

8th August 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Farewell to my loris, Louise,
Who loved to curl up on my knees.
She felt like a friend
Till she forced me to spend
Such a fortune in medical fees.

In a civilised society, such as we nominally aspire to, a true friendship would endure even as the associated medical bills began to pile up. In trans-species relationships, however, this aspirational principle appears to be tainted by a culpable, chauvinistic parsimony.

220 • Corking Pet

7th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

‘It’s only the dull birds that squawk:
The ones worth possessing can talk.’
Now you’ve purchased a crow
That keeps saying ‘Hello!’?
Better start saving up for a cork.

Humans high-handedly ascribe greater value to animals in which we perceive characteristics similar to our own. Yet the shortfall in their accomplishments quickly oppresses us – appearing gruelling, or tedious – with ignoble consequences that often epitomise our own folly and cruelty.

219 • Bluebird Farewell

6th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my bluebird, Baptiste,
Who detested the winds from the east.
He would drowse on the hob
While the cook did her job …
And was finally part of the feast.

Inexplicably our culture approves the harvesting, for human nourishment, of various fowls of the air. The bluebird, however, has a sentimental significance to many, and the callousness of its assassin in this story is therefore noteworthy.

217 • Penguin farewell

4th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my penguin, Pierre,
Whose dream was to fly through the air:
Though he clung to that kite
With apparent delight
I felt for his inner despair.

It is not easy to distinguish ‘delight’ in a penguin physiognomy, and it seems probable that the dream of flying was the author’s, not that of his long-suffering pet, which is singularly ill-adapted for such manoeuvres. All too often humanity’s purported kindnesses are, at base, paper-thin masks for gnawing personal inadequacy.

216 • Carruthers

3rd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I was baiting a bear named Carruthers
At a church of the Carmelite Brothers.
I’m ferociously strong
So he didn’t last long,
But I guess they have plenty of others.

Musculature and morale falter infallibly in captive animals: it’s not the strength of the vainglorious aggressor we marvel at here, but the weakness of his victim. Monks may be ‘known for their unpleasant habits’, as the old joke goes: but should we perhaps applaud this compassionate Brotherhood for allowing its bears to be slain outright? Worldlier bear-baiting gangs are obliged, by commercial imperative, to keep their victims alive, to suffer – for our delight – day after day.

215 • Oyster Farewell

2nd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my oyster, Odette,
Who could never abide getting wet
But would snivel and cry
When the bed was too dry:
All in all, quite a difficult pet.

This Sunday’s moral dilemma. Which is more odious: to posit an inner life for a creature that self-evidently cannot signal emotion to a human being? Or to denigrate her supposed caprices, when these have clearly been triggered by needlessly-inflicted cruelty?

214 • Skintext

1st August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

This morning, a bolt from the blue:
Our tadpole has got a tattoo.
Neatly lettered in black
On the small of his back
It reads ‘What would Lord Attenborough do?‘

I confess I find it distressing when the young choose to disfigure themselves with texts they may well regret in adult life (I spent a small fortune getting ‘What would Jesus do?’ lasered off the mons veneris of my Significant Other). It’s perhaps not surprising that animals look to Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FSA as a saviour, but any responsible tattooist would have known that ‘Lord Attenborough’ refers not to the well-loved environmentalist but to his brother Richard, a noted squanderer of frog DNA in his role as the unconvincing proprietor of ‘Jurassic Park’ in the eponymous blockbuster movie.

213 • Jackdaw Farewell

31st July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my jackdaw, Jean-Claude,
Who liked to lie flat in the road.
The neighbours all laughed
But I thought he was daft.
He doesn’t deserve a long ode.

Many will feel it unlikely that the corvid in question ‘liked to lie flat in the road’, and judge it more probable that he was mown down there by a careering juggernaut … which is what the neighbours found amusing.

212 • Dogged

30th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The store on the way to the station
Was manned by an outsized Alsatian.
‘Pray, are you a grocer?’
I asked. It said ‘No sir,
You’re having an hallucination.’

The products of our imagination often seem programmed to mislead; but as this instance shows, we should study to ask them The Right Question … in this case , something like ‘Please may I have an apple and a banana, in a brown paper bag, to sustain me on the journey up to town?’ It is seldom appropriate to challenge a shopkeeper’s professional credentials.

211 • Flatfish farewell

29th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my flatfish, Phillippe,
Who is, frankly, a bit of a creep.
As I choose my next phrase
I can feel his cold gaze
Though he wants me to think he’s asleep.

The floundering author wishes us to understand that he continues to be haunted, from another realm, by a fishlike gaze of opprobrium – which is more probably the buried memory of well-deserved contempt dished out by a grade school teacher.

209 • Earthworm farewell

27th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my earthworm, Yvonne,
Who has grown rather pallid and wan.
Certain notes I would hum
Made her coil round my thumb.
I can scarcely believe that she’s gone.

Human beings will mourn even the most apparently-inconsequential creature, once they have elevated it to the status of personal pet. Yet note how this plaint is entirely self-centred, and the principle recollection focuses on episodes of manipulation and control.

208 • Body and/or Soul

26th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

There are Driverless Cars in our town.
Small wonder pedestrians frown:
One went for a jog
With her Bodiless Dog
And a Riderless Bike knocked it down.

Just as Modern Man has dispensed with the idea of the soul, so his cleverest machines now rove at large without their once-crucial guiding hands. Emblematically, in this Sunday’s searching parable, we witness the extinguishing of a Spirit Companion (easily the best kind of dog, in that it does not slobber, yell, bite, excrete or fornicate indiscriminately) by exactly such a futile, mechanical zombie.

206 • In the Mirror

24th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Lord Fortescue ruffles my fur:
I narrow my eyes, and I purr.
We sprawl on the sofa
One lazy old loafer
And one upper-crust bon viveur.

People become like their pets, as the saying goes. Doubtless a similar – albeit opposite – belief is held among cats. Time is running out in mankind’s search for the ‘Reciprocal Osmotic Gradient’ – the so-called ‘Grand Scheme’ – by which our shabby race can live in balance with the remaining non-human animals on the planet. Improbably, however, the present poem depicts a member of the Hunting Classes achieving exactly that symmetry.

200 • War of the Words

18th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I must reconsider Persuasion.
I found, on another occasion
That its fame was a fraud
(Or I simply got bored
Before the main Martian invasion).

‘Later in the program we celebrate the death of Jane Austen,’ says Radio 4. One knows what one hopes they mean. Nice to learn that the person who came up with the slogan on the UK’s ten-pound note was, in life, a woman. We must wonder who’s been collecting those royalties, since she died 203 years ago.

193 • Gold Rush

11th July 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

With metal detector in hand
Each weekend he trudges the land:
He sets forth at dawn
And at dusk, all forlorn,
Brings home his pretend contraband.

We should be unwise to laugh too long at this apparently hopeless hobby. As in the good old Klondike days, our dogged adventurer rates his chances at 50/50: each day he either will, or won’t, strike lucky, discovering an Aztec astrolabe, or a Holy Grail, or a plutonium nugget the size of Grand Central Station. There’s no middle ground.

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.

174 • The Crabmonger

22nd June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Is anyone else fond of crabs?
I’ve 69 here, up for grabs:
The mother’s no beaut
But her grand-kids are cute.
They’d make a nice change from kebabs.

I have doubtless inveighed before, in this Verse Marathon, against the keeping of animals as pets. Who can remain dry-eyed on apprehending the uncertain status of these crustaceans, offered up by the crabmonger as a foodstuff, even after their family background, and personal charm, have been so heart-warmingly attested.

173 • Cancer

21st June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Is your zodiac character Cancer?
Is your fate a dark question? I’ll answer:
What the stars have in store
Will assist you no more
Than a Zimmer-frame aids a lap-dancer.

Waking under a strange sign in this very strange year, I’m just so glad that the clear-sighted astrologer, deftly unravelling the tangled threads of time, may still be relied upon to remove any worrying uncertainty from our lives.

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.

160 • Meet the team (16)

8th June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Look out for our caretaker, Ken,
And his heavily-hybridised hen:
With its modified beak
It can actually speak
Though not in the language of men.

In any business the janitor – or similar dogsbody – may prove the most interesting and innovative of thinkers. Unfettered by ambition, untainted by rivalry, he or she is free – like a Shakespearean Fool – to defy norms, and provide a foil to institutional formality through the creative quirks of an idiosyncratic mind.

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.

151 • Night Flying

30th May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Again, I’ve been out half the night
Retrieving what’s left of my kite
Always trapped in a tree
Or on wires I can’t see.
Is there something I’m not doing right?

How often we falter along, locked compulsively into a simple yet crippling life-mistake! Next time you encounter a midnight kite-flyer, bite back your natural contempt for their stupidity and perverseness, rather taking them aside and – perhaps with half-a-dozen kindly-chosen words – setting their whole life on a new and conceivably happier course.

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.

117 • Rhine recovery

26th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I was casting my pearls before swine
When the fattest one fell in the Rhine.
Two nuns in Cologne
Fished it out with a drone,
But more by good luck than design.

Like many a parable, this poem probably answers more questions than it asks. In terms of title I toyed with ‘The Pearl Fishers’ and ‘The Pig Fishers’ but decided that either would be thoroughly misleading. In any event, the point is proven: one man’s miracle is another man’s coincidence.

099 • Tea on the Lea

8th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

When Gandhi set sail on the Lea
And fancied some tadpoles for tea
The beadle of Broxbourne
Brought five pints of frogspawn
And charged but one single rupee.

Jesus’s supposed UK excursion is celebrated in song all over Britain (‘And did those feet‘ etc); whereas Gandhi’s teatime outing on a relatively-obscure Thames tributary is commemorated only in this five-line fragment. Likewise the generosity of Hertfordshire officialdom.

097 • Clyde

6th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I lived with my bellicose bride
Not far from the mouth of the Clyde.
Our little oil-rig
Felt surprisingly big
For somewhere with nowhere to hide.

The past-tense ‘lived’ in this brief statement is ominous. Any bride might be bellicose, having so egregious a dwelling foisted on her by matrimony: yet no hint of blame attaches to husband in the poem – rather, he merely personifies the expectation of a violent dénouement.

Glancing back, I notice Rivers of the World has become a bit of theme at My Dog Errol: this is the ninth and, let’s hope, last instalment.

094 • ‘Grand National’

3rd April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The steeplechase season is nigh:
Watch dozens of thoroughbreds die!
Broken leg, broken back,
Put to death by the track.
Let the owners be shot too, say I.

What are these wretched creatures good for? High-status playthings for the rich, exciters of adrenaline for greedy gamblers, disposable victims of capitalism? ‘Grand National’, indeed: what kind of Nation judges their creation, and exploitation, ‘Grand’? Anyway, it ain’t happening in 2020, Year One of the Virus. Hurrah for that.

084 • Cuckoo, coffee

24th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

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.

082 • Saviours

22nd March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Did you read, on some scrap of papyrus,
How Christ raised the daughter of Jairus?
No dark Dead Sea Scrolls
But soft white paper rolls
For our conquest of Coronavirus.

Admittedly there were no New Testament books among the genuine Dead Sea Scrolls, though with the more recently-discovered fakes anything goes. But whereas those scrolls record the superstitious beliefs of a sect 22 centuries ago, 2020’s rational response to mortal disease is spelt out in the barren superflux of hoarded lavatory-paper.

079 • Trajan

19th March 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

Our eminent emperor, Trajan
Was minded to marry a Cajun.
But processing in pomp
Through her Baton Rouge swamp
His cohort succumbed to contagion.

Empires are forged and maintained by matrimony; here Trajan’s men are thwarted in their attempt to bring him a trophy bride from exotic, as-yet undiscovered territory, and in the particular case few would doubt that the virus was doing a sterling job.

073 • Friday 13th

13th March 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

I was shoving my mule in his shed
When a meteor fell on his head.
I curse my bad luck …
Why didn’t he duck?
Next time, an alpaca instead.

Let’s not blame the beast of burden, nor bad luck. The fault, dear brutes, is not in our stars, but in ourselves: whatever animal you capture and exploit, it will be the Wrong Choice.

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.

067 • Empty Shelves

7th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Slim pickings … the neighbours are dying …
I’ve left it quite late … panic-buying …
Found five plastic forks …
And this small bag of corks …
But nothing you’d call ‘death-defying’ …

Corona Virus is a gift to the right-wing media that elected the present UK government; amid their craftily-orchestrated furore of hand-washing and panic-buying, who has headspace to worry about the vicious incompetence of Our Leaders? Nobody sane believes that Shopping will Save the Day … but who has the courage not to stock up on indispensibles, ‘just in case’?

064 • Sabrina

4th March 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

She told us her name was Sabrina.
It seemed a bit posh for a cleaner.
She swept the back room
With a Burberry broom,
But we just didn’t like her demeanour.

The lackey whom your innate class prejudice caused you to spurn was not necessarily posh. She’d adopted a classy name, and purchased a high-end accessory, in hopes of impressing those hoity-toity enough to advertise for a cleaner.

059 • Out of India

28th February 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

My clock was designed in Madras
By a maker both clumsy and crass.
The bell doesn’t sound
And the hands won’t go round
Yet it belches a foul-smelling gas.

I guess we all know someone who hunts down foreign goods at bargain prices, only to disparage the maker – rather than their own cheapskate stupidity – when the items prove unsatisfactory.

058 • The new tobacco

27th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The roll-out of 5G’s complete!
Humanity’s stupidest feat!
For most of my life I
Have hidden from Wi-Fi
But now it pollutes every street.

Smoking, the cool trend of a previous generation, is now proven lethal. Likewise this shiny communications technology, foisted on us by profiteering corporations, will probably show its true hand in years to come.

056 • Automaton

25th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

A small ad. I saw in The Mail:
‘Mechanical Weasel for sale.
Can whistle the theme
From Pick the Wrong Team,
And tries to beat time with its tail.’

Today’s parents, terrified of their children venturing out of doors, continue to bolster our consumer culture by the purchasing of trashy toys, exemplified by the patronising, unnatural design of this unwanted item, which pays half-hearted homage to some self-evidently worthless TV show.

055 • Puma uncertainty

24th February 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

There is no truth at all in the rumour
That I strangled my godfather’s puma.
But I’m licensed to choke
Those who can’t take a joke
And he really had no sense of humour.

In today’s world a bad reputation prospers exponentially, often fertilised by the antics of the gutter press. Referencing concepts from quantum mechanics, the ambiguous pronoun ‘he’ in our final line ensures uncertainty about who has been throttled (even in the most sublime poetry the ‘meaning’, if any, is perforce completed by the reader).

034 • Curses

3rd February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I find I’ve forgotten my purse.
Excuse me a mo’, I must curse.
‘Damn, bugger and shit.’
That helped not a bit.
Please wait, while I say something worse.

‘Damn braces’, in the insightful words of our Great Poet. But you’ve got to do it properly to feel the benefit.