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Category: Rejection

366 • The horror, the horror

366 • The horror, the horror

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O, these horrors have grown out of hand!
May I bury my head in the sand?
Can I let it lie there
While my corpse roves elsewhere?
A solution like that would be grand,
And my readers would all understand
Why no further postings are planned …

Yes, Covid, Idiots in Office, Climate Chaos and now this. At least I made it to the end of the year as promised. Thanks for the all lovely comments, and I know people all round the world will enjoy re-reading the 366 rhymes of My Dog Errol, again and again, in celebration of a remarkable and memorable year.

Rick Lime

363 • Famous Last Words

363 • Famous Last Words

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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.

362 • Abbesse ! Aidez !

362 • Abbesse ! Aidez !

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The Abbess’s audit, Your Highness,
Regarding young Thomas Aquinas:
‘In his heart, nonpareil …
In his head, off the scale
But in bed? Sadly, E– – –.’

When the great Georges Perec wrote ‘Abbesse! Aidez!‘ he was perpetrating a sound-pun involving the first four letters of the alphabet as they are pronounced in the Kingdom of Francophonia. Today’s sermon, however, purports to reveal one species of help a real Abbess was able to offer to a Pope, and demonstrates how her early assessment of the levitating-saint-to-be – namely, that his compassion and intellect considerably outweighed any carnal prowess – exactly foretold the characteristics for which ensuing centuries would come to venerate him.

358 • Stocking-filler

358 • Stocking-filler

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‘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.

352 • You are what you eat

352 • You are what you eat

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No cannibal vegan grows fat;
Their ethical stance sees to that.
On a diet of air
You just die of despair.
Take note of this brief caveat.

Food fascism is a pernicious scourge of 21st century life. Social pressure is a bubble only if one can muster the confidence and individuality to burst it; otherwise one is likely to stack fad upon fad in hopes of cultivating peer approval. The vegan cannibal, clearly threatening nobody, ought on paper to be a popular figure; but he or she is sadly opting for a downhill path in terms of bodily prosperity. ‘Take note of this brief caveat’ indeed.

351 • Take-Away (5)

351 • Take-Away (5)

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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?

346 • Gold-digger

346 • Gold-digger

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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.

345 • Take-Away (2)

345 • Take-Away (2)

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Today our great monarch, King Louis
Is planning to ban ratatouille,
And pass a new law
Which (to curb Habsburg Jaw)
Will require all our food to be chewy.
NOW BRING ME A DISH OF CHOP SUEY.

Classic overkill from a monomaniacal tyrant. By all means take steps to extirp a congenital deformity brought on by in-breeding. But why impose dietary sanctions on the ornery populace? Don’t these potentates realise that they look weird only because the rest of us have normal jaws? Far more appetising, then, to address the problem by making ratatouille an obligatory staple, so that – if it really causes that egregious chin condition – we shall all, in time, look like our freakish overlords, and cease to lampoon and satirise them.

344 • Christmas Market

344 • Christmas Market

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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.

343 • Take-away

343 • Take-away

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‘Hi; this is your bartender, Barney.
So sorry: your chilli con carne
Has gone by mistake
To the shack of a Sheikh
Who’d only sent out for a sarnie.’
NOW BRING ME A LAMB BIRYANI.

Too work-obsessed to think of catering for himself, the rhymester receives the phone-call everybody dreads. Sadly his response – too spontaneously Wordsworthian to be constrained within his verse-form of choice – is merely a variation on the original impulse, to rely on carry-out: it is certain to lead to further disappointment.

340 • Cruise control

340 • Cruise control

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Please note that your humming-bird, Rex,
Is banned from the passenger decks.
We’re aware he’s a drone
Surreptitiously flown
To observe while our Captain has sex.

All kinds of questions arise when we imagine the shipboard arrangements that necessitated the above communique. (And, rather than offering reassurance, the fact that feckless recreational drones are being banned by winter cruise operators merely reminds us how seriously landlubbers’ privacy is compromised by the unpoliced residue – which throng our city skylines at the prying beck and call of amorally ruthless surveillance professionals.)

339 • Overheard

339 • Overheard

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Please note, your saxophonist, ‘Baz’,
With his ear-splitting urge to play ‘jazz’
Is required to abstain
Or else Take the A Train …
To Alaska, if not Alcatraz.

Who wants to live in a world whose free-spirited exponents of improvised music can be threatened with exile to a notorious penitentiary, solely for practising their art in places where others might overhear? Not I. Surveillance is a scourge, aural fascism a tyranny. And the intolerant voice of this bulletin appears to be upset as much by the would-be musician’s hipster sobriquet as by the unruly racket the neighborhood is nightly obliged to endure.

336 • From our own correspondent

336 • From our own correspondent

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Still holed up, in Azerbaijan,
With two dancing girls, in a barn:
The damn paparazzi
Are all over Patsy
But Patsy is all over Sîan.

War … what is it good for? Macho glory, seedy glamour, the licentious liberation that often accompanies mortal fear? The present bulletin is unhelpful. Quite how the particular situation arose we are not informed, despite the media presence. All we are offered is some needlessly intrusive detail about a putative relationship between the two dancing girls … something which is, in all probability, being faked in order to deflect the prurient and/or predatory attentions of Our Own Correspondent.

333 • Sucker

333 • Sucker

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Please note that the cleaner, McCall,
Is banished henceforth from The Hall:
Her nightly manoeuvres
With hosepipes and Hoovers
Drive too many guests up the wall.

In the owner’s estimation, paying guests are paramount and must be sucked up to at all costs. So a skivvy loses her job, not via a grateful note and cash in lieu of notice, but by dint of a curt note sellotaped to her locker door. Soon ‘The Hall’ will be filthy with dust-bunnies and aristocratic dandruff, and customers will stop coming. And the owner will have reaped his just deserts.

328 • American soap

328 • American soap

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Please note that your strumpet, Cecile,
Is barred from our Thanksgiving meal.
She gets your dear father
Worked up in a lather:
Myself, I don’t see the appeal.

The tiny fault-lines that extended families ignore for most of the working year can suddenly broaden into ravines of foreboding as Thanksgiving looms, and the tribe prepares to converge on the parental ranch. This mother’s note – deploring the husband’s lecherous preoccupation with their son’s voluptuous consort – betrays the tragic depths of her jealous insecurity. ‘Book yourself a makeover, Mom!’ comes the reply. ‘It’s not as though you’re strapped for cash.’  

326 • Sagittarius

326 • Sagittarius

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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.

322 • The Spurning

322 • The Spurning

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Please note that your ward, Abigail,
Did not gain a place here at Yale;
The Provost reviled
The ‘preposterous child’
While his staff found her ‘stupid’ and ‘stale’.

Well, I didn’t gain a place at Yale either, and I urge Abigail, and other rejects like her, to wear the disdain of ivory-tower eggheads as a badge of freshness and distinction. Either that, or to sweet-talk their guardian into endowing some hifalutin’ think-tank there, with free education for his dunderheaded protégée a specified condition of contract.

315 • Buckstopper

315 • Buckstopper

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‘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.

313 • Unholy ghost

313 • Unholy ghost

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I had just been relieved of my post
(No 2 in the Heavenly Host)
When the Infidel Horde
Made me Chair of the Board
(Not bad for an Unholy Ghost?).

It may seem, following today’s developments, that we have the opportunity to lighten up, and turn our thoughts aside from the Orange Demon and his festering cohort. Yet, as Paradise Lost reminds us, the exile may well carve out a new kingdom … he has millions to make as an after-dinner speaker, a freakshow curiosity whose legacy will be measured by the volume of vomit he induces. So, what better way to salute John Milton, who died on this date in 1674, than to flip thru the above-mentioned 80,000-word epic, on which this morning’s rhyme is based? Then, in lieu of stepping out to church, reward your labors with a full English beanfeast.

312 • Failure

312 • Failure

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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.

311 • Liar, Liar

311 • Liar, Liar

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“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 Liar, Liar, Pants on FireDemocrat 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].

310 • Loser!

310 • Loser!

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‘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.

308 • A Sensible Choice?

308 • A Sensible Choice?

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Lock that ape in his airtight Rolls Royce
Till it stifles his snide, stupid voice.
Draw a line in the sand.
Send a sign to the land:
Maybe, this time, a Sensible Choice?

Three instructions for November 3.

307 • Polemicist

307 • Polemicist

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I went to meet George Bernard Shaw
But his concubine answered the door:
‘Will you plese go away?
Hes at work on a play
As Ive told you nineteen times befor.’

And so we seek out another well-regarded dramatist, three score and ten years on from his last mortal breath … but in vain. He was probably tinkering with spelling reform that evening, not writing anything sensible at all. In any case the famous Socialists, anti-vaxers and eugenicists of yesteryear can be of no avail in the present crisis; the past is gone; and the future’s gone too, unless the electorate votes with its wisest imagination.

306 • Regicide

306 • Regicide

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With all common sense in abeyance
I summoned MacBeth, at a seance
(The usual procedure
The cards and the ouija)
But no one ‘came through’ (except Fleance).

In Shakespeare’s time the monarch was revered as God’s representative on earth, and to kill him (or her) was a sin without parallel. Today, of course, such potentates as we still acknowledge are more typically reviled as emissars of Satan. In our moments of deepest despair, therefore, we might wish to be possessed by some high-flying assassin, and to accomplish what needs to be accomplished; but in fact all we can muster is the spirit of an obscure runaway, remembered only for fleeing a scene of monstrous injustice – an epitome of cravenness in crisis.

305 • Perpetraitor

305 • Perpetraitor

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Please note that your acolyte, Artie,
Is banned from our after-show party.
Act II of MacBeth
Does not call for the death
Of King Duncan by so-called ‘karate’.

Geez, Shakespeare was a dude that knew a whole lot about the darkness that can swamp a whole realm after a gracious, humane, temperate ruler gets ousted by a card-carrying psychopath. But his Scottish Play holds comfort for us all: though there was no shortage of countrymen with the means and the motive to cut him down, the tyrannical megalomaniac was eventually unseated by his own delusional self-belief.

298 • Decent folk

298 • Decent folk

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Please note that your godfather, Geir,
Though scarcely a social pariah,
Has a squint and a hump
That make decent folk jump
So we’re slinging him out of the choir.

‘Decent folk’ … what a world of repugnance and shame that nauseating phrase brings up. If we all boycotted ensembles where such a term is used in earnest, choral singing would cease overnight. No bad thing, you might retort. But that end must not be accomplished by marginalising the Geirs and quasi-Geirs in our society … who are legion.

295 • Startling

295 • Startling

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Please note that your patron, Earl Spenser,
Will not be admitted to Mensa.
His Lordship’s IQ
Is quite startling, it’s true.
We have never met anyone denser.

This rhyme concerns a fictional Earl Spenser, not to be confused with the orator who on 6 September 1997 – while eulogising ‘the most bizarre-like life’ of his late sister – shared with a grieving nation the ironic insight that ‘a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.’ In a further proof of sagacity, the real Earl resisted any temptation to dilate upon Diana’s other attributes … goddess of chastity / fertility / the moon, sometime consort of Lucifer, etc etc.

288 • Mental make-up

288 • Mental make-up

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The first time I slept with Max Factor
He claimed to be Virgo Intacta.
When I cried ‘This is mad!
Are you not my real dad?’
He said, ‘No, son, you’re only an actor.’

Folklore suggests that, in the movie business, it’s possible to sleep one’s way to the top; but this morning’s bogus instalment suggests that, in the make-up department at least, different rules apply. Here the Alpha Male swats aside the Young Pretender’s hopes, implanting in his mind an idea that would corrode anybody’s confidence. It would be interesting to know how this fictional conversation continued, on subsequent trysts. The catamite would be well advised to challenge his master with the riposte that We’re All Actors.

281 • Incompetence

281 • Incompetence

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Please note: your chiropodist, Pete,
Will be shot, should he enter our street.
He made such a botch
Of repairing your watch
He sha’n’t get his hands on my feet.

It’s all-too easy to suspect across-the-board incompetence when, in fact, ineptitude has been proven in one field only. The luckless ‘Pete’ here may indeed be a jackass-of-all-trades, but what would become of US society if we took pot-shots at every bungling nincompoop who came to our attention?

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.  

275 • Dear John

275 • Dear John

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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

274 • Quondam entanglement

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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.

271 • Sermon of the Stripes

271 • Sermon of the Stripes

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‘I don’t like the look of your back,’
Said one zebra. ‘Get out of our pack.’
‘We’re just different types,’
Said the one with white stripes
To the other, whose stripes were all black.

Would that we lived in a receptive world where the childlike simplicity of an animal parable sufficed not only to turn the hateful tide of racist rhetoric, but also to clarify and bolster the self-worth of the myriad poor souls who endure it. “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed”, writes our Great Poet. Yet, amid the tumult of modern-day hatred and hurt, upraised voices too often defy comprehension, emitting ‘more heat than light’ as the saying goes. And the cruel crassitude of our amoral leaders – to whom any kind of enlightenment is anathema – constitutes the most tragic obstruction of all.

270 • Surplus to requirements

270 • Surplus to requirements

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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?

269 • Normal

269 • Normal

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Please note that your stepson, Francisco,
Is banned from this evening’s Class Disco.
When everyone queues
To kiss Mrs Hughes
A normal-sized child will get his go.

Modern-day teachers show commendable dedication, generosity and imagination in devising bonding exercises, early in the academic year, that will incline their young charges to warm to the grade school experience. This tersely-worded bulletin, however, gives the receiving family insufficient sense of their unfortunate stepchild’s infraction. Is he too large, or too small, to join his new class buddies in Inappropriate Touching with their tutor?

268 • Punctured

268 • Punctured

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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.)

267 • Libra

267 • Libra

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They weighed you in Libra, the scales:
Now all your fine life-planning fails.
No matter what talents
You chuck in the balance
The world sucks the wind from your sails.

Waking this morning under the sign of the celestial scales, it’s liberating to remember how our lives are laid out in full by the time the midwife has us snipped and weighed. I was 9lbs 10 in my maiden diaper … heavy, man.

260 • Whipsnade

260 • Whipsnade

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Please note that your child, Mary-Lou,
Is banned from our trip to the zoo.
The keepers advise
That a girl of her size
Might get killed by a rogue cockatoo.

Please note, rather, that a truly enlightened society would ban all children from visiting all zoos, the better to hasten their abolition. Since vested interests will surely strive to keep them in business we must – however ruefully – concede that the extinguishing of a few toddlers, by vengeful Psittaciformes bursting forth from internment, might prove a useful catalyst in turning the tide of public opinion against such egregious institutions.

258 • Faye King

258 • Faye King

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Forgetting the wives they’re forsaking
Men queue for a fling with Miss Faye King:
We all know she neuters
Her second-rate suitors.
It just seems a gamble worth taking.

Incredibly there are men who would disagree that emasculation, by some painted celluloid vamp, is ‘a gamble worth taking’. What abject feebletons! We Real Men can validate our virility only through high-profile competitive mating; an alpha Hollywood vedette is both a mirror for male vanity and an antidote to the slow poison of a complacent marriage. The conquest, and satisfaction, of such illusory femmes fatales constitutes a Darwinian endorsement, a seal of machismo. In our dreams, at any rate; our most ignoble and embarrassing dreams.

257 • Femme Fatale

257 • Femme Fatale

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Yet rather than cutting my hair
Delilah confided, ‘Beware!
By curtailing the length
I may limit your strength,
And you’ve little of either to spare.’

This morning’s reading from Judges 16 warned us about the guile of Philistine women, and about the likely aftermath of games that involve sexual partners in tying each other up. Our sermon, now, will develop that theme of the femme fatale, and seek to establish which option is – in the long term – more injurious to the male ego: (a) to be castrated outright, or (b) to be spared emasculation thanks to confidential hints that there’s not much down there worth lopping off?

255 • Fred ♥ Suzy

255 • Fred ♥ Suzy

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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]

252 • Mud

252 • Mud

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There was an old man of Llandudno
Whose wife left him all of a sudden-o.
She’d chatted with Charlotte
The neighbourhood harlot.
His name was quite palpably mud, no?

Baleful and hideous, is it not, to see the conniving women of the parish ganging up on a well-nigh blameless man? Full disclosure: I have never wittingly visited Llandudno, and know nobody there trading under the name of ‘Charlotte’. Consequently the present bulletin cannot legitimately be supposed to bear any relevance to my recent history.

249 • A Voyeur’s Lament

249 • A Voyeur’s Lament

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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.

247 • Julie noted

247 • Julie noted

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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.

244 • Frozen

244 • Frozen

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Seduction is strained, in Siberia
Where trysts mostly end in hysteria.
‘I despise you!’ they shrill,
Vaulting over the cill
And abseiling down the wisteria.

I admit it’s a good while since I had an apartment in Tomsk, so I trust readers will excuse my memory if certain botanical details in this brief, and otherwise veridical, scenario strike them as inauthentic.

239 • Empty nesters

239 • Empty nesters

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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.

238 • What’s she like in bed?

238 • What’s she like in bed?

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Oh how I delight in your snoring!
A riot of sizzle and roaring:
A nightly recital
So varied, so vital,
Your daytime assertions seem boring.

As a general rule the professional male of a certain age regards the secrets of the boudoir as sacrosanct. Yet, as we see above, the day will dawn in most long-established relationships when it becomes a tactical inevitability that certain hitherto-undisclosed truths be revealed.

237 • Wind-up

237 • Wind-up

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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.

232 • Messina / Massena

232 • Messina / Massena

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“So I’ve flown all the way to Messina
To view this Exploding Hyæna,
And now ‘She won’t burst
Till the crowd has dispersed’?
No Sir! I stay here till I’ve seen her.”

Thanks to good ol’ coronavirus the era of self-centered, impetuous air-tourism is drawing to a close. This means more-breathable air all around the world. It also means that the hoodwinking of brainless Americans by shabby Sicilian mountebanks with their callous animal-exploiting sideshows will have to move closer to home: from Messina to Massena, in all probability.

227 • Bingo!

227 • Bingo!

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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.

223 • Apecraft (2)

223 • Apecraft (2)

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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

221 • Loris Farewell

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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.

211 • Flatfish farewell

211 • Flatfish farewell

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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.

207 • A Grand Scheme

207 • A Grand Scheme

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As I sat, with my cat, at the vet’s,
Where a ghastly, huge dog with Tourette’s
Snapped and bellowed and whined,
A Grand Scheme came to mind:
Euthanasia For Other Folk’s Pets.

All true … but let us not be too hard on dogs; it’s so easy to see them as unruly embodiments of all that is vulgar and vicious, and to forget that the cur’s owner in this cameo may feel correspondingly ill-at-ease with the little cat – threatened, even, by the placid decorum with which she awaits her final summons into the consulting-room.

201 • Unhappy houri

201 • Unhappy houri

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The great Russian cosmonaut, Yuri,
Was fired into space with a houri.
But when they came down
His face wore a frown
And hers wore a mask of cold fury.

Though the literal truth of this fragment is debatable, it is a parable fit to illustrate any sermon about the moral and ethical implications of sex in space. (The Kremlin evidently didn’t expect the Creator to take pity on the lonely Gagarin, and fashion a companion for him by repurposing a redundant rib).

197 • Where are they now?

197 • Where are they now?

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We’ve not seen a great deal of Piers;
He hasn’t come this way for years.
The reason he states
Is the size of the weights
That he’s tied to the hairs in his ears.

We’ve not seen a great deal of Layla.
She’s given her heart to a sailor.
She’s renting her spine
To a colleague of mine,
And the rest still remains with her gaoler.

We’ve not seen a great deal of Chalkie
Since he walked, on his hands, to Milwaukee
Where he teaches guitar
At The Conservatoire,
So he claims. But I guess that’s a porky.

A little suite of patterns or exemplars for those who need to craft excuses explaining why they no longer visit people they were friends with in High School (it’s too, too bourgeois, after all, to persist in blaming the Covid crisis for our insularity and self-absorption).

195 • Smith

195 • Smith

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Throughout the whole town of Penrith
There is nobody living named Smith.
Thus, when one gets born
They’re received with great scorn
(This may be a slight urban myth).

Hostile responses to ‘outsiders’ are fostered by malign leaders in many lands. This piece of disingenuous scaremongering, however, requires us to believe that an über-common surname is unknown in one particular Lake District community, and not to question where its unjustly-vilified new-borns can be coming from.

191 • Postcard (3)

191 • Postcard (3)

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The postcard I sent Seamus Heaney
Asked ‘Have you been watching The Sweeney?’
‘Good luck, and get lost,’
Was his simple riposte
(The same as I got from Puccini).

Here we find a further instance of post-life coincidence, where two masters of different arts, from different countries, and from different times, are united in a single opinion which – though manifestly dismissive – is expressed with endearingly musical alliteration, and a paradoxical wit. [See also here and here]

190 • Hang on!

190 • Hang on!

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’Twas the opening night of Peer Gynt,
The show that made Ibsen a mint.
I remarked, ‘It’s quite long …
Maybe cut Solveig’s Song?’
But he scowled, and did not take the hint.

I forget which circle of Hell is reserved for hangers-on who imagine celebrity ‘creatives’ might profit from their two-cents’ worth of Philistine advice. Ibsen, and his composer Grieg, were wise to ignore the present cloth-eared recommendation, and the narrator was lucky not to get his big head kicked in. [See also here]

187 • Ms Clayton recollected

187 • Ms Clayton recollected

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Our Junior teacher, Ms Clayton,
Disparaged the books of Len Deighton:
‘Too dismal, too bloody!
Instead let us study
My Odes to the Glory of Satan.’

‘Clayface’, as she was always known, had little idea what teenage boys enjoy reading – nor, indeed, what Bible-belt parents consider appropriate. I think she was from The Bronx, or Brooklyn. At that age, I imagined they were the same place.

181 • Opportunity missed

181 • Opportunity missed

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At the edge of the old aerodrome
There hovered a shimmering dome.
Some alien lord
Tried to lure me aboard.
‘Forget it,’ said I, and went home.

At first glance there’s a rare honesty about this recollection: no ‘alien abduction’ ensued. Yet the narrator’s peremptory rejection of the ‘alien lord’ is probably a gesture of self-disgust from a speaker disappointed at having subscribed to garish 1950s’ sci-fi tropes, themselves anaemic emblems of dissatisfaction with the inescapable dystopia we have imposed on ourselves.

179 • Blight on Blight

179 • Blight on Blight

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I have only two problems with ‘Noddy’,
The plots and the writing (both shoddy).
If only Ms Blyton
Had worked with the light on
(Or simply been flung in a wadi).

These lines paraphrase my earliest memory of literary criticism. Ms Nicholls’s passion was commendable, her logic less so. A wadi-flinging before 1922, when Blyton published her first title, might have seemed arbitrary and over-harsh. Yet once she’d made it into print, the damage was irreversible – the smug racism, compulsive sexism and wooden stereotyping were out there, a viral formula spreading relentlessly from mind to mind to mind, yea, even unto the third and fourth generation.

173 • Cancer

173 • Cancer

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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.

163 • N.I.L.A.D.

163 • N.I.L.A.D.

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I was spoon-feeding Zsa Zsa Gabor
Till she held up her bowl and said ‘More’.
Sadly ‘Oliver Twist’
Tops the very long list
Of Novels I Loathe and Deplore.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion in literary matters, though ideally it will be accompanied by an explanation, when so forcefully expressed. Our narrator may be scandalised by the anti-Semitism many claim to detect in Dickens’s story; but does that provocation truly justify leaving a femme fatale (albeit a superannuated one) to starve?

161 • Dickens

161 • Dickens

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The day I read Great Expectations
My train had got stuck between stations:
Since time was so tight
I omitted, outright,
All the plot and the long conversations.

When they can find us nothing to look forward to, the British media likes to keep us doped with pointless anniversaries. ‘Today we celebrate the death of Charles Dickens,’ offered BBC Radio 4 a moment ago, and hordes doubtless cheered this maladroit proclamation. As our bulletin suggests, during the 150 years since Dickens’s passing the UK has learnt to scoff at entertainment that requires any imaginative participation.

152 • Sapient cephalopod

152 • Sapient cephalopod

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The octopus looked in my eye
As he clung to my shivering thigh.
‘Man is scarcely unique,
Just a hideous freak,’
He observed. I could make no reply.

Alarmingly the octopus sets out to debunk Descartes‘s teaching, that ‘animals are mere machines, but man stands alone’, but its intentions are contradicted by the scenario itself. For one thing, the man is not ‘standing alone’. For another, only a unique species could fantasise such a damning put-down from a ‘mere machine’ – and then be too stupid to come up with an appropriate riposte.

147 • Crinoline Paradox

147 • Crinoline Paradox

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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?

144 • Gross!

144 • Gross!

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I fear I shall never forget
Being slung in a dank oubliette
With nothing to eat
But three plates of meat
Two plums and a rancid baguette.

I confess that I grow weary of press reports comparing the Social Isolation we temporarily endure, in hope of impeding the incursions of plague, with the privations experienced by ‘lifers’ in the bottle-dungeons of Romantic fiction, whose pretend incarceration made little contribution to society .

138 • Mount Ararat

138 • Mount Ararat

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In the season that followed the flood
When the world was in bloom, or in bud,
Mrs Noah complained
‘Since this planet got drained
My husband’s been stuck in the mud.’

All too often the wife feels sidelined during the enaction of a Manly Project, and finds it difficult to empathise with the exhaustion and ennui experienced by the husband when it’s over. The more so, when every other creature within eye- and ear-shot has gone forth to multiply with a vengeance.

135 • Droit de Cuissage

135 • Droit de Cuissage

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A churlish charwoman from Cheddar
Whose boss seemed reluctant to bed her
Tore up, in frustration,
His Nobel citation
And ran his research through the shredder.

I took a look at Cheddar on my first UK visit, way back. It’s kinda nice and they have a mini-canyon you can run along. Unexpectedly it’s also the setting for this topical revenge scenario, as the boffin-geek denies his cleaner an habitual perk of employment. #MeNeither

133 • Potus alert (5)

133 • Potus alert (5)

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Was ever a leader alive
More ripe for his P45
Than the 45th Potus?
So who are these voters
Who want his regime to survive?

‘P45’ means different things in different territories; back home, it’s that contemptible clown in the White House; here in Britain it’s a ‘pink slip’ document you receive from your employer when your contract terminates. The rhyme above, on the occasion of the Nebraska Primaries, optimistically brings the two meanings together in a transAtlantic alliance.

102 • Colorado fading

102 • Colorado fading

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We watched our blind bailiff from Boulder,
(As old as the hills, if not older)
Half the night, as he swam
Round and round, at the Dam,
Growing colder and colder and colder.

By definition the Colorado is colorful, but this must have been a dull scene, and the average Joe or Joanne would have packed up and gone home on such a chilly evening. We must admire the moral courage if those who resisted any temptation to intervene as a well-liked character attended to the final actions of his career.

088 • Opacity

088 • Opacity

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To hell with this transparent cake,
The sort that a spectre might bake!
I want to eat suet,
Not view the world through it.
You promised me something opaque!

The novelty birthday cake is an idea best avoided. A showy comestible is often more gratifying to the donor than to the recipient.

081 • Tiber

081 • Tiber

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A mermaid emerged from the Tiber
To force me to feast on raw fibre;
Since I, like Rasputin,
Gorge only on gluten
Her fad did not gain a subscriber.

Our Roman week must surely end here. Food fads are one thing, food fascism another. A bearded charlatan may be outwardly less appetising than a Diving Belle, but at least the controversial Russian kept his dietary irregularities to himself.

075 • Ideas of March

075 • Ideas of March

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When Cæsar spurned Artemidorus
His senators hollered in chorus,
‘That prophet’s our geeza,
Not you, Mr Cæsar!
Your hubris is starting to bore us.’

Our narrative here differs in several key respects from Shakespeare’s account of the same (15 March 44 BC) episode. Hard to tell who got it right. But a similar marginalisation of the expert, by the egotistical leader, is a perpetual curse in public life.

074 • Hermitwear

074 • Hermitwear

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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.

071 • Pot luck

071 • Pot luck

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‘We met on a mauve double-decker
That never quite made it to Mecca.
Now she lives in a squat
But my life’s gone to pot,’
Said the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

This historical piece harks back to a distant time when posing on the Hippie Trail held more noble allure for a university graduate than posing as an investment analyst in The City.

064 • Sabrina

064 • Sabrina

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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.

041 • The Critics

041 • The Critics

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Q
Why is Handel’s long masterpiece, Saul,
Much like Pink Floyd’s immortal The Wall?
A
If you left out the stuff
That’s just twaddle and guff
You’d have hours of Nothing At All.

Our toxic culture lionises any sniping columnist whose primary skill is the facile disparagement of genius.

016 • Little Ned

016 • Little Ned

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Please note that your puppy-dog, Ned,
Is banned from the marital bed.
Henceforth I expect him
To lick his vile rectum
On top of the wardrobe instead.

Ned is long gone, mercifully, but traumatic memories remain, not least of this memo’s over-stern wording. [See also here]

003 • Three sisters

003 • Three sisters

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Cordelia, Goneril: call
The hunters to dine in our hall.
Yet do not call Regan.
Since she became vegan
We have no such daughter at all.

Some time before the play begins, I assume, the alpha-male tyrant rallies his sycophants against the principled child. A pity Shakespeare overlooked King Lear’s fourth child Greta, ‘Mistaken, at first, for a beta …’