Bloody Maidstone

The bloody shops are full of bling,
While bloody hoodies do their thing
Outside bloody Burger King,
In bloody Maidstone.

Bloody rain, no bloody sun,
Bloody crowds no bloody fun,
I wish I had a bloody gun,
In bloody Maidstone.

Traffic’s seized up, can’t turn right,
One way system’s bloody shite,
Parking’s just a bloody fright,
In bloody Maidstone.

Bloody mall is full of druggies,
Teenage girls with bloody buggies
Pushing kids in stolen huggies,
In bloody Maidstone.

Bloody schoolkids by the doorfull,
Their bloody manners bloody awful.
It makes you wonder why they’re lawful,
In bloody Maidstone.

Don’t even go there bloody nights;
It’s full of chavs as high as kites,
Staining walls and starting fights,
In bloody Maidstone.

Its celebrities are ‘B’ list benders;
Except for ‘Barry’ from East Enders
And Mckenzie Crook, they’re all horrendous,
In bloody Maidstone.

So what’s the county’s fairest city?
Is it Maidstone? Is it titty!
Only the irony is witty,
In bloody Maidstone.

BT

(With acknowledgements to Capt. Hamish Blair for ‘Bloody Orkney’ and John Cooper Clarke for ‘Chickentown’)

Attrition

I stopped playing when I was ten;
A part of me was taken then.

I sold the bike when I grew soft;
Another bit of me was lost.

I quit smoking when my lungs grew tired;
A little more of me expired.

I gave up lust when I grew old;
Another part of me was sold.

I forsook drink when the doctor said;
One more piece of me had fled.

When anger goes, expelled by pain,
Then I'll be like a child again.

Come the day that I don't wake
There'll be nothing left for death to take

So if there's a God, pray God he's nice,
And leaves a little bit of vice.

(Or if the Devil takes my soul,
Pray he leaves me Rock and Roll.)

BT

(Don't worry - I haven't even achieved line one yet)

Bean Beetles

A retiring little chap is
Platypus Cylindricus
Inclined to keep his head down,
Preferring not to mix with us.
He tidies up detritus
Avoiding any pain or fuss
Assisted by his mucker,
Agrilis Pannonicus.

BT

Valentine

Roses are red,
Violets are blue;
Our leader is Brown
And we're in the poo.

BT

Your turn...

A Year End Economic Alphabet

A's Armageddon, a smidgin upsetting,
B are the Bonuses Bankers are getting.
C is for Credit, and also for Crunch,
D is for Death to the city lunch.
E is the 'End of 2008',
F is for Falling (the Stock Market's fate).
G is for Government, and Gordon, our leader
H is for Happy New Year, dear reader.
I is for Interest, nearly at nought,
J is for Junk (the shares I once bought).
K is for Keynes (John Maynard, not Milton)
L is the Lending the economy was built on.
M is for Meltdown, losing the lot,
N is for Nothing, which is what we have got.
O is for zero, zilch, bugger all,
P is for Penury, backs to the wall.
Q is for Queen (otherwise 'Lizzie')
R's the Receiver, who's frightfully busy.
S is Stagflation, making analysts grieve,
T is for 'Turn out the lights as you leave'.
U is Unemployment and Unrepaid loan,
V are the Vultures repossessing your home.
W is Woolworth's sorry demise,
X is Expenditure, still set to rise.
Y is for Yearning for a better bank rate,
Z is the Zeitgeist of 2008.

BT
New Year's Eve

Dream Lover

Dream Lover
I want to baste you and taste you,
Make a cocktail laced with you;
Trace the lips and the dips of you
The tips and the tricks of you;
Test the turns and the tapers
And the subtle twists of you:
The flanges and the rims,
The dimples and the whims;
The ins and the outs of you
The pleats and the pouts of you.

I’d like to tease you, please you,
Bring you to the knees of you;
The breath and the beat of you,
The sweat and the heat of you;
Bisect you, inspect you,
Parse you and dissect you
Conjugate the pieces,
The components and the creases,
The perfection and the puzzle,
The silence and the hustle.

I want to ream you, unseam you
Desiccate and wean you;
The please and the pardon
The secret scented garden
The nectar and the wine
The undulating line
The fruit that is forbidden
The thoroughbred that’s ridden
The incubus’s wedding
A twist of tangled bedding...

Dawn beyond the pane;
The waking and the shame,
The telltale dream-tossed quilt,
Oh, the wonder and the guilt.

BT
October 2008

The Manners Stone

Galtrigal

'Remember the two that stood here?' whispered the old wise stones.
'We recall,' said the tree and the bird that sung; 'They had no need of anyone.'
'Lovers,' mused the cave, 'from the way they sat with only the sound of the sea.'
'It was me; 'the Manners Stone replied, 'the magic that I have inside.'
'It was they,' the gulls cried back, 'their laughter and their fun;
Their eyes that met, the hearts that beat as one.'
'They never knew,' called the seal in the bay.
'Oh they knew,' said the waves, 'but they dared not say.'
'Remember the two that came,' said the stones, 'that loved, then went away?'

BT


The Manners Stone sits on the grazed turf near a crumbled field wall. It is unremarkable in a landscape dotted with boulders and outcrops, and you would never know it for what it is if you weren't shown. Once there was a sizeable village looking out across Loch Dunvegan, but now there is just a nearby croft, and a scatter of humps and brackened ruins.

The tourist brochures, if they mention it at all, say that the Manners Stone is reputed to give good manners to those who sit on it. This limp interpretation probably comes from a book 'Place Names of Skye', written by the Rev.W H Forbes in 1923. But it's not what I heard. Someone - I can't remember who, but it was someone local - told me that whoever sat on the stone would have good luck and fertility - but only if they sat on it bare-arsed.

The writer and recorder of legends Otta Swire, who was descended from generations of Skye folk, was told a different story, which came from a man of Galtrigal, where the stone lies. The Galtrigal man said:

"The Manners Stone's real name was the Bowing Stone, and it stood in 'the Field of Bowing'. At the proper season everyone came and walked round it three times and bowed. It was the stone of the ancient gods, and if you bowed to it you would bring good fortune to the harvest.

"Then came a minister who was angry and forbade the 'worship' of the stone, for he said it was a pagan practice and the stone an idol. So he had the stone moved into the churchyard as being sacred ground. But the people still visited it and bowed. Then the minister said that it was accursed and ordered it to be thrown out.

"Now, the man on whose land it was thrown had six strong sons, and when his crops were trampled down and ruined by people visiting and circling the stone he grew angry and told his sons to remove it. They did, and threw it into the ravine [there is a deep ravine close by] and it broke.

"Sheriff Nicholson came from Husabost and was angry and said, "Replace the stone as it was or on rent day you'll lose your croft." So the six sons tried to and it was then they found that the stone was broken. They collected the smaller pieces and laid them close together in the stone's old place and then laid the largest piece on top of them, and Sheriff Nicolson accepted that. There it still lies and people still bow to it. But I think there are other stories too."

In her introduction to Otta's book, Dame Flora Macleod noted that, "In olden days the Church did much to forbid and to destroy the ancient beliefs", and I am sure that is what has happened in this case. The good manners explanation, itself recorded by a minister of the church, seems to derive from association with the stone's name, and is a conveniently anodyne substitute for anything earthier or more challenging to the Church's authority. But the name of the Manners Stone must surely pre-date the arrival of english language, which completely undermines the theory.

I wondered whether perhaps the name had a biblical root, as 'Manna'; an association of good harvests with the 'divine sustenance' of the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. Then I looked in a Gaelic-English dictionary and found an obvious clue that seems to have been missed; 'Manadh' in gaelic (the 'dh' at the end isn't pronounced) means 'an omen', good luck'. What better name for a stone that could bring fortune to a harvest? The Manadh Stone.

Simon Cowell and Pot Noodles

Like any apprentice old git, BT regularly sounds off about use and abuse of language. I know language evolves and all that guff but I think, like the pool of human knowledge in a post-apocalyptic society, the vocabulary of individuals may be shrinking.

There are lots of reasons why it might; narrowing educational syllabi, syllabuses or syllabus; fewer people reading; TV; pot noodles; Simon Cowell; text-spell; rap; or the inability to walk through a shopping mall without a mobile in one hand and a bottle of branded water in the other. I wonder if this first generation of bloggers may turn out to be a golden one, blogging Blogging's swan song.

I know few things are more irritating and arrogant than whingeing about people's use of english. Just because I prefer ruh-search to reeee-search, forr'ed to four-head, doesn't mean I'm right (although; There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her four-head. And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was whore-head).

But I can't help minding. It's my beautiful language too, and they're using it like an ashtray.

Anyway, this piece of BT doggerel is for riders who are not readers. I'm sure they'll thank me for it:

How to Tell a Ménage from a Manège

In the days of the Raj
Gents knew a ménage
Was the way the French spoke
Of a bird and a bloke.

In that fastidious age
They knew a manège
As a general rule
Meant a riding school.

So a 'ménage a trois'
Was three people cuddling
Not three schooling rings
(It's all a bit muddling)

The problem, of course is
We'll be inviting troubles
If we keep schooling horses
On French married couples.

Burial Most Royal

A poem by BT's mother. The Isles of the Sea, in the Firth of Lorn, are where St Columba first landed from Ireland. The grave of his mother, Eithne, is on a little hill outside the sanctuary area.



Burial Most Royal

He brought her to the Islands of the Sea,
That royal daughter of the Leinster kings,
And buried her outwith the sanctuary -
An Abbot's ruling had ordained these things.

But I believe Columba thought it meet
And right to lay her reverently down,
With many misty islands at her feet,
And bracken at her head a golden crown.

He left her there, the gentle, good and wise,
(Praying, I think, that God would show her grace)
Wrapped in the radiant light of seas and skies,
And with the sunset's glory in her face.

Moyra Macleod

Funeral Reading

Clearing out rubbish from my Wordpro files yesterday I came across a funeral address I wrote a few years ago. Can't imagine what I was thinking of. It's a bit trite and Desiderata-ish, but hey, if you can't do schmaltz when you're gone, when can you? (I shall almost be sorry to miss it.)


"This is not farewell. I am with you still. I am with you in the memories that you hold. I endure in the small things that I have made or which bear my mark; in words on a page, a dovetail joint, a drystone wall. For as long as they shall last I am with you, as long as you shall last.

I am here today, glimpsed through a glass, in the natures of my children. I will be there tomorrow, like an echo, in the strengths and weaknesses of their children, and of their children's children. In their skills and frailties, in the turn of a head, the flash of a smile, the scatter of a freckle.

I will be there, as you will be there, for eternity, for by our presences we change the future. We are raindrops which start currents; butterflies that stir storms. Each of us are colours on a palette which paint the picture of what is yet to be, and so the future is ours too.

For you, my passing is not an ending, but a continuing. For better or for worse, I have seeded my words and my waves in our todays and tomorrows. The game is done, and it is time to rest. Rejoice in my resting and, if you are able, in my presence. It is not you that have lost me, but I that has lost you, and there is no pain in my loss, for I am not aware."

A British Oath of Allegiance

According to today's news the government is to consider making schoolchildren swear an oath pledging allegiance to the Queen and respect for the law.

The suggestion comes from a review of citizenship ceremonies led by former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith. At last October's launch it was suggested that "people born and raised in this country are often far too cynical about being British and it seems to be a national pastime to put down British institutions and our way of life."

We are governed by half-wits. As a nation we don't do pledges of allegiance. And we have always laughed at our institutions. It's the way we express our affection for them.

I just can't see our children standing to attention, right hands on their hearts, singing 'We are the World'. But if it's inevitable - and stupidity in government usually is - Brother Tobias can at least offer his services by drafting the oath.

One based on the American model doesn't work too well:

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of Great Britain (or to one of the several flags of its constituent countries, and also to the flag of the European Union) and to the Republic Kingdom State for which it they stand, one four Nations (or six if you include Geordies and the Cornish), under God (or gods, or not, as appropriate), indivisible, with liberty (at least when there is no room left in prisons) and justice (but not necessarily in equal measure) for all."

Here is my alternative paean to the British way of life:

I pledge allegiance to...

Binge-drinking on a Friday night,
Humbugs, Hovis and Marmite;
Train delay, Cadbury's Milk Tray,
Ann Widdecombe and Ronnie Kray;
HP sauce, repeats of Morse,
Spotted Dick for second course;
Private Eye, Beano and Eagle,
Triumph Norton, Reliant Regal;
Basil Brush, Winnie the Pooh,
Not jumping the Post Office queue;
Tabloid rags, banning fags,
Football players and their WAGS;
Jones's (Griff Rhys and Catherine Zeta),
Balamory and Blue Peter;
H and coke, (downers and uppers),
Takeaways and TV suppers;
David Beckam, Dickie Bird,
Being good at coming third;
Falling standards, nits in schools,
Government by deluded fools...

...But frankly, any oath's absurd
Except one short, four-letter word.

(It's a work in progress)

Christmas Song

Here is Brother T's classy cultural contribution to Christmas. (More verses to come if the muse wills it). You can make up your own tune.

I've bought the family presents, and ones from them to me
And a musical card for Nana that plays 'Deck the Halls' in C
I've sprayed the front room windows with cfc free snow
And dressed the front door knocker with a tasteful velvet bow
I've bought an advent calendar with a Disney 'Snow White' theme
(Inside every window is a dwarf-shaped chocolate cream)
And I've pasted a nativity outside the downstairs loo
'Cos I think we should remember what its all about, don't you?

Chorus:
I've found the wind-up Santa which plays 'Jingle Bells'
I've found the festive candles that give off festive smells
I've found the things for hanging seasonal greetings on the walls
But I can't, I can't, I can't find
My shiny silver balls

I've just been down to Asda for an amputated tree
And a pair of frozen turkeys (it was buy one, get one free).
I've remembered nuts and dates, and other xmas treats
Which decorate the sideboard, but which no one ever eats.
I've scattered pot pourris in little hand-carved wooden bowls
And fashioned home-made crackers using tubes from toilet rolls.
I've draped the new conservatory with flashing LEDs
And stocked up on instant stuffing, brussels sprouts and frozen peas.

Chorus:
I've found the wind-up Santa...etc

Fish Tale

When it was proposed to convert Littlebrook Power Station on the Thames Estuary from oil to gas, environmentalists were anxious about the impact on fish species of conservation interest. In particular, it was argued that smelt, twaite and allis shad had declined substantially, and were now protected by European Habitat Regulations. Never one to duck a hot environmental issue, Brother Tobias was moved to compose the following classy verse:


When the Thames was young, what times were had
By Smelt, and Twaite and Allis shad.
From tip to fin Allis was svelte,
More lithe than Twaite, more sweet than Smelt.
She'd flutter her anadromous gills
Giving Twaite and Smelt wet piscine thrills.
For preference, I've heard it said,
She laid her roes by Maidenhead,
While poor old Smelt lacked taste and brains,
And was sadly apt to spawn near Staines.
Handsome Twaite, all blotch and rigid dorsal,
Thought Allis was a tasty morsel;
In thrall, he'd always burble "Hi Sis"
If he encountered her in Isis,
While Smelt (Osmerus Eperlanus)
Was envious from nose to ... tail.

Alas, this idyll was cruelly took
When they converted Littlebrook;
First poisoned, polluted, lightly oiled,
Now gas had left their eggs hard-boiled.
They heard heartbroken Allis cry,
"This hot, my eggs will never fry".
Now Smelt, and Twaite and Allis shad
Have left the Thames for good...So sad.

Wet Fish and Chamber Pots

Someone - I can't recall who - once told me that he had visited Attingham Park when it was an innovative adult education community led by Sir George Trevelyan. He was introduced to Trevelyan who, asserting enthusiastically that there was poetry in everything, seized a casually discarded railway timetable, opened it at random, and dramatically declaimed, "choice of chilled, fruit juices," emphasising the alliteration like a true thespian.

One suspects that the timetable was a strategic prop and the random extract far from random, and possibly not even an extract, but nevertheless the point about the ubiquity of poetry was well made. Slopping in the bilges of my mind ever since I read it in some book is a notice apparently once pinned up in Italian sleeping-cars. Something like, "Sotto il lavabo une trouve uno vaso,", which I think means, "there is a chamber pot under the wash basin." It sounds a lot better in Italian than it does in English.

I thought I'd test out the poetry everywhere thesis, and opened the phone book at random. Bad choice; "Carpenter S, Carpenter SA, Carpenter TJ, Carpenter V, Carptenter P, Carr Rev A" didn't seem too poetic.

Hang about. Carptenter? Is that a misprint? I can understand how the Carpenters acquired their name, but were there medieval tradesmen making tents for fish? Are there other forgotten fish trades? Dabhanders perhaps, or Turbotchargers? My attempts to research the issue drew a blank, but I did learn a lot. Did you know, for example, that the Ginger Carpet Shark is a relation of the Tasselled Wobbegong? I thought not. But then, as I waded through the species, the Oblique-Bar Monocle Bream, the Painted Sweet Lip, the Bass Groper, the Six Band Rock Cod, etc, it dawned on me that there was indeed poetry, and that it was good.

Which reminds me, Brother Tobias once wrote a pome about fish. I'll post it tomorrow, if I can find it. Bet you can't hardly wait.

Kentish Requiem

At the shaw's edge, side by side,
Oak, ash and thorn
Laid out like corpses on a battlefield;
Once shadow-dashed by dogfights
As men fell in their turn.
Their antecedents saw
The seasons and the Civil War
Ride by;
The herdsmen and the harvests,
A Saxon's hand on seed;
Betrothal bells and baptisms;
Pilgrims, pigeons' wings.
Moon on moon the hedgerow waxed and ebbed.
Watched the grandsons and the grandsires,
Man and ploughpair;
The wise yews bowing on the hill.

* * *

Heard the yews fall.
Reached out...
Fell themselves before the storm.

Brother Tobias
20 October 1987

Trees

Make a wish upon a hill,
There spirits dwell;
Touch wood at will.
Voices whisper in ripe corn
Ancient runes;
Touch thorn, touch thorn.
Fungus creeps on forest floor,
Enchantment's lair;
Touch wood once more.

Pilgrim's staff and shaman's wand,
Yew crouches round the sacred pond.
The tree of death pollutes the cup;
The bow wood and the bleeding sap.
Let them number ninety-nine,
Beneath take Lammas loaf, take wine.
Circle seven times the tree
For blessing and fertility,
Make Beltane fire within the bole,
Touch yew for moral and immortal soul.

On the moss wolves silent roam;
Always touch wood when you're alone.
Abroad upon a moonlit night,
Touch wood against the priests in white.
Or Herne the Hunter may be near,
Jack-in-the-Green,
Beware, beware.

Touch my sap on suckling's tongue,
St Fechin's tree that would not burn.
Yggdrasil, the eagle's nest;
The trysting place where coffins rest.
Bring your children, bring your lame,
Bring your cattle and your pain.
I am the healer and the healed,
The wise physician of the field,
The toolmaker, the last to leaf;
Touch ash for sickness and in grief.

When you feel eyes all around,
When no one's there
But footsteps sound;
When frail, confused, all courage flown,
When far from help
And far from home;
When you feel They're drawing near,
Touch wood, touch wood,
Touch wood in fear.

Here is Hawthorn, fancy free,
Fairy blessed, the fortune tree.
Dress the door from side to side,
Dress the maypole, dress the bride;
For she has beauty of the dawn,
Who bathes her limbs in dew of thorn.
Merchant's staff and martyr's crown,
From Calvary brought to Avalon.
The Mass tree and the Bile grove;
Touch thorn for laughter, and for love.

Brother Tobias

Kirsty's Beach

The wind blows wild in winter
On the basalt beach.
Seaweed slime and tide-wrack
Strewn along the cold shore.
A fish box and a bottle,
Hailstones gathered by a burn.
No December place to be,
Kirsty's Beach.

In summer,
In the smiling sun, quartz sparkled;
Harebells, heather here and pink sea thrift;
Laughter trickled between the rocks,
Woke whelks;
Pebble splash, ducks and drakes,
A farm in the sand, of sticks and stones;
A child in clover.

Where has my farm gone, Daddy?
To the sea, my child, the gulls and the sea.
Will it come back, Daddy?
Constantly, my child,
To you, and me.

Brother Tobias

The End

Professor Urey was a Noble prize-winning American scientist who more or less discovered heavy water in the 1930s and worked on the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. Asked in the late 1940s if the H bomb might start a chain reaction which could destroy the earth, he replied, "Possible, but not probable. But I see no cause for alarm. After all, the earth is only a tiny planet in a vast universe."

This chilling, if pragmatic, statement prompted Nathaniel Gubbins to write the following poem for his newspaper column 'Sitting on the Fence'. Strangely, it has reached me via the Sudan Star of 20 February 1950, to which the column was presumably syndicated.

The End

Only a tiny man you are in a forest of tiny trees;
Or a man on a tiny mountain top enclosed by tiny seas.
And nobody out in the hemisphere, if anyone lives so far,
Would turn a hair, or trouble to stare, if your miniature world so full of care
Turned into a flaming star.

Only a tiny man you are: in a tiny city dwell,
With millions of other tiny men,trapped in a tiny hell,
But those who dwell, if dwell they do, in worlds beyond the sun
Will shed no tear, if a flash and a smear tell all who watch in the hemisphere
Your tiny race is run.

Only a tiny man you are, you and your tiny wife,
In your tiny house in a tiny town, living your tiny life.
And none who live in the larger lands behind the Milky Way
Will feel a pang, or care a hang, or turn a head at the tiny bang
That ends your tiny day.

Fragment, 1975

Laestrogeni Megotrovitch
Went daft as a rubber ball,
So they put him in a padded cell
And he bounced from wall to wall.
The miller's men and a gaunt old tree
Came bearing gifts of cups of tea,
And chocolate chunks and paper clips
And hazel nuts and leather whips.
'He was our friend in better times'
A miller's man explained,
'Down by the surge in Kennel Vale
Where the primroses once played.'
'I mind the time he made a joke,'
The bent old beech recalled,
'Close by the shade of the powder mill,
Where the water wheel once rolled.
'It set my leaves a-dancin then,
And I must confess I cried;
I'd never thought an old stick like me
Could feel a joke inside.'

Ruthless Rhymes

There is too much good 'motorcyle action' on TV today to concentrate on blogging. And we are dining away for Father-in-Law's Day. But in view of yesterday's focus on literati, here are some ruthless rhymes wot I rote.

Wet Sophie

Sophie's such a silly creature
She fell into the water feature.
She did it, ne'er a doubt,
Trying to pick some pebbles out.
Slipping down each waterfall
She didn't do much harm at all,
But when she plopped into the sump
She went and blocked the wretched pump.
It caused her mother great distress -
She'd only lately bought that dress.

Dustbin Man

When Spotty raced down Coldblow Lane
Astride his Harley, in the rain.
I bet, just briefly, he was sorry
To meet the ascending dustbin lorry.
The impact made a dreadful sound
But, praise be, Spotty's still around;
They wear him as a mascot still,
Embedded in the engine grille


Fragrant Pru

Auntie Pru, with her great, hooked schnoz
Is like a witch - or at least, she was;
She caught it in the oven door
And doesn't have a nose no more.
It fell inside (she should have looked)
And came out awfully overcooked.
Alas, poor Auntie Pru's not well;
The good news is, she doesn't smell.

The Last Bus

Greedy Stephen (the daft berk),
While waiting for his bus to work,
Spotted something on the ground.
It was a 10p piece he'd found!
Believing it his lucky day
He bent across the carriageway
And thus poor Stephen met his fate;
The bus was prompt, and made him late.

DIY

Trying to fix a faulty socket
Father burnt up like a rocket.
He did not do us any favours -
The TV would not work for 'Neighbours'.