Best Friend at School

In the Wrong Band

Politics is the wrong game for those with a penchant for the truth.

Sorry, I Really Cannot “Do” Sunny

In Last year I killed a man Ms. North links to an article in The Guardian written by a train driver whose train had ‘on a perfectly normal summer’s day’ mown down a man who had stepped onto the tracks and calmly waited for death. Last year a friend of mine took a large overdose of her prescribed medication and lay down to die. Someone found her and she was taken to hospital. On the way there one of the paramedics told her, ‘You did not really intend to die. If you had you would have thrown yourself from a building or jumped in front of a train’. Damned if you do, equally damned if you don’t. Perhaps someone should send this compassionate paramedic a copy of the linked article.

This is how I survive

Others may choose a different path…

A world repopulated
Coming into focus once again
The blade was dull
Hacking through the forest
Like a surgeon with a scalpal
Cutting away huge chunks of history
Corrupted, rotten, dead wood

Remember This…

…She is not worthy of your hatred
She deserves only your indifference.

Addendum: And remember this too:

That she fears your pity more than she fears your hatred. No, she relishes your hatred. Hatred validates her, pity negates her.

Oh yes, and your indifference will probably sedate her.
(Just had to get that one in.)

A Casualty of Care in the Community

Those Ubermenschen at the Mail on Sunday seem to believe that drug addiction and genuine mental/physical illness cannot co-exist.  I’d like to tell you about an old friend of mine: Karl, a tall, cadaverous man. I remember having to  crane my neck to talk to him.  I saw him as basically decent. I’ve never heard about him using physical violence on anyone.  He was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia in his teens and lived in sheltered accommodation for most of his adult life.  He was not terribly well educated but he can recite The Parrot Sketch word for word.  

On his fortieth birthday he decided he wanted to be completely independent.  This was probably the worst choice he has ever made. After red tape and bureaucracy were dealt with, the authorities moved him into a council flat.  On a sink estate with his fellow untermenschen. The local drug addicts homed in on him.  Those people smell blood and, like most predators, they hunt in packs.  They pretended they were his friends, they got him addicted to heroin at the age of forty, they used his home as a crack den.  It took a long time for the police to become involved.  Far too long.  They arrested the dealers and cleared Karl’s flat. They did not arrest Karl or charge him with any crime.  He was homeless for a while and then moved back into sheltered accommodation.  He is still addicted to heroin.

A poster boy for the failure of the Care in the Community policy if ever there was one.

Some Bloke Called….

…James Purnell is getting tough on benefit claimants (a.k.a: ‘untermenschen’) in an effort to win the votes of Mail On Sunday readers.  He singles out drug addicts for ‘special treatment’.  They will be ‘punished’ if they do not attend rehabilitation programmes.  He read PPE at Oxford. So he’s been there then.  ‘I know the bottom, he says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.’  Heroin addicts are currently weaned off their drug of choice with a substitute called ‘methadone’.  I can think of a more effective treatment: a cocktail of phenobarbitol and an anti-emetic.  A single dose will be all that is necessary and they will sleep the deepest sleep of all.

Mr Purnell, here’s a clue
No matter what you say
No matter what you do
Those Daily Mail Readers
Will never vote for you
So turn and watch the few
Who still believed in you
Walk away, saying, ‘Et tu’.

This could be the realization of a revolutionary’s wet dream. The bloodier the better, I say.

Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like whisper
Don’t you know
They’re talkin’ about a revolution
It sounds like whisper

While they’re standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
Wasting time in the unemployment lines
Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what’s theirs

And finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ ’bout a revolution. Hold on.
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin’ ’bout a revolution. Hold on.

Rest assured that if you declare war on me I will defend myself. By any means necessary.

A Long Taxi Ride

 

 

Farewell Angelina
The bells of the crown
Are being stolen by bandits
I must follow the sound
The triangle tingles
And the trumpet play slow
Farewell Angelina
The sky is on fire
And I must go.

There’s no need for anger
There’s no need for blame
There’s nothing to prove
Ev’rything’s still the same
Just a table standing empty
By the edge of the sea
Farewell Angelina
The sky is trembling
And I must leave.

The jacks and queens
Have forsaked the courtyard
Fifty-two gypsies
Now file past the guards
In the space where the deuce
And the ace once ran wild
Farewell Angelina
The sky is folding
I’ll see you in a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sitting
Perched in the sun
Shooting tin cans
With a sawed-off shotgun
And the neighbors they clap
And they cheer with each blast
Farewell Angelina
The sky’s changing color
And I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves
On the rooftoops they dance
Valentino-type tangos
While the make-up man’s hands
Shut the eyes of the dead
Not to embarrass anyone
Farewell Angelina
The sky is embarrassed
And I must be gone.

The machine guns are roaring
The puppets heave rocks
The fiends nail time bombs
To the hands of the clocks
Call me any name you like
I will never deny it
Farewell Angelina
The sky is erupting
I must go where it’s quiet.

Farewell Angelina, Joan Baez

Hello world!

This is my Sunny Side Up Blog.  I have transferred my posts over from Blogger but I intend to maintain both.  This blog will be a respite from dark feelings and fear.  It will include my photography, some articles, short stories, extracts from my novel and illustrations.  In short, it exists to show the word that I’m not a complete curmudgeon (well, not yet anyway).

Remember: La vie est belle, et elle commence demain.

What Are They Doing?

In times of increasing uncertainty, people cling to false dichotomies. 

You are eating. A plateful of crisp lettuce and ripe red baby tomatoes. You look away briefly. When you look back your once appetizing meal is covered in beetles. They have made it their home. You scream and cover your eyes. Your mother comes over. ‘Look, Mummy, look, there are insects crawling all over my food.’

She looks at your plate.  ‘There’s nothing there, ‘rie.  You must eat it. The doctor says…’

You run to your room and slam the door. You are safe. You look down. Your carpet is covered in a seething mass of black beetles. You scream. An hour later you are in the back of a doctor’s car on the way to the acute ward. And your skin is crawling with black insects. And you know that this is no escape.