Propaganda can be bought – the truth is free.
In 1996 Yevgeny Yevtushenko came to Birmingham, a key participant in Birmingham Readers' and Writers' Festival. He was promoting the English translation of his novel "Don't Die Before You're Dead." We got chatting afterwards, he was partial to an English pint and there was other common ground. We both wrote poetry, both cycled and both... Continue Reading →
Last night the family lost a soulmate. Max – a memory (02/08/2022) It was Birmingham Dog’s Home, Digbeth, some thirteen years ago where you, a yearling whelp, wheedled your way into our home and hearts. Then the beach at Dawlish, Devon, springs to mind, where you seemingly tried to drink the sea dry, Nearer home,... Continue Reading →
This is an updated version of a previous piece I wrote some 9 years ago. A royal occasion - 69 years ago 69 years ago today Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England. There were street parties all over the country, with events, races and fancy dress affairs which kept the mums busy sewing and... Continue Reading →
Ode to MODERNA “Grab ’em and jab ’em”’s our modus operandiand so far it’s proved – a nice little earner –no matter how many come a cropper and die,your coffins - our coffers – are full from MODERNA. We grab ’em and jab ’em and prick ’em and stick ’emand send ’em away with a... Continue Reading →
Laws for the rich - laws for the poor. The rich make the laws. The poor take the rap. Last night the Police broke up parties of people in Birmingham for just letting in the New Year in a traditional manner. The Coronavirus Act 2020 was rushed through parliament and since then we have been... Continue Reading →
Tennyson's Death of the Old Year was bubbling over with gaiety and the last verse, reproduced below, is the most foreboding verse of all. The Old Year on its death-bed was personified as having been a great 365/6 days in which to have lived, at least for the narrator. "He was full of joke and... Continue Reading →
Gas. Gas, quick boys . . .” Wilfred Owen's full, if disturbing, poem here. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est That was World War One. By the time of Second World War there were gas masks that everyone could use from the very start. We had one for the baby (that was me) in which I would have been lain... Continue Reading →
For Gladys Hotchkiss Christmas comes splitting post, ream or quire, the Yule log is spitting with sparks from the fire. Grandma is sitting her mind quite a mire of washdays and knitting of childhood desire. Yellows, blues, pinks a young girl again coloured gummed links then a paper chain of trimmings. She blinks ― her... Continue Reading →
All the Goss 