Is anybody else still dogshit poor after the Cost Of Living Crisis, the Energy Fuel Crisis, Covid, Lockdown, Brexit, brutal benefit ‘reforms’, and the Premiership Football financial-dealing investigations? Or is Facebook just winding me up about peoples’ purchases, new homes, expensive hobbies, sparkling outfits, posh meals, foreign holidays, nights & days out, festival tickets, gigs, parties, and coronation celebrations? It was only a few months ago wasn’t it? When we were all poor? When everyone’s business was failing, no-one could get work, bills were going unpaid, houses were remortgaged or sold, everyone was using foodbanks, people were dying, children were unfed, and the economy was never going to recover from the multiple Winters of Discontent. I can see that people are angry. I can see that people are striking, and/or protesting. But I can’t see that there’s much sympathy. Not in the world of narcissistic endeavour. Not in the world of funny memes. Not in the world...

  Four matches in, and I accidentally stumbled on The Boy watching the Welsh destroy America. My boycott was over. I hated myself. I tried not to watch, but like most of us I was subliminally entranced by the advertising hoardings. Bigger, brighter, better than ever. Revolving, shining, begging for attention, in the middle of the Gulf’s desert. Among the usual suspects - Coke, Micky D’s ‘We Deliver’, VISA (and a tiny subordinate and seemingly unwanted Budweiser in the corner), there were the global behemoth ‘Others’. Congruent and apparent were the heraldic emblems of Qatar Energy and Qatar Airways; the CEO of the former being Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s Minister of Energy, and Chairman of Qatar Industries petrol company, Qatar Gulf drilling company, and Qatar Adriatic liquid natural gas company. And all so close to the COP27 summit. He has an honours degree from Penn State in 1991. He states this on his Wiki page. There were one or two In-Yer-Face ads that seemed to...

               ****May contain triggers for those suffering from jingoism, or misplaced loyalty**** War! What IS it good for??? HEAR YE! HEAR YE! I was banging-on in Part 1 about how we should maybe give the monarch a bit of rest now? We expect her to serve us, we expect her to maintain fuck loads of posh houses, we expect her to be morally upright, head of the Army, unflinching in the face of adversity, and good on a horse. She never gets a moment’s rest, but her offspring & her offsprung-offspring get to go to Mustique, Muscat or Meribel, Dubai, Dakar or Dar Es Salaam. The latest lot got to go to the 'colonies' of Belize, Bahamas & Jamaica, and boy did they read that one wrong! Bu where does the Queen go? Norfolk if she's lucky, Aberdeen, or Windsor near Bracknell (opposite Maccy D’s). We wouldn’t inflict this life on our WORST enemy, so why do we persist in doing this to our sovereigns? Republican or Raving Loony, you’d have the family...

 *****Look away now if you love HM the Queen, because she reminds you of your nan or your mum, and you want her to live forever, regardless of what condition she may be in.******* He does. Hear Ye! Hear Ye! So…. as you all know by now, I’m the Unofficial Town Crier for Olde Beccles, Wymondham and parts of Kenninghall. There is very little expected of me, and enormous pressure on me to shout stuff. Traditionally, in days of olden, the Town Crier would announce things of importance to the town, mainly concerning royal diktat, royal births, royal deaths, or executions (royal or otherwise). So……. with Her Madge’s Jubbly already gone (Feb 6th), and a 4 Day Bank Holiday planned for June, it would be remiss of me NOT TO put out a massive shout to the old girl! 😄 But first a request: Can we give her a break now? Let her retire gracefully? Take the pressure off a bit? Imagine if YOU woke up with all that expectation on your shoulders? I know she was born into it, but even she didn’t e...

Those not watching Netflix’s latest offering for a third time (in order to ‘Get it’, without asking Google), answered data-mined questions on their smartphones, in between quick & drawn-out games of Wordle. Meanwhile the HMS CostaLot prowled and trawled ‘sovereign waters’ for drowning ex-pats that had left war-torn Blighty for less welcoming arms. Mary put her crochet needles down and surveyed her morning’s work. A fishing-net the size of Sheppey, made of red, white & blue rope. The message - ‘God Bless You M’am - You’ve Gone Platinum!’  In Qatar the Crown Prince ordered three more executions. Two queens, and a fallen woman. All fur coat. No trousers. Mouth wide open. Knickers inside. And all in a days work………….

My love bought me an oven-glove An oven-glove she did gift me. I’d been reading the obituaries Wikipedia, on the World Wide Web And spouting facts about causes and ages and spouses and places of death. They were lined and flameproof And patterned with cats We carry on together marching forward gifting gloves absorbing facts.

  Does anyone have 'narrative voices' in their head? When I write shit, I often assume the inner voice of something or someone I’ve just watched, or heard on the wireless. I think it’s quite common. At the moment it’s Sterling Archer from Netflix's Archer. He’s also the voice of Bob from Bob’s Burgers . I think it’s the sort of laconic, can’t be arsed, and rather belligerent voice that I need, to express my laconic & belligerent sense of not being arsed at the moment? The problem is, if I read anything I have written back in a non-Archer/Bob voice, it loses all colour. And intrinsic meaning. It’s not a problem. According to my 'blog stats', only five people have read any of my stuff in the past month, and I’m one of them. Possibly two of them. I wrote a piece for a magazine last week. It hasn’t been published. Or accepted. But I wrote a piece of doggerel, and I managed to stay remarkably sane. I used to write my blogs in a Joe Pasquale voice. I wanted to convey...