Excerpt from ch24 of Helix Folt the Conservative

The familiar black Lexus bears Mr Roger Buggery down the long and winding drive, past the breezeblock folly, past all the sedulously faked neoclassical sculptures, past all the fibreglass hermit grottoes, and under the glazed redbrick arch into the quadrangle, where Mr Roger Buggery is put down like a turd. “That door,” says Mr Jagtar Singh, indicating one among many, “is where you must go.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery uncertainly and also nastily, “like I like thought like the like salon, yeah?” and “peace.” Mr Jagtar Singh, ignoring Mr Roger Buggery’s protestations, drives the familiar black Lexus off to be fumigated. Mr Roger Buggery watches nastily as it glides away beneath the glazed redbrick arch and disappears. Then he opens the one door among the many, and suffers himself to be subsumed once again into the bowels of Luncheon, which is just nasty. After a great deal of traipsing up and down an immense number of striplit corridors, and trying the handles of an immense number of locked doors, and bearing the affronts of an immense number of disconcertingly tall under-footmen, Mr Roger Buggery at length finds himself in a sort of large hall, filled with benches, ill-lit and fetid with the exhalations of those of the Marxist fraternity whose birth and breeding sufficiently offsets their scrofulousness. Certain of these gentlemen are of Mr Roger Buggery’s acquaintance; Sir Gerald Inhali, for instance, is to be observed chuckling satanically over some witticism laconically delivered out of the side of the mouth of Mr Milton Djugashvili. At the front of the hall is a low dais or stage, whereon has been set a plywood veneer desk behind which Mr Tad Curmudgeonly whispers into the ear of Lady Luncheon. Among the personages seated along the benches placed in rows in the middle of the hall, Mr Roger Buggery espies and flinches at the sight of Ms. Amelia De’Ath in the company of Mr Rex Anusol and the Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott. A few rows back, alone presumably having chaperoned thither her brother, Ms. Minerva Ledwitch attends to her knitting. Three or four seats along from her, Lady Inhali is deep in fatuity with two or three of Stokes Croft’s most unhygienic poets and - horror of horrors! nastiness of nastiness! - none other than Mr Roger Buggery’s own dearly beloved wife. Mr Roger Buggery’s head whirls. His whole future, that creaking and maggoty edifice constructed from a lifetime’s expenditure on subterfuge and mendacity and fraud, is in the balance. He cannot allow Lady Luncheon, still less Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, to condescend so as to notice his wife. Meanwhile, the day’s business is at hand. Time and tide await no cunt, yeah? Of Sir Ezra Tertiary-Syphilis, there is as yet no sign. Mr Roger Buggery extends his scaly neck from his brown shirt’s greasy collar. His villainous head swivels nastily on that stalk. The measures thus undertaken avail him not. Woe! Woe and thrice woe unto him! “Chill,” he mutters nastily unto himself and, just as nastily, “peace.” He fishes out the invitation, greasy with the maculations of a fortnight in the Buggery pocket. There it is in black and white. The opportunity to denounce either Sir Ezra in se, or a proxy of the latter’s choice. Or a proxy of the latter’s choice. How much fraud in the dissembler’s glib phrase. Mr Roger Buggery steels himself, draws a deep breath. Ms. Amelia De’Ath scowls at the sidling, insinuating approach of Mr Roger Buggery. Likewise Mr Rex Anusol. “I hardly think this is the occasion,” murmurs the latter gentleman, “for making an exhibition.” “I hardly do neither,” says Ms. Amelia De’Ath pursing her lips, “it ain’t not proper, genteel refined folk being put to the necessity of mixing with uncultured persons what don’t not know how to conduct their selves.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery nastily, “like who like fuckin’ like arx like you, yeah?” and “peace.” The Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott, having plastered across his face a polite wince, is so good as to intervene. “I rather think,” says he, “that the business of the gentleman is with oneself.” “Chill,” says Mr Roger Buggery nastily, “like I’m like sposed like to like be like denouncing like the like Channel fuckin’ Islands cunt, yeah?” and “peace.” The Hon. Adrian Rorschasch-Blott plasters across his face an exquisite, inconsolable grief. “Sir Ezra in se was the arrangement, I rather think,” says he, “or, failing that, a proxy of his choice.”

In Memoriam:- Tiger Craven 2001-2019

Sad to relate, this morning I had to have my orange cat Tiger put to sleep. He was a very good cat, with a gentle and equable temperament more than offsetting his gluttony and indolence, and was much loved by all who knew him.

I wrote a sonnet to him about three years ago, which I now reproduce below as my dedication to his memory. RIP Tiger Craven.

Sonnet 133

You, marmalade, by rightness represent

Dutch courage, distillate of ’88,

a Whiggishness, essentially decent;

what though it is your own singular fate

to be, for this phase of samsara, cat.

You should be turning the Kraut centre backs,

not - bravely, I’ll admit - murdering rats

(still anyway sectarian attacks).

Mostly you sleep, or indolently purr,

but rouse yourself betimes to stretch and yowl,

and shed on all soft furnishings your fur

and viscera of mice - gutsack and bowel.

Now, bestially, dream your other life

of Rev’rend Paisley, or of Johann Cruyff.

Clementine Unbound publish Sonnets 53 & 56

My thanks to G.F.Boyer at Clementine Unbound for agreeing to publish two of my sonnets.

Here's the link to Sonnet 53, which she published last Tuesday:-
https://clementineunbound.wordpress.com/2019/04/

And here's the link to Sonnet 56, which she published this morning:-
https://clementineunbound.wordpress.com/2019/05/

James Hannom: De Lucretio Dictisque Suis

I very much enjoyed reading this article in Aeon by James Hannom. In itself Hannam's article is excellent, being comprehensively illuminating on the whole topic of Lucretius & his life & times & philosophy, giving equally extended treatments, both to Lucretius's philosophical atomism which is of interest to modern philosophy, and to his - shall we say - niche contention that the world is flat.

Hannom's article has a particular personal resonance, in that I had a classical education several decades ago, during the course of which, aged 15, I found myself translating large chunks of Lucretius. This probably sounds like an ordeal, but it wasn't. I found it absorbing. It was my personal introduction to philosophy. In fact, it's probably fair to say that translating Lucretius, and the early acquaintance with philosophical atomism, was what led eventually to my PhD. I'm devoted to novels, plays, & verse nowadays, and very much an ex-philosopher, but Hannom's De Lucretio Dictisque Suis is still revocative. All very Proustian ...

Racist Icons of the Left No.94

"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."

Che Cuevara
The Motorcycle Diaries.

SWSS stage a play excerpt, and two sonnets due to be published in Clementine Unbound

I've been extremely remiss in not posting anything about my literary endeavours for a good few months. Here at last is an update.

Firstly, I haven't written all that much, but things are still ticking over:-

* Only a few thousand words of Helix Folt the Conservative. This is taking longer than I meant it to.

* 150 lines or so of The Modern Hudibras, an heroic couplet mock epic about Presbyterian street preachers on Broadmead in Bristol City Centre, which is modelled on Samuel Richardson's late 17th century heroic quadrameter mock epic Hudibras.

* The Wasters. An imagist poem about modern Bristolian degeneracy, very obviously modelled on T.S.Eliot. I'm quite pleased with this, although it needs one or two revisions.

* My collection entitled Odes, Epigrams, and Further Sonnets is gradually accumulated. Again, the quantity of new material is relatively low, but I'm quite pleased with the quality.



Secondly, as regards the dissemination-of-the-oeuvre question, I have two developments to report:-

 * On March 13, Briony Pope and SouthWest Scriptwriters staged an excerpt of my play The Senseless Counterfeit as part of the second SWSW Scratch Night, held aboard the Lightship in Bathurst Basin in Central Bristol. This was a one-off script-in-hand performance by a cast of professional actors, and was very well-attended and very successful. I was absolutely delighted to see my work staged for the very first time, and to see it done so well. My thanks to Briony and to Amanda Horwell who directed the piece, and also to the cast for their really excellent performance, and to the people behind the Cabot Cruising Club who so very kindly opened their vessel up for the event.

 * G.F.Boyer on behald of literary periodical Clementine Unbound has very kindly accepted my Sonnets 53 and 56 for publication on, respectively, April 30 and May 7.

From the Bristolian Odes, Epigrams, and Further Sonnets

XXVII.

An Epsloot Tartar in his Dotage

“All you can see, this side the tree line down

The slope: mine. Twenty acres? Thirty? ... I

Forget …” Facsimile of perplexed frown.

We gaze across the paddocks. “I will die

Communing with my ornamental sheep.

By you to be sustained, shall our abode …”

His parasite had gone out in the jeep -

His carer found him wand’ring in the road.

Thus Ozymandias the king of kings

Bestrode once Warburgs and then Credit Suisse.

Increasingly oblivious of things,

Disintegrating piece by confused piece: