RAVING - by Glynis Heathcote. A ***** Review.

I read this novel in two goes and it would have been one go if I hadn't needed to sleep in the middle. Here is a world of frustratingly, wilfully ignorant people, who refuse to see the ever-growing danger that surrounds them. The blurb says "Raving will keep you riveted from exasperating beginning to cataclysmic end." and for me, that is exactly what it did do. While this is fiction - from suspect food additives, to GM crops, from the constant spin on reality put out by the media and politicians alike, to the brainwashed masses incapable of accepting the blindingly obvious truth - Raving contains chilling echoes of the world we live in today. Anyone who dares to speak out or fight back is shouted down or prosecuted. It is Orwell's thought crimes all over again and all too frighteningly familiar. From page one the tension goes on building like a ticking time bomb until it explodes in a bloody and horrifying climax. Chrissy, as a Mother and Grandmother, may seem an unusual protagonist, but in defence of her family and loved ones, she is a tigress. Thought provoking, dripping with fear and frustration throughout, this is too good a read to be missed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Raving-world-theres-nowhere-hide

Survival of the Fattest

Question:

Two men (or women, but I feel safer saying it's men because I'm not stupid) are lost in the wilderness. There is plenty of water but no food.

Both are six feet tall, same build, but one is 12 stone and the other is 30 stone.

How much longer would the fat man take to starve to death?

That's assuming he doesn't eat the thin man.

I know the thin man could kill the fat man in his sleep by smothering him with branches from a tree and stuffing clumps of earth in his mouth and live for much longer by eating the fat man and then drying out strips of his flesh and hanging them off his belt for later, like Bear Grylls no doubt would. But let's assume they don't eat each other. Would the thin man starve much sooner than the fat man?

Subsidiary question, if they didn't eat each other, walking out of the wilderness, would the thin man get further because he had less weight to carry and could keep going longer, or would the fat man get further because he had all that lard to feed off to keep him going?

I think the fat man would, for sure. And that's why, if I was in that situation as the thin man, I would definitely kill the fat man and eat him. If I could get a fire going. Barbecue mainly.

Or just eat him raw, the fat bastard.

Basically, thin man, fat man, who survives?

Unless they stumbled across a woman with enormous tits, then maybe they would both survive.

There are always variables.

I need a rethink of this question. It's difficult being a scientist like me.

Anyway, I need more drink. Laters...

Father Christmas

About a dozen years ago, an old mate of mine approached me while I sat at the bar in my local and asked me if I could do him a favour. This guy, Des, was always involved in local community projects, like driving a school bus taking kiddies on outings, or organising bingo nights for elderly folk in a nearby hall. I’d previously helped him out lugging tables into the street for some royal celebration or other and had also stood in for him as bingo caller – luckily knowing my two fat ladies from my key of the door and all the other bingo banter having grown up with it on seaside holidays – and I expected this favour to be something similar.

“It’s the kids' Christmas party on Saturday,” he said. “I can’t be there this year because…” here he gave me some reason which, with the mists of time, I now can’t remember. “So could you stand in for me as Father Christmas?”

Well, my gut reaction was no bloody way am I dressing up as Father Christmas, as I instantly felt embarrassed just thinking about it. I can get up in a pub full of strangers and sing them a song and I have done so many a time when it wasn’t even karaoke night and have performed on open mic nights to crowds almost entirely comprised of singers and musicians. I have also been known to hold the attention of groups of people, regaling them with a flow of jokes and stories and having them rolling in the aisles, but being the man in red was a performance of an entirely different kind.

Singing and tale telling aside, which I love and feel in complete control of, I can be extremely self-conscious when put on the spot. I started to shake my head and pull that “I’d like to help, but” face, only Des wasn’t going to be put off so easily. Before a decent excuse had even come to mind, he hit me with a guilt trip.

“I don’t know anyone else I can ask to do it,” he said, a hang-dog expression appearing on his kindly face. “If you don’t step in, I think we’ll be forced to cancel the party.” I was about to say I was sorry but I couldn’t help when he nailed me with, “The kids are going to be really disappointed.”

I was trapped. Butterflies already in my stomach, even though Saturday was still several days away, and with serious misgivings, I caved in and agreed to do it. He beamed at my positive response, bought me a thank you pint and then quickly disappeared before I could change my mind. I sat there staring at my free pint, groaning inside and knowing full well I had just been manipulated and thought to myself what a nice chap Des was and also what a crafty bastard.

Saturday arrived with indecent haste in my opinion and as I awaited my 2 pm appointment at the kid’s Christmas beano, my stomach was turning loops. I paced about my flat all morning, going from room to room for no other reason than the nervous ants in my pants and at one point, I became so anxious, I found myself hanging over the bathroom sink retching. Luckily I’d been in too much of a state all morning to eat anything, so all I lost was a cup of tea and an indigestion tablet.

With thirty minutes to go, I washed my face and brushed my teeth for the third time and headed off to the hall. A couple of ladies were waiting for me at the door and before any of the kids could spot me, they ushered me to a downstairs loo, handed me my costume and left me to change and prepare for my “jolly” entrance.

My Father Christmas outfit must have been the cheapest one in the fancy dress shop and the red nylon crackled with electricity as I tried to pull it on. I got my right leg into the flimsy trousers, but as I hopped on one foot and attempted to insert the left, disaster struck and the crotch split wide open. Already a bundle of nerves, this wardrobe malfunction was all I needed.

There was only one option, so I reversed the pants and put them on back to front. The suit jacket was just long enough to cover the rip and I figured, if I didn’t bend over too far, the children wouldn’t get a tell-tale glimpse of my blue jeans. Finally, fitting the equally cheap, itchy beard into place with its attendant elastic, I perched the red hat on my head and I was ready to go.

For a few moments, I stood and took long slow breaths to calm myself down and looked myself over in the mirror. The Father Christmas who stared back at me looked more like a down and out than the man of myth, but he was going to have to do and with one last deep breath, I opened the door and prepared to meet my audience.

“Yo ho ho, hello children,” I bellowed as I strode into the hall waving cheerfully. The smaller kids turned from their games and their crisps and squash and their little faces lit up with excitement. The older children had expressions that were a good deal more suspicious, but when the organising ladies handed me a sack full of gifts, they swallowed any awkward questions and decided to play along.

The gifts were all wrapped and marked with pink and blue stickers to mark out the girls’ presents from the boys’. As I plonked myself down on a chair in the centre of the hall, I was suddenly surrounded by a sea of expectant faces and as I reached into the sack to begin the gift giving, assailed by a good few squeals of delight. There then followed half an hour of the usual have you been good this year banter and paper tearing and kids not wanting what they’d been given, but something someone else had got.

The boys got plasticine or one of those small polystyrene plane kits, the girls, either plastic necklace and brooch sets or a packet of coloured felt tips. By the time the sack was empty, many of the boys were wearing shiny necklaces, while the girls were throwing planes around the room, but each to his own.

The have you been good question reminded me of something my ex wife’s nephew had said one year when his mum had told him Santa wouldn’t come if he was naughty. He thought hard for a moment and then replied, “But I was naughty last year and he still came.” Impeccable logic which made me smile at his cheek.

While this was going on, I’d noticed two teenage girls loitering on the edge of the crowd. They were fourteen or under and I swear they were looking at me with the sort of interest of a pair of Lolita’s, hands on hips, with little secret smiles turning up the corner of their mouths. Eventually one of them caught my attention and asked if they were going to get a gift as well.

“Have you been good girls this year?” I asked, at which they looked at each other, smirking and giggling, before replying that they had indeed been good. At that, for a moment, I forgot to put on my jolly Santa voice and as I handed them their presents, I said, a bit too loudly and ironically, “Yeah, I just bet you have.” That brought more smirking, giggling and knowing looks and I suddenly came over hot and bothered and felt my face flushing as red as my floppy hat.

Finally, it was over. All the gifts were gone and I stood and said my yo ho hos and goodbyes, patting a few tousled heads and reminding them one final time to be good boys and girls. I was almost at the door when one boy, a suspicious look reappearing on his face, suddenly blurted, “That beard isn’t real. I can see the elastic.”

The eagle-eyed kiddie detective had rumbled me at the last second, but the little bugger wasn’t going to outsmart me that easily. “It’s very windy when I’m riding through the sky on my sleigh. This elastic, young man,” I said, giving it a twang, “is what keeps my hat on. It would blow away otherwise.”

He looked doubtful at this explanation, but before any more difficult questions could occur to him and I was forced to tell him that, no, he couldn’t see my sleigh because it was invisible to children, I made good my escape and was back in the downstairs toilet, lighting up the room with blue flashes of static as I stripped off my Father Christmas suit.

I was actually rather proud of myself for overcoming my Santa stage fright and if ever asked to do it again, especially now I have my own genuine white beard, my answer would be: “not a fucking snowball’s chance in hell!”

As for the torn trousers, no one ever mentioned them to me, so I’m guessing the following year they must have thrown caution to the wind and lashed out another £3.99 for a new set.

Shit Christmas (My words set to music and sung by Chaz Crane to the tune of Blue Christmas)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-v32wVp_PY

How Much Does a Soul Weigh?

There are those who claim that, in reality, we are all energy beings. May seem hard to believe when you look at the meat and bone and gristle and tooth enamel that goes into making a person. Those who think we are less like the solid form that we perceive and more like an electrical charge, a creature of spirit, often say that if we could free our minds, we could see this reality as it really is.

Perhaps the latter explains why so many people - poets, shamen, mystics and rock and rollers, in the main - have used opiates, magic mushrooms, peyote cactus and the like, attempting to lift the veil from their eyes, to travel to astral realms or contact the world of spirit. Many would claim they have done just that and - though no drugs were involved - I myself once had an out of body experience* that I am one hundred percent convinced was genuine. Somehow, my essence, my consciousness, my soul if you will, began operating completely independently of my sleeping body and standing looking at my own form lying on the bed was quite a hair-raising experience, I can tell you.

A couple of things got me to thinking about all of this. I’ve been reading a book on quantum mechanics and one of the things that struck me was the following. Those things that we call atoms, tiny as they appear, are actually made up of 99.99 recurring percent of empty space and the author states that if we could remove all of that space, the entire human race would fit into the volume of a sugar cube!

That blows my mind because, if all seven billion of us humans could fit into a sugar cube, the hundred and sixty pound guy I see in the mirror would compress down to the size of a single atom, or perhaps less. It seems to me, therefore, that the claim that we are actually energy beings doesn’t seem that far fetched. You, me, all of us, are made up of atoms. Atoms are 99.9999% empty space, which means we are as well.

If we somehow turned off the electrical charge that holds us together, we would dissipate into almost nothing, like a puff of smoke in a gale. I guess the fact that we are glued together by electrical attraction means we are indeed made of energy, whichever way you look at it.

The other thing that got me wondering was something I heard several years ago. The thing I heard stuck with me, but now I can’t remember where I heard it, though I suspect it was one of those end of bulletin throwaway news items that are never followed up on. It concerned a scientist who was carrying out an experiment on people near to death. No idea how he was doing it, nuclear powered scales maybe, but he was weighing dying people shortly before death and then weighing them again as soon as life had flown the coop. What he claimed to have found was that people invariably weighed a tiny fraction less after death than while life remained. I don’t remember the figure now, but it was something like 0.000003 of a gram. Can’t help but wonder if that’s the missing weight of the human soul once it’s departed.

Well, I have drawn no particular conclusions about any of this. Not even sure if I’ve linked it very well, or even explained myself properly, but I offer it up simply as food for thought. I find these things fascinating. They make my head hurt, I admit, but fascinate me nonetheless.

I sincerely hope we survive after death, if for no better reason than I want some of these mysteries cleared up once and for all. Like, if the universe really is infinite, what’s it in? And if it isn’t infinite, where does it stop? Is there a wall? If there’s a wall, what’s on the other side? Like they tell us that it is scientifically impossible to go faster than the speed of light (because at that speed mass would become infinite requiring infinite energy to shift it faster than light) and yet now they say the big bang shot all of the matter out of it’s centre at faster than light speed. Seems they can’t make their minds up. I may not understand any of it, but when it comes to all these science boffins, I’ve come to the conclusion that any guess we make is as good as theirs. Maybe better. For example, I wrote a fantasy novel about twenty five or more years ago and in it I had my hero travelling through what I called the "multiverse". Now, in recent years, physicists have started suggesting that there may indeed be a multiverse. Sorry guys, but I thought of it first and I will be taking you to court any day now for infringing my copywrite. So there.



(*Out of Body Experience elsewhere on this blog). 

Humour

Juxtaposition between the known and the unknown, the safe and the threatening, is almost always the culprit for causing that thing which we call ‘laughter‘. We giggle at sometimes inappropriate moments because of fear, or nervousness, or the simple fact that the injury, loss of face, death, etc, has befallen someone other than ourselves.

 

For example, despite the fact that I adored him, I got an uncontrollable fit of the giggles at my own father’s funeral. I pinched my thigh until my eyes watered and bit the inside of my cheek bloody, but no amount of pain would stop it and seeing my sister’s sweaty face all scarlet and howling only made matters worse. I tried to disguise my laughter, of course, burying my face in my hands and making crying noises, but with my shoulders shaking from mirth, I don’t suppose the other mourners were fooled for a second. No one said anything, but if looks could kill, me and dad would have been cremated together that day.

 

‘Schadenfreude’ is the name our German cousins give the act of finding humour in the misfortunes of others. That may sound callous, even spiteful, but I would suggest one’s laughter is more an expression of relief that the bullet of fate missed us, rather than any genuine pleasure at the other person’s pain.

 

Scientists aren’t sure why laughter is important, but believe it has some deep significance in terms of survival, in just the same way as the fight or flight reflex. What’s more, laughter isn’t confined solely to humans, but is shared with other species. For instance, if a monkey spots what it believes to be a poisonous snake, it will cry an alarm to its compatriots. When, however, it discovers the snake is nothing more threatening than a length of dead creeper, it spontaneously bursts out laughing in relief, as does the rest of the troop. Therefore, when some prankster springs out on us and shouts ‘Boo!’, we don’t laugh because they scared two year’s growth out of us, but because of the realisation a moment later that we are actually safe and unharmed.

 

Another example was filmed in a wildlife documentary on chimpanzees. The head of the troop, something of a bully, had fallen from a tree and hurt his wrist. As he limped along, the chimps behind him were mimicking the limp, but each time he stopped and turned, they would all instantly walk normally again and appear to be looking anywhere but at their chief. Put simply, they were taking the mickey out of him and thoroughly enjoying it – bit like the labour cabinet did with Gordon Brown – but didn‘t dare do it to his face for fear of retribution and having chairs kicked about the room.

 

It would appear that laughter provides the antidote to the rush of adrenaline pumped into our system by fear, signalling to the nerves, muscles and pulsating sphincter that, threat now passed, they may stand down from red alert. After all, it has long been known that laughter releases mood-enhancing endorphins within our brains, which not only promote a sense of general well being, but also gave rise to the old adage, laughter is the best medicine. Unless, of course, you have a brain tumour the size of an ostrich egg, in which case you might consider chemo. Or suicide.

 

Of all the beasts, the snake has the least developed sense of humour, apparently, because you can’t pull its leg (hat tip to the Beano circa 1965 for that one). Laughing hyenas have no real humour either, they just laugh at anything. Ugly, irritating bleeders.

 

Schadenfreude – or the malicious enjoyment of another’s misfortunes – is a great word, but trust those stone-hearted krauts to invent a word for sniggering as some bruised and bloodied old lady cartwheels down the up escalator, in a surreal race with her ancient wicker shopping basket, while flashing her piddle-stained bloomers at the world.

 

Mind you, I laughed until I nearly suffocated when I saw a bloke trip and fall while trying to jump onto the old route master bus he’d been chasing, so I can talk about stony hearts. It dragged him, twisting and turning, around a corner and for another hundred yards along Streatham High road. Why he didn’t just let go of the handrail, I will never know, but he made my day. I wonder if the conductor charged him for the journey? That would have cracked me up as well.

 

We have, of course, appropriated ‘schadenfreude’ into the English language and that’s what makes English the greatest language in the world. We steal all the good words from other languages and after all, a wigwam is a wigwam, a poppadam is a poppadam, why mess about making up new words when things already have perfectly usable names we can pinch and call our own? We did it with everyone else’s countries, so why not their words. Us English were never stupid and pretty damned good thieves. We should be proud. I know I am.

 

 

 

The Matrix

The Matrix movie trilogy is often quoted and referred to these days in relation to the modern world around us and how reality is often not what we think it is. There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, as well as conspiracy theorists (me included) and they will often ask the question, have you taken the red pill or the blue pill, meaning are you awake to the truth, or are you one of the sheeple who swallows all the lies and propaganda hook line and sinker.

However, I’ve been thinking about The Matrix and in one important way, I’m not sure it means what we all seem to think it means. Neo is “The One”, the saviour, the Jesus figure and he has a small band of true believers assisting him. They are his disciples, if you will.

One of these disciples is actually working against Neo and the rebel cause. He wants to be plugged back into the matrix and be rewarded with a life of ease and riches. He is the Judas figure, taking his bag of silver to betray Neo. The rest of the human rebels display varying degrees of scepticism that Neo is really the saviour they have been waiting for, which probably describes how Jesus was viewed by the majority.

There is the old lady, the Oracle, and I think she represents God, offering advice and guidance, but not actually interfering directly. Or perhaps she could be viewed as Mary, the mother figure, or even a combination of the two.

Then we have Agent Smith, Neo’s nemesis, the representation of evil out to destroy the good guy. If Neo is Jesus, then Smith is the devil. Not only is he out to destroy Neo, he also tries to tempt him. Why do you keep struggling, Mr Anderson, it could all be so easy, he offers, but Neo is not to be swayed in his mission to free humanity and after many trials, including being briefly dead and resurrected, he wins the day, the war is over and the rebels celebrate.

Well, that’s the basic plot of the movie and although it tips its hat to many religious and historical references, it boils down to good versus evil, God versus the Devil.

But, and it’s quite a big but, let’s look at it another way. Apart from stopping the war between the machine overlords and the human rebels, what in fact has Neo accomplished? The rebels are free from further attacks, fine, but are still left living in their bleak underground bases. The earth is still a scorched and blasted wasteland to which they can’t return. The matrix still exists and the majority of humanity are still in their vats of liquid, being used as an energy source against their will, while dreaming their lives away.

In fact, Agent Smith was the one hell bent on destroying the matrix, so doesn’t that actually make him the good guy and not the bad guy we have all been lead to view him as? By making a pact with the machines and destroying Agent Smith, in reality Neo is responsible for preserving the matrix and the domination of mankind by the machines. Great for him, flying about like superman in his sexy black gear, but what has changed for the rest of mankind? Not a thing. They are still enslaved and they are still living in a fake reality - a state of affairs that Neo is guilty of maintaining. Left to his own devices, Smith would have shattered the matrix illusion and with it, the machines' ability to control mankind.

I wonder if the rebels woke up with a hangover the next day and said to themselves, hang on a moment, Neo is actually the machines’ most powerful agent and not our saviour as we believed. We’ve been sold out!

By coincidence, yesterday I saw a video posted on Facebook of a man called Simon Parkes. In it, he was talking about various alien races, which he firmly believes exist, both extra terrestrial and inter-dimensional. I didn’t watch it all because it was quite long and video downloads eat my data allowance like slugs eat your favourite plants, but what I did watch was very interesting.

One of his contentions was that the Earth is actually a prison planet and that humanity is being fed off. I think he said it was by those pesky reptilians. Apparently our emotions are a source of energy to them. Love, anger, hatred, despair, yum, yum, we’re just one big emotional buffet to those green buggers. Remind me to buy a packet of “Lizard-Be-Gone” next time I’m in a hardware shop.

He also stated that mankind has had its DNA tampered with to dumb us down so that we can’t perceive reality as it really is and also to remove our telepathic abilities. He further maintained that when we die, they trap our souls and return them to Earth in another body, memory wiped, so that we can continue to feed them. Don’t, he said, walk towards the light when you pass on, because that is the trap they set for us. If anything, run away from the light as fast as you can and be free of them. Maybe these claims explain past life memories, the wiping process not being a hundred percent perfect, and also the reincarnation beliefs of so many people.

This may all sound like airy fairy nonsense, but I’m not so sure that it is. There are obvious comparisons with The Matrix in that we are all blinded to what is truly real; that we are all in one way or another slaves to the elites and possibly to the alien entities they all work for. And being used as an energy source is one of the main premises of the movie and we all (those of us who have taken the red pill anyway) know how they like to taunt us by showing us the truth in fictional form and having a good laugh when we still don’t get it. It may also explain why our leaders are hell bent on creating constant wars and conflicts, a smorgasbord of misery for the aliens to feast upon. All the dead get recycled anyway, so they can continue emoting all over the shop, so there's not even any wastage.

I have to say, Simon Parkes sounded extremely sane and believable. You may want to look him up on Youtube. Just one note of warning, however, he has the most dreadful comb-over I have seen in a very long time…

Just to end with a small fact about The Matrix. Will Smith was originally offered the role as Neo, but turned it down to instead make his movie “Wild Wild West”. Yep, said no to one of the most popular and critically acclaimed sci-fi movies of all time, to go off and make a complete turkey instead. Obviously took the blue pill, the Muppet.

Lungs Suck

Lungs suck. And they blow. And sometimes, if you don’t remain vigilant, they fill up with water and kill you when you least expect it. Apple bobbing has claimed more unwary victims than people realise. Particularly when the class bully holds your head under while the teacher is outside having a crafty smoke.

 

Lungs don’t even taste good, not unless some sneaky manufacturer hides them inside their pasties, sausages or burgers, disguising their noisome flavour with minced chicken neck and savoury cow’s anus. That’s another Jamie Oliver recipe I won’t be trying again any time soon. The sprinkling of star anise and pinch of saffron didn’t make a bit of difference. As for the squirt of squid ink, bloody waste of time and money that was.

 

Did you know one human lung spread out flat would cover an entire tennis court? I dare say it would make it a bit slippy, though. Don’t see Wimbledon changing over from grass to lung courts in the near future. Not ‘traditional’ enough for those snobs. I mean, they’ve never budged an inch over the all white kit thing, not even for the girl players when they’ve got the painters in.

 

“How much! For six effin’ strawberries and a teaspoon of cream? I don't know about Wombles of Wimbledon, highway robbers is what you are."

Down the Local

Some more of my words turned into a song by Chaz Crane.


http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/down-the-local/

Cockney Sparrow

About twenty or more years ago, I was walking over to the local supermarket, when I came across a baby sparrow huddled up against a low wall. The flats that the wall belonged to are forty-plus feet high, so though the little mite had survived the fall, there was no possible way its mother could get it back into the nest and a local cat was bound to stumble across it sooner or later.

 

Anyway, touched by its plight, I hurried back upstairs, found a small basket with a lid and returned to the chick. As I tried to pick it up, it squawked and shrieked and spread its wings trying to look bigger and more imposing, which was an impressive display for such a youngster given it wasn’t even two inches big and probably weighed an ounce dripping wet.

So I scooped the tiny sparrow up, with it loudly protesting the entire time, put it in my basket, took it back to my flat and fashioned a home for it. First I cut one side out of a cardboard box and covered it with cling film, then cut a flap in the back to act as a door. Finally, I put a number of cotton wool balls into the small basket, turning it into a surrogate nest, all nice and cosy.

At first, the baby sparrow was rightfully wary of me, but when you’re as hungry as growing birds are and someone keeps bringing you food, it’s not long before trust is gained and given. I fed it oats soaked in milk, small bits of bacon fat (remembering how we used to put the rind out for the birds), crushed up nuts and slivers of dried fruit, all supplied by a pair of tweezers. The diet was pretty much guesswork on my part, but it gobbled down what I provided and seemed to thrive.

After just three or four days, I started leaving the box open and all I had to do was walk into the room, tap the food bowl I was carrying and “Birdy” - as I had so imaginatively called my little friend - would fly across the room, land on the rim of the bowl and open its tiny beak demanding to be fed.

Every evening, when my girlfriend of the time, Allison, came home from work, first thing she would unfailingly do was ask how Birdy was and go and check on her. That’s when an amusing idea came to me in the form of one of those sugar coated mini eggs. Sorting through the bag, I found the most convincingly egg-looking one and just before my other half got home, I placed it on the cotton wool in Birdy’s nest.

I was sitting in the living room when Allison got back that night and as usual she asked how Birdy was and went straight into the bedroom to check. A few seconds passed and then she cried in a voice full of surprise and delight “Tony! Tony!”

“Yes,” I responded, trying to sound innocent, but my voice clearly giving away my barely suppressed laughter. There was a brief pause and she called back, “Nothing…”

When she came from the bedroom, I was grinning from ear to ear. “You bastard,” she said. “I really thought for a moment Birdy had laid an egg.”

“Yes,” I laughed. “She’s only a baby and an egg that size would have split her in half, but you still fell for it.” She replied that she would get me back and sometime later, she did, in the form of a large plastic spider placed half behind a pipe in the bathroom. Being a terrible arachnophobe, I was almost sick from fright, so she did indeed get me back. Good and proper.

It was a shame that my suppressed laughter gave me away, because the next part of my plan - expecting to be called in to take a look at the "egg" - was to amble in, pick it up, pop it into my mouth and crunch it up. I think the look on Allison's face would have been priceless. Just the same, all these years on, my prank still makes me smile when I think about it.

Birdy grew fast and within another week, when she started flying around the room, I realised it was time for her to leave the nest. She was clearly ready and cooped up in my bedroom, I was scared she’d bang into a wall and hurt herself.

Next morning, a nice bright warm day, I took Birdy in her box/cage out onto my balcony. She had only been with me a matter of days, but having been a mum to her and having won her trust, I was sad having to let her go, but knew it was the right thing to do. I opened the front of the box and Birdy hopped out onto the wall. She hopped about a bit, looking out towards the big world she was about to enter, then she turned back around, took a good long look at me like she was saying goodbye, then turned again, spread her wings and flew off like a tiny rocket.

 

I freely admit to shedding a few tears watching her go, but I was also pleased that I'd managed to give Birdy her life back when the little soul I'd found, feisty or not, likely wouldn't have lasted an hour or two out on the street. They say that God looks out for even the smallest fallen sparrow and on this occasion, I guess I was the one sent to do the rescuing.

For many years since then, sparrows had all but disappeared from London. No one seems to know quite why, but they went from a daily part of life, to non-existent. Recently, however, I have started seeing a few about again. I particularly noticed because they have been conspicuous by their absence for so long.

There are actually a breeding pair of sparrows nesting somewhere in the downstairs communal garden. Whenever I see them hopping around foraging, I can’t help but wonder, or even hope, that one or other is a direct descendant from Birdy and that perhaps I had some hand in continuing Birdy's line and in my own small way helped to stop sparrows from vanishing for all time.

Still, a comparatively huge chocolate egg, Allison, really?




 

The Itch

Wedding bells
Nappy smells
Filled with poo and pee
Darling dear
Listen here
This really isn't me

 

Nagging whine
Dinner time
But, and here’s the rub
Darling dear
Listen here
I’m going down the pub

 

Wanting love
Elbow shove
Asked for marriage right
Darling dear
Listen here
I’m too knackered tonight

 

Lovely eyes
Silken thighs
Beauty I can’t bear
Darling dear
Listen here
I’m having an affair

 

Screaming fight
House alight
I think it’s time to go
Darling dear
Listen here
You’ve been so nice to know

 

 

Macho Man (Set to music)

Macho man, yet more of my light and cheerful words set to music and performed by my mate Chaz Crane. Light and cheerful - who am I kidding...?

 

 

http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/?s=macho+man

 

Sleep (Acoustic version and pretty damn cool).

Acoustic version of "Sleep". Melancholy, but brill.

 

http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/sleep-accoustic-version/

 

Dreary Dreary Me

Another collaboration with Chaz Crane. Words mine, music and singing his.


http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/dreary-dreary-me/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=436&relatedposts_position=0

I Talk to the Trees

Remember the song, I Talk to the Trees, sung by Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Waggon? Well, I was talking to a tree earlier - an old oak tree and very chatty it was - and I asked it what it thought of climate change.

 

"Son," it said, "I'm four hundred and sixty-two years old and I've seen it all before."

 

"Really?" I said.

 

"The climate changes," it shrugged its upper branches. "That's just how it is. In the 1970s and 80s we had nothing but droughts, now it rains all the time and no doubt, in another few years time, we'll be back to hosepipe bans again. The only thing that remains constant is change."

 

"But," I stammered," a lot of scientists are telling us that man is making the climate warmer, leading to floods and droughts and all sorts of chaos."

 

The oak barked with laughter. "I have a giant redwood in the family and he tells me his great grandfather told him the climate was much warmer back in his day. That's why the snakes and crocodiles and other cold-blooded reptiles were growing forty or fifty feet long, or more. The extra heat provided them with the energy to grow massive. Why do you think Britain has one snake six inches long and all the hot countries have things ten, twenty and thirty feet long? Even your scientist friends will tell you that. It's all about heat and the energy they get from it. They dug up bones in Columbia from a snake they named 'Titanaboa' that was around 45 feet long, weighed a ton and they reckon some may have grown even larger than that. Imagine how much heat/energy those giants must have needed."

 

"So man is not to blame for climate change, then?" I asked.

 

"Of course not!" The oak exclaimed. "They just use it as an excuse to chop down my friends, turn them into paper and use that to send you bills for CO2 reduction. I know you're only a human, but I would have thought even you would have realised that. This is a planet. The climate changes. Get the hell over it. You humans do make a terrible mess of everything, but on this count, not guilty."

 

Well, that told me. Tomorrow, I am going to strike up a conversation with a patch of nettles. I'm sure I'll get more sense and honesty out of them than I will our lying politicians and assorted other climate change fraudsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep

Another song performed by my mate Charles Crane. In this one, I love the way he has combined verses from three of my offerings. Good job Chaz!


http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/sleep/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=424&relatedposts_position=0

Demon Drink Blues

This was the first of my poems (or lyrics as Chaz calls them) that my friend Charles Crane set to music and performed. Video by another blogging chum, Dioclese.

 

 

http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/demon-drink-blues/?relatedposts_hit=1&relatedposts_origin=556&relatedposts_position=0

Bad News (Set to music by Chaz Crane, but renamed "Bears". I think you'll see why.)

Bad News/Bears


http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/bears/

Dark Place (My words set to music/performed by my friend Chaz Crane, lovely bleak video by our mate Dioclese)

http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/dark-place/

Ghosts (my words set to music by my friend Chaz Crane).

http://chascmusic.wordpress.com/category/lyrics-by-tony-groves/