Tags
The Death of Boris
Having sung ‘I have attained supreme power’, he joins the Chorus to sing ‘The Funeral Bell’ before expiring.
c Candia Dixon-Stuart 30/06/2016
30 Thursday Jun 2016
Posted Celebrities, History, Humour, Music, News, Politics, Satire, Social Comment, Theatre
inTags
The Death of Boris
Having sung ‘I have attained supreme power’, he joins the Chorus to sing ‘The Funeral Bell’ before expiring.
c Candia Dixon-Stuart 30/06/2016
23 Thursday Jun 2016
Tags
Animal Farm, Animalism, Beasts of England, Benjamin, Brexit, dead donkey, etymology, revolution, Snowball and Napoleon, Sugarcandy Mountain, The Windmill
I’m with Benjamin on this one, I said, sipping my Macchiato.
Benjamin? Brassica interjected.
Yes, the cynical one.
You surprise me. Brassie can be ironic sometimes.
Yes, we are all being taken to the knacker’s yard in a battle bus. No one can
read what it says on the side. Benjamin had a good memory. Things can
never be much better or much worse. Hunger, hardship and disappointment
are the unalterable laws of life.
You surely don’t believe that, Candia? What about the vision of Sugarcandy
Mountain? We can build our own windmills. The Three Brexiteers
have promised that we will all be better off and the NHS and pensions
will benefit our own old and retired once again.
Hmmm, do you recall that by the fourth year of Animalism and
independence, Animal Farm depended completely on its trade with
the wider world? Rations were reduced and lighting was cut in the stalls.
There was no such outcome as the three day week and the full
manger.
Yes, Candia, but the animals had a feeling of dignity and held
spontaneous demonstrations to celebrate their own triumphs.
Yeah, and a lot of history was re-written as well. The animals felt
that they had re-gained what they had before. As for Snowball and
Napoleon, they were in cahoots with the Enemies and eventually
traded with whichever partner promoted their own selfish,
unprincipled desires.
So, who do you reckon are Snowball and Napoleon?
I leave it entirely to your own judgement, comrade.
So, are you on your way to vote now? Remember, old Jones was not
so bad, even if he was a Fascist.
Yes, I had better watch out for the low-flying campaigning pigeons.
I don’t want to be crapped on. Nor do I want to be savaged by a band of
trained puppies.
And I left, humming ‘Beasts of England’ cynically.
Brassie appropriated a couple of sugar cubes for Post-Revolution
sustenance, adjusted her Alice band and went to check her parking
ticket on the gleaming new dog cart, between whose shafts she
willingly reined herself.
As for moi?
Well, no one has ever seen a dead donkey. And being interested in
etymology, I remind you that le bon mot: ‘revolution’ has the inbuilt
concept of ending up exactly where you started.
17 Friday Jun 2016
Posted Community, Family, Poetry, Relationships, Religion, Social Comment, Writing
inSt Michael the Archangel, Findlay,Ohio- Nheyob, 2011, cropped by Tahc.
I told you I am fixated on the sestina as a poetic form!
We are one because we share in one blood,
declares the priest, trying to evoke love,
in spite of all the centuries of rifts
and shameful practices within God’s family.
We gather in an act of reconciliation,
erasing the thromboses from the past.
Can we negate, wipe out the shameful past?
There’s an indelibility in blood.
No matter how we crave reconciliation,
we cannot will coagulation, love;
we cannot commandeer family
and force relations to cement their rifts.
Inevitably there will be rifts
in the heart’s polar regions; ice sheets from the past
crack, fissure, melt. And, in the family,
though connections are through blood,
they can only be maintained by love
and transfusions of reconciliation.
And every time we achieve reconciliation,
broach the breaches; bridge the gaping rifts,
we spin the web of Love;
we dialyse those platelets from the past
and filter those corpuscles of bad blood,
for the holistic health of our family.
But what about the wider family?
If we attain reconciliation
in the microcosm of our kith, kin and blood,
could we extend goodwill to rifts
of a global nature? In the past
progress has only come about through love.
Sharing a meal can be a sign of love-
introducing the stranger to one’s family;
cancelling out the debts of the past,
in order to gain reconciliation;
throwing out lifelines that span rifts;
being prepared to become blood-
brothers, for the sake of the human family;
ultimate reconciliation; burying of the past;
grafting rifts and banking some good blood.
15 Wednesday Jun 2016
Posted Animals, Celebrities, Fashion, Humour, Poetry, Relationships, Social Comment, Suttonford, Writing
inTags
beaver lamb, Bhutan, bling, capybara, Ganges, Goa, Guatemala, La Giocanda, mink, Noel Coward, orang-utan, Raj, red panda, shagreen, shibboleth, Sikkim, solecism, tortoiseshell, U and non-U, wolverine
A re-blog from erstwhile…
Dahn: Own work. Leopard, Botswana
I am reminded of one of my encounters with a Suttonford grande dame who had experienced the days of the Raj first hand. She measured out her widowhood in coffee spoons and cigarettes at one of her favoured venues- not the Costamuchamullah Must-Seen Cafe, stylish though it be, but rather The Peal o’ Bells, Public House.
One lunchtime –cloth: on (dinner:cloth off) – she sat in a cloud of smoke, which spiralled upwards, like mist rising from The Ganges at dawn. I was moved to admire her leopard skin coat. She minimally acknowledged my obeisance with a dismissive movement of her fag.
A few evenings later, she was leaving a drinks party which was being held to honour veterans. The Husband and I used to be inundated with invitations to such, but lately we have found less favour from les nouveaux. By way of something to say, I asked her where her admired coat was, as she was being solicitously wrapped in a stole by a selected minion who had been appointed to see her safely across the road. She gave me a withering look , secure in her very U status and corrected my social solecism, resulting in this poem:
LEOPARD AFTER DARK
He placed the mink stole round her neck
(not the fur coat she’d worn on deck.)
She saw my look and then observed
the riposte which I had deserved:
“You don’t wear leopard after dark!”
“Never? Not even for a lark?”
“Precisely. It’s not the done thing.”
“What about ocelot?”
“Too bling.
It’s like cloth for luncheon, but NOT
for dinner? One just never ought.”
“Is there any jurisdiction
on camel? Is there restriction
on beaver lamb, cashmere, fox-fur? –
shibboleths on which They concur? –
a consensus aimed at non-U?”
“The proles took to fake kangaroo.
In crepuscular hours of dusk,
outrageously they sported musk
and, as far as Guatemala,
riff-raff lounged in capybara.
Minxes out in the Sahara
had bikinis of impala.
One can pose as La Giocanda
in a thong of rare red panda,
but animal right protesters
wanted bobbies to arrest us.
They showed chagrin;
I owned shagreen:
clutch purses, belts in wolverine,
tortoiseshell compacts – what’s the fuss?
Darling, they’re just not one of us.
In Sikkim some said, “That’s Betty.
She’s the one who’s wearing yeti”
I would sip a margarita,
naked, on a rug of cheetah.
(I was pretty well devoured
by a rampant Noel Coward.)
He quipped, ‘Little looks much snazzier
Than zebra pants and brassiere.’
In the mountains of Bhutan,
my tippet was orang-utan
and my favourite windcheater
was two hides of tanned anteater.
(At altitude on Everest,
one needs an extra tiger vest.)
At a barbeque in Goa,
I singed my flamingo boa.
To meet the Queen, I wore a hat
and had it trimmed with a fruit bat.
There was a tiny rigmarole
when footmen took my corgi stole.
She said archly,
‘Is that dodo?’
I looked at my heel:
‘Ma’am, no, no.
I’m sure your carpets are quite clean.’
She glared:
‘Your headgear’s what we mean.
Though denied my decoration,
I still caused a huge sensation.
I’m a seasoned old globetrotter.
I wear stoat and I wear otter,
I wore porpoise, whale and shark –
But NEVER leopard after dark.”
10 Friday Jun 2016
Posted art, Arts, Celebrities, Media, Social Comment
inCouldn’t resist having a go at re-creating the NGV posters in Melbourne, advertising the Warhol and Ai Weiwei combined show….
Love,
Candia.
04 Saturday Jun 2016
Posted Literature, Poetry, Writing
inTags
Celtic Christianity, churches, forgiveness, Hampshire, miracles, monologues, Music, parables, pilgrimage, Sculpture, sestinas
Dixon-Stuart books have just made this anthology available on Amazon.
Candia thoroughly recommends this insightful read to all her followers.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell,
A Hell of Heaven…
John Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk 1.