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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: Big Ben

Metamorphosis

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Candia in Arts, Humour, Literature, News, Politics, Satire

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Big Ben, Chief Whip, election, EU, Kafka, millipede

Ed Miliband 2.jpg

Ed awoke on the morning of the election from uneasy dreams

and found himself transformed into a gigantic millipede.

His wife said:  Hadn’t you better get up?

He could hear his voice reverberating, but destroying the sense

of his words.  He suspected that his delusions were about to

evaporate.

Ed!  The Chief Whip’s here!

The Chief Whip had been encouraging him to explain why he was

not facing up to the deficit.

Your position in the firm is not unassailable, he had warned.

It’s not going as well as I had hoped, Ed had admitted.  But just give

me another chance.  The voters just need to be soothed, persuaded

and won over.

He was finding it difficult to make a U-turn.

In the crowd who awaited his levee was a small businessman

who opened a file which he claimed had details of his complete state

of despair.  He complained that Ed and his friends had borrowed so

much that although households had been kept afloat, everyone had

become complacent about the cash flow.

A music student presented herself and said that she could not afford

to study at the conservatoire.  Ed felt sympathy for her plight, but knew

student fees would have to be budgeted for in other ways.

There was a lot of grumbling from older folks about dividends being all

very well, but money needing to be kept for rainy days.  The aged and

disabled could not be expected to make a contribution.

The hospital across the road was beyond his field of vision.  The view

from his window was of a gray land under a gray sky.

The ordinary family were now so over-worked that they had no time to

think about Ed.  Circumstances had conspired to make it impossible to

downsize from their apartment, as they had had to take in lodgers

to avoid bedroom tax.

Ed had felt guilty in the past that he had not helped enough and so

he had decided to put in an appearance.  He would show himself to

the masses now!

Delegates from the EU were appalled at the thought of having such a

creature in the same chamber.  They refused to pay a penny towards

their keep.  Rather, they demanded compensation.  Ed feared that the

general tension would discharge against him.

It was agreed by one and all that they would have to rid themselves

of this creature.  He would be the death of them all.

If only he would understand us, sighed a poor old man, who had

worked for a bank at one time.

The music student hissed:  He’s just like Clegg.  Another unpleasant insect.

We believed in him for so long and in what he pledged regarding fees. 

They all weaken our borders and want the apartment to themselves!

Ed remained still until Big Ben chimed.  Then he realised that he had not

the ghost of a chance of survival.

The parasites dispersed.  They left a note confirming that the finances

were not hopeful.  He crawled back under his bed.

But then the electorate went out into the Spring sunshine and discussed

their prospects without him. They weren’t too bad after all, because

they all had jobs which were quite promising and which could lead to

better things.

Maybe the future wasn’t so Kafkaesque after all!

Black-and-white photograph of Kafka as a young man with dark hair in a formal suit

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Sleeping Dogs

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Candia in Arts, Family, Film, Humour, Music, Romance, Suttonford, Writing

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Big Ben, Bishop's Move, Camelot, How To Handle a Woman, I Loved You Once in Silence, If ever I would leave you, Lancelot, non-PC, Royal School of Church Music, sleeping dogs, The Lusty Month of May, Timex, Today programme

tastecard

Diana, Dru and Gus sat in that hostelry which was run by a dyslexic

landlord, namely, The Running Sore and digested their two course

meal.

It had been a special midweek offer: a discount if orders were taken

before seven pm.

They had slid into a corner table two minutes before the deadline, only

to be told that it was two minutes past.

Gus summoned mein host, who couldn’t tell the time anyway, but he was

soon persuaded that Mr Snodbury’s watch was regulated every morning by

Big Ben‘s chimes before the Today programme and that the school bell was

synchronised by this ancient timepiece- Snod’s Timex, that is.

Okay, okay, you can have the special offer, he conceded.  There was no

point in arguing with a bunch of teachers, or they who must be obeyed.

They were too used to getting their own way.

He clawed back the reduction by substituting a cheaper bottle of house

red and they didn’t notice.

Well, we’ve missed the funeral, sadly, Gus said.

Yes, but we can go down next week and make an appointment to see

the solicitors.  Also, Aunt Augusta wants to be taken out again, remarked

Dru, somewhat ruefully.

I suppose so.  She never even commented on me going to see him with

Berenice when I was little, Gus said a little bitterly.

She’s old now.  It was a long time ago and she’s forgotten, soothed Diana.

Better let sleeping dogs lie, she advised.

Mum, can you manage your removal on your own?  Have you got storage

arranged?

Bishops Move - EST 1854

I’ve got Bishop’s Move- that removals firm that sounds like a chess

strategy. They do everything for you.  I’m going to put everything into a

secure barn near Suttonford. Don’t worry.  You go with your father.

The Royal School of Church Music, hmmm.  He was musical then.  I must

have taken after him.  Snod looked down.  He looked pensive, but he

had just noticed a soup stain on his tie.

He should have heard you take the lead role in Camelot, said Diana.  ‘If

Ever I should Leave you’-such a moving song.  He would have been so

proud of you.

‘Would’.  ‘Would leave you’. That was Lancelot’s song, Snod corrected her.

Yes, but you would have sung it even better.

He let it go.

It’s a blessing that Berenice is gone in a way, Dru observed.  What she didn’t

know didn’t hurt her.  I don’t suppose he remembered her in his will.

I loved you once in silence, said Diana.  That was anther good one.

And Snod looked down again.  But this time it was a tear that had stained

his tie.

The Lusty Month of May.. Diana began, but Dru signalled to her to shut

up. It was too much information and at completely the wrong time. How to

Handle a Woman didn’t even come into it.  Those were non-PC times and

Snod was still living in them.  He was one of the Old School.

Camelot Original Cast Recording.jpg

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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