I regret everything

I do quite like me because I'm all that I've got.

You'd think by now I'd be losing the plot.

Getting to a certain age, there's no guarantee of turning the page.

You've got to hug yourself and pat the very same on the back,

the self obsessed pretend they are up for the craic.

Self love should be taught in schools

but so many of us leave thinking we are fools.

We are full up to the hilt with shame and guilt

and then we're meant to find someone to complete us.

"I want to know what love is, I want you to show me"

Seems like a big ask.

Where do we get our ideas of how it's meant to be?

The telly, the pictures, books?

Search me!

If every life was as picture book as they portrayed

then why do we have to wait so long before getting laid?

I was 21 when I lost my cherry and the damsel in question gave me thrush

after the deed I felt like Cinderella sans scrubbing brush.

You grow older and bitter about the sexual act

because you'd been promised in life that it was a fact.

For me 'rumpy pumpy' has been as rare as a comet

Making 'luurve' on an E type's bonnet.

They never told you about the strings attached

your dreams like a china tea cup, chipped then smashed.

Regret is a fact of life

Edith Piaf lied

I regret everything

And if I had my life to live over I wouldn't do any of the same things again.

Fact.      

The man who bought a chapel just so that he could preach

 

The man who bought a chapel just so that he could preach

 

They were coming up for sale on Zoopla & Right Move. The denomination had lost all perspective and were just now selling to the highest bidder. Consecrated ground was an issue. They were being bought up by out of countryers who only had one thing on their mind and that was sympathetic restoration, living quarters with mezzanine floors where their dogs could play among the grave stones.

Passive aggressive locals didn’t get a look in. There was crowd funding after the faux outrage of the sale of a heritage site but none of these ever darkened the doorstep of a chapel when it was in full spiritual working order.

A man with a bit of money. Somebody who had spent their life working in a safe job upon retirement decided to buy the chapel just so he could preach in it. He was one of life’s many invisible men. He was completely ignored on Twitter but he wanted to be heard before he died. The rants that he concocted for social media would now be heard by the odd sparrow and squirrel on the back seats if he left the window open and spread a few nuts and seeds about. He was a musical man so he would play the organ. He favoured “Rock of Ages” and “Bringing in the Sheaves”. He liked a good rabble rousing hymn. He would then climb up into the pulpit and spread his notes upon the golden eagle, with wings outstretched to take them. There was no rabble to listen to him. A drunk kicking a stone on his way to Costcutter stopped and threw some well chosen verbals in the direction of the vestibule. No matter.

The invisible man’s voice was reverberating around the chapel walls and he was able to say anything he liked. Anything. He was a man who chose to go against ‘orthodox thinking’. Even if he agreed with the orthodoxy he would discipline his mind to embrace the counter attitude and argument.  He loved his own intellect and would get a sexual frisson from how clever he could be. An intelligence that had never been acknowledged or rewarded in his safe job over all those years but now he had found his own voice and it was being used in his own chapel.

A man from the denomination turned up to see how he was getting on

“We were so pleased that someone was going to use it for its original purpose. We had tried so many of the usual tricks of the trade, Café Church, Cyw Pregethwr Church, Foodbank, Soft Ball Play area, Mams & Toddlers group and here you are like a modern day Mr Benn turning up here at your own chapel to preach at yourself. Don’t you get bored?”

“GET OUT” shouted the Invisible Man. “I have paid you your £45,000 shekels”

Denomination turned on his heels sharpish and climbed into an appropriate car and sped off down the country lanes.

There was more wildlife on the backs seats today. In fact there were small rodents and birds in all the pews. Cats were sitting next to mice. Dogs were sitting next to cats.

'Spiritual Re-Wilding' had occurred when nobody was looking.

The invisible man went to the organ, bowed to his congregation, and belted out 

🎵“All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small” 🎵

It had cost him a small fortune in pet food but what the hell?   

   Cyw Pregethwr : Trainee Minister

    

 

Snort of Derision

I found myself making a snort of derision. It surprised me, not usually my style, but perhaps when you get to my age that's all that you have left. A young man panicking on the train, not sure whether his חבר was on the same two carriages as he. He'd answered his mobile and on being questioned as to his location he had replied. "Somewhere in Wales, we're coming in to מכינלת" That's not how he pronounced it and that's why I snorted. It reminded me of the time a friend got off the train at Leipzig leaving me with all his camping equipment. We were doing an Inter-rail two years after the Berlin Wall came down. He didn't make it back in time before the whistle went leaving me to traipse round Berlin facing Alsation dogs with muzzles on and German Police who didn't speak English. How dare they? The young man told the unknown voice at the other end that there would be a 45 minute Bus ride from Aberystwyth and then they would walk from the bottom of the lane. My friend in 1991 made it to his friend in Spandau Barracks on a later train. He was a soldier in the British Army from Dolgellau, another tricky place to pronounce if you are not from there. I had to make do with a bunk in a mission on the side of the Berlin Hauptbanhof where it was black bread and coffee in the morning. Why was I so ungrateful? Rudolf Hess was still in residence as I walked past the prison making my way to find my friend who had lost me. I had been warned that the IRA were still active and that I was a target because I looked like a squaddie. The train pulled into the station and young man's friend rushed from the Pwllheli and Harlech carriages to the Borth and Bow Street ones. He was more relieved to see his friend than I was to see mine. You can tell I feel aggrieved 30 years later. Holidays in Wales. Holidays in Europe. There will be no holidays for the Palestinians on the Gaza Strip this year. I look at the enormous new Lidl taking shape as we come into Aber. They invaded Iceland to get it. I snort in derision again and the moral of this tale is that we should lose more friends along our journey's way.

חבר : Friend

מכינלת : Machynlleth

We want to go to fucking war

 

Picture Elliot Franks

🎜"Any time you're Wembley way
Any evening, any day
You'll find us all

Sticking a Firecracker up our arse"♬

The Union as a Virus

 

Photo courtesy of Reuters

I saw this picture and thought of you Great Britain. You are a virus. This actually looks like a dog's toy that has picked up a few hairs from the carpet in its roll across town. It appears that the flag in the background is going to be hoisted up in the many windows of the brand spanking new HMRC HQ in Wood Street Cardiff or to give it its new name, Central Square.

The centre of Cardiff has been colonised by the Imperial Forces of the BBC & the HMRC and the Union Unit in Westminster have sent word that the Butcher's Apron is to be visible loud and proud so that visitors and pissed Rugby supporters sporting the Prince of Wales feathers know for a fact and acknowledge in bowing acquiescence that we are a Principality. They've even renamed the gateway in to the country as the Prince of Wales bridge so we are well and truly f***ed. 

Is there an answer to our plight? Yes, people across the 'United Kingdom' realise that the Union is a busted flush. The brand is dead. You cannot force new life into a dead donkey so what we have to do this side of the dyke of Offa is to big up the English. Yes, support the English in their bid for freedom from the miserable Welsh and the canny Scots. The few true Nationalists reading this will be reaching for the smelling salts now but I am going to agree with a few commentators that an England win on Sunday could do the Welsh national cause and the Scottish one no harm at all. 

The gentleman with a Welsh Christian name 'Gareth' could lead his team on to a new era of competing with a bit of dignity. A dignity that has not been afforded to Wales and Scotland as holiday destinations for the rich and infamous. Tik Tok Portmeirion cariad.

The Union Jack is trying to hold on to Wales and Scotland so we can fight any future wars that the evil empire decides it wishes to wage. After all where would they be without Welsh longbowmen and Scotsmen in kilts on bagpipes?    

No the Union is dead.

Long Live England, Wales, Scotland and a United Ireland.  

Gwallgofrwydd

 

I can see the ‘Gwallgofrwydd’ in her eyes

It’s the way she eats mince pies.

 

It’s the way that she cracks walnuts between her thighs.

It’s the way that she pushed me through one of the windows on the Bridge of Sighs.

 

There’s something to be said for ‘Madness’ and for ‘Crazy’

But you couldn’t take a lifetime of it, makes you hazy.

 

Sanity is more important than your name or reputation

You could lose the latter and still make reparation

 

To lose your sanity in an insane world is the worse thing of all

Because you then become like them in their cars and bars

 

Wiping their asses on their Covid Masks

Drinking the vaccine straight from Thermos Flasks

 

Keep your sanity until the day that you die

It’s only then that you’ll find out why

 

You knew from age 11 that life was a lie

That precocious child that played I Spy

 

who saw through the false smiles and silent scream eyes.

Families carried secrets as high as the skies.

 

Something beginning with A?

Asylum, never granted. Only for lunatics.