Cardiff Psychogeography 3

Cardiff Psychogeography 2

The Time of My Life

 

I am pointing my anal sphincter at the screen and keyboard and the following 'follow through' is what is on my mind regarding Therese Coffey, the Conservative Victorian Work Ethic, the Back to Work mantra et al. It might get a bit angry, it might get a bit ranty. It could be full of sweetcorn but hey it's my blog and I've been at this game ten years.  

The 'lady' that continuously has the time of her life at the Karaoke machine is herding us all back to work. As I've said before, I don't mind working. I just don't want to be forced into work. These mother fucking Conservatives with their Victorian Work Ethic would rather see us do anything than nothing because they are the guardians of the public purse. Reluctantly they have been forced to recognise the Welfare State and their generosity in its administration diminishes year on year.

We're coming out of a pandemic allegedly and now these Tory Toff arseholes want the plebs to take any job going to fill the skills gap. SKILLS GAP??? What skills are required to be a Conservative Minister? Cruelty. That's the skill required. Mz Coffey's mantra is work hard and play hard and she certainly knows how to suck on a cigar and belt out some tunes.   

Who devised this idea of taxing everybody at source? Income Tax, and then using that money to keep 'the others' 'the alienated' 'the unemployed', 'the jobless', the 'workshy' 'doleite's' at a level where it is very difficult to exist and where you are obliged to take any old shitty job going? I reckon it was either Machiavelli or a Tory Toff in his mansion who said 'Let them eat cake'. It might have been a Labour apparatchik 'To each according to his misery' etc but it is immaterial really. It is ultimately a 'Divide & Conquer' Strategy that has divided 'the working class' under New Labour and lower middle class 'flaneurs' like myself under the Conservatives.

There is no compassion in the UK. People are paid to care and then not very much. When you have a hierarchical society with monarchy at the top of the pile and Eton & Oxbridge old boys overseeing benefits payments you can see why we are in the state we are in. This recent drooling at the mouth from 'the little people' at cake gate and weird Uncle Andrew at the palace has all the markings of 'bringing them down to our level'. They will never get down to our level. They have securities and gated communities in place should the shit hit the fan. They have a police force, trained to Tazer first and ask questions later. That pension is worth stepping over the thin blue line for.

This 'Big Society' "We're all in it together" is utter bollocks. Touted by the 'Brexit Big Mouth' himself David Cameron and where is frog faced Farage? He goes to ground as often as Boris Johnson. Any 'populist' cause and he's up and running again in his Rupert the Bear trousers and tweeds. We are a sucker for these 'personalities', these 'characters' because we have been drained of all colour and joie de vivre and personality ourselves. Never mind supply chains. How can people afford to fucking eat? Get them back to work. Flog them back to work. Bring back the Work Houses & the Poor Laws. 

I think what the'widen your field' of job search working class should do and the flaneurial lower middle class is to change their names into something double barrelled like Iain Duncan Smith or Jacob-Rees-Mogg or Ftang Ftang Old Bicuit Barrel Obese. Just to get the Job Centre off their back. "Crikey Jeeves, we'd best leave this one alone cos they look like they could be a Toff, one of our betters who pays our own wages. We can't have them reskilling to being a HGV Driver. Where in the world would they throw their piss bottle to empty it?".

 

Cardiff Psychogeography

The Earl's Court of Miracles

 

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2019/se/parakeet-crime-map-busts-bogart-and-hendrix-myths.html

 Flash Fiction

 

After watching out for the parakeets in Bradenham Gardens and listening for their shrill call, their verdant green plumage bright high among the winter non growth of tree. I sloped, not like an ordinary member of the Earl’s Court of Miracles but I was the leader. Like the escaped parakeets, our job was to stay one step ahead of the privatised law. The Metropolitan Police had been privatised and now each little London canton had their own elite, hand picked security squad. This mob did not read you your rights before kicking your head in, in the back of the black Mariah or down the end of the darkest alleyway. I sloped past Marks & Spencer’s, I limped passed the Co-op and I dragged my leg behind me past Sainsburys. The only people who worked in these stores were security who were linked via satellite walkie talkie to the privatised snatch squads. Everything inside these super stores was now robotic artificial intelligence. The voice “Unidentified Item in the Bagging Area” was that of Donald Trump. Those dressed like me were easily picked out on the infra-red CCTV, a cordon had been built around Kensington High Street.  The vagabonds of the Earls’ Court of Miracles were like zombies compared to the automated barbie dolls and action men parading up and down outside Harrods. London had always been two different cities, the citizens just pretended that it was all one. Doing the Lambeth walk in a Chelsea Tractor was difficult ‘but doable darling on the school run’. Me and my chums had not been privately educated in the little nurseries around Notting Hill, the mothers swerving their prams and little Tarquin and Nigella’s eyes were shielded from ours. Our eyes bled with the injustice that we were living. Our eyes bled when we viewed the opulence of Park Lane and Mayfair through the railings the other side of Hyde Park. We made ourselves scarce in the day but by night we would give the scurrying rats a fright and a run for their money. Night-time was ours; we would skirt the Victoria Coach Station to see what wide eyed bunny rabbits were knocking about. Some of our hooded ghost members would haunt the night buses. Cameras can’t pick up dead matter you see. The Number 11 was always good for pickings. Some Tourists realising that you could ride from Fulham Library all the way to Liverpool Street Station taking in all the sites that the London Bus Company offered for 1000 times the amount. Central London would be empty without the tourists. We could take over then, maybe for that is our plan. France is our inspiration and this is indeed a tale of two cities. There is too much inequality here. The Powers and Principalities have decreed that we must take back what is rightfully ours.    

I couldn’t do this alone; I didn’t have the vision; I did not have the third sight required. I needed a Fagin to my Artful Dodger. I found him. He was in his late sixties, early seventies and he had a little dog, a Jack Russel terrier he called ‘Patch’. This man was walking wisdom and I had to keep him apart from the rest of the gang. Freddie the Vulture I would call him. He would swoop. Before I knew it, Patch was on my shoulder barking into my ear.

“You got to define your enemy son”, he would say. “It’s no good having this generic, they, them”

“Generic Freddie?”

“Yeah generic, are you thick or something?”

Freddie was the only person in the whole world who I allowed to talk to me like that.

“Yes Freddie, I am thick because I only went to a Secondary Modern School, unlike you”

“Don’t hold that against me son, I’m one of you now and I can help you”

“You were one of them though so you know how their minds work Freddie”

Freddie nods and looks down at Patch. He gives him a little Scooby Snack.

“Right listen and listen good because you might never see me again. My age and angina, I could be plucked into God’s bosom at a moment’s notice so listen up and listen good”

I listen good.

“Christmas Day is the only day that some of these poor sods have off. It’s the only day that Earl’s Court Tube Station pulls the shutters across. So, you want to get the Bus Drivers and the Tube Drivers on side. You affect the Transport infrastructure of this fine city and you are halfway there. Then you want to take control of the food supply into the city. Every supermarket has got its own supply chain, its own lorry drivers that drive through the night. This is where your Gang come in. Some of your boys need HGV licences, they need to infiltrate the supermarkets and on the designated day that the transport infrastructure is hit, that is the day that the food supply starts to dry up. That is also the day that ‘A Plague’ is announced on the National News. You need the Toffs to stay indoors. Yer posh wont risk coming out of their des res if they think they are going to inhale some junk wots gonna kill em”. You need multiple attack points. If you have televised pictures of an attack on the water supply as well up at the Lea Valley Reservoir. Something like ‘Thames Water hit by Terrorist Attack’ If you get the population panicked, I tell you one thing, they won’t be headed to Buckingham Palace to save the Royals. They will start a pogrom to Margate.”

With that Freddie the Vulture picked up Patch and I never saw him again but his words resonated. Spread panic among the populace he said. We couldn’t do it all at once. It would need a drip feed approach but the world was doing that already. The news media were doing that for us already. Members of ‘the Miracles’ were using their time in the Libraries of London well. Everybody thought they were watching You Tube or playing games but they were gathering information. They were relaying it back to us at the meetings. We were staying under the radar that was the important thing. The best thing to have happened to us was the breakup of the Met because none of these privatised security firms were talking to each other. There was no joined up thinking. So, if they picked a member up in Deptford, they wouldn’t know about it in Holland Park which was dusty for us because we could bring the New Cross and Deptford Massive across West then. I’m only telling you this because I trust you. You know, like Freddie the Vulture, I might get taken but I know I won’t be going to god’s bosom and neither will he. It’s into the Devil’s Armpit we’ll be going and all because we won’t sign up for the programme, the conditioned programme that we’ve all been programmed to follow since school.   So, I’m still in charge but if I fall in the line of duty, you need to take over right? It’s the law of guerrilla warfare. If we weren’t so fucked up by drugs and alcohol and years of disfunction and abuse then we could take this lot. I’m telling you we could take em.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got parakeets to feed.  

 TENT CITY

               Image borrowed from Wales Online

A fictional monologue based on a true story

Who would be a Park Ranger eh?

I knows you fat arsed bluebirds won't have a word said against your home. It was meant to be Swansea that is 'the pretty shitty city ' but let me tell you Cardiff pushes it close.

Oh City of Concrete!

" there are some tent dwellers who refuse to engage"

Tent Dweller? So I am a Bedouin Arab now and this is my oasis. Halfway between the Museum and the University Building.

No Man's land because it is literally that.

You know what my theory is, Cardiff City FC are cursed.

There was only one way they were going after that guy from Nantes went down in the drink.

Instead of arguing the toss, they should have given the 15 million to his family.

Cursed, as I am cursed.

It wasn't really my stuff, it was stuff that other people had given me.

You have to engage with services under a roof.

I tell you what has happened. One of these wankers inside has gone to the window dinnertime and seen me out here in the lovely sunshine making a daisy chain, seen me out here in the fresh air with all my freedom to do what I want while he's cooped up in there and he's thought to himself that's not fair. "why should he be out there cavorting and playing like a spring lamb and me stuck in here with my air conditioning and plastic sandwiches?"

I cannot believe these Park Rangers though. They were Park Keepers back in the day. Duty bound to keep the Park and all their inhabitants 'safe'

"Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of Cardiff, I'll show you something that will make you change your mind."

Yo Stevie guy, over here, got any tobacco? Got anything to drink? I am vexed man. I will pay you back, you know that!

I want my stuff back

How can they take my stuff?

That’s stuff that people gave to me.

Stuff that people donated to me.

There’s a lot of animosity against beggars and the homeless community.

This is a really dangerous time to be homeless in Britain.

A tale of two cities

Cardiff and Liverpool where the Councils want us off the streets.

Where the Labour Councils are confiscating our tents.

Keir Starmer can you hear me?

It’s the ones that walk around that make most money

It’s the ones with the dogs.

You put people on the spot.

There is some element of manipulation involved.

Getting official numbers is complicated

Your gonna put me in a hostel with hand bag robbers and drunks, oh no you’re not.

45 Sleepers & 108 Beggars.

Who cares if I am fake homeless and taking people for a ride?

Who cares and who should care?

What if I told you that I used to be a professional footballer?

Would you believe me then?

Or would you automatically assume that I was psychotic perhaps?

Perhaps suffering from delusions of grandeur?

But what if I could produce a football card from the late nineties and early noughties that shows that I was a Second division Professional Footballer?

I mean what division is Homeless?

What division would you put me in?

Because you are judgemental?

You are human therefore you judge?

I’m not a sofa surfer

I’m not staying with friends

It’s because they don’t want to put off tourists from coming here.

They are just moving beggars out of sight

For the Tourists

They are using a law from over 100 years ago to convict somebody of begging.

48 hour dispersal

Everybody is out for a quick fix

You want to get me off the streets to make yourself feel better

The system failed me and I failed the system

Why would somebody piss all over you when you are sleeping?

It’s hard to be in this society if you are pushed out

But I ask myself the question would I want to get back into this society now?

 the one that has pushed me out?

You cannot be strong every day of your life

It’s just not possible.

You will break.

https://www.crisis.org.uk/get-involved/campaign/scrap-the-vagrancy-act/

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2019/01/non-consenting-adults.html

Mae gen i fab deg oed

Mae gen i fab deg oed

Dwi'n ei gasáu fo

Mae o'n real poen tin

Mi fydd o'n clinc yn hynach

Rhy debyg i'w fam o faswn ni'n deud

Shotgun wedding oedd hwnna

Gretna Green

Yr unig amser i mi fod yn yr Alban tan fis diwethaf

Es i fyny i Glasgow gyda'r mab i fynd a fo i'r Scottish Football Museum yn Hampden Park.

Roeddwn eisiau dangos iddo fo'r bêl droed roedd Cymru yn chwarae gyda fo pan roeddwn i yn deg oed.

October 16th 1977, blwyddyn Jubilee y Frenhines.

Oedd y Welsh FA yn ei doethineb wedi penderfynu chwarae'r gem World Cup Qualifier yn erbyn yr Alban yn Anfield o bob man. 

Roedd 'na drafferth wedi bod yng Nghaerdydd ac i osgoi mwy o hwnna mi wnaethant nhw droi i brifddinas Gogledd Cymru.

Wel dyn ni rownd for hyn yn cefnogi timau Lerpwl yn dan.

Everton neu Lerpwl a rhai yn mynd i Man Utd.

Dwi jest yn cefnogi Cymru.

Ella mi ai gyda'r poen tin i weld gem ar yr Oval ond mae Lerpwl yn Lloegr yn di! 

Ges i'r mab yn hwyr!

O ni yn 41

Priodi'n hwyr de.

Ac efallai dyna pam dwi'n gweld o yn boen ti'n oherwydd does ddim gyda fi'r egni i redeg ar ei ôl o.

Tadau eraill yn edrych fel bod nhw wedi dod lawr o ras yr Wyddfa a fi yn magu bola cwrw.

Dwi'n siŵr ei fod o dipyn bach yn ashamed ohona i yn gweld i'n rholio fyny i gatiau'r ysgol fel casgen.

Ond na fo gwneud ein gorau drostyn nhw da ni'n de?

Neb yn berffaith.

Roedd o'n reit impressed gyda'r amgueddfa.

Dywedodd y dyn gwerthu tocynnau fod  Gordon Strachan weithiau yn yr adeilad.

Mae'r mab yn dalach na fo

"The Hand of Joe"

Os oeddech chi ar dir y byw ag unrhyw ddiddordeb yn the Beuatiful Game mi roeddech chi yn cofio Joe Jordan yn mynd fyny am y bel yn erbyn Dave Evans oddiwrth throw in gan Asa Hartford. 

Os sbïwch chi ar You Tube mae 'na ryw Sgotyn bach o commentator yn deud definitely a penalty.

Dywedes i wrth un o warchodwyr yr Amgueddfa fod yr Alban wedi torri calonnau Cymru am genhedlaeth ar ôl hwnnw.

Wnaeth o jest sbïo arna i ar hogyn a deud 'Take a look at this'

Wnaeth o droi set deledu ymlaen ac ar hwnna oedd gol anhygoel 'Archie Gemmill' yn erbyn yr Iseldiroedd y flwyddyn wedyn yn Feinal Cwpan y Byd yn Argentina. 

Jincio yn erbyn dau ddyn , torri mewn a chic anhygoel i gefn y rhwyd.

Chwarae teg roedd o'n anhygoel o gol

"You see" wedodd o "if Big Joe had not handled the ball against you the Welsh, then the world would not have seen such a wonderful goal and don't forget Kenny Dalgliesh scored the second that night."

Ond doedd na neb yn dŷ ni yn meddwl am bethau fel hynny'r noson oer o hydref 1977. 

Roedd fy nhad dal yn fyw pryd hynny ac mi roedd o yn cofio John Charles yn chwarae yn erbyn Pele yn Sweden yn 1958 ac mi roedd o yn frwd iawn fy mod i yn cael yr un profiad ond ‘not to be’.

Oleua ma’ Ieuan bach poen ti'n ni wedi gweld Chrissie Coleman yn mynd i Ffrainc gyda Chymru yn yr European Feinals.

Wefreiddiol, ond rhywsut mi roeddwn i dal yn meddwl nôl i'r hand of Joe.

Gewch chi ddim y melys heb y chwerw.

Roedd Dad yn big Welsh Nash, yn erbyn yr arwisgo yn 69 felli roedd unrhyw golled i Gymru yn hoelen yn ei arch o.

Roedd o'n teimlo pethau i fer ei esgyrn.

Tîm gwych y noson honno hefyd, John Toshack ac mi wnaeth o hitio'r bar yn y munudau olaf.

Terry Yorath yn Gapten, na chi Viking o ddyn.

Mae gen i theory chi fod yr enw Cymraeg Iorwerth yn perthyn i Yorath.

A hefyd Yosser Hughes, "Gis a Job I can do dat," Yosser yn dod o Iorwerth

Diddorol o le di Lerpwl

Y Gymry a rhan fwyaf o rheina yn siarad Cymraeg yn adeiladu'r tai

Y Welsh Streets erbyn hyn wedi cael ei adnewyddu

Scowsar o dras Cymraeg di Mam Ieuan

Penbedw

Deg mlynedd yn ifancach na fi.

They said it wouldn't last ac mi roedden nhw yn iawn.

Wnaeth y briodas para saith mlynedd cyn i ddi sylweddoli fy mod i yn 'hopeless case'

Efallai dyna pam fod Ieu bach mor anystywallt.

Dwi'n i weld o bob yn ail benwythnos erbyn hyn ag mi wnâi nol o'r ysgol pan fod Kylie ddim yn gallu.

Aye Kylie! Oedd Jason Donovan a Kylie Minogue all the rage pan gafodd hi ei geni.

Roedd o'n job i gael hi i gytuno i enw Cymraeg i'r fechan.

Roedd hi eisiau alw fo'n George ar ôl George Michael.

Mae'r 1980s lot i ateb drostynt

Ond hogyn y 1970s roeddwn ni.

Choppers a Space Hoppers

Ond ddim cweit yr action man roeddwn yn gobeithio erbyn hyn

Ddim lot o waith o gwmpas dre

Bookies, Pub, Pub, Bookies, adref fydd hi gan amlaf.

Hogiar Crown wedi dechrau cymryd bets pan fyddai'n cael harten.

Dwi'm yn siŵr os oedd o'n deg i ddod a Ieu mewn i'r byd really.

Dwi ddim yn Saint ond mae mam o yn gallu bod yn dipyn o lond llaw.

Beth ddwi'n ofni mwy na dim ydy fydd o yn mynd off a brifo rhywun diniwed pan fydd o'n hyn

'Y Faraway look yn ei lygad o'

Oherwydd rydym ni wedi bod yn rhieni mor sâl.

Does 'na ddim llawlyfr nacoes 

Ond pwy a ŵyr efallai mi aeth o yn beldroediwr.

Ac mi welai fo yn sgorio gôl i Gymru jest cyn i mi gael Heart Attack.

Annhebyg, gweithio mewn Builders Merchants fydd ei dynged o

Fydd o’n gallu adeiladu mawsolëwm  i’w Dad o fel roedd y masiwn yn oes Victoria.

Ar ôl yr Amgueddfa, aethon ni ar un o’r Open Top Bus rides yna o gwmpas Glasgow

Werth chweil hefyd. 

Ar ol Celtic Park mynd off yn y Peoples’ Palace.

Well oedd Ieu wrth ei fodd yn yfed ei pop yn y Botanic Gardens.

Dyna beth wnes i sylwi am Glasgow, fod 'na civic pride yn y lle.

Dim Civic pride yng Nghymru, does na ddim ffwc all yng Nghymru really i fod yn honest.

Yn enwedig i dyn dros ei breim.   

Ond o leua dwi wedi cenhedlu yn do.

I’ve done my civic duty

Faswn ni ddim yn hoffi fod yn ddyn canol oed heb blant oherwydd fuasa pobol fel Kylie yn dechrau pwyntio bys a galw chi yn bedophile.

Does na ddim byd gwaeth na cael eich alw’n bedophile.

Real taboo ond oedd o’n rife yn yr hen ddyddiau yn doedd?

Dwi’m yn siwr chwaith pan ddaeth yr enw mewn i fodolaeth.

Kiddy Fiddlers oedd o pan o ni yn ifanc.

Does dim rhaid i mi warnio Ieu am bobol amheus oherwydd fod Kylie a’i gang o menywod sydd yn edrych yr union rhyn fath a hi ar ol o o fore tan nos.

Dwi jest yn gobeithio fydd o ddim yn tyfu fynni i briodi un o’r menywod maleisis yna gyda chwerder yn ei calonnau.

Roedd o dipyn o straen edrych ar ol Dad tua’r diwedd

Dod a fo off and on y ty bach. Dyn a gymaint o bresenoldeb a hunan barch wedi anghofio sut i sychu ei ben ol.

Does mo syndod fod na gymaint o bobol chwerw yn y byd nac oes.

Tasa chi’n eistedd o flaen y teledu acw am bedwar awr ar hugain yn enwedig y newyddion fuasech yn barod am y Seilam.

Dyna pam dwi allan o’r ty ac am stag rownd dre! Tafarn a Bwcies.

Dwi ddim yn siwr pam fy mod i ddim yn chwerw

Mynd yn fwy happy go lucky dwi

Vilage Idiot fuasa rhai’n deud.

Hoffi deud stori neu ddwy ar ol llond croen o ale.

Dych chi’n lwcus ma heno chi

Dwi’n sobor fel y Saint

Fel arfer fuasa’n rhaid i mi cael un neu ddau i sortio’r nerfau allan.

Well dych chi wedi cael y back story neu y stori dwi di dewis deud wrthoch chi ond tuasa Ieuan neu Kylie neu fy nhad yn eistedd ble rydw i rwan beth buasa gyda nhw i ddeud tybed?

“Mae fy nhad yn poen tin”

“Mae fy cyn wr yn poen tin”

“Mae fy mab yn poen ti’n ond o leua mae o yn sychu fy nhyn”

Beth dwi’n ceisio ddeud yn fy rowndabout Ronnie Corbett fordd o siarad ydy   

Rydym ni gyd yn poen ti’n i rhywun. Fel wedis  gynne, does neb yn berffaith

Roedd Joe Jordan yn poen ti’n i Gymru yn 77 ond wnaeth o ddim cyfadde’r ffaith i’r dydd hwn.

Meddyliwch am funud.

I bwy rydych chi yn poen ti’n iddynt?

Fuasa nhw yn deud wrhoch chi i i eich wyneb?         

I am 10 today!

 

Ken Frane: A Poem

https://sharkfishinginwalesblogspot.webs.com/david-williams 

I was going to write a poem earlier on today

but the muse buggered off, went away.

I can’t claim that it’s come back but if you start something

you should try and finish it or so the smart money do say.

I walked 5.1 miles yesterday.

On a pilgrimage to see where Ken Frane lives.

I’ve placed him in the twilight zone between Fidlas Rd and Fidlas Avenue

Llanishen

After 34 years in Cardiff, I’d never walked up that road before.

“The down at heel, dishevelled gumshoe never quite solves the mysteries to anybody's satisfaction. He is an example of the anti-detective novels which originated in Italy in 1929. It led to a type of crime fiction without certainty of solution. If you like your crime cozy with an element of caper and you don't really care 'Who Dunnit?' then this is the short story for you.” read the billboard.

His face in side profile with a Homburg hat.

“Has a modern Dick Tracey feel to it” said one of the reviews.

The writer whose vehicle is a shark and shanks’s pony

will be celebrating 10 years a blogger on Wednesday 19^th January

and when he started in 2012 Ken Frane wasn’t even a glint in the author’s eye

but by and by he appeared from the gloom and the fog of the subconscious.

Ken Frane is an everyman, he means well but is clumsy and accident prone.

His second in command Terry Heston fares little better.

One day the crime fighting duo will have their own blue plaque

like Holmes & Watson.

  

Waiting

Waiting

 

For the man to come and fix the boiler but it could be the thermostat

or the thingummy on the wall, the go between.

So many bastard things to go wrong to cost money to heat your ageing bones.

Hallelujah! We’ve got mobile phones.

Waiting for 2022 to strut its stuff at the ball

Waiting for the usual bollocks like the bus

and queuing to do your shopping.

I’m British

So I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting.

“No you’re not, you are Welsh”

Tell that to the geezer that makes the forms then

Cos you are for Queen & Country from birth

until we notify them otherwise.

Waiting for a stroke of luck

or a stroke

because I’m a bit of a hypochondriac on the sly

Every headache a brain tumour

Every chest pain a heart attack

David Attenborough breaks off from the arid planet

to inform us that we are the only mammal that knows it’s going to die.

Could it be today?

I’m not doing much apart from

Waiting. 

Squeezed by the System

 

Squeezed by the System

 

Death & Taxes

I’m not prepared to accept them

nor Monarchy

They might have been around for eons

but why accept what you cannot change?

Writing a poem wont dislodge the heavy boulder

but we are all being squeezed by the system

and it is ‘Survival of the Fittest’ by any other name

or a Conservative/Establishment Government.

They are massing their ranks 

and moving their armies around the battlefield

behind the fugue of Covid 19.

No fourth booster required yet.

It’s Mandelson & Symonds against the rest of us.

They have set Starmer and Johnson upon the populace.

It started with a virus but turned into something more sinister

We’ve had a version of Martial Law

We can be controlled by Divide & Conquer

God Bless the Colston 4.

Banksy

Opening Salvo 2022

 

"Folk law says that the first person to enter a home through the front door on New Year’s Day will bring good luck. It’s often thought to be lucky if that ‘first foot’ is a tall, dark-haired man. However, the man’s physical features and colouring change depending on where the story is told (short fat and hairy in Wales) It’s said that he should also be carrying gifts for the home. These can include coal, bread, salt, drinks, and coins, amongst other things. Each item is said to bring some kind of good fortune for the coming year."

Well here we are, the much awaited Happy New Year's Day Blog post from the Shark Fisherman of Wales.

I'm glad it's 2022. Along with many others I tasted grief at first hand in 2021, losing my darling parents within two months of eachother in March and May. I had been dreading it for ten years and more, as a blog post from January 2012 reminded me this morning.

"I am obsessed with dying. I spend a lot of time thinking about death, my own and the demise of significant others. I think more about dying than I do about living. I don't know whether this is normal. That great word that means nothing. I have nothing to compare with. Probably not a great idea to do a vox pop on the streets of Aberystwyth and ask people. I often wonder that the activities we pursue and the busyness of our lives is a reaction to mortality. We cannot face the thought so we don't stop long enough to think about it. Perhaps as children we thought less of the possibility of dying but we knew that people did it, because we heard every day on the news that it was happening." 

Looking back, the anticipation of loss and grief is actually worse than the reality. We are mortal. We don't live forever. This knowledge tickertapes endlessly in the minds that we have but when it happens it is still an enormous shock. I did not witness the exact moment of death but I was there in the immediate time prior and in the aftermath, instantly with my mother and within an hour with my father. Mam went first, at home, she didn't want to be treated in Hospital having been a nurse at the start of the National Health Service and to see the difference in the way it was run now. Dad, a gentleman till the end and nine years older than Mam let her go first and he soon followed. The shock of the news and the enormous number of pills he'd been taking daily for two years for heart, water, and blood and prostate had caused a blunt trauma to his kidneys.

What angered me most about the way that Dad went was the fact that he'd been ok outwardly, visually until Mam died. He then went into Hospital on two occasions and on  one of these visits he picked up the Hospital bug M.R.S.A, so damned if you do and damned if you don't. You need to be treated but you might catch something in there that can kill you. At his advanced age it would have been awkward to kick up a fuss, 102 and 6 months exactly to the day of his birth that he died. Who knows, the tablets that he'd been prescribed had kept him alive longer than he would have been otherwise, we just don't know. It's just me thinking about them both now having walked through the Front door to a new year. They had both dodged the Covid bullets but old age and infirmity got them both in the end. 

What saddened me about 2021 and 2020 alike was the way that human beings became just numbers and statistics on the nightly news. The elderly, health care staff, anybody and everybody became a number read out by the newly knighted in the New Years'Day Honours List. We still don't know for sure the origins of the virus and we will not know definitively. Looking back on the Spanish flu of 1918 now, was it inevitable that something similar would happen a hundred years later? Were we all just too comfortable and complacent before it happened?     

Who knows? In 2022 we might get a fourth wave of Coronavirus. They are running out of Greek names. Chances are it wont be as severe but I am your typical social media knob with very little scientific knowledge so what do I know? The jaded public will just continue trudging through the mud arguing with eachother, hoping that the national past time of shopping, eating and drinking will finally be written into statute as 'essential' 

One thing I have been predicting and even suggesting should happen is 'Civil Unrest'. I am hoping that 2022 is the year that the British Establishment starts to see the underside of many Doctor Martens Boots. As a long term Carer living on £64.70 a week for the last seven years and now being chased for a Universal Credit repayment I am really ready to kick off. I want to lay into the Establishment and its lackeys because ordinary people are having very diffficult lives because the upper echelons are maintaining the inequality through the class structure. Slapping yourself on the back every New Years Day by handing out gongs to the famous celebrities and some of the ordinary people with difficult lives blinds us to the Establishment Bear Pit. 

I didn't march against the Iraq War. I was working in London at the time. Friends came up from South Wales to march. I couldn't be bothered to travel the short distance from Lewisham. I had swallowed the Bush and Blair line. I was so unconscious and so fundamentally wound up in my own soul misery that I didn't think marching would make any difference. Of course it didn't but I should have been on that march, Tony Blair shouldn't have received a knighthood from the Queen via the back door today and Jeremy Corbyn should be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Establishment Injustice via the Policing Bill will be writ large in 2022. My advice to readers of this blog is to bull your boots ready for it to all kick off. Their hope is that we will be broken and cowed by the Pandemic lockdowns. That like prisoners in Her Majesty's prisons that we will have learnt our lesson and have been rehabilitated by their punishing regime. As the landord of the now closed down 'Dublin Packet' in Caergybi said to me while handing over a pint of Guiness in the 1990s "What doesn't kill, cures" 

I suppose it boils down to whether you are happy at the way that society is being run. Prior to Covid 19 it was insane and people want to get back to that normal? Can a change come without bloodshed? Hopefully, but there are bound to be a few bites and bruises along the way.