Get your 'Visitor to Cymru' outfit ready for tonight

 

Mixed Fruit Jelly And Razor Blades

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0B7QM3K84/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I purchased this item on the 4th August, so Amazon tells me, and it has taken me until October 28th to complete the reading of it. Item? Product? To describe a book of poetry?

It certainly wasn't a slow burn but it did take awhile to get me in the groove. It took me 4 long sittings. There are 109 poems after all and each one is an odyssey.

I got to wondering how the book would look if instead of poetry it became free verse with no titles, just the words tumbling into eachother like Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road'. 

I have described 'Mixed Fruit Jelly And Razor Blades' in my review on Amazon as a Blockbuster and that is indeed what it should become. 

I have 3 favourite poems from the book. The Game on Page 80, swiftly followed by I give to you,C, Baptized in Coffee on Page 82 and then Neanderthal:2019 on page 171.

Thrift Stores, Diners, Bicycles, Cigars, Scotch, Women, Fitness & Family, More Diners & More Thrift Stores.

Luke Austin Daugherty claims not to be a distinguished poet but I'll tell you one thing

"HE WRITES IT DOWN"

Further Reading

https://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.com/2015/07/love-with-vengeance.html

The problem with politics is people

 

The problem with politics is people. Not with policies but with the people chosen and annointed to implement them. Politics is now a popularity contest. Do we like the person presented to us on the leaflet or in the party political broadcast? Deep down we know that our vote will mean nothing and change nothing but we have been groomed to believe that it will. People died running out in front of horses to give us this freedom. A freedom, like going out for a Sunday spin in the car with the family, yes that type of freedom.  

We have just been witness to the most extended example of political and monarchical musical chairs. Now if the Conservatives had been so ruthless as King Charles and the Monarchy and just gone ahead and had an anointing after the blunderbuss of Boris Johnson, but they went to their membership and had weeks or was it months of talking heads between Sunak and Truss before one was chosen to tank the economy and then the other one comes in yesterday with the Superman S on his T shirt!

We the voting public are the problem because we are constantly projecting our own unhappiness and frustration on to these politicians whose major fault is their ego. We have lesser egos, otherwise we would be up there giving it large as well. Twitter is awash with vitriol and bile aimed at the Conservatives and Labour. The Conservatives from Labour and Labour from the Left. Centrists are viewed as akin to Nazis.

Why am I writing this blog post on this particular topic? Well I was diagnosed in 2006 with Bipolar Disorder or Manic Depression pre decimalisation. A life lived swinging from high to low mood with very little time spent in the 'Center'. I think by now, no I know by now that I am allergic to the extremes. I am angry and frustrated with the Bipolarity of life. The pendulum swings from Conservative to Labour. There is a choice of two on the menu: Take it or Leave it! Labour have very little time for talk of a Progressive Alliance. They and they alone must be the ones to take on the scourge of one nation Conservatism but with the anointing of Sunak, by the the time of the next General election, they will have met in the middle. 

Our 'Gogglebox' opinions will fall between which one scrubs up the best. Which one has the slickest persona and which one do we relate to the best? We can spoil the ballot. We can choose not to vote. This is where I am at the moment. Actively thinking about choosing not to vote. I had to wait until I was 21 to be able to vote for the first time in the General Election of 1987. It was a protest vote that made no difference but myself then, seeing what I am writing now, would I be shocked? No because I've always been a cynical old bastard at heart. 

If we know our own human failings well. If we are our own worst critics then what makes people who stand for public office any diffferent to ourselves? If they stray or transgress then we shout 'Burn the Witch' but in effect are we not just shouting at ourselves? If a policeman's lot is not a happy one then a politician's is a lot less amusing but they are incredibly well paid for the abuse and approbation that they receive.

The system is broken but we still take part because we believe that it is a fundamental human right to be able to vote an egotist into power. The Monarchy like Labour and Conservatives know that we have nowhere else to turn. If Britain was going to have a revolution like France and Russia then it would have happened by now. A phonecall to Sturgeon and Drakeford is all that Sunak in his Superman T shirt had to do last night for the media to fall over themselves this morning. They are hoping that the S stands for 'Saviour of the Union'. Starmer wants to wear the same T shirt so what is the difference between these establishment stooges? Nothing. It is just that they are hoping that the history of their respective parties will win them favour at the ballot boxes.

I hated Kinnock and the Old Welsh Labour. I don't mind Drakeford because he speaks his mind and asks sausage fingered Tories "What planets do they belong on?" but again it's all about the people and it shouldn't be. Politics should not be about people. We would be better off having Robots in Holyrood, Westminster, Cardiff Bay and Stormont, writing policy and implementing it because then we could not argue, bicker, call them bastards or throw shade. It is 2022 and we have got nowhere fast politically. If in the next General Election there is a 🤖 head on the ballot paper, then I would vote for the Artificial Intelligence because otherwise it's a no show from me. 

Politics should not be a Popularity Contest.       

Walk and Talk with Williams

Tywyn a Tal-y-llyn #cerddediad 🌪 #walkabout #steamtrains #steamrailway 🚂

Bemoaning the State of the High Street.

I had just passed my driving test and I ventured out to Rhyl on my own. On the way back I pulled into a layby between St Asaph and Denbigh just before the notorious S bends on the short cut avoiding the centre of town. I pulled into the layby, I pulled on the handbrake of my light blue mini as I had been taught to do on my driving lessons and I cried. My cries turned to sobs. I was 17 and it was 1983.I had picked up the energy of Rhyl and was taking it home with me. 

I have always been sensitive to the energies of places and people. To be kind to Rhyl it might have had nothing to do with the bright, garish and cheery seaside town but more to do with the fact that my adolescent mental health was now in crisis and that this was the first visible symptoms of such. 

39 years on and I have just returned from Gosport in Hampshire.I went to Portsmouth on a whim and a prayer. I just fancied a change and variety is the spice of life but it appears that there is very little variety in UK PLC. The centre of Portsmouth was like the centre of many impoverished towns. Lively with the spirit of people fighting the odds but visually drab and austere. 

Victoriana haunts our major towns and cities. A statue of the overweight and grieving Queen Victoria is not going to do much for the morale of the homeless and drug addicted as they scurry around the base of these bronze statues to an unelected German monarch(Queen Victoria's mother was originally from Germany, so Victoria spoke only German for the first three years of her life)from over a century ago. An era that gave us warships and empires and the right through money to enslave others of different colours. Liverpool, Manchester,Glasgow and now Portsmouth seen with my own eyesight.There are at least 45 statues of Queen Victoria on the National Heritage List for England but there are many more unlisted ones. Why? to remind the former servicemen lying in doorways what they fought and could have potentially died for?

Down in the Harbour area of Portsmouth there is an obscenity of a shopping area called Gunwharf Quays. It is called a Designer Outlet and it is designed to keep the poor and the riff raff out. They go shopping in Portsmouth city centre in the Cascades shopping centre or the city centre market open on a Friday and Saturday.A 4 minute ferry ride from the Gunwharf quays will see you alight in Gosport (God's port) abbreviated. Well it looked like God had forsaken Gosport on the day that I walked down the High Street. It reminded me in no particular order of Newport, Barry, Bridgewater and Rhyl, Ellesmere Port and Birkenhead. It reminded me of my home town of Bridgend. What some of these towns have in common namely Ellesmere Port and Bridgend is that they have Designer Outlet's right on their doorstep and people and politicians are bemoaning the state of the UK's high streets? The North/South Divide is now the North/South 'what we have in common'. Poverty is endemic in every community. London the Capital being a classic example. 

McArthur Glen outside Bridgend, Cheshire Oaks outside Ellesmere Port and Gunwharf Quays on the Portsmouth Harbourside. Your own town or city has quite probably got its own Designer Outlet on the outskirts and I bet your town centre is minging despite the success of these car convenience centres? I'm surprised that there isn't a concierge on the entrance to these soulless places offering you pieces of carpet that you can strap with velcro to your shoes so that you can shuffle about the stores as if you were at home going to put the kettle on in the kitchen.

The UK has been 'designed' by somebody to keep the wealthy nice and comfortable in their gated communities with their big cars and their designer shopping outlets where they can rub Armani shoulders with their fellow strivers. I know I know "I didn't get where I am today by writing blog posts bemoaning the state of the nation".

Barry, Newport, Rhyl, Bangor, Holyhead in Wales and Ellesmere Port, Birkenhead, Bridgewater and Gosport in England are places that I have witnessed with my own eyes and when I leave I feel for the citizens of these towns because by now they probably know no different. They have got used to their surrounds. We could be cruel and make jokes at their expense. We could feature them in books entitled 'Shit towns' and put them in Christmas stockings but we live in these towns that have been victims of managed decline by the Conservative Party.

The early 1980s recession was a severe economic recession that affected much of the world between approximately the start of 1980 and early 1983. It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II.It is the same colour government now as was in charge then. The only conclusion we can draw is that we have become so accustomed to our misery that we no longer see the difference in standards of living. We drive through, around, over the 'Stop the Oil' protestors into the out of town designer shopping experience with the idea that one day we will have the money to shop there. For now it is only window shopping that we can do, bar treating ourselves to a Kumquat from the M&S Foodhall for we are a twat.      

 

             

The Moon as a Fishing Buoy in Bermo

For National Poetry Day 2022

The Moon as a Fishing Buoy in Bermo

Do you see the Lleuad in Abermaw

or do you see the Moon in Bermo?

It's a fishing buoy now in the sky which is the sea.

They are looking up at me, the creatures and anenomes.

Best Fish & Chips in town are at 

 Dolphin 🐬 Fish Bar, King Edward Street

opposite the Llyfrgell.

You can go and eat them on the front

 just enough away from the bins dressed as seagulls.

The litter on the train tracks at Barmouth Station is disgusting.

I could have taken a picture but it would have spoilt the poem.

The plastic gets caught up in the nets of the fishermen 

along with black bags full of cocaine.

We are a bastard species aren't we?

Consumed by our egos.

Gwynedd plan to charge 300% Council Tax on Second Homes

and some would say "Gwd"

What about the family who have had their little bwthyn among the boulders of Bermo for decades? 🏠

Do they deserve to pay £6,000 a year for a two bedroom cottage? 

"What about the locals?"

The locals wouldn't live there, it's too small, too damp and too anghysbell.

You've got to walk up lots of slippery and narrow slate steps to get there.

Let them stay!

He's learning Welsh!

But the Senedd have passed the buck as if it was a Rugby Ball

and the Council are now playing catch up backed by an angry mob!

It's the closest traeth to Birmingham as the brân flies

The Walsall Cafe & West Bromwich Garage pay testament.

I don't give a fig about your national identity

It's the language and its preservation that is important to me

and I know that the môr-forwyn agrees

because she told me. 💋

 

llyfrgell:library

anghysbell:remote

traeth:beach

brân:crow

môr-forwyn:mermaid