£53 a week, mate?....yoor avvin a laugh, aincha?!?!

The S t o N E d h O L Y b L o G G e r hereby extends his apologies to the Good Peoples who inhabit the Blogosphere for his long and (I'm damned sure) sorely missed absence from these virtual walls whereon we bloggers paste up our witterings, rancourous or otherwise, in the vain hope that somebody will read them and recognise us as the obscure genius that we have always believed ourselves to be!

The aforementioned absence was due to circumstances outwith my control - ie: Mr. Iain Duncan Smith! Details later, but for now let's consider the much-in-the-news Minister for Work & Pensions. This may prove difficult for I can hardly bare to type out his name without feeling somewhat nauseous and it conjuring it up in my mind an image of his shiny little bald head under the conference lights as he delivers yet another pernicious and petty minded diatribe against 'benefit culture' to the Legions of the Lame-Brained that are the septuagenarian Tory Faithful!!. Yes, I know it's wrong, but I would happily see the Repugnant Tory Dimwit's noggin cleaved in two by a war-axe or some such implement as one uses in these matters, and see for myself the cancerous grey sludge inside it that passes as a brain!!!

And to think he was born  (surely thiat should read vomited up?!?!) in Edinburgh where I myself made my howling entrance into this World of Fools & Fops & Popinjays! Just one more reason for me to resent the Grey, Windblown, Kebab Strewn Streets of this Piddling, Presbyterian, Pisspot, Prison Town that has for so long stifled my

S t o N e D   &   H o L y   R o L L i N g N E s s ! 
Hell hath no fury like a lover ignored!!




He was also, again like the S T o N e d H o L Y b L o g g e R, schooled by Vatican Stormtroopers - ie: given a Roman Catholic education!! Unlike myself though, he still practices the faith. I find this baffling...if only momentarily. In instances such as this I quickly revert to my Pontifex Maximus Drenched Default Setting of Righteous & Holy Indignation and begin to Thunder & Fulminate!! Weary from these exhortations I humbly implore and beseech the Wrathful God who Bides in Heavens High to exact a Swift & Shuddersome  Vengeance upon this Perambulatory & Puny Pestilence for having the Outrageous Fukn Temerity to Believe he could be counted in the Ranks of the Faithful and as such qualify for life everlasting!! Oh. for B'Jaysus sake why can this Miserable Little Man not be turned into something more befitting his position in the Cosmic Grand Order of Things - say errr.... Dog Shit for example!!!
   

And now for more on the beleaguered Blockhead that is George Iain Duncan Smith. Not beleaguered enough, I and countless others would wager ; for by rights this Toxic Tory Abortion should be vilified everywhere he goes by any society that is any way concerned with the Social Justice it affords its citizens. Again, I would happily see this Loathsome Tory Toad reduced to a Skulking Pariah and pelted with various comestibles and the contents of yir average Septic Tank whenever he dared show his Loathsome Little Toady face in the Good Light of Day - for surely in any Society worthy of the name, it would be so!! 

The fact that this Horrible Little Runt has actually prospered in this world is but further grist to my Embittered and World Weary Mill!! He has 'prospered' by various means ; Aside from his ignoble six year stretch as an officer in the British Army he has sold both armaments for GEC Marconi and gun related magazines for Jane's Information Group. He has also lied about attending the University of Perugia and something called the 'Dunchurch College of Management' which turns out to be nothing more than a weekend jolly for the team at GEC Marconi's own staff college! He has also 'got on' by marrying himself into money and claiming the fair hand of the daughter of some grandee called the 5th Baron Cottesloe. Oh, how simply wonderful it must be for everyone.....especially as they all live on Pater-In Law's estate in Bucolic Buckinghamshire!!! Shall we mention him swelling his bank account further with monies claimed from the public purse for his wife 'working' as his 'Diary Secretary'? Oh, we'd better not because he was 'cleared' and given a slight rebuke by 'Parliamentary watchdog'! That'll teach him!!

But enough of  peddling guns and lies and his shameful rise to the dizzy heights of the DWP.... let's talk about now and his frankly laughable and ludicrous claim that he could subsist on £53 a week! Do I really need to spit forth yet more vitriol and detail the many ways that this is Contemptible & Insulting & Arrogant? I implore you readers, please take the time to visit the website below where you can sign the e-petition to make this Tory Abomination make good on his Flagrant & Heinous Clap-Trap and live on £53 a week for a year!! Here's the link  https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-smith-to-live-on-53-a-week 

Make it so, people! 
Verily, I say unto thee, Make it so!!!

Robert Burns : Rock n Roll Animal!

It's that time of year again, folks. The time when the S T O n e d H O L y b L o G g e R reminds aw you Cyberdarlings (or at least that portion of yiz amongst the teeming multitudes of the blogosphere who have blundered their way onto these exalted pages!)  that the birthday of Robert Burns, late of Ayrshire, Scotland, will soon be upon us. It's the 25th January when yiz aw need tae get the whisky bottle oot and raise a toast tae Rantin' Robbie!!! So keen am I tae draw yir attention to this impending anniversary that I am here, sitting in the Cramped n Chilly confines of the computer suite at
S t o n e d H o l y H Q, hammerin' awa at the keyboard on a Saturday night, when any other self-respecting Rock n Roll Animal worthy of the name wid be oot on Cuban Heels, Scavenging & Scouring the Skirted Streets seeking out Raw Flesh & Live Heat!!! Fie, even the Bardie himself would surely be one of them!

*    *    *   *    *   *    *

But here I am ; caged within the Hallowed & Hushed Halls of  R O l l e R C e N t R a l, 
the indifferent S t o n e d H o l y W a l l s flickering in the glow from the computer screen, writing this garbage for the elucidation of  Virtual Loons n Quines! By rights, I should be spending my evening entertaining several delightfully upholstered nubiles, keen to show their appreciation of my S T o N e d h O l y g E N i U s by enveloping my dulled senses in Sumptuous & Voluptuary excess! Oh, such a Realm of Fleeting Pleasures to be abandoned to! Yes, I know, Sex without Love IS an empty experience.....but as empty experiences go (and there are many in this meagre & pitiable world) it's one of the best!!

*    *    *    *    *    *    *

A fact, I'm sure, that would not have been lost on Robert Burns : For although he was a man of Prodigous Poetic Capabilities and a man firmly engaged with the Political Upheavals and Intellectual Altercations of his age, a man possessed of Easy Charm & Wit, he was a man also, who liked nothin' better than tae Cock Up his Beaver and loosen his breeks tae gie the Bonnie burdies a treat!! Though undoubtedly one who relished the pleasing company of rosy cheeked lovelies as a way to fill his hours and afford him the opportunity to display his breadth of learning, a means whereby he could show off his dazzling rhyme makkin skills....ahm pretty damn sure he liked it even better when the jades bade him lift up their petticoats and lug oot his pintle!!

*    *    *    *   *   *    *

I here recommend yi hunt doon a copy of "The Merry Muses of Caledonia." for the collected Smut & Bawdy Verse of Burns and a Joyous & Jovial Jaunt in Rhyme through the World of Fornication. 'Say, Puritan, can it be wrong, tae dress plain truth in witty song?'  asks the frontispiece and what follows is guaranteed tae put a smirk on the most door of faces. Here's wee sample tae whet yir appetite;

O gin a Body meet a Body comin thro the rye

Gin a body fuck a Body, Need a Body Cry!

Gin a body meet a Body comin thro the Glen

Gin a Body fuck a Body, Need the Warld ken!

Gin a Body meet a Body comin thro the Grain

Gin a Body fuck a Body, cunt's a Body's ain!

*    *    *    *    *   *   *

Awright, cyberpeepers, ahv said ma piece. Ah'll leave the rest to you. Meanwhile, here's a doff o the cap and a raising o a glass tae Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), a real Rock n Roll Animal & a real gone..... 

S t O N e D H o l y r O L L E r! 

Avanti Popolo!!

A V A N T I   P O P O L O ! !  These are the stirring first words of the famous Italian workers anthem 'Bandiera Rosso.'  And the sentiment is surely one to stir the blood as we hapless though not entirely hopeless layabouts here at  S t o n e d H o l y   H Q  lurch somewhat gingerly into 2013!!.....and Yes, the days, though short, grow longer! The sap is indeed rising within these Pop-Slop Veins.....(although it's efficacy therein is counteracted somewhat by a Roman Catholic education and the many harsh lessons wrought and sexual failures incurred in the course of our dreary years of Pop-Slop Failure!! All of which bitter recollections serve to remind me that it was Bill Withers who pointed out "you sure do become attractive when you have a hit record"!!)

But, Ladies n Gentlemen, there is indeed LIFE in these Old Pop-Slop Dogs yet!! It's true, Ronnie Dawson's Bones ain't been doin' a Whole Lotta Shakin' themselves recently, but we've still got him on the S t o n e d H o l y R o c k O l a  at 45 r.p.m loudly proclaiming"There's still a Lotta Rhythm in these Rockin' Bones"....so if that don't get ya Movin' & Groovin' then yi must be deader than Ronnie!!

Dismal Experience tells us it's foolhardy, I know, but for now, as we stride forth into the New Year from out of  the Hallowed Portals of S t o n e d H o l y H Q our demeanour is positively chirpy!! We must admit though, to our High Spirits being literally dampened a little by the want of a good, stout pair of Boots!!! The S t o n e d H o l y S p i r i t  is willing but the Wet Feet & Chilblains are weak!!!

No doubt Navy Manners aboard the Good Ship Blighty  in the 21st century - ie : being routinely keel-hauled at the Job Centre plus ; being hung from the highest yardarm for raiding yir youngest's piggy-bank for a few Pieces of Eight tae keep the motor running ;  walking the plank on a diet of beans on toast and hard tack ; and being remorselessly lashed by the Cat o' Nine Tails and any number of caterwauling & talentless teenage bimbos and young men who need their trousers pulled up! - will soon chip away at our chipper disposition but for now we remain buoyant! If it wiznae for the Grog and the right to Self-Medicate I don't know what we'd do!!

No doubt the Soulless & Enervating smiles of  Top Twots, Messrs. Cameron & Osborne, and indeed the whole Pernicious & Corrupting Business of Politics and Governance of Her Majesty's Sinking Ship Great Britain will soon hasten the restoration of the
S T O n e d H o l Y B l o g g E r ' s  default setting of Stinging Rancor &
World Weary Cynicism!!

It is given to some lucky souls to play out their lives upon the grand stage of Revolution where Ferment and Insurrection are heady in the air ; A Monumental Theatre wherein their walk-on-parts and asides are woven into the very Fabric of History....but not so the
S T O n E d H o L y b l o G G e r !  I find myself bobbing aimlessly in fouled waters surrounded by Capitalist Pirates, Free Market Sharks and endless fukn episodes of 'Grand Designs' on More4 and adverts for reclaiming PPI.......

Sometimes Davey Jones' Locker doesnae half look inviting!!!!

Make mine a Rum, Barman! AAAARRRRRR!!!

Happy New Year Cyberpeople!!   

God Bless Us, Everyone!!

Well, Good Peoples of the Blogosphere, it's that time of year again......the time when Mumbling Old Curmudgeons, Dyspeptic Pop-Slop Failures & Miserable Bleedin' Bastards alike furrow their knitted brows and hurrumph loudly.....And Lo, Did It Come To Pass!!! H  U  M  B  U  G  !  ! 

We're over the worst of it though. Chrimbo has been n gone. Turkeys incinerated. Tons of plastic garbage that was inexpertly wrapped and placed under tinsel-laden Chrimbo trees before being trashed in the grubby sausagelike fingers of avaricious brats lookin' instead for an iPad or Blackberry has already been tossed into the garbage can en route to landfill!

Good King Wenceslas has looked out once again on snow lying deep n crisp n even & Boxing Day is no more..though there is, undoubtedly,  a lot of Boxing still to be done as the Tenuous Familial Threads that bind us finally snap under the pressure of  pretending we're 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time' !! That surfeit of Mulled Wine & Liqueur Chocolates surely can't help but inflame ire when argy-bargying for control of the T.V Remote!! Whether this really is 'The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year' is moot, but I'm betting it doesn't feel like it for many as they finally call it a day and crawl into bed nursing a sore jaw, a bad case of stomach ache & a severely bashed and bruised sense of pride!!...

....But Don't Worry! Be Happy! Collective Amnesia will soon take hold & we can all act out our bit parts in the Pantomime next year!!....oh such happy days to think I will once more find myself in the Thronging Tumult of the Drinks Aisle in Asda on Christmas Eve searching for bottles of Vermouth and half-price Cava to palm off to sundry friends & relations in lieu of a real gift! And all this whilst being bombarded with Slade screaming 'It's Christmaaaaaaaaaaaas!' and the thought of Noddy Holder's Pension Fund swelling enormously as the PRS payments flood in!!!.....this is nowhere near as life-draining as Cliff-Fukn-Richards whining on about Mistlefukntoe n FuknWine & Fukn Children Fukn Singin Christian Fukn Rhyme!! If there's a Merciful God in Heavens Yonder can he not do something about this!!!???

Meanwhile though, the shop doors have already opened anew & ushered in the rampaging hordes of Bargain Hunters Shouldering & Shoving in the Jungle of January Sales! Ah see now, how the Merry Little Consumers bulldoze their way to the front of the queue and gladden their covetous little hearts by snappin up that cable-knit sweater reduced by 90 - yes, 90! - percent!! See how they fill the Yawning, Vacuous Chamber of their Meaningless Lives with Material Trinkets n Trifles as the Sulphourous, Ravening Maw of Commerce swallows up their Little Plastic Cards & the next 25 years of their Crummy Working Lives!!!.....but hey, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday!!

What the real Christmas Miracle is though, is the idea that underneath all this Brazen Glitz and Phony Bonhomie is the story of a helpless babe-in-arms and the possibility of REDEMPTION!!! Now if that possibility, however slim, isn't just cause to Celebrate then I'm blowed if I know what is! And if a Hoarding & Penurious Auld Shitebag like Ebeneezer Scrooge can have his Black, Miserly Heart opened up to Tenderness & Affection there may even be hope for a Comfortless S t o N E d H o L y b L O G g e R !!
It's enough tae Bring a Tear tae a Glass E'e!!

I have just been visited by the Spirit of Christmas Present in a glass                       of Tawny Port....and do declare, I will have another!                                         Huvva Coool Yule Y'all........God Bless Us, Everyone!!!   

Mellow Fruitfulness!!

Twas just the other day, as I recall, whilst slumbering like a Babe enjoying the Sleep of the Just, cocooned within the cosiness of the Stoned Holy Counterpane, that I found myself, in  a most Rude & Untimely manner, being ripped from such Golden Slumbers as an Embittered & Bibulous, Middle-Aged Pop-Slop-Failure can be allowed to enjoy, by the irksome twittering of the alarm clock! If this is a world where One Direction (or Yin Erection as I like to know 'em!) are rakin' it in and runnin their Manufactured & Manicured Hands over the lissome forms of any number of Delightfully Gamine Popettes and yet one where I struggle to pay the phone bill and buy Sachets of Fast Action Yeast, you'll hopefully understand that a Gid Night's Kip is sometimes hard to come by!! Luckily, my Unwavering Belief (or should that be Monomaniacal Delusion?!?!)  that I shall be vindicated in my choice of career path, recognised for the lyrical genius that I am and finally rewarded with Pneumatically Endowed Ladies wantonly proffering their Prodiguous Endowments up to my Delight & Tumescent Satisfaction , ensures that Sleep Shuts Up Sorrow's Eye & Felicits Me Awhile From Mine Own Company!!....

But I digress....And so it was, that after a good scratch of the Stoned Holy Nut-Sac and thereafter savouring the Silky & Satisfying Feel & Taste of the Parritch which I had lovingly stirred with my trusty Spurtle, that I, your very own SToNEdholYbLOGGer, issued forth into the Unsullied Hours of the Morning ; Ready, if not quite willing, to drop to my knees and take yet another shafting from those Hard Task Masters - The Fates!..& all this, Gentle Readers, to garner a few kopeks to spend on Necessities & Garbage alike... Whatever idlesome thoughts as were ambling their Devil-May-Care way through the blancmange-like folds of the Stoned Holy Brain Packet, were quickly shooed away when I noticed that the Pastures & Paddocks which girdle Stoned Holy HQ were frosted in silver and the Sweet Recalled Aromas of Approaching Winter had circulated up the Stoned Holy Hooter!!

Ah, Autumn : Season of Mists & Mellow Fruitfulness. Close Bosom Friend of the Maturing Sun. Conspiring with him how to Load & Bless with Fruit the Vines that Round the Thatch-Eaves Run! Ah, poor John Keats : Coughing up blood & thrashing in his T.B Sheets by the Spanish Steps.....and  now it seems, as I have read in the pages of the local periodical, not the Skulking, Emaciated, Doom-Laden Youth we'd previously been given to believe, but an Opium Addict "Drows'd with the Fumes of Poppies"!  Does it matter if  "Ode on Indolence" was written whilst the Peely-Wally Poet was off his face on Laudanum and scribbling feverishly? In the sense of it somehow diminishing his Artistry, the answer must be an emphatic NO! However, if it helps us imagine Keats as a fleshly creature of Needs n Wants n Weaknesses n Contradictions, YES!....... I for one would like to think Keats drew some pleasures from this world before leaving it.  Is it an idle fancy of myself alone  that the 'Bright Star', Fanny Brawne,  got a good bloody seein-to before Keats' oh too perfect Peggin-Out in Rome!?!? (I may expand this notion into an Erotic Vignette for Modern Interpretive Dance entitled 'Keats & Teats'!!....watch this space!)

But how can the days have been, Scrapin'-for-Ha'pennies, for a Stoned Holy Rollin' John Keats and his Melting Flesh?!  If No Man Chooses the Bed he's Born In, it must be noted also that the Age whereupon his life is played out against is not to his choosing either -  Thus it was that Poor John got a time when Britain was distancing itself from the Bawdiness & Licentiousness of the 18th Century. A time when the Educated Classes were obsessively diferentiating themselves from The Riff-Raff & The Mob & the The Great Unwashed. I ask you, Good Readers, how was a Penniless Poet ever gonna get to 'dance beneath the Diamond Skies with one hand waving free' in a Codified and Mannered Society dominated by notions of Propriety & Respectability? Is it any wonder then that as Britain moved towards the stultifying repression and joyless Puritanism of the Victorian Era that Keats had recourse to reach for the Tincture of Opium!? Who amongst us would begrudge the Poet a few hours of escape, if not escapism, into Laudanum fuelled reveries?.....or, perchance as he himself put it, "For Poesy, No, She has not a Joy, at Least for Me, so Sweet as Drowsy Noons & Evenings Steeped in Honied Indolence ; O, for an Age so Shelter'd from Annoy that I may Never Know how Change the Moons or Hear the Voice of Busy Common Sense!"

....but this is 2012 and Laudanum is unavailable over the counter at yir local dispensary....Bargain Booze however, next door, is open for business and happy to supply 'Broken Britain' with cheap, mind-numbing concoctions to dull the senses and nullify the pain...if yiv no' awready blown yir Giro doon at the Bookies, that is!!! Far better methinks to look at the Autumn Skies above the Housing Estate with its boarded up windows and its row of grafitti splattered fast-food outlets and think of Lost John "While Barred Clouds Bloom the Soft, Dying Day & Touch the Stubble Plains with Rosy Hue"!!

                             

ROCK ON, BEAUTIFUL JOHN!!

Godspeed you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Just made good my return from a brief visit to the Smokey Big Black where the StonedHolyRollers performed their heinous & blasphemous musical outpourings before tens of thousands..... or, to explain more fully, we rocked the pavements of Notting Hill as part of  our ongoing Street Outreach Programme! Enough generous people with impeccable taste dropped enough in the hat to finance a trip to the Land of the Late Night Haircut (aka: Stoke Newington!) for the finest Turkish Culinary Delights our meagre coppers could buy. Having just mentioned tens of thousands of yir Human Peoples, we must remember, my dear cyperperusers, that that figure is a small number within the context of the thronging multitudes of London.

London IS big, after all....and stuffed fulla peoples. Big Ones - Little Ones; Skinny Ones...& ones who give the bathroom scales just a little more trouble! All sorts of folks of varying shades from peely-wally Hombres, like yir StOnEdHOlybLogGer here to the blackest of shiny black folks, whose veins must course with the undiluted blood of Ham!

And all of these people, it seems, are on the move. Paddin' the Hoof North to South. Takin' Shanks' Pony East to West. Perhaps Time lapse photography shows us best the Disorganized Buzzing of Human Drones Hithering & Thithering; the Turbid Seething of Human Waters; the Chaotic Crash of Ambulatory Humanity.
In our haste to get where it is we're going to, the cold lens of the camera sees us not as individuals but a Formless & Shapeless, Unthinking & Blundering mass!

Cut to Tottenham Court Road Tube Station at 5pm and the Riotous Rampage of Rail-Users is in full swing. A Senseless Concretion of Commuters en route from Points A to B. Here you exist for a split second before morphing back into the anonymity of the Hurrying Hordes. An endless gallery of faces flits before your eyes which instinctively follow the constant stream & strain the retina. Bits of bodies desired & hungered for in an instant are quickly forgotten as another surge of visual stimuli is discharged from off the next Northern Line train bound for High Barnet. Wave after wave they flit by as the brain struggles to make sense of the experiential overload of Colour, Shape & Form.

In the confined space of the underground carriage we entertain ourselves, unknowingly almost, with the ceaseless floodtide of human faces; detached & seperated from their unimaginable lives for the seconds they take up in our own. Down here we are all voyeurs. Seemingly bored & uninterested eyes dance from place to place furtively. We steal a glance but quickly look away if our eyes collide with someone else's. We observe but exist also as observed as a thousand sightlines criss-cross one another in an intricate optical lattice. We are cardboard cut-outs against a flat, dull backdrop to be stared at, regarded, scrutinized. We sit in suspended animation waiting for our stop to arrive so that we can once more spring into some kinda life movement.

We spill out onto Archway and busy ourselves with the To-ings & the Fro-ings, the Comings & the Goings on the Avenues we've drifted onto in life.....& there are so many ways to get there : Motorways, Roadways, Byways, Highways, Pathways, Headways, This Ways, That A-Ways, By-the Ways, Sea Ways, Sky Ways, Cycleways, Throughways, Giveways, Gettaways, My Ways, Your Ways..........Bon Voyage & Godspeed, you Wearisome Wayfarers!

Dwarf Sized Sin City - London's Own Miniature World of Vice!!

In his classic cautionary tale from 1961, the Immortal Jimmy Reed warned us clealy, in his own inimitably lazy n laconic manner, that the 'BRIGHT LIGHTS' & the 'BIG CITY'  Would Go To Your Baby's Head!....but here I am, loping like a chimpanzee up on two legs round Soho, London's own MiniatureWorld of Vice!!!

Adrift in Soho by day, Costermongers shout the price of apples from behind their barrows in Berwick Street and office drones scurry to order over-sized cups of coffee during lunch breaks. The huge fireglow of the Sun swamps the Puny Neon Doodles and renders their message ineffective.....but sooner or later the Sun disappears from view and it's Diminutive Celestial Sibling, The Moon, takes over the task of throwing light upon one half of the World. And it's when night falls the Dwarf-Sized-Sin-City comes fully to life and starts to Glow!

To All Night Drug Prowlin' Wolves, like yir very own SToNEdholYBLoggeR, creepin along the Kerbsides n Alleyways lookin for some Midnight To Six, Man kinda Stimulation, the Moon has been made redundant by a Vast, Obedient Army of yellow street lights but for most of the Human Being Species it's still all they've got between them and impenetrable darkness, so it's just as well the Moon still insists on clockin' on for its night shift!   There was a time, long ago, that when darkness came, our ancestors would huddle close to one another and wait for the light to return. Strange Days Indeed! Half formed & naked, not knowing truly if the Sun would be back, staring into the unknowable immensity of Space and (if their Proto-Lingual skills had developed sufficiently to allow them to do so!!) wondering, open mouthed, at a million Studs of Fire twinkling above their frail little Simian skulls with their foreheads criminally low & their prognathic jawlines jutting out most ungracefully...& there, all the while, the mystery of mysteries, crawling across the Dark Mansion of the Sky; a Big, Silent, Silver Orb!....And then it came to pass that fire was bridled!... and in an evolutionary blink of an eye it wasn't long at all before there were light bulbs & the multidazzle of Soho was shining out and selling sexual gratification!! So to the shuffling human shapes of Soho the Moon goes unnoticed; its pallid, ethereal light lost in the importuning glare of Neon. Even if you were to throw your gaze heavenwards, your eyes would, as Evolution has taught them to do,  ignore the Moon's flimsy, ashen light and settle instead upon the Gaudy & Urgent Buzz of Coloured Neon!

Unlike Fireworks which bomb their Shimmering Splendour in an instant, Neon will glow for as long as you pass an electrical charge through it. Unlike Fireworks and their Ephemeral Moment of Brilliance, Neon shines on....So Neon has been Captured; Neon has been Tamed; Neon has been set to work! It can be bottled and moulded into phosphorescent symbols which burn through human retinas to send you a promise of satisfaction! In the crowded Scintilla of Soho we are in a place where the neon lights assure us SEX can be viewed; SEX can be spied upon; SEX can be consumed, SEX can be perused, SEX can be bought.....

It is also, in the words of the All-Time-Master-of-Honky-Tonk, Ray Price, a place where lights can say "forget her name in a glass of sherry wine" or where lights can "offer other girls to empty hearts like mine." Verily it remains thus, Brother Ray! "The Cabarets & Honky Tonks, their flashing signs invite a broken heart to lose itself in the glow of city lights!! They paint a purty picture of a world that's gay & bright....but it's just a mask for loneliness behind those city lights!!!"

Time, methinks, to leave these illuminated postcodes behind me!!
Ahm Outta Here-Vroom Vroom!!!....

here's the link to Ray in all his honky tonk Glory! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr79fOfP0dY

and another one for Jimmy Reed sounding half-cut as usual!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giGGK3Fk9co

Squat City Idler - Squat City Idyll

Up on the roofs off Londonville, right this goddam Holy Beat Second, there's one helloffalotta people just like me, soakin' up the Sun in all its generosity, nonchalantly flickin' flies away with the sweep of a quickly browning arm & listening subconsciously to leafy London undulating in the softest of blowin' breezes as a city-bound forest of London Planes put in by Londoners past gently get on with the job at hand ; hoovering up particulates outta the muggy Capital's air space; greening up the dreary, brown brick streets and, of course, just as they're doin' now, quietly susurrating & providing a subconscious connection to nature in all its goodliness amongst this man-made, dehumanising mincer that chews people up n spits 'em out bent & twisted!!

 God knows what kinda fucked-up mess would stain these Boulevards if it wasn't for these trees, standing in their own unobtrusive, dignified way, softening the jagged edges of this Concrete-Mash-Up!! For people get mangled here in the litter strewn Streets & Avenues that reek of fried chicken. Here, amongst the Crescents & Terraces, damage is wreaked on Tender Hearts & Uncomprehending Minds! Maybe the countless rows of disshevelled Victorian Villas in Hackney (where the plaster has peeled long since from once resplendent neo-classical porticoes and where the gardens are now filled with black rubbish bags, empty cola cans & dandelions) are a microcosm of what happens on a citywide scale where the slow erosion of neglect comes to play also on human beings and eats away at notions like Respect & Dignity, Kindness & Sociability. And so what happens if you haven't got whispering leaves to stir atavistic memories and soothe the woebegone soul?  In Londonville, remember, there is a Whole-Big-Heavy-Heap of  Bricks & Mortar and Steel & Glass sitting on top of what once was Mother Nature's  Rich, Brown Valley Earth! London is a Big, Dirty Squatter!!

Someday yet to wheel about this whole goddam Man-Made-Muddle is gonna be REDUNDANT and everything is gonna be beaten back & weathered down & swallowed up! Until then things have a habit of staying just where they are until someone or something comes along n picks 'em up n shunts them along to Postcodes new! It was in this way that London used to be in other places : The Houses of Parliament, St. Paul's, Buckingham Palace - all use Portland Stone from Dorset; The Tower of London uses stones from Kent & France; Tower Bridge uses granite from Cornwall. It occurs to me now that all of these stones just mentioned were formed when the land masses they were part of were sliding across parts of the Globe other than the locations they are at present. Indeed, the London Clay that the City itself rests upon was formed by marine & land deposits in shallow sub-tropical seas...so all that stuff that got washed out and deposited must have came from somewhere else before ending up in thick layers waiting to be turned into bricks to be carried in hods by burly Victorian labourers before then being turned into places like Kentish Town & Kensal Green, Hammersmith & Highgate.....& just think on the incalculable amount of Welsh slate currently insitu atop all those houses in London's vast Granny-Knot of Roads & Streets!

It's fitting then to think that most Londoners themselves started out as being from somewhere else. Strange to consider that the Pre-Fab Escarpments of the High-Rise and the Smoky & Sooty Rookeries of Slum Tenements delivered up some kinda scant sanctuary for the rootless & homeless from Blighted & Benighted, faraway corners of our World ; yet they did! And so here we all are huddled round the banks of the river as it wends it's time-worn passage to the sea; imagining as we go about our scrawny human business that the walls that hem us in are somehow permanent. And yet, even this London is on the move!!

10 Million people, 20 Million feet, 200 Million Toes; Swarming,  Flocking, Plodding, Tramping the hard, faceless streets imperceptibly moving little bits of London detritus from here to there....or maybeez it is the wind huffs n puffs down these hollow canyons scudding things along.....or maybe it's the rains that fall & wash something along to somewheres else....& so it goes....and by the time the Sun's had enough and decides to call it quits for the day & clock off, London isn't really the same as it was when it started out that morning......but no one notices because there's food to be gotten, eaten, deposited; drink to be drunk; sex to be searched for; laughter to be enjoyed; tears to be cried; desperate screams to be howled; old lives to fizzle out n new ones to be pushed into being.......

And so the big Meaningless, Pointless, Goal-less, Destination-less wheel of life grinds on taking every one of us living creations round with it until the day arrives when the space we fill up is gonna fall apart & all the atoms that constitute what we are are gonna  say 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know Ya' to one another and go lookin' for new forms to become part of.......Sometimes it is that that thought chills ya to the very core of your being but right now, up on my Squat City roof glorying in the Sun and listening to the gentle rustle of the feathery foliage and faraway hum of planes high above me....it's....kinda....errrrr.....BEAUTIFUL!!! 

PEACE, LOVE N COSMIC FELICITATIONS MY FELLOW BLOGGERS!!!!

THIS IS YIR SQUAT CITY IDLER IN HIS SQUAT CITY IDYLL SIGNING OFF........