Batten Doon the Hatches!!

Today found the S T O n E d H o L y b L O g g E r cloistered within the confines of StonedHoly HQ and  fully intent on not popping his Stoned Holy Noggin' above the parapet to have a keek! I hunkered doon! I  battened doon the hatches! I decided to wait it out in the hermetically sealed environment of the Stoned Holy Fall-Out Shelter!

Verily, it was 'chuckin' it doon' ootside, as it often does in these latitudes, but that was not the reason for my taking the StonedHolyPersonage far from the madding crowd. It would require a soaking of Biblical proportions to deter one so inured to a pluvial drenching as the S t o n e d H O L y B L o g g e R from issuing forth from his front door, I can tell you!

Perchance I have commenced a period of monk-like Seclusion, removed from the distractions of this Crazy Old World to explore the "Weird Scenes Inside the Gold-Mine" of Inner-Space? But no, gentle readers, the Monastic life is not for me ; although it may interest you to know I  have actually undergone a period akin to that just described - it was called the 80's!!! Which I spent mostly in my bedroom listening to Blind Lemon Jefferson & Howling Wolf and reading the works of Leon Trotsky & Isaac Deutscher whilst the likes of Duran Duran and Depeche Mode were abroad in the world at large and raking it in!!! Wankers!!

Maybe then it is, the Stoned Holy Frontal Lobe has finally snapped
and I have retreated from the hugger-mugger of the 21st Century into a
Howard Hughes-like paranoia of never opening the curtains and wearing a hat made out of kitchen foil to deflect the mind-bending rays being used to pacify the world's population by a race called the Zargons who hail from Planet Karg?!?!...and all the while subsisting on a diet of porridge and crisps and lying in my own shit!! Eh.....errrr.....ummmmm...NO!!! I like to think the Sanity of the s t o N E D h O L y B l o g g e R is fairly secure.....for the moment leastways!!

Is it then possible that Wonga.com sent the boys round to gie the poor
Stoned Holy Knee-Caps a couple o' dunts wi a mash hammer to convince me I should pay forthwith the outstanding balance of £2,750 which I owe them from an original loan of £35 I took out in lieu of Jobseekers Allowance which I subsequently did not receive after the black-hearted scoundrels and dejected jobsworths who enforce the callous ideological policies of the DWP sanctioned me for all of March & April forcing me thusly to lie low and pretend nobody was in, ignoring the loud and insistent rapping upon the Stoned Holy Front Door?!?! I am happy to report t'is not so!.... although the Stoned Holy Coffers are, indeed, currently perilous!

No, the real reason behind my self-imposed quarantine was the funeral of one Margaret Hilda Thatcher and all its associated BULLSHIT!! Listening to the mock solemnity of the tossers who turned up to make political capital out of the anachronistic old crone's demise would be distasteful at the best of times but knowing they've splashed 10 Million Quid on their shindig does tend to stick in the craw somewhat!!!....And all of this fanfare at the taxpayer's expense in times of so-called Austerity....Nauseating!!!.....but what really tipped the scales was the news from The Sunday Times Rich List, courtesy of Michael Meacher, that the wealthiest thousand people in the U.K (just 0.003% of the population!) have, over the course of the last three years, got richer by the staggering sum of £155 Billion!! I'll write that figure out in full just so you fully comprehend it - One Hundred & Fifty Five Billion  Pounds!!

That, my friends, is enough to pay off the entire U.K budget deficit and still leave £30bn as loose change!!

Let's Kick Out the Tories!!

 Ta-Ta for Now Cyberpeepers!!

 Sleep Well!!!

A Healthy Dollop of Schadenfreude : Thatcher's Deid!!

Mr. Charles Dickens, no less, late of Rochester, Kent once opined that "It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times" but we here gathered in the 'Diary of a Pop-Slop Nobody' Editing Suite do not concur! For surely, these are simply the worst of times! Was it not ever thus for lowly folks such as the S t o n E d H o l y B L o g g e R....but today, I must admit, there's an all too perceptible upturning at the corners of the
S t o n e d H o l y C h a t t e r H o l e...I...errrr...think it's called a SMILE!! 

It's true, the S t o n e H o l y C o u n t e n a n c e is not usually troubled by such things; wearing as it does a gravely chiselled expression, placed there upon it by wasted years of tirelessly chippin' awa' at this Pop Slop Mallarkey for scant reward! So, yes, the
S t o n e d H o l y B r o w is mostly found Furrowed Deeply & Darkly Shadowed ;  it's bleedin' hard work lugging 'round all my baggage of Resentment & Bitterness, I can tell yi!! Old Jacob Marley hasn't got as look-in! But today the onus on these Discontented & Heavily Burdened S t o n e d H o l y S h u d d e r s has lightened somewhat with the news that

THATCHER'S DEID!!

My guess is that the Blogosphere is right this Holy Beat Moment ablaze with feverish typing as an Army of Bloggers pound the keyboards to celebrate the fact of her passing!! The S T o n e D H o l Y B L o g g e R is one such! No doubt in some Iniquitous Quarters they are already penning Turgid Eulogies & Puerile Panegyrics to further cloud the Repugnant & Revolting airs by her bier but that is most definitely not the case here at
S t o n e d H o l y H Q!!.....nor I suspect a lotta places north of Luton or outside of Tory Central Office....and maybeez, not even within every corridor of that Scurrilous Den!

For the people of whom the S t O n e D h O L y B l o G G e r sings of and for in his capacity as The Concrete Prairie Crooner, The Baron of Baritone &  Psychedelic Overlord of the S T O N E D H O L Y R O L L E R S and lest we forget, The Guiding Light & Most Irreverent High-Heid-Yin of the Stoned Holy Church of Rockin  Rollin Brethrenness, Thatcher poppin' her 87 year old clogs is, most assuredly, cause for sloppin up a good healthy dollop of SCHADENFREUDE and savouring every bitter n twisted mouthful!!

It has been said that the Guid Die Young - need we say more?!?! 87 Miserable Fukn Years of Heartbreak & Rupture! 87 Afflicted & Sorrowful Steps that have lead to the Cold, Grey Clay!! The Zoroastrians believe you have but one duty to fulfill with your allotted time on this goodly Earth; namely, to leave the World a better place for your having been in it! This Poisonous & Pernicious woman has singularly failed in this undertaking!! She's been a Bane no' a Boon!!...n noo she's on a spit being roasted like a herring amidst the blackest, deepest Palls of Beelzebub's Halls!!!.......leastways, I like to think she is!!!

I urge you gentle readers, whilst they prattle endlessly on & on and discuss her legacy to think of the damage wrought by her and her love affair with Reaganomics and the Free Market Madness of Friedman : mass unemployment, millions homeless, the gap between rich and poor ever widening, communities ripped apart all across Britain, manufacturing all but disappeared, the rise of 'Benefit Culture', bank bail-outs and bankers' bonuses, the social fabric in tatters......Oh, t'is a Bitter Harvest she has wrought!!! And noo she's DEID!!!!.....but how can we forget her warped, bastard spawn are still at the helm  and creating a Britain where money gets what money wants and no-one gives a shit for their neighbours cos 'there's no such thing as Society' anyway!!!!

Champagne isn't really the style of the s t O N e D H o l y b l O g g E R, but tonight I just may crack open a fine bottled ale and without pity or remorse say "Thank Fuck, the Wicked Witch is Dead!!!!" Then I may wind up the S t o n e d H o l y V i c t r o l a and listen again to The Beat 'Stand Down Margaret' or Crass 'How Does it Feel to be the Mother of a Thousand Dead' or Elvis Costello 'Tramp the Dirt Down' or Morrissey crooning 'Margaret on the Guillotine'......I must confess, I may get a wee bitty nostalgic for those Thatcher blighted days of my naive youth....but, be assured all yous oot there in Blogland, I will all the while be feeling satisfaction & delight in another's misfortune!.....

Schadenfreude - oh, doncha just love it!!!!

Morrissey /  The Beat / Elvis / Crass

  

£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!