What is this all about ? You tell me !

DAY FORTY-SEVEN:  Tuesday 16^th February  2021:

We had another Downing Street briefing last night from Prime Minister Boris Johnson. I am not sure exactly what he said but the underlying message was clear – we can not ease lockdown yet. It is not safe.

A couple of media headlines:

More than 60 MPs on the Covid Recovery Group have backed a letter to Boris Johnson demanding he commits to a strict timetable for ending controls in England.

Tory MP’s tell Boris Covid lockdown must go by the end of April – but Foreign Secretary rejects calls for arbitrary commitment to lift all restrictions.

MURDERERS !

Who are these evil greasy pole politicians who would rather see more and more and more people die from china virus than keep the nation safe.

COME ON THE MEDIA NAME AND SHAME THE EVIL LOT OF THEM !

Within my writing project I am planning a new discussion and debate project: THIS HOUSE BELIEVES – one of the topics will be THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT POLITICS SHOULD BE BANNED WITHIN DENOCRACY

If I had £1 for every time I said this I would be a rich man:

The tory party does not understand there are REAL people at the end of their policies. The labour party fully understands there are REAL people but think they exist only for them to play politics with.

True ?

I am feeling so angry I need to SMILE do here is SMILE OF THE DAY.

Nobody’s perfect. We make mistakes. We say wrong things. We do wrong things. We fall. We get up. We learn. We grow. We move on. We live.

Yesterday I wrote another 3,265 words in my project bringing the total to 338,580 words since 1^st January. Half a million words in the milestone I am aiming for, the half-way mark in my challenge and at that point I am going to start promoting myself. 161,420 words to write. If I can hit 4,500 a day I will need another 36 days. Saturday 27^th March. Let’s see how many days I can shave off that number.

The project I am working on right now is A STAIRCASE OF WORDS within which I have written 4,300 words. This project tells the story of how I came to love writing. I believe the roots lay with my family who encouraged me from a very early age. No credit at all can be given to the failing school system I moved through. I was taught how to read words and how to write but not taught to love the order of words be they of my own composition or that of another writer.

It was not until I was fifteen years of age that I was introduced to poetry in school. I love poetry and I love music. Both were taught by a crazy teacher Mr  Wild, wild by name and utterly crazy by nature. I taught myself to read music and to play an instrument at the age of nine while still in my formative years. However, my formative years were gone by the time I learned to love poetry. It was too late for me to learn to write poetry, I wish I could do it  but I can not. Writing yesterday in A ST AIRCASE OF WORDS I included this poem by

The Snake by D H Lawrence

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

 

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

O came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough

Before me.

 

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over

the edge of the stone trough.

 

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

And where the water had dripped from the tap, in small clearness,

He dipped with his straight mouth,

Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

Silently.

 

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second-corner, waiting.

 

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

Sand flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused

a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,

 

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels

of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

 

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold

Are venomous.

 

And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

 

But I must confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink

At my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth ?

 

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him ?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him ?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured ?

I felt so honoured.

 

And yet those voices:

If you are not afraid, you would kill him !

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough.

And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips.

And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

And slowly turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice a dream,

Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders,

and entered farther,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into

That horrid black hole.

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing

Himself after

Overcame me now his back was turned.

 

I looked round, I put down my pitcher

I picked up a clumsy log

And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

 

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed

In an undignified haste,

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure and in the wall-front

At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgare, what a mean act !

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

 

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he could come back my snake.

 

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld.

Now due to be crowned again.

 

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness.

 

Is that genius or is that genius ?

Allow me to share another poem, this one a little shorter:

The Donkey by G K Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorns

Some moment when the moon was blood

The surely I was born.

 

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil’s walking parody

Of all four-footed things.

 

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

 

Fools ! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet.

 

I have a tear in my eye having just shared that.

 

I have decided I am going to change my book POETS CORNER. Instead of the 47,714 words in the current draft I am going to take it up to around one hundred thousand words, to include more poets and more poems then publish it in three separate but series linked books.

OK let’s now check out what was happening ON THIS DAY:

16^th February 1959: Fidel Castro becomes premier of Cuba

16^th February 1985: Hezbollah is founded

16^th February 2006: The last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

And now for a list of people on Wikipedia who nobody has ever heard of who were born on this day.

16^th February 1952: William Katt actor was born.

16^th February 1953: Lanny McDonald Canadian ice hockey player was born.

16^th February 1958: Natalie Angier author was born.

16^th February 1961: Liu Kang Chinese footballer born. I didn’t know China knew how to play football !

16^th February 1977: Ahman Green American footballer born. AMERICA CERTAINLY DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL !

We’ll leave it lite that I think.

 

Today is Shrove Tuesday – PANKAKE DAY – will try to make some for lunch. If it’s a success I will report on it tomorrow. If I am silent then it will have been a failure.

 

I have three coins from the Victorian era: A copper one penny date 1899, a silver one shilling date 1887 and a silver half crown which is too worn to read the date. However, the image is of Queen Victoria looking very young. She came to the throne in 1837 so I am suspecting this has a date of 1837.

 

1899 – 1887 – 1837

 

1837: Brunel’s steamship The Great Western was launched.

1887: The Saint John’s Ambulance Brigade was founded.

1899: Elgar’s Enigma variations first performed.

 

1837 to 2021 = 164 years

1887 to 2021 = 114 years

1899 to 2001 = 102 years

In total three hundred and eighty years. If those three coins could speak what stories would they tell ? I have an idea to make that into a writing project IF ONLY WE COULD SPEAK.

9,755 new cases of china virus yesterday and another 230 dead. Locally 48 new cases and two deaths. Still our country if failing to respect and honour these people. Still our country and its monarch are failing to send condolences to the bereaved. When you open my time capsule in 2121 what will you think of this ?