A Book

When you’ve been knocked down,

And feel you’ve lost the fight,

Remember life’s a book,

Which only you can write.

A Song

When you’re in a hole,

Where nobody can reach you,

Remember life’s a song,

That only love can teach you.

A Rainbow

When you’re feeling blue,

And all your skies are grey,

Remember life’s a rainbow,

That needs a rainy day.

A Fix

My fix, for fixing’s what I need,

Is Earl Grey tea, both strong and black.

I don’t do nicotine or weed,

Or LSD or H or crack,

Cocaine or speed or ‘e’ or smack.

To get me started, nothing’s finer

Than Earl Grey tea served in bone china.

Liebster Awards

Facetious fool that he undoubtedly am, fergustheirriot have been sacked. Here is his genuine Liebster Awardees, awarded to him favoursome blogs:


1.  http://marcusmoore.wordpress.com/ In a word: blog.

2. http://willhatchett.blogspot.com/ Good poems.

3. http://pantsofdeath.blogspot.com/ Surreal. Should write more.

4. http://raymondantrobus.blogspot.com/ Thought-provoking.

5. http://www.bradleysands.com/ Genius.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Chinook-Helicopter of Orange

The Lobster Award

The Lobster Award is passed around amongst the blogosphere, from one blogger to another five bloggers. The blogger in question chooses their five favourite blogs, posts them on their blog, then goes away to steal some teaspoons, or something. Oh, by the way: you're not allowed more than 200 followers (otherwise you are not a blogger, but, according to the UN, you're officially a cult).


Many thanks to the poet Sarah James http://www.sarah-james.co.uk/?page_id=7, who chose this as one of her five Lobster Award blogs.


My five are as follows:


1. http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

2. http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

3. http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

4. http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

7. http://fergusthepoet.blogspot.com/

Commiserations to the runners up, who were.

The 16:26 Powl of Borridge

For DL and GJ (aka NB)

Most families who grew up on our estate had the 16:00 tea-time, replete with tea, toast, scones, tea, jam, cream, Rottweilers, tea, and servants in Nirvana t-shirts to serve the whole lot. Our house was slightly less conventional (it always voted Communist and wore wellington boots on a Sunday), and my mother insisted we would have none of that upper middle-class, bourgeois 16:00 tea-time nonsense. No, instead, we had to have the 16:26 (the precise moment at which Uncle Jo Stalin had passed away) Powl of Borridge (my mother was dyslexic, on account of having gone to a Steiner school). Make that the proletariat’s 16:26 Powl of Borridge. She always managed to add just enough salt, but for what purpose, my eight brothers, six sisters and I never could tell. Even today, whenever I see a Powl of Borridge, I unthinkingly start singing “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying” and offer up a silent prayer for Uncle Jo Stalin, before I snap out of it and remember that I am a Captain of Industry responsible for running the armaments factories which maintain global military operations. I have a photograph of Margaret Thatcher in my office. I bet she never had to suffer years of eating Powls of Borridge.

Sir Josef Oik was talking to himself.

The Chrimblas Story, Part One

(from the Gospel Accordingly to St Kenneth of Chinook-Helicopter, who knew because someone telled him and he believed everthing beople tolb him)

Chapter 1 Verses 1 – 42

Chrimblas was fron a Holy Ghost and virtuoso fambly. Him father (that one) was a carpenter and him mother was a walrus and they had lots of nails in the house, which was a hovel (which am neeeeerly a hotel, or mayhaps a dislecksick hotel). And him famnly tree was like this: him Dad (the other one) was God; him Dad (not that one) was a carpentry lesson; and before his was a father, and another father and another father and another father, all the way back until. So, you get the picture: he had relations going way back, proving he was the Messianic.  

And him Mum, who was called Mum, was a Virgo, which meant that she was. Chrimblas was born in a table, with cows, sheep, goats, donkeys and geese and more cows and some hay and some straw and him Mum, the Virgo, and his Dad (that one) and also.

Coming soom: The Chrimblas Story, Part Two (wiv Los Angeles and and singing and and and shepherds and and and and stuff).

Bear Costume Relay Team

for RC

People wondered who was inside the giant charity bear costume (some even placed bets).

            Suggestions included: HRH Her Royal Majestic Highness (grovel, grovel, scrape, oooh, be I hever so ‘umble,  etc.) And So On The Queen, an absent Headmaster, another bear (and inside that one, another bear, etc., just like them dolls off of Russia), a pizza delivery man (lost), a “costume wearing artiste” who used to dress up as Mickey Mouse before realizing that there were better things he could do with his brief and pointless existence, Mother Theresa’s hedonistic fifteenth cousin ten times removed, nobody, Kenneth Chinook-Helicopter, and, finally, Johnny Marr’s cutlery service (led by his magic teaspoons, who are always the most charitably-minded of the eating irons).

But, in fact, it was all of them taking it in turns. While they were waiting for their go in the bear suit, they played a few rounds of that popular children’s game “We’re All Spoons!”, which they had to let The Queen win on account of her embarrassing temper tantrums when losing popular children’s games (even ones which weren’t “real”, whatever that means).

Sea

Street lamp spreads light as a wave reaches shore: small, unseen; its sound is heard (sssshhhhhh…..). It lasts a second on the shore, but a lifetime in the heart.

The Rich Man

A rich young man approached Jee-whizz and asked, “Can a rich man get into heavens above?”

            Jee-whizz thought for a minute. “Yes,” he eventually replied, “as long as they pay a special type of tax called an indulgence.”

            “Super!” replied the young man, and rode off on his bicycle.

Later, when he was alone with his Apostrophes, Jee-whizz was confronted by Judas Carry-cot. “Master, surely it is as easy for a rich man to get into heaven as it is for a badger to ice-skate to the moon?”

            “Badgers can ice-skate to the moon,” replied Jee-whizz, “for is it not written that if you can dream it, you can do it?” The Apostrophes were full of wonder at this latest badger-related revelation. Jee-whizz continued, “It is as easy for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heavens above as it is for a monkey to climb a tree.”

            Simon, who was called Jeremy, then asked Jee-whizz, “Who is holier, master: a hairdresser or a Welsh dresser?”

            Jee-whizz laughed. “How much you still have to learn,” and the Apostrophes sat around feeling a bit thick, apart from Judas, who was sulking (again).

Thought for the Day

“It is the fate of all dining room tables to end up as the half-remembered remains of an unremarkable dream.”

Guru Quackami-Stabbingmusic (from “Sayings Which Credulous Westerners with Post-Colonial Guilt Disorder Will Swallow”)

Dreams make use of all the detritus of life, making the ordinary surreal. This morning’s half-remembered offerings consisted of a dining room table.

            It began life as an ordinary kitchen table, but microscopic magic bankers mysteriously transformed it into a fully-fledged dining room table; it was good enough to host quite a decent upper middle class dinner party which had forks and spoons for pudding.

            The angry indigenous inhabitants of the kitchen eventually overcame their tribal differences and led an uprising against the microscopic magic bankers, resulting in a fire in the dining room which incinerated the dining room table and spread to the rest of the ground floor, burning freely until the firemen came and put it out.

It is the fate of all dining room tables to end up as the half-remembered remains of an unremarkable dream.

(Hint: you may now nod sagely at the ethereal wisdom of the East which you understand but which is beyond the grasp of your less enlightened materialistic friends.)

Tomorrow’s Thought for the Day will be delivered by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Mohamed Beard-Glasses, from the trenches outside St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Silence

On the Way to Work

Obadiah Circumflex reached towards the handle of the door (although it could have been the handle of a car boot or the handle of a baby’s pram) and opened it. He left via the front door (although it could have been the back door, the bathroom door or one of The Doors) and made his way towards the tube station (although it could have been a tube of toothpaste, a cathode-ray tube or a misspelt tuba).

Once there, he bought a ticket for his destination (although it could have been a ticket for his dog, a ticket to the moon or a ticket to ride) and boarded the next train on platform 2 (although it could have been platform soles, a platform for debate or platform 3).

The interior of tube trains always made Obadiah Circumflex feel slightly ill at ease, especially when he hadn’t had much sleep the night before. The rattling rails weaved their soporific magic on him, and he drifted off (although he could have drifted away, drifted into shark-infested waters or simply drifted through life).

He never woke up.

Demands

As I went to St. Paul’s for a little light tent theft, I couldn’t but help hear some protest chanting:

Chearleader: What do we want?

Sheep: ….general bleating noises amidst some mumbled confusion…

Ch: When do we want it?

Sh: …NOW?

Ch: What do we want?

Sh: ….general bleating noises amidst some mumbled confusion…

Ch: When do we want it?

Sh: We already said?

(Repeat until)

The demands of the Tent City Geniuses are quite complex. Having listened to their various demands, I have decided to provide a simplified guide.

1 ….er…?

2 Um…sort of….?

3 Well, more…..erm?

4 …………….?

5 ??????????

So, that’s all cleared up then, isn’t it?

Fergusthepoet now owns seven tents.

Magpies

One for a teaspoon (property of Johnny Marr).

Two also for a teaspoon (also property of Johnny Marr; same as the first).

Three for a Chihuahua, like a hippy rat.

Four for existential angst, wot we all have.

Five is for fireplaces (unlit, due to elfin safety).

Six is for a poster of Che Guevara (boo, hiss, grow up, ecksettera).

Seven for a chocolate chip cookie (burned).

Eight for a garden fence, owned by Kenneth Chinook-Helicopter.

Nine for Rameses II, one-time Pharaoh of Egypt.

Fergusthepoet cannot count to ten, which am just as well. Hmmmm.