Waking

Strange waking dreams... a grey fronted city, houses on the river, a bomb goes off or an earthquake happens, something like that, and the fronts all slide off the houses, some side walls too, and fall down into the water. Blinking, that sight goes and it seems to me the houses are high up or the water is low, a drought or the tide is out. The sides of the river are almost like escarpments, or cliffs, but that doesn't feel right. A very blue sky, the wings of a great bird flying into the sun.

While I take my dreams seriously in terms of understanding what's happening in my backbrain, my general rule is to discount them if there is a physical attribute which may be unduly influencing me, like illness or indigestion...and my stomach is not happy today. This may be down to my terrible attempt at cooking last night, in which I learned that chucking raisins into boiled couscous is no solution to anything.

The bird interests me though. I would quite like a tattoo at some point, though doctors don't want me to have one because of the potential melanoma thing.  In any case, it's hard for me to find symbols I would want on my skin permanently; stars, the sun, waves, daisies, birds flying away. That's kind of where it would be. So the sun and the bird are at least part of my lexicon. The rest of the vision is probably a combination of subconscious anxiety and creeping gut rot.

The Tory Soul part III: The Beautiful Money

And then there's this.

https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10153675647741939/?pnref=story

I won't be able to analyse this piece objectively as any kind of view of the tory psyche until I have stopped laughing and being indignant at it by turns. Oh dear! And there's me trying to understand with Thatcher and Austen and Gog Magog and Gillray! Why bother if it all comes down to this? :-D  Such a fool to waste my time pondering!  Feel for Cameron though. With friends like these, who needs enemas?

Alan Duncan has of course apologised, again.  It seems to be all he does.

Here's a little information on this serial sorry-sayer.


His first governmental position was as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Health, a position he obtained in December 1993. He resigned from the position within a month after it emerged that he had used the right-to-buy programme to make profits on property deals. It emerged that he had lent his elderly next door neighbour money to buy his home under the right-to-buy legislation. The neighbour bought the 18th century council house at a significant discount and sold it to Duncan just over three years later. Gyles Brandreth describes this event in his diary as '...little Alan Duncan has fallen on his sword. He did it swiftly and with good grace.'

On 15 May 2009, the satirical BBC programme Have I Got News for You showed footage of Duncan's previous appearance on the show in which he boasted about his second home allowance, denied that he should pay any of the money back and stated it was "a great system". The show then cut to footage of David Cameron announcing that Duncan would return money to the fees office, followed by Duncan's personal apology, in which he called for the system to be changed.

Duncan had claimed nearly £5,000 on gardening; pranksters from online magazine and marketing company Don't Panic paid a visit to his constituency home where they planted flowers in the shape of a pound sign on his lawn and left a money tree. On 14 August, Duncan said (whilst being filmed without his knowledge by Don't Panic), that MPs, who were at the time paid around £64,000 a year, were having, "to live on rations and are treated like shit.[18] I spend my money on my garden and claim a tiny fraction on what is proper. And I could claim the whole lot, but I don't." These remarks attracted the attention of the press, and were criticised by commentators from all sides.Duncan apologised once more, and Cameron, though critical of Duncan's comments, denied that he would sack him from the Shadow Cabinet. Despite these assurances, on 7 September 2009, Duncan was "demoted" from the Shadow Cabinet, to become Shadow Minister for Prisons, after he and Cameron came to an agreement that his position was untenable.

The Dead Poets' Society

Been a paid up member from childhood, long before the film. That's just how it's been.

There's someone I 'know' but not really, through fb. She is a firebrand, spitting blood and fury at the world's injustices, calling men out, calling white people out, calling anti-trans people out...Her passion and principle get a bit OOC at times, but on other occasions they light me up.

She has said offensive things before, but I just thought; OK, listen without umbrage and learn from another viewpoint.

Now one of her friends (unknown to me) has called Shakespeare's work shit that no-one would read if white people didn't force them to, and she vehemently agreed.

As if by magic, I defriended her.

I can't believe my action for something so trivial...

 I feel awful about it.  She's an intelligent woman. And WS was certainly not immune to the opinions of his time, though it was  part and art in him to go beyond and above those opinions. Sometimes his writing is questionable, but much of  it is beautiful. And I grew up with him. For all his faults, he is a part of my identity, my literature, and my past. I might have done the same for Yeats, Donne, Cavafi, Hafez,  Lorca, Dickinson... and I appreciate how ridiculous it may sound, but it's my rule; rationally criticise their work by all means but don't randomly attribute appreciation to nothing more than race! How is such behaviour not racism in itself?

And if this makes me trivial, then trivial's what I am. Sorry lady. But not sorry enough to stick around.

In other news, I rescued a beastie today. So not a complete loser!