The inevitable demise of Capitalism (part one)

(Extracts from 'A day in the bear pit' by Jonathon Glenister)

"Sitting at my desk, shares up, shares down. Best thing is I can make even more when the market crashes!

Politicians! Politicians? A bunch of bed-wetting arrivistes who haven't got the cojones to get stuck in! Losers, every single one of them out there - that window there. Losers!

Sympathy! Sympathy? Who for? All those weaklings who haven't got the 'kin nerve? Nah, they can all eat it as far as I'm concerned.

Cowards! Cowards, the lot of them!"

Poll Results - Who do you blame?

1 = Thatcher
1 = Cameron
1 = Blair
1 = Clegg
1 = Johnson
1 = Bush
1 = Them all !

The Comic Strip presents...

Five go mad in Dorset

"Blah blah blah, stolen plans, blah blah blah, missing scientists. Blah blah blah, Kidnap boy. Blah blah blah, everything ties up. Blah blah Submarine. Blah blah leave it out!"

Not forgetting "ham and turkey sandwiches, bags of lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, heaps of tomato, and lashings of ginger beer!"

The day Tiger went to the world cup

Originally published elsewhere, a while ago.

Lunchtime in Frankfurt, leaning gently into a second bottle of crispy white. The old town streets full of Mexican families lapping up the sun, Paraguayan supporters demolishing the biggest pile of chips that you ever did see and English fans scurrying from bar to bar determined to drink another German city dry.

This is the World Cup Semi-Final day and 8 hours from kick-off and the tension is starting to build. Guido, the Italian waiter mutters "Forza Italia" under his breath at every opportunity, whilst Hans his boss urges us to support the hosts. Tiger feigns impartiality with the dreaded words "We are just fans of World football mate!". Both seem happy as Tiger discharges the remnants of the last glass of the third bottle of a cheeky little Chablis and head back. In the car bets are taken.

At the Hotel one of our party is missing, confined to his bed with little more than a wet flannel to save him from a raging fever. Sympathy abounds, our taxi awaits and with Mehmet (Turkeys first ever GP driver) at the wheel, we're off! Dortmund here we come!!

Ten minutes later, allowing for a couple of wrong turns (Mehmet's Co-pilot was not the smartest of chaps), we arrive. The Co-pilot pays the man and then spends four hours haggling over where to meet after the match. Whilst this great meeting of minds takes place, Tiger takes in the moment. The stadium surrounds are awash with thousands of home fans enveloped in newly liberated Bundesflagge. Pockets of Azzurri survey the scene like a fox outside the chicken run. A smattering of delightfully trollied sons of Albion weave their way through the crowds like Peter Crouch through a Brazilian defence (i.e. barging straight through, falling over and being stared at in utter disbelief).

It has to be said that Tiger is not a complete stranger to the world of corporate entertainment. However, even Tiger was staggered at the oppulence of the FIFA corporate village (more like a futuristic space settlement). Is a jacuzzi really necessary? Does every discerning footie fan really need a casino on site? As for full scale flight simulators, well we ask you? Despite all of this frippery, they did serve a fine array of food and more essentially the WW oppoprtunities were plentiful.

After a swift replenishment. Into the impressively long-named stadium and to our seats, which we proceed to stand on for the whole 120 minutes. From kick-off to final whistle the quality of the football is astounding. No aimless hoofing to the 'big fella up front', no misplaced passes or bad first touches. Just quality control, intelligent running and beautifully finessed passing and probing attacks. All at extreme pace. It was a display of real verve and style by both sides and the referee was even better! Ballack (supposedly unfit and slated by the press) gliding between his own defence and the Italian back four prompting the Germans forward. Whilst in response the Azzurri were driven on by the gutsy Gattuso and the peerless priceless Pirlo (Gawd bless ya Mr Keating!).

Penalties looming and a frenzied Italian surge leading to the sublime moment. Lehmann (of the big hands, big head and big ego) kept his team in it until the moment that silences the length and breadth of Deutschland. Fabio Grosso curled a wonderful shot around the outstretched grasp of the despairing Gooner. Cue large scale in-take of breath in the stadium and a small scale explosion of delight in block 2, row 7 seat 136. The true blue colours of the Crouch End Ultra exploded in delirium. "You're not singing anymore...", "I'm going home in a German ambulance", "Come on you Blues" all muttered underneath the breath a la Guido. The Routemaster goal (i.e. wait ages and two come at once - I refuse to call it The BendyBus goal) is driven home by Del Piero. The Italians go wild, the Germans go home and Tiger goes back to the bar .

Following much post match analysis, the handing over of many Euros to the Ultra and a smattering of crispies. We depart to find Mehmet (who is fresh from breaking the Frankfurt-Dortmund land speed record). Despite the fine endeavours of the Co-Pilot, Mehmet is missing, presumably negotiating his next Indy 500 drive. Tiger retires to a Budweiser sponsors party - Well, to tell the truth, Tiger distracted two of the surly bouncer chappies, diverted attention as the team plunged into the midst of the wake. After a couple of Budweisers the need for an alcoholic drink came on strong. Fortunately, Mehmet arrived and before we'd done our seatbelts up we are back in the relative safety of our hotel bar. One more for the Strasse and then off to bed.

Tomorrow has already begun. The sun is already starting to peer round the corners of the curtains in the spartan bedroom. Sitting on the bed Tiger nurses a gentle Italian whilst trying to work out how to get BBC 24 on the tv. All these subtitles are ruining the plot. What a day, what a night, what a match. Now the only thing that needs resolving is what on earth are we going to do with the dead body in room 512?

The starlings fly north this winter

Code blue
section 14
stand down

raven has left the tower

await further instructions

Something to put a smile on your face

ICC TEST RANKINGS

1. England
2. South Africa
3. India
4. Australia
5. Sri Lanka
6. Pakistan
7. West Indies
8. New Zealand
9. Bangladesh

Beachy Head

It's all too beautiful

As any fule kno... Beachy Head is a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county Sussex, immediately east of the Seven Sisters. The cliff there is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 162 m (530 ft) above sea level. The peak allows views of the south east coast from Dungeness to the east, to Selsey Bill in the west. Its height has also made it one of the most notorious suicide spots in the world.

The name Beachy Head appears as 'Beauchef' in 1274, and was 'Beaucheif' in 1317, becoming consistently Beachy Head by 1724, and has nothing to do with beach. Instead it is a corruption of the original French words meaning "beautiful headland". In 1929 Eastbourne showed considerable foresight and bought 4,000 acres (16 km2) of land surrounding Beachy Head to save it from development at a cost of about £100,000 - an absolute bargain!

The prominence of Beachy Head has made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel. It is noted as such in the sea shanty Spanish Ladies :

"The first land we sighted was called the Dodman,
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, off Portsmouth the Wight;
We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover,
And then we bore up for the South Foreland light."

The ashes of German social scientist and philosopher Friedrich Engels, one of the fathers of communism, were scattered off the cliffs at Beachy Head into the Channel, as he had requested. This solemn and moving act was undoubtedly the reason for the huge proliferation of communists that live in the Eastbourne area to this very day.

The headland was a danger to shipping. In 1831 construction began on Belle Tout lighthouse on the next headland west from Beachy Head. It became operational in 1834. Due to cliff erosion, in March 1999 Belle Tout lighthouse was moved more than 50 feet (15 m) further inland.Because mist and low clouds could hide the light of Belle Tout, another lighthouse was built in the sea below Beachy Head. It was 43 m in height and became operational in October 1902. For more than 80 years, the red-and-white striped tower was manned by three lighthouse keepers. Their job was to maintain the light, which rotates two white flashes every 20 seconds was then visible 26 miles (42 km) out to sea. The lighthouse was fully automated in 1983 and the keepers withdrawn. Trinity House announced in June 2010 in the five yearly Aids to Navigation review, that the light range would be reduced to 8Nm and the fog signal discontinued. In February 2011 the work was undertaken, and light range reduced to 8Nm by the installation of a new LED navigation light system. The fog signal was discontinued at this time.

In 1653 the third day of fighting in the Battle of Portland, took place off Beachy Head during the First Anglo-Dutch War. The Battle of Beachy Head, 1690, was a naval engagement during the Nine Years' War. 250 years later during World War II, the RAF established a forward relay station at Beachy Head to improve radio communications with aircraft. In 1942, signals were picked up at Beachy Head which were identified as TV transmissions from the Eiffel Tower. The Germans had reactivated the pre-war TV transmitter and instituted a Franco-German service for military hospitals and VIPs in the Paris region. The RAF monitored these programmes hoping (in vain) to gather intelligence from newsreels, instead they only picked up dire versions of collaborators singing 'Lili Marlene'. There was also an important wartime radar station in the area and, during the Cold War, a radar control centre was operational in an underground bunker from 1953 to 1957 - allegedly!

There are an estimated 20 deaths a year at Beachy Head. The Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team conducts regular day and evening patrols of the area in attempts to locate and stop potential jumpers. Workers at the Beachy Head pub and taxi drivers are also on the look-out for potential victims, and there are posted signs with the telephone number of The Samaritans urging potential jumpers to call them. Deaths at the site are well-covered by the media; Ross Hardy, the founder of the chaplaincy team, said this encouraged people to come and jump off. Worldwide, the landmark’s suicide rate is surpassed only by the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Aokigahara Woods in Japan, according to Thomas Meaney of The Wall Street Journal. Which I don't suppose is something to be really proud of!

The cliff was used in the opening sequence to the 1987 James Bond film The Living Daylights, in which Bond (portrayed for the first time by Timothy Dalton - Officially the 4th best James Bond) parachuted from a jeep which overshot the top of the cliff in a scene which was scripted as being in Gibraltar.

Beachy Head was also the setting for The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" and "Close To Me" videos. It is well known for the closing scene of Quadrophenia, where Phil Daniels shoots a scooter off of the very top of Beachy Head. Local Eastbourne band The Removalists also shot the video for "Last Train to Soul Bay" at Beachy Head.

Beachy Head is briefly shown in a segment in "Many Happy Returns," an episode of the British TV series The Prisoner, starring Patrick McGoohan. When Number Six temporarily escapes from The Village, he arrives on shore beneath the cliffs of Beachy Head. After he makes his way up the cliffs, there is a brief view of the lighthouse as seen from the top of the cliff.The 2011 remake of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" was filmed extensively on Beachy Head as well as nearby Eastbourne, which was preferred to Brighton.

The British Romantic poet Charlotte Turner Smith published a poem entitled "Beachy Head." This prospect poem places its reader at Beachy Head and uses its expansive view to discuss nature as well as political power and cultural dominance. According to Wikipedia; Eastbourne born poet Andrew Franks includes a number of references to Beachy Head in his work including 'Belle Tout' in his collection, 'The Last of the Great British Traitors' and for once I can confirm that, that is true! (www.soulbaypress.com)

In Howard Jacobson's 2010 Man Booker Prize-winning novel, The Finkler Question, the bereaved widower Libor Sevcik commits suicide by jumping off the cliff at Beachy Head. The female protagonist in Brian Sibley's Yet Another Partridge, a radio play, throws herself off Beachy Head in despair.

Whilst it is understandable to dwell on the melancholy aspect of Beachy Head, it must also be noted that it a thing of stunning natural beauty. Stunning view and only a step away from...

Poll Results - Fred Perry Shirts

1 = Pastel Green (Red & Blue Trim)
1 = Black (with gold trim)
3 = Brown (with sky trim)
3 = Red (with blue trim)

Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?

RIP Richard Hamilton

British artist Richard Hamilton, regarded as a pioneer in the field of Pop art, has died at the age of 89 following a short illness. The London-born artist's best known work was a 1956 collage featuring a body builder and a tin of ham, which earned him the title "Father of Pop".

The Gagosian Gallery, which announced his death, said the art world had "lost one of its leading lights". He was working on a major retrospective just days before he died.The exhibition is due to be seen in London, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Madrid next year.

Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota said Hamilton died as he "would have wished", working on his art. In an interview with the BBC last year, Hamilton said: "I've always done exactly I wanted to do and I've always had the good fortune to do that."

Richard Hamilton was born in London in 1922, trained as an engineering draftsman and worked at EMI during World War II. He studied at London's Royal Academy but was expelled after defying the teacher's instructions. Hamilton went on to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, leaving in 1951.

A year later, Hamilton founded the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, with Eduardo Paolozzi, Lawrence Alloway and several other architects. This group helped to develop English Pop Art.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he also taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art, where he was an early supporter of David Hockney. Aside from his famous collages, Hamilton also designed the cover of the Beatles' White Album and poster in 1968. Hamilton's design is the only Beatles' album cover that does not show the four band members.

The artist told how Sir Paul McCartney called him to ask him to design the new cover. Hamilton said: "Peter Blake's album sleeve (for Sgt Pepper) was crowded with people and very colourful. I thought it would be appropriate to present an album that was just white."

During his career, Hamilton exhibited at some of the world's most famous art galleries, including the Tate in London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His later work focused on political images, which often parodied post-war consumerism.

Serota said:

"This fascination with the consumer society was highly critical, a moral position that was also evident in his distrust of the political establishment ranging from Mrs Thatcher to Tony Blair and Hugh Gaitskell."

One of his more famous political works is Shock and Awe (2007-08) featuring Tony Blair wearing a cowboy shirt, with guns and holsters. Hamilton said he produced the image after he saw Blair "looking smug" following a conference with George Bush.In 2010, London's Serpentine Gallery exhibited Hamilton's Modern Moral Matters, which focused on his political and protest works.

Asked recently about being called the father of Pop art, Hamilton said it was not a term he aligned himself with. "While I was interested in the pop phenomenon, I never associated myself with the term, which I used to describe Elvis Presley and rather vulgar American imagery of ice cream cones or hamburgers," he said.

"However, significant things were happening in the 1950s and it seemed not only to be a cool moment but a momentous moment for humanity."

Poll Result - Best British Poet

1. Dylan Thomas
2= Percy Shelley
2= Adrian Mitchell
2= John Keats
2= Rupert Brooke
6= Ted Hughes

I was standing in a bar, where were you?

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

Published on this day in 1922

The Waste Land is a 434-line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity — its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its elegiac but intimidating summoning up of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures — the poem has become a familiar touchstone of modern literature. Among its more famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih." What follows is, what follows...

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But here there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead, up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you,
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains,
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract,
By this, and this only, we have existed,
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms his prison
Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: the boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow
Le prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Da. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

"And death shall have no dominion" - Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

“”From "And death shall have no dominion"
Twenty-five Poems (1936)

All back to my place

In which AF reveals the sonic delights guaranteed to get him going...

What music are you currently grooving to?
I’m always buying music, following up recommendations or reviews. So, currently I’ve gone back and rediscovered the Kyoto Jazz Massive, Anne Briggs and ESG. I’m also listening to the Ghostpoet album, Kraftwerk, & Neu. As well as the Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane albums to cover off the suited & booted mod rock angle.

What, if push comes to shove is your all time favourite album?
I always say it is most probably All Mod Cons by The Jam, it had such a strong influence on me at the time and opened me up to poetry, love, feedback, Rickenbackers and a healthy dose of cynicism. Although on any given day it could be Fabulous by Prince Buster, Y by The Pop Group or Sextet by ACR.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?
I bought two T.Rex 7” singles at the same time from upstairs at Boots in Eastbourne. 20th Century Boy & Solid Gold Easy Action, both had the red & blue matching sleeve & label with Marc Bolan's face on it. Top tunes!

Which musician have you wanted to be?
For too many years I had a rather unhealthy obsession with all things Paul Weller (he was like the elder brother I didn’t have). But since growing up a little and appreciating musicians for other than their wardrobe I would be quite happy being Johnny Marr or Morrissey, Damon Albarn or Graham Coxon, Joe Strummer or Slim Gaillard, Bert Jansch, Mark E Smith or Wild Billy Childish or any member of A Certain Ratio.

What do you sing in the shower?
Often a hotchpotch of nonsense, sort of Kurt Schwitters meets The Temptations. Failing that I often sing; Human Touch by Pocketsize, Sunset Coming On by Albarn on Mali Music plus a mangled version of either Louie Louie or Fever.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?
Don’t make me wait by The Peech Boys makes me feel damn funky, Louie Louie never fails to gee me up and Capital Radio by The Clash has a similar effect!

And your Sunday morning record?
Sunday Morning by The Velvets of course. Or more likely a heavy blast of reggae especially; Augustus Pablo, Linton Kwesi Johnson or Reggae Chartbusters vol 2 (Longshot, It mek, Reggae in your jeggae etc). Concorde by Modern Jazz Quartet is in the mix too, but most probably better on a Monday morning!


(Thank you to Mojo Magazine for allowing the reproduction of this interview).