Limericks on Poetry Page 20.05.08

Guess who went to the London Olympic victory procession, armed with a camera.

16.10.08 - News alert! Herman Hellfire of one man death metal combo Gruesome Skull has new songs. He originally split the band up due to musical differences with himself but decided to reform it. Expect to hear some horrific noises coming from his vicinity by Christmas.

Blog 27th March 2008 - Weirdo Weather!

Question: When is a hurricane not a hurricane? When is Arctic weather not Arctic weather?

Answer: When it occurs in Britain and is emblazoned on the front page of the Daily Obsessed like a portent of Armageddon beyond all doomladen precedent, worse even than the prospect of a Labour government being re-elected as our Gordon-Brown-Despisers-in-General would have it.

Mind, the weather in old Limeyland has been a tad volatile, and when it comes to traffic chaos, Carmageddon would be quite apt to describe such conditions as would Train-mageddon, Bus-mageddon, Rickshaw-mageddon, Pedalo-mageddon etc. If the weather so much as mildly deviates from what London's traffic infrastructure insists is acceptable, London traffic protests by taking immediate strike action and coming to a standstill, causing either misery or mirth depending on whether you need to work or not.

Must say the main road near where I lived resembled a cemetery for the twisted battered corpses of umbrellas after the 'hurricane'. I nearly thought of laying wreathes for the fallen but surmised they'd probably blow away too. Whatever, I've had more costume changes than Alec Guinness in 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' over the last couple of weeks.

If this sounds like a classic British moan about the bloody British weather, I must say there's nothing I like more than British weather forecasts. I especially like it when they say it will rain, say, to the South of the M4 - so I assume I could just cross over at an appropriate service station footbridge if I want to get in the dry. It's as if the weather hasn't learned the Green Cross Code or that pissing rain and gales realise it's bloody dangerous to try and cross a road where the traffic's doing over 70mph.

Thinking about it you could plan your journey along the M4 judging by these forecasts. When driving West make sure it's raining on the North side of the M4. Then make your return journey when the forecaster predicts rain to the South of the 'M4 corridor' That way you'll always be on a sunny, dry carriageway and laughing at the sad, bedraggled, screen-wipered faces coming the other way. Thanks to the Met Office, we can all have happy travels after all!

Murder 'mongst the meat scraps!

I’m beginning to wonder why us Brits don’t follow the American example - and stop bothering to employ police detectives at all.

Let me explain. Under compulsion of unemployment I’ve gotten to see a lot of daytime TV. Whether or not daytime TV with its innumerable repeats is a way of forcing the unemployed back into work, I don’t know, but that’s another issue. The thing is, I get to witness the delights of Quincy and Diagnosis Murder. I get to see Quincy, a pathologist, passionately declaring ‘Goddamit! This was no accident! This was no fall, no accidental flan poisoning, no bucket of cement dropping on someone’s head by a quirk of fate! This was MURDER!’ – and then with all due zeal banging his fists on the tables of every appropriate authority so that not only is the culprit caught, but long term justice is done and the law is changed for the better of all humanity.

I get to see Dick ‘bad Cockney accent’ van Dyke (and half his family judging by the cast credits) playing a doctor who gets a Shipmanesque amount of patients copping it under dodgy circumstances. Off he goes, solving the case, never minding the fact that poor Burt on bed nine’s got a bit of gyp from his hernia operation.

Doesn’t anyone ever tell these people ‘get back in your laboratory/hospital ward and do the job you were paid for’? Or is it the case, as any Martian arriving on this planet and tuning it to daytime television would think: In America, they say ‘To shitty city with employing police detectives; we’ll just get the pathologist or doctor to do it.’

It doesn’t end there. We’ve got Angela Lansbury putting the criminal fraternity bang to rights whenever she gets a case of writer’s block in ‘Murder she wrote’ and Sister Mary Helen breaking her Vow of Silence whenever an ungodly event occurs in her holy vicinity.

I’m beginning to think this moonlighting crime-solver thing might be the most lucrative thing I could do as a writer. Already I’ve formulated a character in my head: Derek the Dustman Detective. Not only that, I’ve a synopsis for the first episode of the series. Our refuse disposal operative cum supersleuth gets mighty suspicious when he collects a bag of meat scraps from a bin outside Barry the Butcher’s. Is Barry a more sinister butcher than his customers believe him to be? Is that cheery smile and a wink whenever he raises his meat cleaver indicative of a dark, murderous intent? Derek the determined Dustman Detective intends to expose and reveal all…

RORTON BUGLE updated with asteroid anarchy and turkey terror! - 05.03.08