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Tuesday 23 March 2010

Radio Blah Blah


I have recently spent time selecting poems for slots on a local radio station's equivalent of "Poetry Please".

Along with nineteen others I have been asked to read several of my poems and to then "discuss them" for a run of six weekly shows, so I am feeling rather chuffed with myself.

Having trawled through my stock I have come up with a varied bunch for the show, one of which will be PROPHECY.

Written at the start of a relationship as a predictive "warning", it proved me to be clairvoyant.

You need big balls to make prophecies



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PROPHECY









(The Meet .....)
The warmth of expression
you share  with me
is the fear of loneliness
forever to be.

The tenderness we show
is our dream of compassion,
escape from our lives
automaton fashioned.

Fragile, desiring,
needing to touch,
be careful my friend
lest we desire too much.

(The Middle.....)

We give too much,
too much of everything
to hide our sorrow,
to keep us together
we give to the exclusion of others
giving what little we have
to deny inadequacy,
to delay our loneliness for one more day,
but caressing the hallow relationship
we cry with fear.

(The End.....)

Frustration is the enemy,
the lack of conversation
the lack of substance
in the indolent marriage,
two strangers
cross-talking help,
unable to take or receive
so hard do they try to give;
until there is no more.

(The Epitaph.....)

Give but take
loving or annoyed,
talk but listen
and discover yourselves
!
LAURENCEAUX England LAURENCEAU Lawrenceaux LAWRENCEAU Laureanceaux LAURANCEAU Lawranceaux LAWRANCEAU Loranceaux LORANCEAU Lorranceaux LORRANCEAU POETRY Prose POEMS Social Comments HUMOUR Humerous SMILE Smiling LAUGH Laughing LAFF Laffing CYNICAL Truism TRUISMS Welcome HULL Kingston-Upon-Hull Kingston Upon Hull KINGSTON-ON-HULL Kingston On Hull YORKSHIRE East Yorkshire HUMBERSIDE Yorkshire DEPRESSION ThisISUll FED-UP Pissed-Off LONELY Disgruntled DISSOLUSIONED Blue BLACK Thinking BLOG Blogger LYONEL


Monday 22 March 2010

Well done? II



And so the dominoes start falling....

The recent demise of a former colleague has precipitated the departure of another who has decided, not unreasonably, that doing two jobs is not much fun after several months of "helping out".

Good luck in your new job Louise, you will be missed by the guvner and me.

See How Things Turned Out ...

Saturday 13 March 2010

Beat the clock


The 70's pop band Sparks once sang - "You gotta beat the clock, beat the clock", so here's a challenging time waster that invites you to beat this clock.


RULE:
Draw two straight lines on the clock face so that the sums of the numbers in each part are equal.

HINTS: Scroll down this post to get hints and then the answer.




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HINT#1:
2 lines across a clock face will give 3 sections, whilst 2 crossed lines will give 4 sections.

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HINT#2:
Add up all the numbers on the clock face and consider some divisions of that number.
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ANSWER:
2 parallell lines divide the face into 3 sections, 78/3 = 26 so each line must bound a count of 26.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

No, no, no, no, no


No personal insight today, no talk of work, no worries, no money and no regrets (that come to mind).

The poem "First Love" has prompted a few interpretations in the past, none of which I was consciously wishing to express, in fact this was one of the weird ones – the poems that practically write themselves, like I was just along for the ride and to push the pen.

One woman said she thought it was about a girl; secretively pregnant for the first time, but now alone following her passage into womanhood and the creation of her first true love. This was apparently concocted from the interpretation of the word tear (as in eyes) for tear (as in tear up the book).

Another said it was the words of a woman to a man during intercourse, which I didn’t go for as no-one has ever recited a few lines during my time(s)!

I never sent this to the person who I thought it was for, for they were something of a secret; a good old fashioned crush, its depth mirroring the height of the a pedestal on which she stood, then as short as the time it took to fall back to earth when she started going out with my mate (of old).

Have a look and see if you agree with me that it is merely a big dollop of crush-love.

First Love ...
first love LAURENCEAUX England LAURENCEAU Lawrenceaux LAWRENCEAU Laureanceaux LAURANCEAU Lawranceaux LAWRANCEAU Loranceaux LORANCEAU Lorranceaux LORRANCEAU POETRY Prose POEMS Social Comments HUMOUR Humerous SMILE Smiling LAUGH Laughing LAFF Laffing CYNICAL Truism TRUISMS Welcome HULL Kingston-Upon-Hull Kingston Upon Hull KINGSTON-ON-HULL Kingston On Hull YORKSHIRE East Yorkshire HUMBERSIDE Yorkshire DEPRESSION ThisISUll FED-UP Pissed-Off LONELY Disgruntled DISSOLUSIONED Blue BLACK Thinking BLOG Blogger LYONEL


FIRST LOVE


One woman said she thought this poem was about a girl; secretively pregnant for the first time, but now alone following her passage into womanhood and the creation of her first true love. This was apparently concocted from the interpretation of the word tear (as in eyes) for tear (as in tear up the book). Another said it was the words of a woman to a man during intercourse, which I didn’t go for as no-one has ever recited a few lines during my time(s)..........












I love you inside.
Deep inside, protected and warmed
where no-one-else has been,
and as with undercurrents
you move unseen in me,
you stir my heart
kick me inside,
prick my eye;
and only the tear tells anyone you're there.
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Saturday 6 March 2010

Where on earth?



Where on earth, other then the rudderless economic wilderness of our typical local government office creche (don't ask!), could the following seem both normal and logical to its participants?

When asked why they were removing papers from a confidential waste sack, to feed laboriously and noisily through our latest office toy (large paper shredder), only to stuff the then vastly increased volume back into more confidential sacks, did they say they had to.

A reminder that we pay good money to have such papers taken away and securely burned, at a cost based on the number of sacks; merely served to mildly irritate them.

I halted this waste of money, their paid time and I suspect a degree of "fun", whilst the person that sanctioned a shredder to supplement a shredding service we already pay for, was unavailable for comments!

LATEST:-
From the box of new toys also came stacking desk trays - not bad for an office ordered to adhere to a clear-desk policy. Also came halogen desk lamps; not really required in a brand new building legally supplying a high Lumen value per square foot, thought how they will be introduced to the electrical supply which manifests itself as a few sockets in each desk, has yet to be addressed. Perhaps our "financial controller" will see fit to order some (banned) electrical extender blocks next.
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Tuesday 2 March 2010

Pretentious - Moi?

I've had a bit of feedback from the drinking crew who last deemed fit to comment when I first mooted the ideas for this blog. True to form a hail of friendly banter has resulted from my decision to go ahead with it (until something interesting starts to happen in my life), but their latest comments about pretentious crap came a bit close to my personal retaliatory button.




In order to illustrate just how pretentious I could become, may I offer you, dear reader, a big pile of pretentious doo-doo written many years ago, when I actually believed I was good(ish) at poetry. Oh the naivety of youth!

I was into (trying to understand) John Donne at the time and the poem below was the result of a truly heart felt sentiment, expressed in the style of you know who, following a challenge to do so by a then current girlfriend who was way more clever than me. Are you still out there Gillian Wilde?

Having returned to this poem after so many years I guess that she won the challenge (and went on to be a headteacher - though I guess she may Now feel she actually lost after all).

Read Here ...

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WHISPER, DON'T SCREECH (Respect to John Donne)


You're quiet - never seen.
I know not what you think
for you never exhibit all you seem;
and I know you though you never speak.

Once I hoped you’d speak;
to tell of all you keep so silent, muted and dumb;
and I tried for conversation,
for the words of motherhood and love,
but you were quiet - unseen.

At first I thought you totally dumb,
a mute without a tongue,
an autistic frustration to me as I tried to tell,
to speak with your foreign tongue.

As with two tongues pidgin soon developed.
It grew in strength and sprouted wings
and flew in time between us,
gradually becoming tame with time and love.

To each of us our pidgin came:
a carrier of notes,
explanations, hints of whispers
and language translations.

And now I know your language,
though I've never heard you speak.
You are not dumb - you whisper;
and I whisper now: don't screech.

Monday 1 March 2010

Stop press .....



Preface - there is little punctuation to this article 'cos I typed it quickly - just read it quickly and do your best ...

Gobsmacked - I am truly gobsmacked! (Look it up you non-northerners.)

I have just heard on the news that some money-grubbing councils in England (a country that is currently majoring in an insidious fascism of covert taxation and over weaning interference in personal liberties) are proposing to fine motorists who "refuse" to turn off their engines in stationary traffic and that the zealous Hitler youth movement that is also known vicariously as traffic enforcement officers, parking attendants and illegal immigrants (oops - sorry - mustn't generalise - though illegal immigrants are usually the most polite of this lot and invariably have better teeth for some reason!) , will be empowered to shove a probe up your stationary exhaust and God-forgive you if they sense even a whiff of an emission gas. KERCHING - you owe them a reasonable fine, to off-set your unnecessary carbon emission, instead of your thought that what you actually owe them is a conversion of their probe into something all together more anal.

I have checked the calendar and it is actually March 1st (so no April fools due yet) so this idea must have been floated into the news to soften us up - to see if we will react in a sort of, "fuck you - were not gonna vote for you again" sort of way.

Are these people of this world?

Are they willing to prop-up expenditure not often based upon practical need, but the political aspirations of bureaucratic half-wit policy makers who, if not employed by the council, would be unemployable, such is their apparent dislocation from practical, real-world people "on the street". (Am I sounding like a rabid dog yet? - not that I have ever conversed with a rabid dog by the way).

We (you and me and the rational people) recognise that a car that is stopping and starting is wasting fuel at a prodigious rate (compared to a quiet, low tick over when stationary); that the hydrocarbon emissions per "traffic jam" or "rush hour" misery will be huge and that the noise of hundreds of cars starting and stopping , restarting and restarting and restarting (you get the drift of this I'm sure) would be a bigger ecological "disaster" then just letting us overburdened motorists slog our lemming-like way to "work". I refrained from using the words, "to our chosen career choice" as for us low-life, lower-middle-class oinks there is no career, just a vacuous hope that your job will not disappear overnight, when your foreign owner (I am not thinking of TATA of India at this time - honest!) decides it is better for them to "mothball" a major UK steel-works, because their carbon-offset reward is greater then trade to be had at this difficult point in the international steel trade cycle. (Though I would bet that just a bit more steel will now be made in India)

Phew - did I really just write that little diatribe? Look out Jack Dee - the new Mr. Misery is in town and coming your way! While I'm here, you don't often here the use of gobsmacked and then I came across this BBC article about climate change - something we can no-longer deny, nor exacerbate further if we wish crops to continue growing (for example).

SOURCES:-
http://www.southportvisiter.co.uk/southport-news/southport-southport-news/2009/11/27/stationary-motorists-in-sefton-could-be-fined-for-leaving-engines-running-if-plans-are-approved-101022-25263545/

http://www.steel-beam.co.uk/blog/second-corus-plant-to-be-mothballed

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6847227/Questions-over-business-deals-of-UN-climate-change-guru-Dr-Rajendra-Pachauri.html

Well done?



I had lunch with an ex-work colleague today who has been dismissed; not because of attitude, nor because of a failure to deliver business expectations; indeed an irony of this case is that, whilst languishing at home, their labour won a prestigious award for business improvement and productivity, happily received by a project manager and “hangers-on”, whilst the principal contributor was being airbrushed out of existence.

My colleague single-handedly took his employer through a paradigm shift in their processing and presentation of data through a suite of Internet portals, yet this was the result: guilty of charges that seemingly resulted from an extended period of mutation and re-interpretation, to a point of desperation and disproportion, by those whose principle attribute seems to be the avoidance of pragmatic problem resolution.

You can pick your friends but not your family. You can shake them off but you cannot deny them. You may live your a life apart from them yet their failings are deemed your failings and their crimes yours also, but for some your "real crime” would be to wish to lessen the public linkage of yourself to their indiscretions. This my friend did and lost his job!

It appears that Human Resources would rather throw out a productive and conscientious asset, upon whom they have spent thousands of pounds for career development, rather then admit to failures on their parts. These people have done a disservice to themselves, to the well-being of their local government organisation and to the morale of those “in the know”. They seem content to confirm that for distancing yourself from one's family lineage (over which you have no control), you will be punished.

To those responsible for this outcome I have this question. * If you had to review the worthiness of a German for a job, would you start by checking their oven and then upon finding nothing, accuse them of hiding the “facts”, whilst resolutely presenting the crumbs of a Yorkshire Pudding as those “facts”, upon which “guilt” (by implication) is proved? I think not – so why utilise such an approach in this case?

You have temporarily (hopefully) ruined the aspirations of a whole household, but how satisfied you must be to merely prove your department has teeth. Well done?


* Upon re-reading this I apologise to many Germans, but this metaphor best expresses my amazement at how my colleague was processed.
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