Here We Go Again

ballot-160569_640
So apparently it’s on
Time for Corbyn versus May
Though I’m fairly sure that Farron
Will want to have his say

But will anybody listen
To Lib Dems this time around?
Have recent landscape changes caused
A resurgence newly found?

Will they reclaim their moral high ground?
Will they break the UKIP curse?
Now Farage has got his Brexit
Or will Nuttall make things worse?

Or is it Scottish nationals
Who will now reign supreme?
The most vocal opposition
To the hard Brexit regime

But they only fight in Scotland
So they can’t rule the rest
And it seems there’s no-one else
To put Theresa to the test

She’s called a snap election
To reinforce her strong position
As she leads us out of Europe
Against feeble opposition

But perhaps she’s got it wrong
And now cometh the hour
Jeremy will also cometh
And sweep Labour into power

It might seem unlikely
But if we learned anything last year
It’s that outcomes just might be
Both what we hope or what we fear

And does it really matter
Which leader we applaud
Since we said ‘f*** off’ to Europe
And bet our future on a fraud?

Super

cart-15507_1280
Where did Tess go?
I hear she’s doing quite well
Despite fears induced by a shift
In prices blamed on continental drift
But she returned home sans berries
Because now they’re too expensive
And she Asda make do with cheaper alternatives
And consider Aldi options
To make the most of her devalued pound
Cos every Lidl helps
But do we need more rice on?
I think Rose will just have to Wait
But what’s that over there?
Is it a bird?
Is it a plane?
No it’s just a big shop.
Is there anything ‘super’ about that?

Stuff I Used To Do But Don’t Do Anymore (Or How I’ve Become A Less Interesting Person Over Time): Part 5 – A Lack Of Prose Disturbs Me

James Proclaims (4)

vintage-1636219_640

After a fortnight’s break from this ‘feature’, I’m back with more ‘Stuff I Used To Do But Don’t Do Any More’.

It’s perhaps appropriate, after a two-week hiatus from the series, that this post is about how I don’t write any more. Although to be honest I’ve disappeared from this blog multiple times before (for longer than two weeks) and in any case, I have actually posted a few things on here in the last two weeks, just not a post about ‘stuff I used to do’.

Maybe I should add ‘writing about stuff I used to do’ to the list.

Or is that just ridiculous?

I think it probably is, but in the context of other stuff I’ve considered appropriate material for this blog, it’s perhaps not all that ridiculous. After all, I did once write this post… Continue reading Stuff I Used To Do But Don’t Do Anymore (Or How I’ve Become A Less Interesting Person Over Time): Part 5 – A Lack Of Prose Disturbs Me

That Friday Feeling

foot-race-1545604_640
Finish line in sight
Soon the race begins again
But today we win

Free As A Bird

new-jamproc-3

Another Monday and another ‘Artists Corner’.

Except that I’m supposed to do these on a Friday according to my 2017 blogging schedule.

Monday is ‘long post day’.

But, after another week of stress in the world of work, I continue to be a little out of synch with the blogosphere.

In the greater scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. There are bigger things in this world to worry about.

Like the fact that tomorrow is my birthday and I have to go to work. I hate working on my birthday.

Anyway, I’ll probably post something tomorrow about that. And I’ll expect my comments section to be full of birthday wishes.

Back to today though and I’m belatedly posting my weekly contribution to Haylee’s Moodle Army.

This week she gave us free rein to do what we want.

So I was going to do something depicting a lion who had escaped from his cage (so ‘free’, but also ‘reign’ because the lion is the king of all the animals.), but upon his escape he was going to have set up a business selling spring water and he’d be selling the bottles as a ‘3 for 2’ offer (so ‘sort-of-free’ rain).

In the end that seemed like quite an ambitious proposal for someone with my artistic skills so I drew this pigeon instead.

pigeon

A Momentous Day

party-309155_640

If the motto of the Brexiteers
Is ‘All For Us and None For You’
Then today they’ll tone it down
As we begin to say adieu

For though we complain about officials
Who were appointed, not elected
We’ll ignore that our Theresa
Was unopposed when then selected

To move to Number Ten
And be the preeminent figure
To guide us through this mess
And today to pull the trigger

For if all hope now seems lost
And we think things can’t get better
Theresa begs to differ
And today she sent a letter

The letter went to a Donald
But not the one called Trump
(Though he’ll no doubt have his say
As we prepare to make the jump)

To become once more an island
An isolated nation
No longer able to blame
Everything on immigration

We’re told things will improve
But they might be getting bleaker
As the prices all go up
And the pound is getting weaker

But fear not my fellow Brits
In the short-term we’ll be thrifty
But soon we’ll be in ‘dreamland’
Through article number fifty

Outside The Comfort Zone

new-jamproc-3

It finally happened, after nearly three months of following a fairly consistent blogging schedule (longer posts on Monday, approximations of poetry on Wednesdays and a slightly rubbish doodle on Fridays) I’ve managed to fall behind.

I’m not worried, I regularly disappeared for weeks on end in 2016 and, nearly three full months in, 2017 is already looking like a significantly better blogging year. Not necessarily a better year in any other respect, although 2016 is oft much maligned as the ‘worst year ever’ and certainly Brexit and Trump made it a pretty bad year politically and lots of celebrities dying made it bad year for people who like celebrities, and I wouldn’t say 2016 was a vintage year for me personally because it wasn’t, but I’d be hard-pressed to say that it was manifestly worse than 2015 in that respect. So far 2017, while seemingly better on the ‘celebrities dying’ front (as far as I’m aware), is still suffering from the ridiculousness of Donald over there and the imminent triggering of Article 50 over here. On a personal level, there is much to be optimistic about but little in the way of the ‘realisation’ of any of that, so, while 2017 has not been significantly worse than 2015 or 2016, I’m not sure I could claim it’s been much better. But it’s early days and there’s the potential for some personal growth in the next few months.

But the last few weeks have been arduous and I’ve been maintaining a blogging schedule that is reasonably consistent against the backdrop of a job that is, at times, more than a little challenging. I like a challenge, I don’t want to be bored at work, but ‘challenging’ can be synonymous with ‘time-consuming’.

So missing a couple of scheduled blog posts is not the end of the world. Continue reading Outside The Comfort Zone

The Future Is Bright

The realities of a ‘post-truth’ world
Are hard to distinguish from those
Of the pre-truth world
Worlds where we are bombarded by images
Of things we neither want nor need
Although
On reflection
Maybe we might need them
And we do quite want them
In fact, we can’t live without them

But iThink iKnow what iNeed
Though Apples are not the only fruit
Just look in the Amazon
For a Galaxy of alternatives
An Xperiance like no other
Knock here to use the Windows
If you want to escape the Androids

What do you think Alexa?
Or should we ask Siri?
Maybe Cortana?
But no-one asks Cortana.
Any more than anyone ever asked Jeeves

WikiLeaks will show us the way
To the whole truth
Or at least to aspects of the truth
Or an interpretation of the truth
The truth that will sell the most papers Continue reading The Future Is Bright

Stuff I Used To Do But Don’t Do Anymore (Or How I’ve Become A Less Interesting Person Over Time): Part 4 – I Read A Book A Week (But Never Dostoyevsky…)

James Proclaims (4)

bookworm-151738_640

Here we are then at part 4 of my miniseries on stuff I used to be able to claim I did, but now I don’t really do.

And this one is on reading.

Books that is.

Because I used to read a lot of them and now I don’t.

Although, contrary to the suggestion in the title of this post, I never used to read a book a week. That was a little nod to one of my favourite sit-coms, ‘The Office’ (original UK version, although I am very much a fan of the US version too).

The comment about Dostoyevsky is a nod to the same episode, although it is true that I’ve never read any Dostoyevsky.

Judge me not though, for I can point to a great many worthy authors that I have read, thus proving my intellect. For I have read (and in some cases enjoyed) works by Dickens, Hardy, multiple Brontes, Stendhal, Flaubert, and numerous other authors that appear in the ‘Classics’ section of your local bookshop.

But don’t be too impressed, I’ve also read everything Dan Brown ever wrote, so I’m clearly not averse to an ‘easy read’ either.

In fact, my parents used to joke that I’d read anything I could get my hands on, even a cereal box if there was nothing else available. And in truth I have read some pretty good cereal boxes in my time. The Frosties box of summer 1987 stands out as a particularly good one, although the Coco Pops of autumn 1991 would run it close.

I jest of course, for while these days, as all sensible consumers should, I read the ingredients of cereal boxes to make sure that nothing contained therein is going to slowly kill me over time, I wouldn’t read a cereal box for entertainment purposes. Jars of Marmite on the other hand…

But I digress, for my parents made that observation about my reading habits (or one of them did and I’m not quite sure which of them to blame…) because as a child I did read a lot.

It might make me sound like quite a worthy child but I’m not sure that I was. It was the eighties and there wasn’t really much else to do. Continue reading Stuff I Used To Do But Don’t Do Anymore (Or How I’ve Become A Less Interesting Person Over Time): Part 4 – I Read A Book A Week (But Never Dostoyevsky…)