There are days when the world is rigged against an Angel. Setting off I have:
- found a cache of clean clothes I had run through the machine last night, which should be in the case, hanging secretively behind the bathroom door.
- packed all the story books in the hold bag and now have nothing to read for hours.
-dropped the lavatory cleaner, cap and all, into the loo while performing the ordered ritual of 'leaving the house'.
I haven't even set foot in the street yet, never mind faced volcanic clouds. Sob.
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'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free'
About Me
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Heroes
- Axel Leijonhufvud
- E.E.Evans-Pritchard
- Edmund Leach
- Francois Couperin
- Joan Robinson
- John Maynard Keynes
- Louis de Soissons
- Mario Draghi
- Noam Chomsky
- Pablo Picasso
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- Pietro Porcinai
- The Earl of Onslow
- Umberto Boccioni
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Blog Archive
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2010
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May
(21)
- Goodbye to All That
- Leaving Home
- Deportment
- Abolish the House of Lords
- Changing Labour
- Who Are These People?
- Welcome to the Sunlit Uplands
- Pandora and the British Constitution
- Was Any of It Worth It?
- The Man in Silken Stockings
- Floreat Etona....
- Delaying the Opening of Parliament is the Next Ste...
- The United Kingdom Forced to Prop up the Euro
- Five More Years
- A Progressive, Democratic Alliance of the Centre R...
- Sending for Mr Cameron
- Herding Cats and Voters
- Brown Was Supposed to Go After Lisbon Was Secured
- A Way of Life That Labour Has Lost
- Heckler
- Local Candidates Deserve Some Consideration
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May
(21)
Fallen Angels
- David Cameron (for risking the disorderly dissolution of the Euro)
- Giorgio Napolitano (for stance on Budapest 1956: Prague 1968: Italy 2013)
- Mervyn King (for bailing-out Northern Rock)
- Nicholas Kaldor (for inventing VAT)
9 comments:
Check your bag for your passport and tickets since it is obviously one of those days.
I once drove over 250 miles to the border only to realise when I got there that I had forgotten to pick up the car log book, a sine qua non of getting through. I had to go all the way back home for it and travel again the following day.
Bon voyage.
let me cheer you up
Vitaï Lamenta
There’s a breathless hush, twas a close-fought fight
No.10 gained in a famous win.
A bumpy economy, money tight -
Bad; but at last our man is in.
And it’s not coalition that sticks in the throat
Or the selfish hope of avoiding pain
But History’s Hand on the tax-payer’s scrote -
'Pay up! pay up! and pay again!'
The exchequer’s books are sodden red,
Red with the ink of a bank that’s broke;
And Darling's out; New Labour dead;
And Mandelson gone in a puff of smoke.
The river of debt has wrecked the banks,
As Brown skulks off with blackened name
And the tax-payer hears, as Sterling tanks-
'Pay up! pay up! and pay again!'
These are the words that year by year,
Whenever a Chancellor’s plans are set,
Everyone who pays tax must hear,
And none that hears it can forget.
This they must all – yes, each man must
Bear through life like a ball and chain,
And cursing Brown for his boom and bust
'Pay up! pay up! and pay again!'
then again, not so cheery perhaps
Nomad, I passed through the barriers at St Pancras - lovely walk in a lovely morning, waved happily to family thinking how marvellous to have at last a day when I didn't have to wear my Drizabone (it was sleeting in Bloomsbury only two days ago) and then it hit me why I had a free arm. Where was my neatly folded coat? Ready to go, but waiting trustfully on a chair in the hall.
Then there was a black insect that crawled steadily up the plastic cladding inside the aircraft and disappeared into the light fixture. Was it going to crawl along to MY light fixture? and out, and on to me? When I got to Pisa it was raining. No Drizabone. Then the platform for the train moved from 5 to 2 with all those stairs and tunnels and two minutes to gallop wildly across the Italian railway system with half of humanity (well, a lot of us) though hands were given generously with cases and bags. And Mr HG is in Rome - so I'm having gin and tonic for dinner.
You always cheer me up ND, even when you are being a doubting thomas about the return to normality in England.
He's everyone's man I suspect (except Sackerson's who has subtle and erudite objection). I'm so pleased he just walks about like the rest of us (with a few extra-sharp eyes but that's to be expected for persone in vista) and, if the creditors don't give considerable grace, and with good grace, to debt, both public and private, they may find we are now represented by people who act in our interest and not in theirs. They'd better watch it; they're not really owed anything, lots of them.
Ah these were the days - I remember them well.
Now I intend to travel and see a bit more of my own country having seen many others. Ash cloud permitting of course as we're the first to get it when it blows this way.
You should always fly to and from Florence, Pisa is so '90s
After London prices it was get back for as little as possible, Anon. None of the helicopters were dropping money over WC1 - further east perhaps.
Such a lovely country to have to explore, SR. I only know it from novels but they do it proud. And in so many different guises; a particular favourite is Trollope's Scotland and the fine portrait of the mad Scottish politician Robert Kennedy. That distinction in bad behaviour drawn - not so much shooting at Phineas as doing it on a Sunday, and in a Judd Street rooming house kept by an even stricter Presbyterian (or Unitarian, or even stricter sect, was it?) Anyway, the characters of various kinds of Scottish culture are an enlightenment.
Nick Drew, that was brilliant.
I've just e-mailed it my father, (who is fond of reciting the original).
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