The Songstone

I s'pose we die in minutiae. The Visigoths come and the Senate debates procedure, precedence and etiquette.  As bees die, insects go, forests chop, seas acid, sperm decays, air chokes, nukes raise, we obsess on which sleaze gropes which bint's bum, or if some bourgeois cunt on 200k should get the same as the fuck on 250. What an epitaph.

Dad: Fair enough. Just sayin'. You should also consider that 2% doesn't sound a lot, but for every million men, it means 20000 looked like that. Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the ...

Son (12): Dad: yeah, and what do you know about it? Son: about what Dad: drinking Son: I know its bitter as sh*t and makes me throw up *** Son: ww1 Dad: ww1 Son: those are the events after ww1. I'm talking about the actual war Dad: nope, during. Verdun was 1916 Son (a few hours later): dad only 2% of people got shell shock in ww1 so all I have to say is this That's my boy!

Becky Binz-Comely was having an awful night. Every 25th January was the same: celebrating that terrible oik Burns, who was appalling to his women and whose father was a mere tenant . Haggis!   She would write an article for the Guardian culture section . They would take anything written by and celebrating talentless posh. 'Virginia Woolf, whose contribution to and influence on literature has been immense, was born on the same day as Ayrshire’s favourite son – yet year after year, no one shows up to her party.' That this could be because Woolf was an over-privileged loony who wrote excruciating banal never wormed in Becky's 'mind'.   One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. Oh, the profundity! Becky was in raptures. Boeuf en daube! Becky was sure they never ate that in Ayrshire. 'Emily Brontë’s bicentenary is due in July.' Quite by chance, mid-rant, Becky tripped over a great writer, but perhaps realised her error an...

Becky Binz-Comely was having an awful day . The news that evil rapist, John Worboys, was to be released after only 9 years, was a body-blow to all put-down, privately-educated, female Oxbridge graduates everywhere.  She could have been in that cab! Imagine those filthy oik hands clawing at her couture! Oh!  Of course Becky believed in rehabilitation. Of course she knew there were far too many (almost all working-class men) in prison. Of course muggers and burglars, especially black ones, were products of broken homes and an uncaring, racist society.  But men like Worboys were the scum of the earth, and should be castrated, or at the very least locked up and the key thrown away. Only language his sort understood.  He'd even had the cheek to plead not guilty and force a survivor to testify! No woman should ever have to prove her accusations! She should just be believed! Anonymously! No longer a danger to the public? Experts on the parole board? Pah! Wh...

Becky Binz-Comely was having an awful day . It was that time of the month; Christmas was over; it was pissing down and freezing; the delayed train was steaming with sodden, standing commuters.  Becky did what any well-brought-up young lady from Penge would do: she abused a near-minimum-wage oik in a cheap polyester uniform. 'You there...'. It was only a hundred years from Passchendaele, when great grandmama had sat, crocheted, suffraged and sang ' We don't want to lose you, but ...'. Becky was very proud of her heritage.   This oik was not cannon-fodder, though: imagine Becky's chagrin when he did not cringe; imagine her horror when he actually answered back! 'Honey'!   Becky was outraged. Becky was appalled. The struggle for women's rights was far from over. Had great-grandmama suffraged for this? Until a young, very well-brought-up female graduate could be heard in respectful silence, until her entirely justified complaints were met with...