This page is a repository for scraps, fag ends and failed experiments.

Upstairs in the unforgiving
World, the World must earn a living,
Stuggling 'gainst the time and tide,
'Til sun sets on that World Outside
And softly sweet the night is falling,
But the blogger’s lonely calling,
Keeps him to his basement tied.

For the blogger’s work is ne’er abated,
The newsfeed’s greed is never sated,
The blogosphere keeps getting bigger,
And RSI it cramps his trigger-
happy finger, ever-clicking,
Ever cutting, pasting, sticking,
And in the end for what? Go figure!

Is it of his own volition
He endures this strange war of attrition?
Perhaps for his own education?
Perhaps for folks in other nations?
For those whom ignorance has blinded,
Or for the like and unlike-minded?
Perhaps for future generations?

For who can doubt it’s his vocation
To surf this sea of information?
His skill: to find the perfect snippet,
To metaphorically paperclip it
To another view or bent,
Find the balance of the argument,
Then, with his pithy comment, tip it.

But beside his true goal this goal pales,
He hopes to tip the whole World’s scales!
For those who know the blogworld know
A snowball idea can grow and grow.
And in other basements, down below,
By the monitor light’s ghostly glow,
Other bloggers add their snow.
For the blogworld’s ever on the go,
A constant state of change and flow…

…But from himself he’ll try and mask
How great his Sisyphean task.
For the Outside World’s so big, so slow,
And jealously guards the status quo.



August 2006

A Regular's Sonnet

I go up the Co-Op and on my way down,
If there’s not much special on the telly,
I might just pop into the Rose and Crown
And get a coupla jars in my belly.
It’s not for the ale (though they got some nice brews)
That the Crown gets all the time on my hands.
The corner shop next door’s called the News n Booze
But all they got is newspapers and cans.
 If I wanted to get soused I could do it in the house
 But that don’t give the same satisfaction,
 Cos here you can sit just as quiet as a mouse,
 And still be at the heart of the action.
So the liver and the missus can both kiss it,
Cos if it happens here I int goin' to miss it!

Sept 06

Southmead Hospital (Maternity Unit) Sonnet

Forked out three sixty just for the car park,
Make that four 'cos of course the machine
gives no change, then the sarcastic dark-
eyed desk lady, with face the pale green
of the walls in the forlorn waiting room,
Ticks you off, and says sit anywhere.
So we sit in unfathomable gloom,
Even though we’re all glad to be there.
And you think: is this what communism
is like? If Bevan had this chair,
Would Aneurin have an aneurysm:
Look on my works, ye dreamers, and despair?
And yet, all the miracle we need in life:
A safe scan, a saintly NHS midwife.

Jan 09

Of all the world’s appalling callings,
Sales cold calling’s worst of all.

All the mornings of verbal maulings,
From those you’re calling, starts to pall.

All the more galling is that my appalling
rates of commission are so small,
That even four successful callings
barely pays for one pub crawl.

Sept 06

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we brushed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose premolars and canines, so brilliant and white,
At the dentist we flashed, oh so happily beaming?
And the gums’ bright red glare, and the orthodontist’s chair,
Gave proof through the night that all our teeth were still there;
O say, does that star-spangled dental floss still glide
O’er the chops of the free and the home of fluoride?

Feb 07