I don’t like that flea stuff you use on me and I would have thought you’d have realised that by now. I’ll let you into a little secret – when I run and hide it’s a clue that I don’t like something.
(Anyone with alternatives to ‘Frontline’ – please share).
Posted for: ‘The August Break’ project, hosted by Susannah Conway
Woop~Woop! It’s Midwinter’s Day and the shortest day of the year! You know what that means, don’t you? For troglodytes like myself, living above the snow line, that means that we can expect the days to now gradually grow a little longer each day, allowing our poor befuddled winter brains and our pink eyes to slowly adjust to the merry arrival of the Spring weather that is, oooh, only just around the corner now. …Look, work with me here would you? You know that I hate the dull dark days and I’m doing my best to ‘talk this up’. We’re in shock, having just returned from bright sunshine and 90 degree heat - to be plunged into the sub zero temperatures of a beloved Blighty that struggles to keep moving (witness the Channel Tunnel chaos) as soon as as a the merest whiff of a snowflake comes our way. So yes, the shortest day of the year is cause for celebration around here - it means the best is yet to come.
I heard that the rock band won out in the Christmas number one pop chart struggle that I mentioned yesterday. That news woke me up enough to actually look up the name – Rage Against The Machine with ‘Killing in the name’. Then I went and listened to it. Oh how I love this country. Just when I despair that everyone has been turned into brain dead drones we go and do something like this! I can’t say I like it much but it’s certainly a welcome antidote to the usual mass produced saccharine sweet twaddle.
I’m on day two of my musical run-up to Christmas. Today is Wham’s ’Last Christmas’. Like yesterday’s song it actually doesn’t have much of the Christmas spirit about it (being essentially a classic break-up song) but maybe that’s why I prefer it to the norm at this time of year. It’s not George Michael’s best offering by any means, but stands head and shoulders above many other modern seasonal offerings and unlike those (that mercifully died the death almost as soon as they were released) is still played, now 25 years after its initial release (in 1984).
Ooh, hold on….let me look into my crystal ball. With my soothsayer’s hat on I sense a prediction forming in my mind’s eye. Yes, yes, there it is. Already pens are scratching across paper, keyboards are frantically clicking and printers are pumping out paper. It’s a…a book! …It’s a book and I predict that it will hit news stands within 6 months. It will tell everything that we didn’t need or want to know of the ‘man behind the mask’, the ‘painful truth’ about the ‘tortured genius’, the story that no one even dared to utter during his life. It will be the true story of Michael Jackson and, hold on, I see the title emerging from the mists….and it shall be named ‘The Man In The Mirror’.
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No hate mail peeps. I am a fan of Michael Jackson’s music, sad for his family and sad for the loss of his musical talent but let’s not forget that four days ago most people when asked would have sneered, questioned his sexual proclivities and called the man disparaging names. Now those same people are practically beatifying him. I feel we need to get a little perspective here.
It’s amazing how with the death of Michael Jackson time seems to have stopped. People have stopped starving to death in Africa, there are no wars, no threats to world peace, no environmental disasters, no companies announcing mass redundancies, entire nations are no longer financially crippled and global warming is no longer a threat to the future of our planet. Phew. Thank goodness for that then.
As my husband said this morning whilst watching Sky News:
‘We’ve had fifteen minutes of Michael Jackson, 15 seconds of British detainees being released in Iran, 10 seconds on the policing of the G20 summit and 5 minutes of Wimbledon.’
It’s good to know we have our priorities right.
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Art:Rene Gruau
Art:Rene Gruau
