Tag: Limericks

A limerick a week #130

Three cheers for the Ides of March!

Or should that be Three cheers for the marchers of March? I’m hugely encouraged by today’s ‘strikes’ by school pupils globally protesting against climate change. Of course the usual suspects will be up in arms about the kids missing a day of their education, but, frankly, if you are not educating youngsters to think and act for themselves, then your educational system is not up to very much, is it? Conversely, if you are educating them to be independent thinkers, with an eye on their futures, then don’t complain as and when they take action against the very real threats that exist as to their future.

So, here is a shout-out to Generation Change and its efforts to promote social action by young people. Or, as a primary school teacher, Richard Russell, wrote in the Graun: “The lessons infantile adults can learn from children go far beyond climate change“.

Whilst opinionated b******s may sneer,
I’ll personally raise a loud cheer
For the youngsters whose action
I hope will gain traction:
To live sans a climate of fear.

A limerick a week #129

A Devine Presence 

I wasn’t over-enamoured with the ‘yoof TV’ movement of the 1980s and 90s, partly due to its progenitor’s ‘Marmite’ personality (although in fairness to Marmite, quite a lot of people like it, but did/does anyone actually like Janet Street-Porter? This guy certainly didn’t) and partly because, as with each generation, it sought to take aim at the earlier cohorts’ mores and extinguish them before clapping itself on the back for being the only radical generation ever.

Punk rock was certainly like that as well. Its commentators look back on it as mould-breaking, but, to be honest, it was only the decadal equivalent of the 1950s Teddy Boys or the Mods and Rockers of the 1960s or even the androgynous Glam-rockers of the early and mid-70s.

And what did punk rock’s mould-breaking lead to? The bl**dy New Romantics, that’s what! Oh, and 20-something years later, a middle-aged ‘Johnny Rotten’ advertising Country Life Butter on TV. Some revolution that was!

It’s obvious then that I don’t think that Street-Porter’s yoof TV movement was as radical as I suspect she thinks it was, but, as with all generational torrents, something washes up that is, indeed, memorable. So, from Street-Porter’s yoof TV era, what or who was it?

Kim Taylor, that’s who.

“Who?” you ask.

Kim Taylor, you know, the TV presenter who fronted the Rough Guide shows and was something of a style icon. The lass that wore sunglasses all the time and was a bit sardonic.

Remember her now? The former presenter who’s just died.

“Oh”, you say, “Magenta Devine. I quite liked her on the Rough Guide. I wonder what happened to her after that?”

Hmmm! So do I.

A lass changed her name by design
And wore sunglasses all of the time,
But I’ve heard now she’s died
So could front a Rough Guide
To the Heavenly Kingdom Devine!

 

A limerick a week #128

Too late to panic…

It’s that time of year again when students of the RGU Gray’s School of Art short-course on B&W film photography finalise their exhibition prints.

It’s always helpful to get an exhibition print ‘in the bag’ early on during the course as it takes some of the pressure off. I managed to do that this year, which was just as well as I then struggled for weeks to make progress on any others. Finally, I got a couple more finished just in time to be considered for the exhibition. Phew, panic over!

The short-course exhibition encompasses more than just B&W film photography, it includes exhibits from around 500 students covering: Drawing, Printmaking, Painting, Jewellery, Ceramics, Fashion, Printed Textiles, Kilt Making, Bag Making and 3D Design. All-in-all it’s an impressive show and, for anyone local to Aberdeen, this year the exhibition runs from Monday 11 March to Friday 22 March with the following opening hours:

Monday to Friday:       09.00 – 22.00
Saturday:                       09.00 – 18.00
Sunday:                          09.00 – 15.00

(Parking restrictions operate from 08.00 – 16.00, Monday to Friday).

The private viewing, at which light refreshments are provided, is on Sunday 10 March for exhibitors and their families and friends (in other words, anyone can go because, for a limited period only, I am friends with the world!) and that takes place from 10.30 – 14.30.

To date, I cannot recall any risqué photographs being shown (or taken!), we leave that sort of thing to the life-drawing classes, but I suspect we’re all just ‘too British’ to indulge in taking pics of models in the ‘altogether’, which made me think…

A man with a camera once said
Shooting nudes just filled him with dread!
He’d lose his composure
On over-exposure
So focused on landscapes instead!

A limerick a week #127

🎶Land of Grope and Tory🎶

I have the unfortunate privilege of being represented in the UK parliament by Ross Thomson, a young conservative MP who has appeared, on more than one occasion, to show himself unsuited to public office.

As reported by The Scotsman:

  • His ‘off-duty’ antics while on a supposed fact-finding mission to Iraq deeply offended families of soldiers that had been killed there while on active duty;
  • He considered a clearly hoax smartphone app called “instantgrammes” to be something that seemed to make ordering class 1 drugs online “sound cool”;
  • He was obliged to pay back a travel and subsistence claim in which a friend stayed with him overnight at a hotel at taxpayers’ expense. This took place after discussing “possible employment opportunities [with his friend], which was followed by a drinking session in Edinburgh”.

Since then he has been escorted by police from the Stranger’s Bar in the Houses of Parliament over allegations of drunkingly groping other revellers, something he denies.

Although no action was taken subsequently by the police or the House of Commons authorities on that occasion (because no-one concerned had made a formal complaint) the latter may now take action over an earlier incident as an official complaint has since been made by a Scottish MP concerning that previous episode of alleged inappropriate behaviour.

According to the Daily Record, the complainant “was frustrated at what he saw as Mr Thomson’s denials about his behaviour [about the most recent allegations]”.

Meantime, the locals are revolting…

Here’s the limerick:

One cannot escape the furore
Or the lewd and libidinous story
‘Bout an errant MP
Whose downfall we’ ll see
In the heart-Land of Grope and Tory!

A limerick a week #126

A right pain in the a**e! 

I recently compared ailments with a friend:

À gauche I possess a gammy shoulder and a sore thumb-cum-wrist joint, whereas à droite it seems that I’m developing Dupuytren’s contracture in my hand, otherwise known as Viking’s finger or claw! (Oh, and I just broke a tooth.)

Meanwhile, my friend has just the one malady, a musculo-skeletal pain en bas à l’arrière which, I am told, is extremely uncomfortable at times.

So, does a chap just hang around feeling sorry for himself and radiate sympathy to a fellow invalid, or does he write a limerick?

No contest! Here it is (with my apologies to sensitive readers):

There once was a chap couldn’t sit
‘Cos he’d broken his bottom a bit.
He said that: “I fear
There’s a hole in my rear
And a crack that runs right down the back of it!”

(_x_)

A limerick a week #125

“In my darkroom…

…when I see that print coming in the developer, it’s as if I win the lottery” (Don McCullin)

It’s approaching the time of year when students on the Gray’s School of Art ‘short course’ on black and white film photography begin to panic and wonder if they’ll ever get a print worthy of the end-of-course exhibition. I’ve got one, thank goodness, as it takes the pressure off, but I’d like a couple more.

I had high hopes for at least one other (my ‘ice-cream buddy’ has seen an early version of it and has asked for a copy when it’s finished!), but I have just spent a frustrating hour and a half in my own darkroom and can’t seem to get it right. Nevertheless, I’m already in awe at a couple of pictures that my friends on the course will be showing so I think that bodes well for the exhibition.

This has all coincided with a documentary on the veteran photographer Don McCullin entitled ‘Looking for England’ that has just been shown on BBC 4. He’s an interesting character, albeit of his era, who is renowned for his compelling, if at times horrific, photographs of various global catastrophes and warring outbreaks.

The Nikon F camera that McCullin was carrying when it famously stopped a Khmer Rouge sniper’s bullet when he was accompanying government soldiers across a Cambodian paddy-field in the late 1960s. He recounts the experience here: http://www.aaronschuman.com/mccullinarticle.html

The documentary is on the BBC iPlayer and worth catching if only to view the developing landscape of ‘Englishness’ throughout McCullin’s life from his street photography of the 50s and 60s to the modern day.

It also shows some clips of him in his darkroom, as he prefers film photography to digital:

I have a dark room, and I still process film, but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience; you can move anything you want… the whole thing can’t be trusted, really.

I don’t know if it’s intentional, but the programme also coincides with a retrospective of McCullin’s work at Tate Britain that runs until May (memo to self: organise that weekend away NOW!).

Here’s the limerick:

A photographer was heard to remark
That shooting with film was a lark.
‘Tis a thing that envelops,
Consumes and develops
And one that keeps you in the dark!

A limerick a week #123

I have a cunning plan … 

Is it just me, or does Theresa May’s Brexit Plan B look remarkably like her Plan A? Plan B, remember, didn’t exist. It couldn’t because it was her deal or nothing.

Aah! Now I see. ‘Tis her cunning plan! There can be no real Plan B, so we’ll take Plan A and simply call it Plan B. That’ll fool ’em, eh? Theresa May, the Baldrick of politics.

‘Twas ‘Deal or No Deal’, you see,
Until she invented Plan B,
But Theresa’s May-hem
Will soon overwhelm
Them both. So, how about C? 

 

A limerick a week #122

“En politique, une absurdité n’est pas un obstacle”

A couple of weeks ago it was the former UK Chancellor, George Osborne, that had me suspending both belief and disbelief. This week it is the turn of the UK’s Prime Minister to promote incredulity.

Having studiously ignored all the signs that her ‘deal’ with Europe on the UK’s hair-shirted and self-flagellating attempt to leave the EU was not only doomed to failure, but would end in unalloyed humiliation, she diligently continued her journey to a self-induced political disaster.

Even the Downing Street cat saw it coming…

The UK Parliament has inflicted upon her one of the greatest defeats a British Prime Minister has ever endured, but there is no thought of her resigning. Quelle surprise! Instead she wants to explore Plan B despite weeks of her proselytising that there could be no Plan B.

No reprisals!

The honorable thing to do would be to resign, “but” say her apologists “these are not ordinary days”. Instead we are saddled with a Prime Minister that has tasked herself to resolve a problem created by her own appalling lack of judgement when, clearly, she is a part of the problem and not the solution; regrettably, the same can be said of the Leader of the Opposition!

So what price honour in politics, these days? No doubt Theresa May’s supporters would claim Charlie Chaplin’s litany on her behalf, that “Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself”, but I prefer Bonaparte’s bon mots (in English this time) that “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap”.

A Prime Minister once tried to promote
A deal that she knew wouldn’t float.
The fruit of her gambles? 
Complete omni-shambles.
No surprise she got trounced in the vote!

Postscript:

As reported in The Scotsman, Theresa May stood  for election in 2005 “under a Conservative manifesto promising a second referendum to decide whether to overturn the 1997 result [of the Welsh referendum on its devolved government]” yet she denies the UK public a People’s Vote on whether to reaffirm or abandon Brexit now that the public is better informed.

In the same article, she is also reported as having “voted for a ‘wrecking’ amendment to the 1998 Scotland Act that would have struck down legislation creating the Scottish Parliament”; legislation that was enacted as a result of the devolution referendum. A contrary stance on the people’s voice to the one that she advocates now.

… just saying!

A limerick a week #121

Out on the pull…

I had my gym induction as a new evergreen member of the Aberdeen Sports Village this week. ‘Evergreen’ is the polite word they use for their ‘old farts’ subscription rates.

Happily, I am at the younger end of the old-folks age spectrum and, despite being unfit and overweight, I enjoyed the induction. Nevertheless, in comparison to the slim and trim youth for whom their bodies are temples, I probably came across more as Angkor Wat than gym bunny. Still, that made me laugh even more at one young bloke, a wannabe Adonis, who was clearly out to impress a couple of the svelte young female gym members and missed his mouth completely when taking a swig from his water bottle. ‘Twas an epic fail.

After my induction I had to take an unhappy sounding car to be looked at. It had begun to misfire and a warning light had illuminated to tell me the electronic control unit had put the car in to ‘limp mode’. The dealership is about a mile and a half from home, so as I was in sports kit I thought I’d jog back after dropping-off the motor. That was when I had my own epic fail and tweaked a calf muscle halfway home. Just like the car I was reduced to limp mode.

Still, putting together the collective misfortunes of the wishful thinking young Adonis and me, it inspired this week’s ALAW…

A muscular youth at the gym
Thought the girls would all fancy him,
But despite his best hustle
All he pulled was a muscle.
Served him right for being out on a limb!