I've been monitoring the loony right-wing papers over the last few days. Things at the Express have reached something of a hiatus today. Unfortunately, they don't have a front page archive... but I am able to share this little number with you.

Is anyone else in the slightest concerned that Britain is becoming a little like North Korea? Now that one person's been shot, more people will be. Public complicity in state-run murder will grow. Paranoia will increase. Eventually some catastrophic event will alert us all to our stupidity, and things might start to get better again. When will that be?

I'm off for a week or so. If the Isle of Wight presents both an internet café and something worth writing about, you might hear from me sooner!

Photos will follow, but suffice to say, for the time being, that me and friends from Cockermouth went out afterwards. I drank: 1.25L of wine, 4 tequilas, 1 cocktail, 2 dodgy alcopops, 4 vodka Red Bulls... and there the memories end. Best quote: "Don't you find that hair driers really dry your hair???" Oh Lord, never again, never again. Roll on the Cockermouth Party in August. Sad times, sad times.

Update

Photos never did follow, did they?

I'm back now from my week/end in Windsor and St Albans, having variously seen, talked to, and lunched with the Great and the Good. Today is St Thomas' Day. Here is Caravaggio's Doubting Thomas, scandalous because it shows Thomas taking up the offer of touching Jesus' wound, which is not suggested in John's gospel.

Crucifixion

In time, we come to miss the things
We used to curse.
To make things worse
We turn towards a history
Whose contours, falsely carved, decree
The slavery of our memory.

Desire I must that past I lack,
And dream the child
Was undefiled;
I read this fiction day by day
And tell the tale that tries to slay
The rootlessness I still betray.

Oh, kyrie eleison!
You saw me cry
And saw me die
In this symbolic suicide,
The end from while all life's derived.
The reason you were crucified.

Written 01.06.05. Read the small print.

Labels: poetry

• Shock story of the day: there is not, after all, a causative link between wearing a hoody and being a serial rapist/murderer/ASBO. Most people I see wearing hoodies are middle-aged men trying to look cool, anyway.
• I'm also going to Live8 in Hyde Park tomorrow. Which proves I am not a middle-aged man trying to look cool.

Having fun masquerading as someone important in Windsor Castle. I'm visiting my friend who's organ scholar here. Very touristy during the day, but quite pleasant in the evening. I'm surprised how sociable the environment is; everyone lives more or less in community, and there seems to be a very strong sense of doing things together (though I spoilt the party by refusing to eat curry last night — there's no point even pretending I could eat it), so my friend and I went to the local PizzaExpress and bitched about Leicester.

The organ is cacophonically LOUD, with a separate division just for pedal reeds. I had a brief twiddle but would rather witness someone talented playing it! It's another world; I can't imagine living, or even working, here. The expense of the choral and castle setup being so sociable is that it becomes cliquey and insular. And unfortunately, like with most cathedrals, tourism is more or less the only redemption from this isolation. Even the Queen goes in the back door.