The Danikils

Tags

Daffodils, National Poetry Day, parody, poetry, The Raven, Wordsworth

It’s UK National Poetry Day Tomorrow.

And, purely coincidentally, as I went to bed in the wee small hours, I suddenly had a Proustian flashback to a poem called The Danikils, by ‘T.Y.’

T.Y. was a lad called Alan Tinsley and his effort was on the front page of my earliest effort at journalistic excellence, a class newspaper, set as a project by an English teacher (the name and other identifying features of whom have completely left my brain).

Rather like Dr Johnson’s dog on its hind legs, we were a least as surprised that Tinsley had done this at all as by any qualities it may have had. He had never been noted as a creative mind, an average student (given that he was already in an above average grammar school setting), more inclined to science subjects than arts and lit. Indeed I often wondered if he’d found this parody elsewhere and sneaked it in, but that would not really have been like him either. Then again, I’ve written things myself which I’ve suspected were too good to be original (but every man likes the smell of his own farts, as they say), and wondered if I’d dug them from some dormant memory.

I doubt it was a great parody. Technically it was a matter of taking Wordsworth’s Daffodils and tweaking a few words here and there. I shouldn’t knock that approach, I use it far too often myself, even fifty years on. And the effect of Tinsley’s effort seemed very funny at the time, and not just to us sixteen-year-olds; the teacher was mighty impressed and also mighty surprised.

I wish I could remember more of it. I think the line ‘vacant and expensive mood’ was in there, but I have a feeling someone else, a professional writist like Paul Jennings may have used it too. Only one bit really sticks — I can’t even recall whether he wandered lonely as a cloud or some variation thereon, but lines three to six were definitely …

When all at once I spied a crowd
A host of hairy Danikils
Beside the pool, beneath the trees
Doing the dance of the cheddar cheese.

Well, it just goes to prove my assertion that anyone can do this parody stuff, and undermine any ambition I might have to sell myself as anything special, though I am assured by small Chinese women that I’m a genius.

And I’ve been asked to recite (or at least read) The Raven for the Scottish Arts Club’s Halloween Poe evening. I can’t think of that without tweaking the first line in a Tinsleyish manner myself. It always comes to my mind as …

Once, upon a midnight dreary, as I sat with Wallace Beery …

But I shall dress in black and do it straight of course. I’m even buying a smoking cap to wear as I read it from an armchair…

A video may follow. Or not.

Don’t Shoot the Piano Player

Tags

bristol, emtitlement, heartbreak, love, piano, romantic gestures

“Let’s stop romanticising the misguided, possibly dangerous actions of spurned men.
On Saturday, the Bristol Post reported the story of how a 34-year-old man was intending to play one of the city’s public pianos in order to “win” back his ex girlfriend. Calling the woman who he’d been dating for four months “Rapunzel”, the stunt was intended to show off how much he loved her.
As is fairly typical in these kinds of stories, the Post branded the stunt as romantic, calling Luke Howard “heartbroken”, tagging his efforts as “dedication” in their tweet. However, in refusing to accept his ex girlfriend’s “no”, and by making a huge public statement demanding that she recognises his “love” for her, Howard’s behaviour is not romantic. It’s entitled – and it’s symptomatic of a wider problem of men’s harassment of their exes.
This is not the first time that women have been told to accept men not taking no for an answer as a romantic gesture. From John Cusack’s ghetto blaster in Say Anything… to the best man’s creepy filming of his friend’s bride in Love Actually, the ideal of a heartbroken man harassing the object of his affection has been sold to us as true love over and over again.
But there’s nothing romantic about refusing to accept that a woman has a right to leave you. It’s not a love story when a woman tells a man “no” and he demands she change it to a “yes”.”
[various posts, originating on a site called The Pool, I think]

I find the reactions in some quarters to this poor, suffering sod most upsetting, What mean-minded miserable buggers there are in this world. HAve they never been dumped? Or even loved?

On what basis are people extrapolating shit about ‘entitlement’, and his not accepting her ‘right’ to leave him? It’s a dumbass gesture born of wretchedness, and I’ll agree the guy seems a bit of a wet twerp, but at most it’s a case of pleading, not ‘demanding’. I see no evidence in article or interview of him not ‘accepting her right’, but he seems to be trying to exercise his own right of appeal (not very appealingly, it must be said). And unless the poor lass lives near the piano or he’s lugging around wherever she goes, he’s hardly ‘harrassing’ her.

Personally, I would support a policy of summary execution for anyone who dumps their partner without good demonstrable cause (though not after such a short relationship as his with ‘Rapunzel’, and with the proviso that the dumpee has to agree to it — and that after a cooling-off period). If I stabbed someone I could cause them extreme pain and some possible impairment, and I would quite rightly be castigated and punished for it, but the wounds would heal in short order, and life continue much as it was.  Dumping someone who loves you can cause at least as much anguish, physical pain, and even seriously increase their risk of heart failure, leaving internal scars that time does little more than stick plasters over, and which make successive relationships harder to hold down; but the law doesn’t even get involved unless the sufferer acts unreasonably and illegally. Even then the victim gets all the blame and deprecation, rather than any support or help.

Theologists used to say (maybe still do) that the greatest sin is to break a vow. If free will is the main gift of the deity, we take a great step by surrendering it to a promise.  So the greatest insult to said deity is to throw the gift back in Her face by breaking our word. And the same people who demand (and they are demanding) that guys simply accept the pain of being dumped are usually those who bemoan the lack of commitment shown by so many blokes these days. I have heard someone say that their vow to stay for better for worse, ‘didn’t include if it made me miserable’. For fuck’s sake, it’s no vow if you’re only saying ‘I promise to stay as long as it makes me happy’! And anyway, statistics show that a great many dumpers come to regret it later, by which times. I’d be the last to say ‘suck it up’ about any misery it does cause, but to cause even more misery to get out of it is morally no better than stealing to solve your cash flow problems.

But like I say, the guy seems to be making a prize pranny of himself. Stephen Pinker suggested that the irrational actions of the rejected have evolved to make the rejectee scared and more likely to stay around out of physical fear. I rather think they’re there to ensure the separation. Grand romantic gestures, and all the other things that a man or woman will do when scrabbling with bleeding fingertips to cling onto a crumbling cliff, do little more than make us look complete twats that no one could possibly love. That will kill any tendency to guilt feelings in the dumper, so they can go off and mate with some fresh supplier of eggs or sperm.  Life, eh?

lurgi

crippling headache and photophobia

going back to bed

service may resume next week, if i’m still alive

here’s some tall ships in Cádiz harbour