Book a restaurant meal.
Now.......

Followed by that cosy reminder as your burnt tongue stays painful for days. Probably just me. ☕

Pink petals on green
Winters here seem
A gentle dream
A warm sun caressing
My face in passing
I capture the scene
outside my Gozo home
walking alone
holding a phone
that snaps up beauty
in all that I see
To live here lifts my heart
every day seems to start
With blue sky & sun
until the day is done

Orwell, Huxley & Bradbury saw this coming.
So did we all.
But those fictional governments fed off fear in exactly the same way.
How will it end?
Happy or sad ending?
Rereads loom.

Exactly.
It stands for power for power's sake.
The heart of the party withered & died in the fight to be the darling of the media.
We used to know what they stood for.
Today that's a message forgotten & consigned to history
Trying to be something you never were.
Lost.

Open house at Christmas, full of family & friends.
It makes the honeyed stone walls glow with joy!
Sunsets plunged us into darkness now.

Good choice.
I flew home to Gozo from Manchester last Sunday.
I am still not fully warmed up.
I am still coughing & sneezing.
I am still ashamed at how nesh I have become!
Join Lily.
Lily knows stuff.

In the centuries, then decades since slavery officially ended it's shadow threw a dark cloak over America.
It's less than 100 years since skin colour decided your place in America.
Today it's sickeningly obvious America still festers under that long dark deep shadow.
Maine under Pennywise.
Fear!

Then raise the Yorkshire standard high
Beneath its shade we'll Iive and die
Though Tories flinch and Reform sneer
Well keep the red flag flying here

SPOCK raised an eyebrow.
"Captain, I felt an emotion reading this starfleet message, one I am unused too"
KIRK put down Play Captain, careful to hide the centre fold.
"How so Spock, we have bravely gone where no one has gone before & you have an emotion now?"
SPOCK touched the screen.
"It's pity"

Aye lad that's made o'stern stuff.
Daan pit lift ta the coalface, hewing laughs & applause from tha crowd face, chip chip chip fer each nugget o'joy in stalls & circle.
Tha hobnailed clogs stamping tha boards with passion.
Yorkshires pride dripping like lard o'er every line.
Towering performance!

I would like to thank my long suffering wife who has never even been to Venezuela.
My parents long gone they gifted me my lack of hatred of small boats. Above all my friends here in Gozo who helped me not murder anyone, no matter how greedy I may have felt.
I wear this medal with pride!
Peace on you

Re Bjorn into IKEA
Amongst the meatballs
An empire of dirt
Organised in self assembly boxes
Persbol was a liars chair
Without instructions
That old familiar sting
I focus on the pain
That old familiar screwdrivers sting
Blisters & pulled muscles
The packaging
bigger in the car
What have I become

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Your words are butterflies drifting like clouds of colour at Holi, settling in my mind & shading my thoughts, always.
Never stop.

I admit I did consider it.
But if Hamburglar was awarded one instead of inventing it himself I feel I should at least attempt an award from a jury of my peers.
Obviously it will be equally meaningless, but it's not the winning, it's the taking part.
Apparently.
However I shall nudge my peers daily.

I was sleeping
my country left
I woke
It was not
right?
Those unwrapped gifts once so British
Now ignored,
ridiculed,
despised
Love of the stranger
Fight for fairness
Support the underdog
Sweot into the rubbish
With the wrapping paper
It has a cost
Life has a price
You must give
We must take
Ruined