Prisoners. Lest we forget.

Amazed. (Or even amazing grace.) Amazed that I’m still alive in spite of all the odds being against; and in spite of the Indian palmist* who assigned me 60/65 years as a long lifespan; and in spite of having done some miraculously idiotic things. Amazed that I can still discover new friends in unsuspected places and find new insights under the most unlikely of stones. Amazed, and utterly chuffed, that new-ish shapes of Shoggoth can still emerge from the deep fathoms of my diseased imagination. I am truly and really a lucky bleeder. (Here’s to you Ian!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPvRsLWlDXw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmopROxBnBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1injh4-n1jY

*The Indian Palmist. A cute traveller’s tale.
It was long ago and far away, when the wench I then was was young and foolish and brave and didn’t think twice before embarking on chancy undertakings, that I found myself in a deserted train station, in the middle of nowhere in South India. The only other representative of human life was a middle-aged Indian chap also travelling on his own. Naturally enough, almost a given in India, we fell into idle chitchat; you know, “where are you from?” “how do you like India?” “have you ever been tempted to vote Lib Dem?” and so on.
At some point it transpired that he was a spare time palmist and astrologer and he kindly offered to read my palm. Now, I don’t believe in any of this occult, mystical fiddle-faddle, but I am rather fond of astrology nevertheless; it amuses me. So I agreed to have my fortune told and very interesting said reading turned out to be. My heart line revealed, he said, that I was by nature loving and kind but had little or non patience for idiots (guilty as charged) and by the poor flexibility of my thumbs that I was very stubborn (again, culpable, m’lud). The life line, he said, was good. I’d enjoy a long life, “60 or 65”. And indeed, by his standards, 65 might have been more than a reasonable lifespan.
We sat there indulging in some more pleasant chin-wagging. The afternoon was hot but calm and the air was clean and sweet, considering we were in a train station. Suddenly on the other side of the tracks, far in the distance and like in a dream, an all-women manifestation went by in almost total silence. It passed on quietly, carrying placards I couldn’t read and red flags. I liked to imagine it was a communist protest and who’s to say I was wrong. After all we were in Kerala, or very nearby, and in them blessed days Kerala was known as the Red State.
Then his train came so we wished each other well and he went on his way. I was half tempted to hop on that train myself -although technically, as per schedule, it wasn’t my train- as one tended to do in those days in out of the way, middle of nowhere places in India; for you could never be quite sure when the next train, bus or bullock cart would be along, no matter how emphatically the locals told you that “yes, yes, train/bus/bullock cart come, very soon/5 o’clock/two hours”. I didn’t, however. I kept faith in the quoted time-table and eventually my train arrived, a mere 35 minutes late.
There are events that stick in your mind like memory limpets. This is one of them. Not only for the almost surreal, dream-like quality of the whole thing but because, come every birthday after my 65th, the nice amateur astrologer lives again in my mind’s eye and I tell him “For better or for worse, you got that one wrong, mate.” Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, indeed.

Desert Moon. (In the Desert) This is where I am. Perhaps is where I must be. Or even want to be, look you! 🙂 (It’s not so completely lonely as it would seem. I’m in reduced but selected company, please note.)
Sunshine. (I Have a Dream) And this is where I’d like to be, really, truly and unequivocally. (Please note the big fuck-off portal that leads to … Places.)

Sensibilities. As it says on the tin. You take your conjectural beef to xem, xe will work xir jiggery-pokery and, Bingo!, off you’ll go with your brand-new, fully-fledged Victim Status, neatly packaged and mantled in stacks of Manifest Virtue and Organism-Specific Sorrow. Just add opaque water and Bob’s your auncle! Ze also runs personal one-to-one courses on how to take offence using a technique formulated by zirself. Follow zir wizard instructions and you will be capable of finding malfeasance in the very periodic table!
PS 1. Xe is MoF. DoID* Certified. *(Ministry of Fear, Department of Intersectional Societal Disintegration.)
PS 2. Grants for impoverished plaintiffs procurable from the Open Society Foundations, the WHO and the Bill Und Melinda Gates Syndicate.
PS 3. The Shoggies, the Tadpoles and yours truly kindly offer free detox, deprogramming, rehabilitation and convalescence programs for those hapless peasants who fell for any or all of the above piffle and are now urgently trying to retrieve their misplaced brains. Home calls or free fortnight in the many corking spas in the beautiful Plateau of Leng. The programme includes an optional crash-course in abuse, vituperation and vitriol run by the Repulsive Moon Beasts of the aforementioned bonny uplands.

Love Bugs. Anti-Valentine 2024 Decided to break with tradition and upload this year’s Anti-Valentine card on Valentine’s Day, look you. It’s still an Anti-thingummybob, though. So, here they are, a couple of bitching Love Bugs, to remind us that luuuurve is not always the plain sailing the Fluffy Brigade would have us believe. Mr. LB is accusing Mrs. LB of a deficit in fondness just because she failed to appreciate his re-arrangement of their love nest along the latest diktats of fashionable Feng Shui. Mrs. LB has temporarily lost patience with her old mucker’s vagaries and she’s responding in kind. (Don’t worry, folks, they will make up soon enough. They are Love Bugs after all, innit?)