Thinking of the election due later this coming week, and of the likeliest result, I fear for the parrot. “He speaks all languages aptly,” wrote Skelton, implying that the parrot hears everything and can keep nothing out. So what will be swirling about in his brain by Friday morning ?
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This week Mr Trump (“the American Minotaur”) was in the UK for a meeting of NATO leaders. Then he got the hump because people were laughing at him and he left early.
Not long ago, Mr Johnson (“The Toad”) did a Putin with a bull. See picture above. Perhaps he was rehearsing for his upcoming chat with Mr Trump (the Minotaur).
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Last week “Prime Minister” Johnson tried to take political advantage of the terrorist attack in London. This despite the appeals of the father of one of the victims, expressly not to do so. But how could Mr Johnson resist ? He’d lose one vote, no doubt, but might well have gained rather more than one. It’s just a matter of weighing the numbers. A no brainer for a Toad. So he said it was Labour who were responsible for those deaths.
What further depths do we have to sink to ?
In the meantime, the Parrot, Bird of Paradise, uncaged and homeless and close to exhaustion, looks for an ark for respite or as staging post, as the Flood continues to cover the Earth.
We seem to have strayed into the Old Testament. Or has the Old Testament suddenly been translated into our present darkness ?
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Toad’s progress around the country this election is always, of course, more a search for images which might benefit him, than a chance for real encounters with real people.
And, to date, that search has come up with some striking images, which would appear to be considered appealing to us. There he is in one picture, wearing boxing gloves with “Get Brexit Done” printed on them, and a Toad’s face between the gloves, smirkingly up for battle.
And there’s been another picture in which the Toad meets a large bull in a cattle market. And there again we see that face smirkingly up for battle, though the supposedly fearsome bull tethered close by might be accused of looking a bit bored.
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The Parrot is tiring overhead. He lacks the staying power of the swift and a Bird of Paradise needs a foothold on the Earth. But now he’s heard the UK Prime Minister announce the Tory manifesto for the UK’s immediate future, having first “got Brexit done.”
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The stanza was written a day after we had heard from some pollsters that the Tories had increased their lead, with just three weeks to go before the General Election. And this was the day on which Mr Toad was about to launch the Tory manifesto. And there was a lot of rain falling, as well as lies being broadcast.
The Parrot saw the danger to the UK of all this flooding, remembering Noah, but the Toad had no thought of danger, or of the UK. He was still thinking strange Gollum thoughts.
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The other night, in Sheffield, there was a BBC Question-Time session, in which the audience was able to question four UK political leaders in turn, only one of whom is a worthy leader, the one not eligible to be the Prime Minister. Nicola Sturgeon’s presence there was puzzling but useful as a reminder of true worth.
But it seems that Corbyn did ok and the Toad was a toad, as always.
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I live in the West of England, near the Severn Estuary, where the river begins to narrow. Here above, is a picture of it, taken by Nicola Knoop. I am close enough now to see it a few times most days, and to be aware of it, all the time.
The river is grand, very restless and not a little sinister.
Recently, I wrote a poem about it. Click here for the link.
The last few lines of the poem make reference to, and play on, a line by Edmund Spenser, a poet who lived (and wrote) in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. TS Eliot quotes the line in his great poem The Wasteland : “Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.”
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