MIETTES (Crumbs)
Central Heating Advert, Post-Trump
Since global warning has been written off
prepare for a new Ice Age.
Martine Aubrey
Quand c’est un flou qu’l y a in loupe.
Where there is a fog, you’re sure to find a wolf.
Il Marche (It works):the new extreme centre party
Macron is almost honest. He says ‘political campaigns are at heart a matter of style.
You have to work the magic. I wonder what his sleight of hand is?
Intelligence quota
If you think your clever, you are not. if you think your stupid, you are not.
If you think at all you are doing well.
Contra l’academia francais
La langue de la France n’est pas s’agite de liberte, ni egalite, mais complaisance de un peu fraternite.
The French language isn’t about liberty or equality but it allows some fraternity
Health and Safety Sur le Tard
Never take a short cut
Never change your mind suddenly
Never forget you are old
Questions m asked
How do they changed the dead light bulbs in the Raxat Tunnel?
Where do the snails go in dry weather?
How do dogs know they are dogs
Excuse for being late
I thought I’d give you time to be late
Regret
Is the rationalisation of disappointment.
Avec Nietzsche
‘We feel so at ease with nature because it doesn’t have an opinion on us’.
In General
the friendship between men is status based, and the friendship between women is a conspiracy.
Brexit 1
Come what Theresa May.
Brexit 2
2% of the electorate thought ‘no’ meant ‘no way’.
Agenbit of inwite
When struck by remorse, hit back.
In this vale of tears
always carry a hanky.
Library vagabonds
Some people read books. Others write on them.
Musical French
French spoken by foreigners is said to be ‘a violin out of tune’. Mine is self-made with no strings attached.
Bla-bla
Bladder
Celebrity misery
The pleasure principle has absorbed the reality, and therefore it is without a basis.
Terrorist couple
L’arme dans l’arme.
Arm and arm.
Faux rabait-joie
More amused than he let on.
Tidal Brexit
In the 19th century England ruled the waves. Now the waves rule England.
Saving Democracy
World without referenda, amen.
Le boxe anglais
Boxing is the new jogging for middle aged men
Rugby prologues
At the next World Cup, the Japanese team will recite a hiaku at the opposition. More intimidating than the rather hackneyed haka.
RIP (Obituaries L'Independant)
Mesdames Moulin-Crumb and Porco.
Poetic fallacy
Dante claimed to see the Adriatic and the Mediterranean at the same time from the summit of Monte Falterona.
Evil communication corrupts good manners (XV33, Corinthians, Paul)
I live in fear of being misunderstood in French. It’s a form of emotional hypochondria. I tried saying nothing, but found that could be misunderstood. The treatment that works best is to misunderstand others, and thus transfer the fear.
Dumb focus
Little things disturb my peace of mind. Big things are unthinkable.
Port-Vendres
There are so many old people here that when I see a young person I say (s)he is not long for this world.
Embodying thought
Ideas formed in the past are knee-jerk. Thinking on your feet either trips you up, or dances you into the future.
Complet
Those who are full of themselves have no room for others.
Confidences
m was easy to talk to because she listened
Silent Prayer
Roland Barthes finding himself speechless before what he loves.
DVVD
Fined a billion euros for faking an ecological design feature, Volkswagon laid off 30,000 shop-floor workers.
Fidel Castro’s desecration
The ex-King of Spain and Gerry Adams attended his funeral.
M 17/11
M was no saint. She died the day before the feast of Margaret of Scotland
Parrains
Le Banque Populaire de Sud sponsor yacht racing. Apt. Most of the staff in my experience are at sea.
Toulouse a la mode
The young women look older because they wear too much makeup. The older woman, however, don’t look younger because they wear young people’s clothes.
In two minds
We all need to be a bit bipolar to prevent paranoia.
War and Peace
The trouble with peace is – no organisation.
Pity Ex-President Holland
‘Many a man who believes himself the master of others is a greater slave than them’. Rousseau
Coterie art (pace Aos Dana)
The poets make associations with one another.
As needs be
Vent your feelings and, if you have none, invent them.
A Verity from President Higgins
‘Abstract concepts are not beyond ordinary experience and people.’ He advocates the teaching of philosophy in schools. But that would beyond the teachers.
Candidate Macron reassures the while collared
Vous n’allez pas faire peur. La meillure facon de se payer un costard c’est travailler.
Have no fear. The best way to pay your tailor is to work hard.
High Death Rate in Port-Vendres
It’s a place people tend to gravitate to…
Pray for those
'for whom the crack in the tea-cup opens not only on the land of the dead but also on the perilous seas' (John Jordan on Ranier Maria Rilke)
Florien Ilies (2013)
‘Rilke, the ardent lover of tender unhappiness, high priest of the inexpressible’.
C’est la barbe
When you eat an ice-cream it shows.
Jacques Prevert
‘Il faudrait essayer d’etre heureux, ne serait-ce que pour donner l’exemple’.
One must strive to be happy if only to give a good example.
Death day, 23 April 1616
A received coincidence that needs to be correction. Cervantes and Shakespeare did not die on the same day. Spain used the Julian and England the Gregorian Calendar. Miguel beat Will to immortality by ten days (or was it the other way round?). The age difference was seventeen years in Cervantes’s favour.
Brexit (and Trump)
The age of Nigel FarRage.
The faux-Immortals
Those who expect to live for ever worry themselves to death
C’est moi (excuse my French)
La voiture a plus bonne marche est s’appeller le Logan. Mais non.,Il y a le Hogan – une vehicle avec deux roules et le conducteur est son propre engine.
The cheapest bargain in cars is the Logan, if you discount the Hogan which has two wheels and the driver is his own engine.
Demure Lighting
Everybody is beautiful in the right light.
Right reason, 2017
There is more to right-thinking people than their righteous despair.
Trump diplomacy
Trump offers Kim Jong-un of North Korea a trip to Disneyland. Khrushchev was refused entrance for security reasons. Watch for the sniper inside Mickey Mouse.
Philo fallacy
Philosophers are pedants who think ideas are fixed.
Motto
Some say, ‘I live to work.’
Others, ‘I work to live.
I say, ‘Live and let live, and let others work it out’.
E-Nappies
Changing babies has changed, but babies have not.
En attendant
Je suis a la perfection un fois chaque anneě
Once a year I’m perfect. Wait for it.
BaBa
Collective intelligence is strictly for sheep
Populisme (par Paul Valery)
‘Le bon sens des salauds
The good sense of bastards.
The dark age of Trumpery
‘C’est une grande temps de rallumer les etoiles’
(Apolinaire).
It would be a good time to relight the stars.
‘The Room’ and Room Enough
Fiction shouldn’t imitate life, although life often imitates fiction. The life behind the fiction is what’s interesting.
Patient Prisoner
The hospital ward is a cage with no bars hold.
Ah! oui
I picked a spring flower for a lady, but kept it for myself as it was a narcissus.
Braque-age for Critics
‘Il n’y a qu’une chose valuable dans l’art. C‘est inexplicable’
The only value in art is that it’s inexplicable.
The saintly scholar
Not being right you learn something.
Mazeppa (a la Trump)
Mad Cossack leading the have-nots nowhere,
and himself into rich merchant’s pockets.
Russia prospers.
O altitude
A poet is someone who doesn’t let wind.
The trick of the stock exchange
A matter of confidence.
Representative power: a selfie
Votez pour des candidat qui vous ressemblent
Vote for the candidate that looks like you.
Intellectual life
What interests me is my stupidities.
Emotional life
Not wanting to be any trouble causes more trouble to myself and others.
Ireland
What I miss most is murk roses.
RIP (Obit L’Independent)
M. No.
Madame De Stael
‘Le gloire est …un deuil eclant du bonheur’.
Fame commemorates happiness with its fireworks.
Voltaire’s advice
‘Pour vivre heureux, vivons cache’.
To live happy, live hidden.
Cut flower
St Flora decapitated for hiding Christians (851)
En Marche
Macron’s pirouette
Practising Poet
Verse is willed like marriage . Poetry comes and goes like an affair.
But you can’t have one without the other.
Dog Owners
Different from the rest of us.
Dead-ends
‘It’s when you have no hope that you no longer despair’. Seneca
‘…of solace I know nothing’ (letter to a bereaved friend). Sam Beckett.
‘Only the desolate can know my sorrow.’ Schubert.
Solution
It’s possible to weep.
Spendthrift
Je guirlande mes billets sur les fouilles morts
Ou je jette mes fric dans la friche.
I garland the dead leaves with my bank notes
I throw my small change on the wasteland
‘Garance, le nom de la fleur’ (Children of Paradise),
Before playing the ultra romantic Garance, Arlette was Madelene Crapicheau, femme de chamber, in Dėsire (1937) directed by Sacha Guitry.
Paul Fort ‘Le Bonheur’ (1872)
‘Le bonheur est dans le prė.
Cour-y vite,
Cour-y vite.
Il va filler’
Happiness is in the meadow.
Hurry, Hurry.
It is fleeting.
Incompetant mouths
The respective gobs of Donald Trump and his English side-sneer Nigel Farage bespeak lies.
Not owning up
If you don’t want to be responsible for your prejudices, put them on someone else’s
lips.
The Genius of Zidane, manager of Real Madrid football team
‘I asked the players to run more’.
Irish Lit Asset
What a pity I was not abused as a child. I would have something to write about.
And people would want to read me.
Failed PS candidate
Gerald Filoche (efilocher, worn out). 0.07 % in the poll. Didn’t get enough endorsements by mayors .
The limits of French
‘Plateband’ for ‘flowerbed’. What an ugly word?
On the other hand, ‘rabougri’ for ‘stunted’ is just right.
My job in London
I was briefly a gross bonnet. But I never wore it.
Mon jardin sauvage
This year I won’t be eradicating yellow flowers
Macho shirt front
I wouldn’t be seen dead
with a needle and thread
replacing buttons
Future all planned
Melania Trump is ‘looking forward to all the memories we make in our new home’.
President Macron, mega megalo
‘Never be photographed facing people. Always look at the camera’.
The little prince
doesn’t convince
me he’ll grow in-
to being a king.
In Valcluse
the head of human resources in a cloths factory strangled his secretary with a towel.
Inscape in autofiction
If Flaubert didn’t become Madame Bovary, it would have been a nasty little book about a silly woman.
Cut
After m died I stopped talking to people who resumed normal conversation.