First Stroll of 2022

There were fireworks hereabouts last night, many, many fireworks. The oneth of January has turned out to be a ridiculously mild day. Mr Stove is lit, but mostly so that I can en-kettle and do cookingery upon him. Doors and windows are open. For the first stroll of the year I kept myself to the reasonably non-squidgy sections of towpath, and covered them twice. Didn’t meet a living soul upon my perambulations; presumably all tucked up a-bed with hangovers brewing. Didn’t meet any dead souls either, so they may or may not have hangovers.

To each and every one of the Greek and Roman gods – please, please, please let this year be less insane than the past two. If you need a sacrifice then just let me know in the usual way, I have several people in mind.

The (horrid) swans came with me part of the way. This in spite of my hissing at them.

The swans were replaced by a veritable army of geese flying directly overhead (always a dangerous thing, goose-sphincters not being made as well as they once were).

Ye gods, were they noisy.

There was a lone sheep in one of the fields… it’s that pale dot in the photograph below. Centre of frame, on the horizon this side of that hedgerow.

There were lots of other sheepsicles about, hundreds of them, but when they all wandered off and changed their outlook this one stood standingly still, all alone. Most peculiar behaviour indeed. Had it lost the ability to walk? Was it stood there in deep thought, contemplating life as a quadrupedal even-toed ungulate ruminant mammal? If so then we’ve all been there, haven’t we, trying to come to terms with life under the heel of the wolf, being fleeced on a regular basis.

Perhaps it (too) was merely pausing to contemplate the clouds or the Sun’s reluctant rising?

Perhaps we await not the Pale Rider but the Pale Sheep?

Did I simply fail to spot the White, Red, and Black Sheep? The full set for the Apockyclypse…

Well, whatever the Greek and Roman gods do about improving 2022 they’re going to have to move swiftly and decisively; I’ve already seen a headline suggesting that the odious little turd Tony Blair has been knighted in the “Honours” List. I suggest a small speculative investment in Parcel Force Ltd shares, since if true then there will be a(nother) flurry of Registered Post Parcels from all parts of the Empire to Buckingham Hice as others return their medals and sashes in disgust.

Wasn’t it Karl Marx (the Grouchy one) who put it best when he said that he wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would accept Tony Blair as a member?

Don’t even get me started on Sir “Alien Bell-End” Whitty and Sir van Tam-Tam the quackzine man.

No, seriously, please don’t.

There have been many fine and splendid boats passing today, folk out for some sort of celebratory cruise methinks. Even Messrs BARGUS of Four Counties Fuels were out working, fully-laden and heading south.

I tell you, it’s all go on the canals, you know.

Those houses on the road opposite (above)? Very recent builds – thrown up in the winter weather, a little more each time I passed or moored there – including those terraced jobs to the right of frame… the banner outside while they were trying to flog them (and they’ve mostly been flogged now) indicated ‘…prices from £695,000…’ Eckythump alone knows what that “detached” (by about 18″) Show Home to the left of the entrance road went for…

Wibble moo fribble de-clomp. There’s nowt else to be said!

Those terraced jobbies surely can’t have gone for six nine five? Can they? The world’s more insane than I thought. Surely not. The building with the white car in front of it is two houses, the building to the right of that shows three front doors. Oh well, I hope folk are happy in them.

Pauses, Stage Left, to iron the puzzled frown out of his brain-gland.

I am typing this stuffed full of that eppy-tome of English cuisine, Squubble & Beak. Yesterday lunch was a fine platter of all manner of vegetables, today was a nicely-crusted end of their remains, with HP Sauce.

HP Sauce (“Houses of Parliament” Sauce – hence the “HP”) and still featuring same on the label along with the Queen Elizabeth Tower (home to Big Ben, the clock not the porn star), is now highly foreign-owned, and is produced in the Netherlands.

We own nothing anymore in this country, and nothing is sacred.

The Sun (the celestial body, not the scurrilous Fleet Street rag – no longer actually run from or produced in Fleet Street, as with all of England’s broadsheets and rags) is already setting as I type this. These days there will probably be a distinct period of time before it rises on some other part of the Empire (they pulled all of the Empires and the ODEONs down decades since). So that’s damned near the first day of the year gone already, and never called me ‘Mother’.

How time flies when you live in Interesting Times.

Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a bandana (sic).

Fruit flies are very fashion-conscious.

Whither England in 2022?

I care less with each passing year, this country having had its soul surgically removed, and continuing to blot its copybook on a daily basis. I would love this to be the year when we decorate our lampposts and sturdier roadside trees with politicians of all grades, and with anyone of a global and/or corporate and/or “billionaire” bent. Let’s add the lying bastard mainstream media in there too, eh? So many need to dangle for their crimes, so little time left in our window of opportunity in which to hang them variously by their necks, ankles, and (admittedly pre-shrivelled) testicles.

Ho et le hum.

I shall let you know if the lone sheep remains fixed when I walk tomorrow.

One little sheep, making a stand.

Waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Cry BAAAAAAA! and let slip the sheeps of [civil, global] war!

Chin-chin, chaps.

Ian H., & Cardinal W.