Ennui and A Dog Called Héros

Love me and I’ll follow.. A French/ English bull terrier holding out for a hero.

It’s a Sunday and I mean that. It’s an anonymous day here in France. The elections for the European parliament have failed to excite the little town of Saint Savinien. The English side of me awaits the inevitable tsunami of punditry that will slosh unto the shores of both Britain and France when all the votes are counted. Politicos dipped in faux gravitas will spin the results their way regardless of the obvious truths. Groomed ambitious journalists will love themselves and strut their clever university smart-kid questions that evoke no answers. 

 And no one will care.

 The poor folk will drag themselves to pride-less low wage jobs and try to get through to the next pay day in England and in France. The rich will withdraw their wealth from the bank of other’s labour and place it beyond taxation and the concept of community. That’s the way it is. You can’t change anything.

It’s what’s called disconnect. 

It is one of the most unexploited dangerous/exciting forces on this Earth. Apathy is a dam, not a desert.

Only 36% of voters voted in the 2014 local council elections. More importantly 64% of voters did not vote! Duh.  Most politicos are glad. The ugly brutes of the great disconnected class are simply too dangerous, too unpredictable. Just imagine if the great majority of people took an interest in the things that control their lives. Good lord – the show would be unmanageable. You would have to spin so fast you’d be a blur.

I need a direction. Don’t point ! Sweep  me up. Love me.

 The micro-elite in the bubble of simulated angst and outrage that is consensus politics would have to address the politically incorrect weeds and brambles in the perfumed garden of human life. That would be like coming down to the factory floor and soldering a silicone chip, hauling a gearbox off a car engine or the life of a sub-minimum wage nouveau-pauvre Euro driver pushing a truck through the night shift to get urgent Parmigiano  cheese to your delicatessen. 

Just imagine that!!!! Just imagine if one’s limousine wasn’t serviced on time or the private nurse couldn’t soothe the  paper cut on your finger or the wholegrain organic muesli wasn’t on the supermarket shelf. Few modern politicos have the imagination or experience to leap that void.

I know I’m just ranting on. I’ve lived these issues all my life. No one reads this. Most people don’t vote. Even fewer care.


Emma Thinx: Anarchy – the default setting of organised nonchalance.










Shelter. A Poem By Oscar Sparrow

                                          Shelter


A ledge A gap A hole
A chance A crack A slot

A have or not 

A home.

A nest A den A box
A street A cell A plot

A have or not

A home.


My partner Oscar Sparrow (the poet) no longer blogs or slogs the internet trail. His pencil still has lead and so I’m delighted to air a small poem about the social issue of housing. He just wanted to put the idea of HOME out there. (He didn’t want me to explain that the capital A is used to create the idea roofs or tepees).

Give me shelter and I will be your morning song

The concept of home is so central to our human sense of self and security. Governments mouth empty phrases about young folk, values, the future and self esteem. Yet, a home is beyond most youngsters trying to set out. It is a market where our leaders cannot tread and the haves squeeze rent-juice out of the have-nots so that they can never ever ever have what the landlords (and our millionaire leaders) have…..A home.

What is government for? I’m sure some would say it was to clear the path for the operation of profit making markets and then stand back. Perhaps this is the rule of Nature – the rapacious predators at the top of the food chain pull down and gorge on the flesh of the prey species, inevitably those who are weaker.

 Yet – even indifferent Nature allows a blown seed to find some fissure. Young pigeons cling to a girder above a street near my local bakery. Callous Nature shrugs yet still applauds a homemaker. Maybe Nature is also indifferent to markets…….Maybe there is a bigger home truth and pitiless capitalism is not the ultimate super-symmetry of the sub atomic universe? Could such a heresy be true? Is the stone face of greed not the portrait of perfect beauty?  Do we deny our young people something that is fundamental to our conscious existence? Tell me – who is not worthy of an affordable home? Who? Who?And why? Why?


Emma Thinx: Home is where the start is.