Scrabbling in 2010.

The Times reports that the game of Scrabble, still popular in the internet age and first marketed in 1948 is to undergo a change of rules. Mattel, who market the game, have decided to allow some proper nouns, those of celebrities, places and companies.

They'll be scrabbling to
be the first to triple score,
hit on Beyonce.

War criminal haven 06 04 2010

Britain is a safe haven for war criminals, it seems. 53 of them are living here, free from prosecution by Scotland Yard as they are deemed to be somehow above and beyond the reach of the law.

The real terrorists
are living, Scotland-Yard free.
They can't be blown up.

Jarvis cocks up 23.03.2010.

Railway maintenance contractor Jarvis, founded as a construction company in Yorkshire , after riding high on the back of new labour's PFI programmes which saw it given contracts to build new academies and health centres (by ripping up perfectly good ones) and 'maintain' the railway infrastructure, was living on borrowed time and money, making massive profits in between

Jarvis, whose botched railway engineering led to the Potter's bar rail disaster in 2002 and who, at the height of their money-making refused to pay subcontractors what they were owed, have finally gone into administration.
Jarvis were hoping to be awarded a huge 50k contract by Chiltern Railways.


Main-line injection
fails to stop Jarvis cocking up
and getting pulped.

Jarvis constructs great
big pile, gets derailed then opts
for deconstruction.

In a squall

In a squall,
a sudden gust
along Commonside Ridge,
I rush to your oakside.
In that squall,
excited,
I see your leaves
bowling over the path.
Because of you
and the brushing squall
I remember joy.
I look up through
your browning tops
with their patterings
then down to where your stays
hold you fast.
In a squall,
I lean into your great girth.
You lean over me,
live pillar.
In that squall,
your slowsway is an
ocean liner coming
into the quayside,
slow shuddering,
lining up
to grind against something.
I fancy that I hear your heart
(unless it is mine)
beating out its
ancient reason.
I'd rather be crushed
by you than by
any mortal.
That would be
some kind of justice.

Here, at Rhoscolyn.27.03 2010.

What does this Nature do,
implacably, with majesty,
drawing from us
only vengeance against nothing.
So slowly, with grace,
she folds and crumples
the crust, sets the largest things
moving in a slow waltz,
the tiniest things trickling,
full-formed,
stranger than fiction,
sweet beyond imagining.

The Buzzard brown,
planing and keeling,
keening into her lift
is true,
while F19
fighters rend the sky
with awful roaring
and firecracking,
slashing and stunning,
ghastly beyond imagining.

For all our mixing,
our fixing of fact
our fighting impatience,
our fiddling to make faster,
there is nothing,
nothing we can ever do
to surpass her,
not even by stealing her,
subduing her,
snuffing her out,
shutting down her sweet light
with hard, glaring orange.

Here, at Rhoscolyn,
the pinpoint dancing
of diamond on azure
dazzles,
drawing the pleased eye.
In a March-stiff breeze
here are hares cantering,
black-tipped tuffets
matching each other,
matchless.
In an Indian spring
sentry Stonechats
lead us on
from pillar to post.

Here at Rhoscolyn,
Hen Harriers scissor
the dun marsh.
On a still March night,
here at Rhoscolyn,
there, in Palestine,
is the Pole Star
and witness friends
winking, pausing,
breath held still
to take ours in.

Oh stars,
dear stars,
oh how you are betrayed!

Wealth equals misery. 15.03.2010.

An article in the Observer 15.03.2010. by Jamie Doward discusses the relationship between wealth and misery. The findings by some researchers in The Economic Review that levels of happiness tend to stagnate as the people reach saturation point in terms of their consumption comes as no surprise.

Consumption eats the
soul away. Mammon maketh
man more miserable.


Wealth times consumption
divided by time equals
man-made misery.