Seven Wonders of the World

Waiting for machines to start working.

Avoiding phone calls from a gormless, over-achieving fuckstain who needs employees cos he's no-one else to listen to him, spraying opinions around like dark yellow piss. The kind of guy who rings radio stations.

Eating lunch with witless middle-aged niceties prattling on about their favourite celebrity in the jungle and talent shows for people who couldn't hold a job as a tv presenter.

Being heckled in a side-street by half-drunk state-dependent dropouts so bored of their own irrelevance that they need to extract uncomfortable reactions from passers-by to kill the time until they get pregnant or die of their own stupidity.

Fighting through groups of shriek-prone santa-suited blondes on their office christmas party from some equal opportunity employer. They will spend Monday being repeatedly shocked and incredulous with each re-telling of the news that two of their colleagues got off with each other after six bacardi and cokes.

Mindless destructive reduction of fellow human beings to the most objectionable way they differ from me.

Sitting in a pub drinking good coffee.

Homework #3

(to the Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso)

Tears come tumbling down your face

I drop them like kisses

Unfolding slowly

My nose is wet

And tumbling come your tears

I take them to me

Drop them gently

Tell me somethin'

And tumbling underneath

In yellow streetlight

About your face

What is this thing

And tumbling go your fears.

Letters to the Editor #1

Times of London, 4th October 1951.

Dear Sir,

I observe that the ladies of this country have an undue amount of time on their hands. I further observe that this abundance of time leads them to engage in activities of a questionable nature and of bafflingly little consequence.

That the fairer sex should direct their energies to worthwhile pursuits - indeed, that they are capable of genuine contributions beyond the realms of cooking, cleaning and haberdashery - is one of the great progressive steps of our time. Thus, we grant our unwed daughters take employment in the civil service, and play audience to discussions of politics and the sciences.

Sir, it is not working. Too many of our young ladies can be readily observed engaged in public giddiness, witless prattle, and inscrutable giggling.

They must be given more to do. Perhaps they should be made to read the lesser Classics, or engage in formal education until marriage. A change must be made, before the country is filled with contrivances, ephemera, and pointless confections of a distaff bent. Melodramatic "soap" operas, gossip-filled journals, and captioned portraits of slumbering housepets - these and other sufferances await us in unbearable measure, should we fail to act decisively.

Yours etcetera,

J. Charles Wimblethorpe, Esq.