To the naughty step for anyone who thinks a left-winger could win

Ok- are you listening now? People in this country won’t vote left-wing. We know this. It’s a given fact. We’ve been told it for years and don’t listen to any of those Scottish people who said they voted SNP because they liked their anti-austerity programme. Why should what people SAY about their reasons for voting be in any way relevant? We know, and they don’t. Got it? Milliband was left-wing and nobody voted for him. So that proves it, end of discussion.

But wait! Didn’t thousands of people say they didn’t vote for Ed because they thought he was Tory-lite? Doesn’t that suggest they might have voted for a left-wing candidate, if they’d been offered one?

No!! Because people in the Labour Party knew he was left-wing, even if no-one else did, and he lost, so shut up and let us get on with deciding which Blairite we want to lead the party now.  No-one in the LP wants a leftist leader, so even if one did get in, the LP itself wouldn’t support it.

But, hang on! Didn’t a majority of local Labour party branches (or whatever they’re called) support Ed against his brother because they knew he was more left-wing? So they supported a left-winger. 

For god’s sake, don’t be so silly! Ed was left-wing, he lost the election, end of.

But WE didn’t know he was left-wing.

Shut up! No left-winger will ever win an election – geddit? What’s wrong with you, aren’t you listening?

Yes, but –

SHUT UP!  OK- where was I? O dear! We’ve just had tens of thousands of people joining the LP because some weird, loony left-winger put his hand up to be leader of the party.  Well – that just proves it! No real LP member or supporter would EVER, EVER support a left-winger.

But didn’t quite a lot of them vote to select Ed coz he was left wing?

I’m not going to tell you again, one more interruption and it’s the naughty step for you!  All those people who joined to vote for the loony left are BAD PEOPLE. They are what we call “entryists” – pay attention, there will be a spelling test at the end.  These people are entirely different to the people who joined to vote for that lovely Yvette or Andy or whatshername. Those people are not entryists, they are exciting new blood who share the concerns we have to do anything we can to get into power and end Tory rule.

Anything? Even running a left-wing candidate?

No! Obviously not that, stupid.

So, how do you know people won’t vote for that?   

Because they didn’t vote for Foot and Benn back in 1983, and then they did vote for Blair all those years.

So – people who weren’t even born then are going to remember that left-wing meant some upper-class academic and a guy in a donkey-jacket who looked like he should have been the archbishop of Canterbury, not Prime Minister?

Well- ok then. Young people might get all starry-eyed, but pensioners won’t vote for lefts. They’re worried about their pensions.

You mean they’ll vote for the lot that have already mucked about with their pensions?

Look! We have to reassure them a Labour government won’t do anything to their pensions.

But they already have done something to their pensions! How much worse can it get? Ok, don’t answer that one, I don’t want to know.  Hmmm, there’s only one lot of people who we really know how they’re going to vote, and that’s the lot who joined the LP to support the left-winger.

But they don’t count. They are BAD PEOPLE. Right, that’s it! Naughty step for you!  

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Another daft kids' story in (bad) verse - reading the instructions properly on writing comps.

Well, this time I did write down the correct location of a writing comp, but I thought, when it said Children's Competition, it meant to write a story for children, not for children themselves to write it. But I found my story would qualify for their 500 word flash fiction section, but somehow I don't think it'll get anywhere, as it is definitely a children s story. There is a skill in reading the details of these writing comps, and I've never been one to take in details like that - one of the problems with being too much of a right-brain thinker. But at least, at this rate, I will have enough material to produce a whole collection of bad-poetry stories for kids. All I need now is an illustrator.

The set title of the story was A Skinny Dragon:

THE SKINNY DRAGON

There was a skinny little dragon

With knobbly knees

Who loved to go and

Climb in trees.

She had lovely pink scales,

So her Mum called her Rosie,

And every day she ate

A bowl of ambrosia,

Because she was magical and that’s what you eat if you’re magical.

Her best mate was Vera,

She was purple and green,

Dragons are all different,

None are the same.

She had funny toes

And a scrinched-up nose,

She liked to play games

And was a terrible tease,

But not nearly as good as Rosie at climbing trees.

So- there was skinny Rosie up in a tree,

And Vera down below dancing with glee.

They’d just reached the age when they’d started to fly,

And off Rosie went into the sky,

Flapping her wings as hard as she could,

Gliding along into the woods.

But that wasn’t such a great idea, 

Because she was getting far from home.

Then a great gust of wind came 

and blew her along.

Out of sight.

But she landed alright.

Then she saw, something standing nearby,

Staring at her with wide-open eyes,

With only two legs and no tail,

And skin without a single scale.

The thing suddenly shouted really loud 

“Have at you, fiend!”

It was really scary 

and made Rosie scream.

She grabbed the …. thing ..  and looked around,

“Wh- where?” she stuttered, What’s a fiend? What’s that pointy thing in your hand? Why are you looking at me like that?”

And the boy – coz that’s what he was – said

“Why, you’re just skinny and pink, with knobbly knees,

You’re almost small enough for me to squeeze!”

Then Vera came crashing down through the trees,

And landed with a loud, purple thump

And, rubbing her bum, coz she’d got quite a bump,

Stared at the boy, who stared back at her.

And Rosie yelled “There’s a monster here!

He said it’s called a fiend!”

And the boy stamped his foot and screamed 

“No! YOU’RE the monsters, 

Though you’re pink and skinny and purple and green,

“I’ve come to rescue a princess, and it’s all gone wrong,

“I’ll never be a hero, I may as well go home.”

“A PRINCESS?!” the dragons yelled, with great big grins,

BUT

“You don’t look like a princess’s pal, 

You’re brown with no scales 

and you’ve got no tail 

and WE’VE been flying for almost a week

and YOU haven’t even got wings.”

“Well, I thought dragons ate princesses for tea,

“And if I rescued one, then a hero I’d be,

“I got a sword and went to explore,

“But I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“But, if we met a princess we’d be ever so polite,

And we’d never, ever eat one, we’d be nice.”

So, they took the boy home and gave him some ambrosia till he’d cheered up, then they sent him home and went to look for a princess instead.  But ever after that the boy was always a little bit magical, because the dragons didn’t know you shouldn’t give ambrosia to humans.

New poem about osteoporosis

Slipping Out

I didn’t know it’d be like this,

Her breath cut in half,

The slowly collapsing

Basket of her ribs

So undramatically removing

Itself from her life.

“Silence is golden,” her mother said, “Girls should be seen and not heard.” Well, there’s no silence now in that grinding struggle, just breathe! breathe! Sipping air in teaspoonfulls past the slithering mass of stomach, it should not be here in the chest, it sneaked in slowly through the hiatus, stealthily like a tumour, weighting the lung, cozying up to the heart. It’s almost beautiful, that mayfly wing transparency of her spine on the X-ray, vanishing quietly from her.

All those years of holding her words,

Swallowing anger and pain,

The words tail-backing in her throat,

Bracing herself not to let them tumble out.

She’s free, now, to say them.

And sometimes I hear the never-spoken truths

Slipping from her,

Fluttering upwards

From a chest that’s too small now

To hold them.