Special Guest Blogger: Bushongo/Kuba God Mbombo

Most creation stories start with one all-powerful individual that is responsible for creating all things in the universe, but few versions begin with a massive amount of puking.
In the beginning, there was just me, the darkness and a lot of water and it was very, very lonely and all that solitude made me sick to the stomach, literally because it gave me a bellyache which got worse and worse until i just began vomiting everywhere.  
First out, along with my breakfast was the Sun which sorted out the darkness and then i up-chucked the Moon, the stars and then finally the Earth and a pile of diced carrots which was weird because they hadn't been created yet and i had eaten cornflakes for breakfast.
The heat and light soon sorted out all the water which evaporated creating clouds and hills and mountains emerged from the water.
I was feeling a lot better thank you for asking but after another shorter stomach cramp up came a leopard, eagle, crocodile, a fish, tortoise, heron, scarab, a goat and a black leopard-like animal and three male and one female humans, my kids.
These nine animals went on to create all the world’s creatures and the human's multiplied nicely and the male kids helped out by vomiting up ants to turn over the soil and plants and trees and things but my daughter discovered lightening and wreaked havoc with it so i considered sending
her to her room but instead banished her to the sky which wasn't very clever of me as she now threw down thunderbolts and things at us.  
Problem was she was responsible for fire so i showed the humans how to make it from trees so they could still make tools, weapons and cook food with it.
Once the creation was complete and peaceful, i felt much better and the indigestion seemed to be under control so i stepped back and told my eldest son Loko Yima to keep an eye on things and retired from the Universe building game.
I do look down every now and then just to see how everyone is doing and it seems to be going okay considering your inauspicious start especially as a dodgy guts can go up and out the mouth or downwards and out of another place and your planet may have been very different place if you had been created by me having the squirts that day.

Special Guest Blogger: John Smith

All 16 year old boys have a need to explore and visit new countries and 16th Century England was great for that because we were involved in battles all over so i visited many battlefields all over Europe starting with the Netherlands, fighting for them in it's war of independence from Spain.
When the dust settled on that one i trotted off to the Mediterranean and after a spot of pirating, fought against the Ottoman Turks in Hungary where i was captured but escaped by beheading my captors and returned to England and that's where my story really starts.
Plans were being made to exploit the New World and i attached myself to a group of 100 adventurers preparing to establish an English colony in North America and i was named the leader as i had exactly what a new colony would need, a lack of compassion for whoever was already there.
After five months of puking over the side of the ship, we arrived at the Chesapeake Bay, and disembarked at what was to become Jamestown and i planned to trade for corn with the local Indians but one day i was were ambushed by members of the Powhatan empire who took me to their emperor, Big Chief Powhatan.
I never spoke Powhatan and they never spoke English and i did the English thing of speaking English even louder but they still didn't understand me and they were about to be put me to death when the chief’s young daughter placed herself between me and my executioners.
The Chief summoned his shamans who checked with their big totem pole thing who obviously said i was a good guy so they agreed not to gut me horribly.
With my head still attached to my shoulders, they sent me away and i set about making Jamestown the best town in the New World or it would have been if the colonists didn't keep dying and they didn't stupidly burn the place down, we spent one winter living in the charred ruins but the local Indians bought us some food as the leaders daughter acted as a intermediary between us.
I did hear she married an Englishman and went to live in England but she did help make sure Jamestown didn't gain a reputation as the settlement where everybody went to die, like Eastbourne is today, but while out hunting in a canoe, i accidentally set off a powder bag which was in my lap so i took my charred nads back to England for treatment.
With my love plums all patched up, i returned to different parts of the New World and explored and named the places so for example the first place i landed was a christened New England because it was green and pleasant, a stinking bog was obviously named after Boston in Lincolnshire and the disease ridden hell-hole on the coast was perfect to become the New Plymouth.

Kiev For Eurovision in 2023

It's Eurovision week and where usually it is anybodies guess who will walk away with the glass microphone trophy, its a foregone conclusion this year because it's going to Ukraine which wouldn't be so bad if their song wasn't so terrible.
For once the United Kingdom's song isn't awful, i never bought into the reason we always did so bad was due to everyone in Europe hating us, it is purely down to our entries being so instantly forgettable, a box of red, white and blue face paints to you if you can name the singer and song of last years UK entry without googling it.
The nations i put a little tick next to in the first semi-final (Croatia, Bulgaria and Denmark) are already out making me wonder if the people voting had the volume turned up on their TV's because we have The Netherlands, Greece and Lithuania gracing the final and to be polite, their efforts are as dull as dishwater although i was glad to see those wacky Moldovan's make it even if the presenter introduced them as coming from Moldovia.
Still, the whole point of the Eurovision is that it's a bit mad, a bit trippy and more than a bit gay where the best song doesn't always win as Ukraine will prove this year so i will see you in Kiev next year...if it's still there.

Special Guest Blogger: Sir Basil Zaharoff

You know you have achieved something in life when you get given a knighthood and i was very good at my job, just that my job was selling arms to many nations to fight wars that i had a hand in starting.
My first job was as a tour guide in Turkey and then i became a tout for a brothel but far more lucrative was my next line of employment as a fire man, not a fireman as in someone who puts put fires, but a man of fire as in a professional arsonist burning down mansions of the wealthy so the Constantinople Fire Brigade could extort rewards from their owners for saving the valuables within.
It was by luck that i met with a Swedish captain who was about to leave his job as an agent of arms manufacturer Thorsten Nordenfelt so i applied, and got his job and so began my spectacular career just as the political and military instability in the Balkan states, Turkey and Russia hit its height.
As any salesman will tell you, the best way to make a living selling anything is to create a demand for it and when it is weapons you are selling, trying to starting a bunch of wars is the way to go so that's exactly what i did.
After selling the world's first submarine to the Greeks, i went running to the Turkish government to tell them their enemy Greece now had a submarine and persuaded them to buy two of their own.
Then i went to Russia and explained that as Greece and Turkey now had submarines, they were such a threat to Russia it would be madness not to have a few of their own and they ordered six.  
To balance things up Thorsten Nordenfelt produced a range of anti-torpedo boat guns but it turned out that the subs were actually useless and fell apart as soon as they tried to fire a torpedo but by then they had been paid for and i had moved on to hawking the first automatic machine gun.
It was the first but there was a better version being offered around at the same time by a rival firm but i managed to not only sabotage the presentation but be stood next to the potential buyers when it failed and just happen to mention that as luck would have it, i had machine gun they could buy.
After the turn of the century i held many sales meetings with the Germans who were concerned by the British Empire and then went straight from Berlin to Paris to tell the French that the Germans were rearming and they really should get themselves some decent military hardware to meet the threat posed by Germany.
World War 1 came and my profits from selling weapons to multiple nations on both sides of the conflict exploded like a British House hit by a bomb i had sold the German's during the blitz and i was asked by the British to negotiate to drag Greece into the war on their side and to persuade the Ottoman Empire to defect from the Germans.
I agreed as long as i was rewarded with a Knighthood for my services so i could call myself Sir. Despite my best efforts to prolong it indefinitely, World War I did eventually end, and i spent the remainder of my years working at a Monte Carlo casino but unfortunately dying before nuclear weapons were a thing, the money i could have made selling those things to everyone!

Special Guest Blogger: Harvey Ball

After serving 27 years in the military, and then another six in the Army Reserves, i was pretty fed up with war so i retired from the service to become an advertising artist and started up my own business and i was pretty good at it, so good in fact that i was approached by the State Mutual Life Assurance Company who asked me to come up with a design to make into a badge to cheer their miserable people up.
Within ten minutes i had designed a simple bright sunny yellow smiley face with narrow oval eyes with the one on the right slightly larger than the other and a slightly off center mouth.
The executives loved it and paid me $45 for my creation which they turned into 100 badges and handed out to their staff and soon other people wanted the smiley badges too after a New York City radio station WMCA began giving away t-shirts with my cheerful design on it and in 8 years 50-million of the things had been sold and it had become an international icon after the French adopted it and started to use it and it appeared on t-shirts, hats and mugs and became known as a 'smilie'.
So you would probably assume i made a fortune and lived out the rest of my life driving speed boats and living in a mansion? You would assume wrong because of the tens of millions it generated, i only saw that original $45 as i never trademarked or copyrighted it but as the inventor of the original smiley face i couldn't be to upset about it.
A British company called The Smiley Company now holds the rights and has an annual turnover of $167 million but i died of liver failure in 2001 so i saw my icon become the basis for every emoticon on the Internet but that poo one had nothing to do with me.

Special Guest Blogger: Shi Pei Pu

I grew up in Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan, where i learned French and attended the Yunnan University, graduating with a literature degree and then become an actor and singer where i met the Frenchman assigned to the job of accountant at the French embassy in Beijing, Bernard Boursicot, and the Chinese said, hey, he isn't the brightest cookie, maybe we could pump him for French secrets.
I first met him at a Christmas Party and he told me that he had only been with men and wanted to go with a woman so despite being dressed in a suit, i told him that actually, i was a female Beijing opera singer who had been forced to live as a man to satisfy his father's wish to have a son.
Amazingly he believed me and with Boursicot convinced that he was with a woman, we quickly developed a sexual relationship, maintained in total darkness and with things tucked neatly away so he never realised that his lover never actually had a vagina.
I also convinced him to pass French secrets to me which i handed to the Chinese Government and even when he was posted in Mongolia, he kept up passing me the secrets but i had a plan to keep him from straying, i told him i was pregnant and next time he came to visit, i presented him with his 'son', or more accurately, a boy i had purchased from a local doctor.
Boursicot bought me and his son to Paris because he wanted to be responsible for his 'son' and the 'mother of his son' and the Chinese government basically had already got all the secret documents they could hope for from the diplomat but he bought us into contact with less stupid French people who got a doctor to have a good look at my private parts and i was revealed as a man and Boursicot was arrested by French authorities for passing on secrets to the Chinese but the French President, keen to avoid any tensions between France and China, pardoned me.
Upon discovering the truth of our relationship, Boursicot attempted suicide by slitting his throat to escape the humiliation but survived the attempt and i returned to performing but rather than the episode be forgotten, it was turned into one of the most famous plays of all time, Madame Butterfly, oh well. 

Beergate And Partygate

Keir Starmer's joy at thumping the Conservatives at the local elections must have been numbed slightly after the announcement that he is being investigated by Durham Police for a possible break of lock-down rules in April 2021.
As the Conservative Party came out to support Boris Johnson when he was being pilloried for breaking the law, the Labour Party big-wigs have been out in force to explain how a beer and a curry with his colleagues while on the campaign trail is very different to what Boris got up to and they do have a point, but if Keir is the latest recipient of a Fixed Penalty Notice for breaking Covid rules, he has to go.
While it was Boris who made, and then broke, his own rules, Keir voted and supported them and has been making almost daily calls for the Prime Minister to resign after the Police delivered his fine which puts the Labour man in a very awkward position if a buff envelope lands on his own doormat shortly.    
The Police may yet come down on Labour's side of the fence which is that Keir merely had a drink and shared a takeaway meal with party colleagues as allowed for 'work purposes' or they may go along with the Tory MPs and right wing press claiming that this was a social gathering or party for 30 people and not work.
I like Keir, he is not a bundle of laughs but we need a serious and a tad boring person in charge but while part of me feels he is being stitched up by the Tories and right wing as a way of diluting Boris's own partygate scandals, another part of me see's this as a chance to install the formidable Angela Rayner as Labour leader.
As the police investigated previously and found no case to answer, it is stated that they have reopened the case after new evidence came to light and Keir has already been shown to have made an 'honest mistake' when he stated the aforementioned Mrs Rayner wasn't present when she was which could put a crimp in her own leadership prospects but for now, the Tories have 'Beergate' to throw at him whenever he brings up their failings at keeping to their own laws.

Ireland For The Irish?

Amidst all the fun of seeing the Conservative Party getting their arses handed to them in the local elections, a more serious story was developing in Northern Ireland where Nationalist Sinn Fein gained the most votes raising the specter of a referendum for Northern Irish to leave the UK.
As the Liberal Democrats and DUP have now discovered, throwing your lot in with the right wing side of British politics is not a healthy choice for your long term politics prospects after the party swallowed Boris Johnson's promises that he would not countenance a border in the Irish Sea and backed his Brexit Leave campaign only to be thrown under the bus when he not only countenanced it but gave it his full backing.
The DUP imploded and went through three party's leader's in the space of three weeks and now find themselves behind the Party whose aim is to unite Northern Ireland with the Republic and to anyone of a certain age, is remembered as the political voice of the IRA during the troubles when the paramilitary group was carrying out bombings and shootings.
The Sinn Fein vice-president Michelle O'Neill is now entitled to the first minister role and has stated that it will not call an immediate 'border poll' but will bide it's time and widen support for a referendum by first selling its vision of what a united Ireland would look like to make sure it has enough support before even considering it, knowing that Sinn Fein in the Irish Republic is polling ahead of any other party and any border poll would need to be voted on in both parts of the island.
While the future of the United Kingdom has been focused on Scotland, the future of Great Britain is now at threat which makes Boris Johnson's current headache even worse as despite everything else the history books would show, it would underline his name as the Prime Minister who oversaw the breaking up of the four nations proving that Brexit, as expected, is the awful gift that just keeps giving.

Winning With Lucy

A colleague has been trying to get me to join her in buying some stocks and shares but i generally balk at the idea of putting money into something i know nothing about but armed with 5 companies that someone in the know slipped our way (not guaranteed but as close to a sure thing as it gets apparently), we did look at a couple of apps like eToro but we didn't understand it so we let the idea drop and had a discussion about Johnny Depp and James Franco instead although i still quite fancy the idea i just have no idea how to go about it.
I am on safer ground doing my football bets although my rapidly dwindling Skybet funds may suggest otherwise but i do have a system which is never bet against the team in red.
For some reason football teams in red always seem to be more successful which is why i am backing the red wearing Liverpool to pip the blues of Manchester City to the Premier league title although i am dreading the inevitable harping from the far too many Liverpool fans i know.  
My team Arsenal are playing Tottenham on Thursday which is almost a play off for the final Champions League place but as Tottenham are at home that means Arsenal will be playing in their away kit which isn't red so i fear facing Friday morning avoiding all Spurs fans.
Relegated are Watford and Norwich who both play in yellow and will be joined by white Leeds or blue Everton and they are being replaced in the top league by Fulham (white) and Bournemouth (red) so another red team to lose my money on next season.
I'm not sure how they decide who is the 'home' team in the UEFA European Cup Finals but in the three finals we have the red Liverpool beating white clad Real Madrid and all red Roma beating half red Feyenoord but as Eintracht Frankfurt wear black and Rangers wear Blue, that one is heading for a boring nil-nil yawnfest and the Germans winning on penalties.
So until i manage to navigate the stock market and fling money at those 5 (not guaranteed but as close to a sure thing) companies, i say get to the bookies and fill out the betting slip with Liverpool, Roma and Frankfurt, you know it makes sense.

Disclaimer: The author of this blog cannot be held responsible for any losses resulting in filling out betting slips with Liverpool, Roma and Frankfurt and if you knew how often she fails to win on her football bets, you would have to be stark raving insane to listen to her.

Too Funny But Tories Not Laughing

The voters of England didn't just give the governing Conservative Party black eye, they bundled them into the back of a van and beat the crap out of them with cricket bats as with a few results yet to come in, the loss is expected to exceed 300 seats.
If the local election results were replicated at a general election the Government would not only lose their stonking great 80 seat majority but would be 48 short of an overall majority so would be scrambling around for someone to partner with which after the previous Lib Dem coalition, nobody would would touch which would allow the Labour and Liberal Party's to pick out the new Downing Street curtains.  
It was a heart-lifting sight to see a very dejected looking Boris Johnson on TV this evening saying it was 'a tough night' which is not what the local Tories who lost their seats said, they laid the blame squarely at the door of number 10 and the law breaking Prime Minister, the newly unemployed ex-leader of Carlisle city council said it all when he explained the loss as: 'Basically I just don’t feel people any longer have the confidence that the prime minister can be relied upon to tell the truth'.
He is now pondering calling a general election but that isn't only to save his skin because the plotting is now going full steam ahead behind him to replace him as Tory MP's fear what happened to their local representatives will happen to them soon enough as waiting in the wings are more Fixed Penalty notices, the Sue Gray report and the privileges committee inquiry and none of them will improve the mood in Tory HQ.
I took the rest of the country a while to catch on to what a disaster Boris and his motley crew of imbeciles have done but i can't say i'm not enjoying it, i just hope he hangs around for a while yet and acts as a constant reminder to voters just how awful the Tories are so at the next election, they not only lose but are reduced to the edges of our Democracy where they belong.