Special Guest Blogger: Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us!
I may be one of America's greatest poets but I barely published a word in my own lifetime and hardly ventured out of my own front door but somehow people seem to know a lot about me, including my sex life.
I was a recluse, I would spend days hiding away in our family’s home in Amherst, Massachusetts and the only time i did go out was to go to school but my love was poetry, and not the usual stuff but i did it differently, breaking the rules of the usual grammar and rhymes, daring concepts and changing the meter on a whim which was a bit of a problem for most editors and why not very much was published at the time.
I had over 1,700 poems in the bottom drawer of my dresser, and only seven were published but after I died of Kidney Disease, my sister in law, Mabel, edited my poetry to fit a more traditional style although we had an agreement that she would burn them all when i died.
I was definitely the stay-at-home type, for the last twenty years of my life I never left the house and because i would always wore white, i became known as the Nun of Amherst but it was one of my favorite colours. If you must know, it looked rather fetching with my fair complexion and chestnut hair.
I did also suffer from problems with my eyes, an  intolerance to direct sunlight, so it was hard to go outside but i had a regular visitor in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who knew about publishing but he was always trying to 'improve' my poetry by straightening out the punctuation, taking out the half rhymes and adding Capital letters but i  said if you can't print them as i intended, stuff you and refused to let him alter them.
One regular thing was the romantic letters i wrote to my friend, Susan Gilbert,  who married my brother Austin and that did break my heart but if I couldn’t have her, I suppose it’s best to keep her in the family.
I did write about death quite a bit and because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me when but i never heard a Fly buzz, all i heard was: 'Shouldn't that sentence start with a Capital Letter'?

Churchy Types And Abortions

Groucho Marx said that: 'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them…well, I have others' and that comes to mind with Nigel Farage who has been spouting forth on the subject of abortions.
When it was revealed that he has been working with the whack-a-doodle right-wing US-based Christian group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), it was only a matter of time before the massive donation they made to his Party meant he would begin echoing their views and that day has come and the Reform UK leader this week said: 'It is ludicrous we allow abortion up to 24 weeks and that the law is totally out of date' and Parliament should debate rolling out stricter limits on abortion for women.
Now i take no side in the Abortion discussion, it is only between the man and woman directly involved but what i am for is having the choice left on the table so i hate it when religious types, or people speaking on behalf of them, stick their noses in and try and force their view onto people in what is already a difficult decision.  
The ADF that Farage is working with has called for abortion to be banned as well as strip away protections for LGBTQ+ people, in the name of Christianity and that may be successful in America where Religion is taken much more seriously, but not so much in Britain where it plays almost no part in the decision making process.
There was a discussion a few years ago about cutting the legal limit to have an abortion from the current deadline of 24 weeks to 22 weeks but it was dismissed after Health Chiefs warned this could inflict cruelty on vulnerable women and 90% of abortions happen in this country are performed before 10 weeks and only 1% are after 20 weeks and they are due to fatal conditions that mean the child would not survive birth or is a danger to the mother if the pregnancy continued.
If Farage thinks he can stir up ideological feelings in a culture war using abortion then he should note that in a British Attitudes Survey, 90% of Brits supported abortion in some circumstances and over the last decade the UK has seen a string of victories for abortion rights such as decriminalisation in Northern Ireland, the permanent adoption of abortion pills by phone after the pandemic and the introduction of buffer zones around clinics.
It is far too important a decision to have someone else try to intimidate a woman into what they can and can't do with their own bodies because of their own beliefs and we cant allow them to chip away at the right to an abortion, however we feel about it.

Special Guest Blogger: Greek God Eros

The Greeks have given us many great things such as thick yoghurt, sodomy, and triangles but they also gave me to the World and I was the irresistibly handsome God of Love, Sex and Desire.
I was born of Chaos and helped Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth) get it together and their offspring helped to populate the Universe and fill the pages of mythology and silly blogs like this and my role was to stir the passions and create desire, no matter how many hearts get broken in the process. To help in this mission, I carried a lethal love weapon, a magical bow with two string which nobody could withstand when my Arrows hit you.
Primarily known for the gold arrows from the string which denotes love, my other sting fired lead arrows and led the receiver to indifference so it’s best to get on my good side if you’re feeling lucky.
I went from being the most eligible bachelor in the Universe to a married man when i fell for the lovely mortal Psyche after accidentally pricking myself with one of my own arrows which was a match made not in Heaven, but in the Underworld.
My Mum, Aphrodite, was jealous of the beauty of my mortal girlfriend as people were leaving her altars barren to worship a mere mortal woman instead so she stole her away from me and imposed four difficult tasks on her which she did so as a reward Zeus turned Psyche into an immortal to live amongst the Gods with me.
My love life was complicated but my family life wasn't straight forward,  my mum complained to Themis that I did not grow and remained a perpetual child so Themis advised her to give me a brother and when she gave birth to Anteros, whenever I was near him, I grew into an adult but if Anteros was away, I shrank back to my previous, smaller size.
When the Romans took over the Greek they changed my name to Cupid and turned me from a handsome stallion of a God into a cute and cuddly baby angel which is a bit embarrassing but not as much as the Brits who thought they had stuck a statue of me in Piccadilly Circus only to find out it was actually a statue of my brother  Anteros.
The Sculptor thought I was too frivolous to immortalise so did the statue of goody two shoes Anteros instead who was the punisher of those who scorn love and the advances of others but the Londoners just shrugged and called it Eros anyway so it's not me but everyone thinks it is anyway so I'll take that, spin on that Anteros.

Boris Redux

The saying is that you cant keep a good man down but it seems the awful ones are pretty keen to come back also because Boris Johnson is apparently eyeing up a return to politics when the current Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, falls from grace.
Since being removed by his own Party in 2022 after swearing he never attended any of the lock-down breaking parties only to then be hung to dry by his own photographer showing he was not only there but pissing it up with the rest of them, Boris has been knocking out yet more babies (his 9th? 10th?) whilst plotting a miraculous return to politics like a bloated Orpheus muttering about his destiny and the betrayal he suffered at the hands of his Cabinet, who if memory served, refused to work with him.
Johnson’s premiership actually began in triumph if you are of a right wing bent, he had an enormous majority and the opposition Labour Party was in disarray until his self-inflicted scandals, corruption, lies and incompetence saw him squander it all away.
 Kemi, for her part, has been irrelevant and has on a few occasions ended the day rejecting the position she had appeared to be taking at the start of it and as she moves her party so far to the right that many have taken the short step to Nigel Farage's Reform Party, the relaunched UKIP which were once dismissed as Fruitcakes and racists but now are in the same political space as each other.    
As the Conservatives leak electorate, the Party’s best and brightest are manoeuvring into position to replace her and vying for the honour of being knifed by colleagues before the next election but if Boris, who was one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers at the time of his removal, thinks he can come back and be welcomed by the British public means he is even more deluded than that time he asked us to trust him that all the rules had been followed in Downing Street during lock-down.

Capitalism's Crap

The problem with Capitalism is that it falls over time and time again and it is the little guy who gets hit but as the people who run these things rely on Capitalism to maintain their large houses and even bigger bank accounts, it isn't going anywhere soon so keep that envelope for 'Sell Your Gold' handy because nothing is going to change.
The thing came crashing down in 2008 and from that we had the right wing ideology of austerity where everything was slashed in an ideological zeal which they said HAD to introduced to bring it down but which achieved nothing, the debt actually somehow went up from £1.0 bn to £1.5bn when austerity was officially ended in 2019 and achieved nothing except hollowing out all the essential services and here we are in 2025 still struggling with the results of the Conservative Parties response to 2008.
When the Labour Party took over a year ago the National Debt was £2.2 trillion and our taxes were at the highest rate since 1945 and dont get me started on the whole idea of Privatisation, what a bright idea that was.
The whole system is designed to make profit for large companies who don't care how people pay their extortionate prices because the Capitalists who now run the UK's public utilities do not seem to be serving the public very well, taking the customers left, right and centre, as the water, gas and electric suppliers know that whatever they put their prices to, we HAVE to have them.
Nobody can argue that since they went private the rail, utility, mail or water industries have been more efficient, generated investment, lowered costs or saved jobs because what actually happened is large scale redundancies, prices sky-rocketed and the previous British companies are largely in the hands of a small group of international investors who pay themselves billions in dividend payouts and as we found out recently, tax free.
The whole system should be shook up because Capitalism. Crap 'innit. 

My Summer Playlist

First Day of Summer so i thought i would change my playlist in my car to my Summer Playlist, and discovered it is only 15 songs and several of those are by the Beach Boys.
Black Velvet (Allanah Myles), Boys of Summer (Don Henley), Echo Beach (Martha and the Muffins), Under the Boardwalk (Drifters), Summer In the City (Lovin' Spoonful), Summer Breeze (Seals & Croft), Here Comes The Summer (Undertones), Summer Time (Sam Cooke) Summer Means Fun (Bruce & Terry), In The Summertime (Mungo Jerry) and Summer Madness (Kool & The Gang) as well as the 3 or 4 by the Beach Boys and that's it which is pretty poor for a season which most people seem to like the most out of the four.
In contrast, my Christmas playlist is 262 songs long and i would need to start listening to them in September to fit them all in which obviously says a lot about me, mainly that i am not much of a fan of the Season of bitey insects, sunburn, hot car interiors and waking up with the pillow stuck to my face with sweat.
If i had my way Summer would be a fortnight long with it never getting above 25C and a few of those days rainy because i do love a Summer shower and even better if it comes with an explosive electrical storm lighting up the sky, actually i am adding no Thunderstorms before 9pm because a Thunderstorm during the hours of daylight is just a waste of Mother Nature's electricity because it's like being a racist tit on Twitter, nobody notices because of all the other racist tits there so keep the storms until its dark when they are so much more spectacular.
I am sure there are many more songs i could add to my playlist but i assume i look every year and don't find any so looks as though it will be me and my 15 songs Summer on rotation until September and then my car interior will be filled with tunes about Snowmen and Santa.

TACO Bellend

There are many names for Donald Trump, most are based around his weird orange skin colour, his rotund figure or his small hands and that's even before we get into him being a criminal and sex pest or low IQ but the one which seems to have rattled him is TACO.
Until today i wouldn't have known what a TACO was if it landed in front of me, i had to Google it to find out that it's a traditional Mexican dish consisting of a small hand-sized wheat-based tortilla topped with a filling which still doesn't enlighten me much but  it now also stands for 'Trump Always Chickens Out' with regards to his imposing tariffs, and then when the economy tanks..well, chickening out and backing down again.
When asked by a reporter in the White House how he felt about the term TACO that has come into popular use? he replied: 'That is the nastiest question I have been ever asked. So nasty.'
Now that he has reacted, it will be uttered everywhere to  get under the man-toddler's tangerine coloured skin which is hilarious and especially as it is Mexican which Trump always rants about and promised to build a great big wall but never, chickened out of that also i suppose.
So we can now add TACO to the long list of insults for the Satsuma coloured sex pest but as we have a Taco Bell here, can i be the first to suggest TACO Bellend? Nope, seems that everyone else has beaten me to that one. Damn.

Another War Crime By Israel

More than 31 Palestinians were killed and 150 injured by Israeli fire on Sunday as they went to receive food at an aid distribution point set up by an Israeli-backed foundation in Gaza Witnesses said that Israeli soldiers opened fire as they headed toward the aid distribution site in Rafah.
The foundation claimed in a statement that it delivered aid 'without incident' and denied accounts of chaos and gunfire around its sites but the Israel Defense Forces said its initial findings show its forces 'did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the aid centre' and 'the reports are false and fabricated'.
The Red Cross confirming it was treating many wounded and had recovered the bodies of 23 Palestinians and mobile phone footage shows people running and ducking, with gunfire audible in the background.
Doctors at the Nasser hospital reported chaotic scenes, with dozens of bodies being brought in with most injuries were shot in the upper parts of the body, the head, chest, and abdomen.
Australian doctor Ahmed Abu Sweid says there was a “mass casualty event” today and describes the hospital as overwhelmed, with medical supplies running out.
'These are all civilian casualties that were asked to go to an aid centre to collect food, and ended up presenting with gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds' he says. 'Most of them are critical. Some of them arrived dead on arrival'.
The United Nations has called the distribution in Gaza 'a death trap' but as yet, nothing from the continued backers of Israels abhorrent genocide funnily enough.
The end to the regime in Palestine and Israel came not come soon enough, hopefully ending with Netanyahu and his cronies in the dock of the Hague.

Politicians And Big Business Bad For Our Health

The Ed Vasey story only enshrines in my mind that you really shouldn't trust politicians (of any flavour) and big business because both will screw you over given the opportunity.
Conservative Peer Vasey, tabled a proposal to delay the UK’s tobacco and vapes act which would gradually raise the age at which consumers can buy cigarettes and other tobacco products, just after  the cigarette company whose IQOS product is the world-leading heated tobacco brand, paid for his visit and accommodation to its research facility in Switzerland.
Vasey put forward the amendment saying that more research should be done into the potential harms that such products such as heated tobacco can cause relative to cigarettes which is exactly the legal challenge brought by Philip Morris in 2023 against the proposed tobacco and vapes bill but was withdrawn after the previous Government challenged it.
Tobacco companies market heated tobacco products, which warm pre-rolled tobacco sticks to a lower temperature than traditional cigarettes, as a less harmful alternative to smoking because their studies have shown that the devices emit fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes but doctors and researchers have said that most of the research into heated tobacco has been paid for by the industry, and that the long-term health are unknown but inhaling any tobacco is known to be a danger to health.
Cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris once tried to spin a report into smoking in the Czech Republic as having 'positive effects' on the nation’s economy.
There was the revenue from excise and other taxes on cigarettes before smokers met their demise, and the 'health-care cost savings due to early mortality' savings were weighed against the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses, and the lost taxes no longer paid by dead smokers, the Czech Republic actually came out ahead.
When asked if they were seriously basing it on their products were so lethal that people actually dying prematurely was a selling point, they replied that they were not suggesting that there is a benefit to society from the diseases related to smoking.
No, of course they weren't, that would be absurd, they are basically national heroes.

Special Guest Blogger: Queen Anne

One of the most important acts of a Royal is to have a child to carry on the Royal lineage and I did try, I had 17 children in total but lost all of them as babies except one, William, who reached the age of 11 before realising that he was a bit odd, living so long so he popped his clogs and that changed the course of the royal family and the end of the Stuart dynasty and allowed the German Hanover dynasty to begin.
I was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from  1702 and the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1707 when the Kingdoms of Scotland and England merged with one Parliament.
I was married to the Prince of Denmark, George, but even I found him very boring.
He suffered from asthma and when he had an attack he breathed very heavily which wasn't great for him but showed that at least he was still alive. If he didn’t pant loudly he might be carried off and buried by mistake.
As he didn’t have much work to do ruling the country, he spent his time making model ships so when I came to the throne I made him Lord High Admiral.
I was plagued by poor health throughout my life, primarily gout which not only meant I was unable to move much but my sedentary lifestyle meant I also piled on the pounds and had to be carried to my Coronation for which i was actually 51st in the throne for.
After the whole Catholic's are evil thing and shouldnt be trusted with sharp kitchen implements or seats of Royalty at the time, I leapfrogged over 50 Catholics who had stronger claims but were excluded from the line of succession.  
I fell ill at Christmas in 1713 and as i was so feverish and kept losing consciousness, my death was seen as imminent but I wasn't known as the most stubborn woman in Great Britain for nothing and held on for months until a stroke did for me in July 1714 and ushered in the Germans.