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From today (July 7th 2026) for the next 5 days, most of my books are available free to read so do check them out by clicking the link
(NB if the weird, presumably AI generated, 'gym' book is still there ignore it. Its nothing to do with me and has hijacked my page.)
And if you are living in this world you could do worse this summer than re-read E. M. Forster’s (1909) short story The Machine Stops. Look out for phrases that will ricochet around your brain;
The story opens revealing Vashti “a swaddled lump of flesh… with a face as white as fungus” who was “seized with the terrors of direct experience.”
“People never touched… the custom had become obsolete owing to the Machine”.
Meanwhile – here’s a piece to keep you til I see you again in the Autumn.
Grasping & Gasping
(colours of the world...)
Rotting hands grab green-backs
Star-spangled oligarchs enjoy renown
Stagnant blue bloods still leach off the people
Achromatic suits blame folk who are brown
Black ooze fuels purple fevered consumerism
Thwaites great white monolith warms its belly
Maroon liquid flows in Gaza unquenched
Blanks in nacreous garb spin and sparkle on telly
Yellow journos hold none accountable
Algorithms rush us straight to red
Spew beige sound-bites that don’t
And bile not worth being said
And The Grey multiply stumble stagger and shuffle
Skin eyes and lungs the colour of ash
All the poisons they drink eat and inhale
Urban armies of jaundiced zombies buying death for cash
My 60s childhood was indigo, burnt pink and emerald
Now most are in black or mourning shades of slate
Dazzling peach hot chocolate tart turquoise I remember
Today we practice denial but dress for our last date
As the lords of greed grasp and grab sealing our fate
*
cheerio