300. May's Brexselection v Corbyn's Diarrhoea option

After months of political constipation, May is going to give the Westminster weevils another vote. WEHEEEEEY I hear you cry (not).

On the 12th March (just 3 days before the Ides of March – has this woman not heard of Julius Caesar?) MPs will be allowed to pick from her limited and tainted selection. They can choose between bad and dreadful which will look something like this...

Plus, in the wake of the 9 defecations from Labour (no – that is not a typo) Corbyn has been dragged kicking and screaming to actually agree a previously stated Labour Party plan. Depending which Labour Party spokesperson has the mic, this is something like a policy on a second vote/referendum – albeit one that is vague, unformed, kind of sloppy/watery and uncomfortable for everyone. Let’s call it Corbyn's diarrhoea option…

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NB. If you would like to try some mixed race magic, a 7-day Ella & the Knot Fairies offer starts next Tuesday.

Amanda's books UK

Amanda's books US

299. This Blog post will change your life…

… (It won’t)

Ok - after last week’s splurge of sarcasm I realise that it’s me that is out of step so, this week I’m doing NORMAL.

I had a cursory look online to see what counts for normal these days.

So firstly, ignore the dire warnings about the appalling state of the natural world and obviously don’t read my dystopian sci fi novella unless you are mad

Zero One Zero Two

Zero One Zero Two (UK)

Instead, look at what rich, thin, vacuous women are wearing at various spangly meaningless events or watch comedians who have run out of material talking to each other on game shows. Stomached that for about 2 minutes.

Then apparently there are lots of mysterious things those nasty, pesky doctors don’t want you to know; medical and beauty secrets that will magically make you younger / healthier / more attractive/ thinner yada yada yada with NO effort. So, I came up with two of those – a. don’t eat shit. b. walk around a bit. Ok that’s that done.

Plus, here is a picture of my half-century+++ face after four days with my grandson, little sleep and no makeup because, apparently, if you are a woman, that makes you a hero these days. I generally wear eyeliner and lipstick if I’m performing because it’s quite important for an audience to be able to clearly read facial expressions while I have a rant about how we're all fucked by Brexit (woops, sorry, shouldn't have said the 'B' word) but apparently the rest of the time I am akin to a firefighter diving into a raging inferno to rescue 8 children from an 11^th floor or a civil rights activist... just because I leave home without slapping ridiculously expensive chemical kack on my face every single day and go places where other people might see me.

Also – here is a gluten-free egg-free recipe for coconut macaroons that will change the way you eat forever (it really won’t).

Shredded coconut - as much as you can get in half a small bowl (your local Asian supermarket will probably sell pre-shredded coconut)

About half that amount again in rice flour and ground almonds (if your budget is tight – more rice flour than ground almonds)

Vanilla essence if you have it. Vanilla extract or real vanilla if you won the lottery

Wee bit salt

The equivalent of 6 tbsp of melted coconut oil (pound shops or Aldi etc sell it cheap)

Honey or – if you just came into an inheritance – maple syrup

Mix and mush

Squidge into balls and bake in medium oven for 15 – 20 mins

Leave to set for about an hour (or less if you cannot wait)

Eat with a cup of tea either on your own or with a friend if you are feeling generous. Hide some in a tin so they don’t eat them all. Couldn’t be arsed to take a picture but I’m assuming most folk who eat food or ever ambled by a bakery know what a coconut macaroon looks like.

I know I really should have put up a story about how something inane changed my life but I can’t think of anything apart from GROWING UP.

See – a whole blog post that is entirely normal…

298. This Remainer wants XXX Brexit

I mean raw – served up still bleating. I want a Brexit so hard it would penetrate pack ice like steaming piss through warm ice-cream; so potent it could push through bedrock like a hot knife through rancid butter. I want Brexit so pure it would make high end cocaine seem like weevil-infested dust. I want Brexit so tough it would make John Wick look like a soggy disabled kitten.

And in the words of Queen I WANT IT ALL AND I WANT IT NOW…

Then I want it shoved down Ree Smogg’s weird neck. Build Brexit into a wall to knock Boris Johnson’s fat head against. Grill it into dry toast that Corbyn has to eat every day for a year with no fluids. Form Brexit into concrete shoes for Gove to wear in Parliament.

I am sick of hoping for common sense to prevail. I am tired of waiting for mediocre politicians to chuck in the towel like Cameron and Clegg and go fuck up somewhere else. I am weary of waiting for decency to outplay intolerance and for rationality to get a foothold and rise up over the heads of the greedy and self-serving and those lacking self-awareness. I am fed up of trusting to the end of wilful ignorance.

So – come on. Let’s get it over with. Let’s rip the dirty plaster off the infected wound of British democracy.

As the blue collar America MAGA brigade who voted for Trump in response to his dog whistle politics and white supremacy begin to ache, so will the Brexit voters when they finally realise they’ve been duped. The tax year is ending across the pond with huge numbers of US voters waking up to just how much worse off their families are since Trump gave their money to the billionaires whose validation Trump  - a multiple failed business conman - craves. Well – it’s too late.

I want to see the faces of the Brexiteers when regulated workers from the EU are replaced by unregulated workers from anywhere we can get them. I want to experience the reactions of those who followed Theresa May to Armageddon as they struggle on growing NHS waiting lists while – presumably - she will still get seen promptly.

Let’s see the responses of those who followed Johnson’s jingoist gibberish when they stand in the supermarket queues in the hope of buying scarce or unaffordable fresh produce – while he and his ilk shuffle off to WE’RE OK LAND – or whatever place the well-heeled shits go to when they’ve finished screwing things up for everyone else.

I want to hear the howls of the folk in Wales and Sunderland and other areas that voted heavily (without bothering to check the facts) to ‘reclaim our borders’ when companies along with Nissan swell the Brexodus and industries like steel, complete their flight and the EU funding that has helped keep many areas, ignored by Westminster, afloat after Thatcher wrecked working class communities, dries up.

And yes – the people who didn’t vote for this nightmare will hurt too, along with the many millions who saw sense too late but I still want it.

I want the flea infested, un-house-trained, incontinent cur to have its face shoved in the steaming pile it dumped in the corner. And yes we’ll all have to suffer the stink but, just for today, I do not care. Right now my inner 8 year old is stamping her foot…

297. Sanity or Insanity…

Today’s options – a couple of pleasant distractions or down that rabbit hole - just click the links.

My silliest poem

Snail Love

Or – how about my quirkiest book (nb - the original edition of this off-beat, eccentric histoire d’amour was written several years before auctioning virginity on the internet became a thing…)

The Companion Contract - uk

The Companion Contract - us

But, if you really haven’t had enough of Brexit – this is my favourite Brexit essay –

Brexit & the Goldilocks Zone

Bonne chance

296. The freedom of 20 years without it…

2019 marks 20 years since I went television-free. Younger folk may be saying – so what! But trust me – many of my generation regard TV as second only to oxygen in their list of essentials. Once, when the TV licence Gestapo came to my house, they even checked the bathroom for signs of TV usage.

But then, I've never owned a microwave / dishwasher / smart phone, never had a Fb or other social media account (this blog is it) never used a credit card despite persistent pressure from my bank. I don’t own a car blah, blah, blah. For the strange and looming month of February why not step out here with me; outside the ring, outside the loop, outside the matrix.

Yes, I know, I’m never going to be 'liked' by 20m people because I post a picture of me with new nail varnish but, I’m just saying, a lot of the STUFF we're conned into thinking is life enhancing and essential really is not. Plus, if you get rid of those ‘time saving’ devices and apps you’ll actually have real time. Time to think. Time to look. Stop following mediocre exhibitionists and you may have time to make your own life special. So, come on out, the air is lovely (in a few remaining places) and the mind space is amazing.

I just mention this because it came to mind as I schlepped into 2019 almost pre exhausted. Also, if things continue as they are, many things we take for granted may soon become scarce. Just yesterday top supermarkets warned that crashing out of the EU with No Deal will lead to shortages and empty shelves.

Of course, if humans continue the way they are, none of this will matter because the planet will become uninhabitable for most living things including ourselves.

So lighten up and chuck some stuff.

And - check out one of my more unusual books

Zero One Zero Two

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1539762602

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1539762602

295. Brexit is Britain’s Hecatomb

Boris Johnson claims he didn’t mention a Turkish migrant invasion during the referendum. Oddly, everyone remembers his scare tactic comments  so clearly there's no need even to fact check. But, in the scheme of things frankly you have to respond – yes, so what?

In Corbyn we have an opposition leader who neither leads nor opposes (any fellow lefties who took me to task when I said – on this blog - that he would be a disaster for Labour - shortly after he was elected - may want to come back to me now with their current arguments about the great man? No? Ok...

We have a leader who does not lead and cannot even claim now to have her own faction – despised as she is by the rabid Brexiteers, the soft Leavers and the despairing Remainers.

We have ten DUP members brought and bought in to prop up a pitiful administration. They, of course represent Ireland. Ireland voted to Remain as passionately as Scotland did and yet the DUP dinosaurs hover like Dementors in the dark screeching and swooping out on a Brexit full moon to feast on Theresa May’s hopes  if she dares deviate from the Brexit disaster they crave.

Gove was one of the big liars of the referendum con and now simply sings out his silly tune about a No Deal being a disaster as if the results of May’s Brexit deal would be a picnic.

And Farage – that maggot in almost-human form – is warning people to prepare for another referendum – when presumably he’d dig up some new improved xenophobia.

The history of war is littered with the trusting masses being led by their social superiors to slaughter. Time and again, throughout the ages, those vain or stupid or stubborn (or all of the above) ‘leaders’ led ordinary men to useless deaths. The Charge of the Light Brigade the famous poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson (my mother forced me to learn it when I was a child!) was an attempt to make a silk purse out of that particular sow’s ear. The infamous charge during The Battle of Balaclava 25^th October 1854 was one of the worst massacres of the Crimean War. Of the 675 infantrymen who were ordered into the cannon fire – few returned but they were sent into the horrific suicide charge without there ever being a chance of any other outcome.

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a hecatomb.

In ancient Greece – a hecatomb was a great and public sacrifice – initially of 100 oxen. It became a term attached to war carnage on an excessive and pointless scale. Unnecessary sacrifices led to slaughter in other words.

Brexit is Britain’s political hecatomb and above are listed some of its perpetrators.

294. Brex-Zit. If you’re not embarrassed, you should be…

Yes. The big Brexit zit on the face of Britain is still there. 

We may have hoped it would go away over the too short winter break of the Christmas / New Year holiday but it hasn’t. It is the result of eating, not sugary fatty foods but the unwholesome stodge of xenophobia, stupidity and populist soundbites and the horrible zit is unlikely to be lanced by the vote scheduled in Parliament today. We will, instead, like a greasy muddle headed, self-centred teenager – just end up with a messy, infected sore on the face of UK democracy.

A world habitable by humans moves exponentially closer to the precipice while Britain throws time, money (ferry contract anyone?) effort, media obsession, passionless posturing, exasperation and exhaustion into the pointless but cavernous Brexit pit we dug ourselves into.

Prime Minister May is still pretending she has a deal that makes sense to anyone.

Corbyn still has not let us in on the secret of what he actually thinks about Brexit despite the best endeavours of Emily Thornberry (should-be leader of the Labour party) and Keir Starmer (shadow secretary for exiting the EU) and John Macdonnell (shadow chancellor) to come out and pretend to everyone that he has. 

Macdonnell and Corbyn see the current mess – which, as I’ve said many times on this blog, Corbyn was, by his ineptitude and prevarication and confused thinking, complicit in – as their chance for another General Election. I presume these two old farts think they will then ride off to Brussels a couple of hours before the deadline, explain to the 27 remaining countries that they too actually hate Europe in a stuck- in-the-1970s way, not really understanding modern work practices – but could they please have a better deal than the one given to Theresa May?

I wonder how that would go?

Despite the enormous amount of time and effort it has taken for Boris Johnson to contribute to wrecking Britain he has, apparently, found yet another woman to shack up with… He’s still lying his head off while she, presumably, is lying back and thinking of Little England.

And the craziest thing – apart from the way the Scots and the Irish were conned out of a hopeful future by English Nationalism - is that those, dizzy and blinded by the dusty, destructive windiness that is Westminster, seem to think the rest of the world has not been watching every mean, miserable moment aghast.

The idea that the countries formerly exploited by Britain are not now sitting in bemused judgement on us, like young adults watching a senile bullying old uncle slavering into his incontinence pants, is so naïve as to constitute raging insanity.

 But the world is watching this car crash. The world is appalled that a wealthy nation with everything of its own resources and all that it has gained from the rest of the globe over the centuries, should be squandering what other countries can only dream of and we really, really ought to be embarrassed…

Check out my comedy poem on this subject

African Journalist in Britain.

https://youtu.be/IC0agIVMRng