Olly Olly Olly (Oi Oi Oi)

During primary school, I was once sent to the headmaster’s office for shouting ‘Olly olly olly’. What my teacher had divined were the following words: ‘Tits in a trolley/Balls in a biscuit tin/Sitting on the grass/With my finger up me ass/Playing with me ding-a-ling. The punitive exercise of precognition aside, I suspect this moment was at once Proustian, triggering memories of her own childhood’s equivalent smut. And so, as I traversed the correctional webs of my primary school, my story became my swansong, inspiring in those I met the memory of Do the French have a lick/When they hang you by the prick, He loves to go swimming/With bare naked women, or, sung to the tune of Run Rabbit Run, Bum Titty Bum Titty/Bum
Bum Bum.

Cow-Rain-Fractal

If you Google something along the lines of ‘are sitting cows an indicator of rain?’, the first thing you will find is the Met Office stating, a little too doggedly not to arouse suspicion, that this is, in fact, a falsehood. That it is nothing but an old wive’s tale, let bygones
be bygones and allow the awesome power of meteorology wash over you. Well, I say no. Not a drop more. I hereby petition Metallica to re-record ‘Enter Sandman’ as ‘Enter Mandelbrot’ and Cc all weather forecasting agencies.

Quartz Heals All

Something odd happens when a gemstone is transferred from a place of study and into someone’s home. Suddenly, the gem is no longer about its glint and compounded history, but the person to who it belongs. Nevertheless, sighingly, I quote Sufjan Stevens: Amethyst
and flowers on the table/Is it real or a fable/Well I suppose a friend is a friend.

Largest Wealth Transfer In Human History

I, for one, can get on board with the evisceration of all but the upper crust and ruling elite. Having plundered the masses, they will surely cascade inwardly, resulting in some kind of mega-posho-war. Mansions across the country promptly barricaded with cases of vintage port, money guns loaded with the deeds to entire streets, their use as decoy invaluable during concerted attack from buy-to-let landlords, their phalanx strengthened by their apathy. The product of several years training in archaic disciplines kicking in, Tabitha rushes to draw her lance, Hugo makes for the turrets with the eagerness of an ill-conditioned ephebe, his certificate for best hot tar finally put to use. Alas, I shall not bear witness to the carnage, almost certainly having been confined to the dregs of history by a) scurvy, b) a society-in-free-fall attempt at Dignitas, where, at the sound of a bugle, my fellow kin beat me to death with clubs made from banknotes and coagulated blood or, c) gladiatorial conquest.

New Scotland Yard

One of the reasons Louis XIV chose the Sun as his emblem was its ‘just and equal distribution of its rays to all alike’. I assume the high priests of the Metropolitan Police wanted their sign to rotate for similar reasons (we’re going this way, that way, forwards, backwards, over the Irish Sea). So, when a protester daubed the New Scotland Yard sign in orange paint, they took their metonymy most seriously, placing a great many officers around the blemished sign. The footage of the lame, spiritless stare of the flanking officers’ serves as a good reminder that where there be dragons, so too, be men and women reflexively, boringly, propping them up.