Now incorporating The Sudbury Hill Harrow and Wherever End Times

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Nicholas Hogg story for Radio 4

Ones to Watch
BBC Radio 4
Wednesday November 7th, 3.30pm GMT

Award-winning radio, TV and stage actor, Nigel Anthony, reads "Naked" by Nicholas Hogg. Nicholas Hogg's story "Paradise" is included in Willesden Herald - New Short Stories 1. His novel "Show Me the Sky" will be published by Canongate in 2008.

BBC Radio 4: Listen Live
BBC Radio 4: Listen Again

Noël Knowall

YouCare.com

Boycott the Daily Scum (The So-called Sun)

Sign a petition to boycott "the Daily Scum, the so-called Sun". Go Heather! Papers like that shouldn't be allowed to call themselves "newspapers", there should be a standard applied before that term can be used, under the Trade Descriptions Act. They should be called "news-flavoured fiction".

Zoz

If I should dream ghosts/If they should dream me


if      I       should  dream   ghosts

they    would   be      real    there

should  be      as      dreams  are

dream   real    people  become  ghosts

me      too     dead    alive   here




if      they    should  dream   me

I       would   be      real    too

should  be      as      people  dead

dream   real    dreams  become  alive

ghosts  there   are     ghosts  here



--
Stephen Moran

Friday, October 26, 2007

Make the sentence fit the crime

Man Who Urinated On Dying Woman Facing Jail

"Friends of a former soldier who urinated on a dying woman have been condemned for doing nothing to stop the attack."

The jail term should be doubled to six years and he should spend a month in stocks at the beginning and end of it, with buckets of shit and urine provided to the public to throw over him.

Zoz

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Radio Free Willesden - Podcast 6*

Kid in a Well by Willie Davis

I never work on days when there's a fire in town. It's a holiday as far as I'm concerned, and not just because it means the end of the world to some poor bastard, or family thereof...

"Kid in a Well" by Willie Davis, won the Willesden Short Story Prize 2007, judged by Zadie Smith. Willie Davis teaches English at the University of Maryland. This story in included in the anthology New Short Stories 1 (Pretend Genius, 2007).

The text is also online at the Guardian newspaper website, if you would like to read along and listen at the same time (follow the bouncing ball), here.

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From: A loaded gun

Memoirs of a Madwoman

"If I were a shrink, I would eventually snap, slap someone on the side of the head and say, “Get a grip, for God’s sake!!!” So I guess it’s good I’m not a shrink. They are all saints. Often incompetent saints, but saints."

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

DNA pioneer less intelligent than other scientists

Arse about race

"He [James Watson] has said similar things about women before but I have never heard him get into this racist terrain. If he knew the literature in the subject he would know he was out of his depth scientifically, quite apart from socially and politically." (Steven Rose)

Zoz

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Sunday in the park



Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

(To a Young Child by Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Don't be a stupid boy

Lenin's Tomb

"By motivation, essentially, and with the exception of the Al Qaeda in Iraq element who have endeavoured to exploit the situation for their own ends, our opponents are Iraqi Nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs - jobs, money, security - and the majority are not bad people." (General Dannatt)

As you know "All play and no work makes Jack a stupid boy", so every now and then you should force yourself to read something non-funny, for the good of your brain, even if you really don't want to. We care too much for our non-readers who might someday come here to read, to expose them to the risk of complete stupefaction.

Feargal Mooney

Alfie is a cracker

Alfie breaks out

"A PARROT that can unlock padlocks, remove keys from keyrings and unscrew bolts has escaped. Alfie, an African grey, broke out of his cage and then flew out of an open door in Alloa.A PARROT that can unlock padlocks, remove keys from keyrings and unscrew bolts has escaped. Alfie, an African grey, broke out of his cage and then flew out of an open door in Alloa."

Hooray! Go Alfie.

Zoz

Sunday, October 07, 2007

On this day plus 17 and a different month

Great new series. No. 1: 2003

How not to write poetry*

Marzials' epic "A Tragedy" has recently been nominated for worst ever poem.

Noël Knowall

* Hence our motto: Tomorrow's News, Yesterday. We scooped BBC Newsnight and now we've scooped the Guardian. Ed

Friday, October 05, 2007

We scoop BBC Newsnight

In the past 15 minutes you may have seen Newsnight Review on national television (BBC2), with Daljit Nagra reading "Darling and Me". We gave you that recherché delight here, back in May. From the article:

Two poems by Daljit Nagra, an excerpt from his brilliant reading. Unfortunately we're only allowed two. These are "In a White Town" and "Darling & Me!" from Look We Have Coming to Dover! (Faber, 2007).

Noël Knowall

Find the Don

Wife Escapes Jail Over Fatal Sherry Enema

"A Texas woman has escaped being charged with negligent homicide after she killed her husband with a sherry enema."

I know it's not funny. But why sherry? I mean I like a drop of sherry, and so does my Aunt Flossie, but...

Zoz

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Welcome to China (and India)

Girl Bound Hand And Foot For Swim Practice

"Li's ankles were tied together with string and her hands were bound by a strip of cloth for the swim. 'It's not dangerous because, first, her swimming skills are really good and second, I was swimming with her, staying close to her,' her father said."

This man is not a father. He is lower than the most revolting sea snake. Adults who give their senses to children are the scum of the earth.

Zoz

Loose goats*



From: "Jolt" by James Lawless

... Three or four goats appear and start following them. They frighten him as they get closer with their horns, bells tinkling. She laughs at him. He’s embarrassed. Kathleen knows goats. They had them on the farm in Galway.

She sheds her shyness in the open countryside. She wants to make love al fresco. There is no one about except for the goats. She breathes in deeply the fragrance of the pines. Lying down on the scorched earth, she loosens her blouse, drawing him into her. ‘Is it possible, Michael? Say it’s possible.’
...

New Short Stories 1

* Loose Goats (oil on canvas) by Indi Dhillon. Willesden Herald collection

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

They're not all locked up



This kind of thing gives genuine psychics like myself a bad name. If Mr Imran keeps sticking his junk mail under my windscreen wipers, I will put a hex on him.

Mystic Mavis

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Guardian Angel

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 3)

Detective Sacked

"...the patron saint of police, Angel Custodio."

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Herbert Ridley

What good are all these saints and guardian angels? They seem to be even more incompetent than their mortal charges. Ed

Accretion



Madrid

Harry Lemon

Monday, October 01, 2007

Killer human attacks chimp

Escapee shot

"Jonnie and fellow chimp Coco appear to have tunnelled out of their cage at Whipsnade Zoo over the weekend. Keepers managed to recapture the younger chimp Coco, but could not catch 41-year-old Jonnie. The zoo says it shot him 'in the interests of public safety'."

They made an example of Jonnie. Actually, it's too easy for me to say that. I feel sorry for the person who had to do it. It does make you wonder, though, whether they could have found another way. A tranquiliser dart would seem to be the solution, but maybe there was a reason why it couldn't be done.

Zoz

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation announces the inaugural 2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize (caferati)

"September 27 would have been the writer and editor Shakti Bhatt's 27th birthday. To celebrate the occasion, her friends will read from her work and remember her with poetry, short fiction, and music...The Shakti Bhatt Foundation will announce the inaugural 2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize."

The award is for books published in India. Shakti was one of the contributors to "New Short Stories 1". (Tributes)

Ossian