Black gold in NW10

Cruiser Reports Drilling Success at Willesden Green

"The Willesden Green 06-35 well was drilled to approximately 2530 m depth. The well encountered two commercial zones which have been tested individually. The total of the last recorded rates for both zones is approximately 645 mcfd and 130 bpd of liquids or approximately 237 boepd gross (178 boepd net to the Company)."

So they packed up their bags and they moved to Beverly.
Hills that is. Swimming pools, movie stars...

It's only a matter of time before Ganache comes in from the courtyard of Herald House covered in black gunge, after dibbling into a gusher.

Business Desk

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Mayor has balls done

The Framley Examiner

Everything in the F.E. makes Feargal Mooney laugh like a drain. Personally I can't see it myself. For example, what is funny about:

Classified

Give my regards to Broad Bean. After 6pm. £12

Bobbins

Yes please £15. 01999 793604

As I type this, he's looked over my shoulder and started falling around again.

Red

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Council tax rebel interned

Grandad Jailed Over Council Tax

"[H]is wife Rita, 76, told The Sun that she was not impressed. She said: "He's an idiot. He has rung from the cells and is full of himself. He thinks it's going to be a laugh. I'm certainly not visiting him.'" (Skynews)

Richard Fitzmaurice got thirty-two inside days for protesting about council tax. If he'd come out of a Leeds night club and kicked somebody half-to-death instead he would have got off with community service. The policy now seems to be to let out paedophiles and killers but lock up war veterans who fight the unjust escalation of council tax.

Zoz

Letter from Rana Dasgupta

Re: Short stories, Small Wonder, etc

Dear Feargal

Thank you for your interesting remarks on the Small Wonder Short Story Festival, which I read in the Willesden Herald.

Your recollections of the panel on which Di Speirs and I spoke differ markedly from mine, which is in the nature of recollections.

I do think that my recollection serves me faithfully, however, when I say that I did not "admit that [I] didn't really like the short story genre, and had been commissioned to write [my] book "Tokyo Cancelled".

Knowing something about the publishing world as you do, you would be aware that my being commissioned to write such a book would be extremely unlikely.

Much more significantly: as a writer of short stories, and as an enthusiastic reader thereof, I would never dismiss the genre in such a way.

This is how my recollections go...

I said that there was something unshakeable about the centrality of the novel to modern literature: that its scale was widely felt to be necessary to the complexity of the contemporary world and psyche. This, I said, was why the "great novel" was so tantalising an achievement for all aspiring national cultures - such as America's in the nineteenth century, and India's today.

But I also said that this desire for literary grandeur leaves behind an unsatisfied residue. This is the desire for smallness and intimacy in literature, the desire for tales that can be consumed in a small amount of time, and re-told like folktales. This is why the short story remains entirely unthreatened by the pre-eminence of the novel.

As you know yourself, the quest for form - the search for the voice and scale necessary to what one wishes to say - is the primary effort of writing. This may lead one into novel writing at one point, and into the writing of sonnets later on - rather as Beethoven confined himself almost exclusively to the string quartet after finishing the Op 125 symphony.

Genres are not in antagonism with each other, and there is no sense in any kind of fundamentalism of genre, nor in any a priori generic rejections. That is why I did not, and would not ever, issue the rejection of the short story that you recollect. But perhaps recollections are dynamic, and liable to amendment?

Rana Dasgupta

Feargal Mooney responds:

Dear Rana, thank you for that. I understand now that Radio 4 only commissioned you to write for Afternoon Reading after the publication of "Tokyo Cancelled". I apologise for getting that wrong and for misinterpreting your remarks about the place of the novel etc. I will post an update to the article below and wear barbed wire under my vest for a week in penance. Feargal

Surely they can be intercepted?

Gunmen seize 100 at Iraq ministry

"Gunmen in military-style uniforms have kidnapped more than 100 men from a research institute belonging to Iraq's higher education ministry. A ministry spokeswoman said the gunmen arrived in new pick-up vehicles and stormed the ministry's Research Directorate in central Baghdad. They ordered women into one room and seized the men, including employees, guards and visitors to the building." (BBC)

Zoz

Selected short stories of McGahern on Radio 4

BBC - Radio 4 - Afternoon Reading

"Monday 13 November - Friday 17 November 2006

Short Stories by John McGahern

Stories by the celebrated Irish author who died earlier this year. "

Ossian

A moment trapped

Pretend Genius Press podcast 2

"A moment trapped" by Amy Muldoon and "Uno" by Blem Vide, with links by J. Tyler Blue and Josh Davis.

Warning: Not for those of tender years or delicate disposition. Contains a source of swearing. May contain traces of noise. Always read the label. However, this episode is not quite as raucous as the first.

Noël Knowall

• Subscribe to this podcast with iTunes


• Visit Pretend Genius Press podcast home


• Add this URL to your own podcast software.

BBC Radio 4 commissioning guidelines

Error 404: Page not found

BBC Radio 4 commissions¹ about 150 short stories per year, half of the approximately 300 they broadcast. Presumably you or your parents have to be in the right Masonic Lodge, or wear the right old school tie to get the call. A blessed scapular from Mrs Haverty Clerical Outfitters and Nylon Factors (UK) Ltd to anyone who can find out how to get aboard this particular gravy train.

Di Speirs, Radio 4's commissioning editor for short stories and other literary readings, admitted under aggressive questioning from the audience in her interview at the Small Wonder short story festival earlier this year, that there is no way for anyone in London to send in anything for the Afternoon Story. The regions contribute half of the daily, year-round stories and she commissions the rest.

Joint-interviewee Rana Dasgupta read "The Flyover", from his book "Tokyo Cancelled". The story was chosen as one of five finalists for the £15,000 National Short Story prize. Di Speirs was also on the jury for that. She said it was the only one out of the over 1,400 entries, which had a sense of folk-tale about it—something for which she had been looking. She subsequently commissioned a story ("The Horse") from Dasgupta for the Afternoon Story.

The reading bombed in the hall and the panel discussion afterwards turned to why it didn't work as a live reading, whereas it did "off the page." Four people got up and walked out at the same time, whether out of boredom or to convey a message, I don't know.

Di Speirs also said that, out of all the stories entered for the £15,000 National Short Story prize, there wasn't a single humorous one or one with a political edge, something for which the judges were longing. But the rules of the competition were such that only established authors could enter, so what does that tell you?

I like to think that I'm a sceptic and not a cynic but maybe I'm just bloody-minded, maybe it is too easy to throw rotten tomatoes. This article is a revised version² without the exhortation to "rush the stage". I had my arse deservedly kicked over the earlier one.

Feargal Mooney

¹ Commissioning is the process of paying the idle offspring of a friend of the family to write, in a genre that he or she doesn't like, stories that are utterly inauthentic. Ed

² Updated 14/11/2006, thanks to corrections in letter from Rana Dasgupta. Ed

Searchers in vain

---

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• The International Willesden Herald
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• If you don't see it here, it didn't happen

---

They zizz like mosquitoes, darting this way and that, completely lost: the searchers. Oh the frustration they suffer till they land here and find out at last all about:

"Is it legal to own a wolf dog in Maryland?"
"Massage parlours in Cricklewood"
"Munchkin proxy syndrome"
"Blow-up Hitler dolls for Allo Allo"
"Women for sale on eBay"

Check back for updates. See also Greatest Hits (about image searches*).

Simon Moribund

* Please note, this is not a free photo agency. £300 per online use (renewable annually), discount for bulk. Print editions by negotiation. Enquiries: Julia Bumwilley, Intellectual Property, Crapstone Scrotum Bumwilley Haversack. Ed

Meanwhile, in Panama

(From "the eejit")

Oh to have hummingbirds doing this outside of one's window.

Dumbs felled

Rumsfeld quits as Republicans collapse

"Tuesday's elections gave the Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives and results by Wednesday had moved them within one seat of victory in the Senate."

Poetry reading for Lebanon

Hugo Williams, Owen Sheers, Clare Pollard, Adam O'Riordan, Tobias Hill and Annie Freud reading; with music by Steven Hinds.

7.30pm, 8 November, upstairs at The North London Tavern, 375 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7QB (3 minutes walk from Kilburn tube, Jubilee line)

Tickets £5 (All proceeds will go to children's charities in Lebanon)

Letter from Ted Gaggard*

Write This exclusive

"He said he wanted to try a new experimental massage technique that he'd just learned in massage school."

Brokeback Newsdesk

* Star of Viz Comic's "Ted Gaggard—He Looks a Bit Haggard"

Pretend Genius Press podcast

Listen to episode 1

"My Valentine's" by J. Tyler Blue and "Dig big baggy grotto mob mottoes" by Blem Vide, with dramatised links by J. Tyler Blue and Josh Davis.

Warning: Not for those of tender years or delicate disposition. Contains a source of swearing. May contain traces of noise. Always read the label.

Noël Knowall

• Subscribe to this podcast with iTunes


• Visit Pretend Genius Press podcast home


• Add this URL to your own podcast software.

On this day minus 13 and a different month, 2003*

Double-entente:
Gay Bar - Electric 6 feat. (Cow)Boy George and Slushy-T



System of a Down - "Boom"

Better quality: Real Video / QuickTime / Windows media player 56 k or broadband

Interview with System Of A Down about the video: Real Video / QuickTime / Windows media player 56 k or broadband

Recycling Dept.

* Now with added YouTube

Short story competition update

Dear literary people, the north wind is upon Willesden. Trees are rustling with a sound reminiscent of paper chains. Time to round-up untold stories for the winter and send them in, so what are you waiting for? And furthermore...

Willesden Herald and Pretend Genius Press today shook on a deal to publish an anthology called "New Short Stories" featuring short-listed stories from our competition, next spring. Inclusion is optional. If you don't want it we'll just die (laughing).

Brokeback Newsdesk

• Updated announcement


• Guardian Books news story

Willesden Herald - Podcast 4

Archive Recordings: At the Stop the War demos [Warning: too loud! Ed.]

Some stalwart subscribers to the WH might have heard these snippets before, of speeches at Stop the War demos in 2003, from Tariq Ali (unannounced first speaker), Azzam Tamimi, Jeremy Corbin (Hyde Park, March 2003, shortly after the invasion) and George Galloway (Trafalgar Square, November 2003, during George Bush's sojourn at Buckingham Palace).

Feargal Mooney

• Subscribe to Radio Free Willesden in iTunes (broken link)


• Radio Free Willesden's page in the iTunes podcast directory (broken link)


• Feed for other podcast software


• Noise-induced hearing loss?
  I say, NOISE-INDUCED HEARING LOSS?*

* Caution: turn the sound down on your iPod. Ed

<< Previous | Next >>

"Afghanistan war is 'cuckoo' " - General

Observer

"Tony Blair's most trusted military commander [former Chief-of-Staff, General the Lord Guthrie] yesterday branded as 'cuckoo' the way Britain's overstretched army was sent into Afghanistan. [...] In a unprecedented show of scepticism towards Blair, he said the Prime Minister's promise to give the army 'anything it wants' was unrealistic."

Zoz

Sonnet for Dandy

Why should Dandy's obituary not be written
in as serious a manner as for Lord or Lady?
On Staverton Road each noontime he was sittin'
on the grass in front where it was nice and shady.

In the evenings he took his master walking,
a genial man who shouted greetings freely
across the street when he and I were talking,
but Dandy wasn't trusting strangers really.

Black and white and stocky, Dandy had a dour way.
I always said, "He'll bark at mine in a minute!"
And after he'd bark me and my dog on our way,
But truly, I don't think Dandy's heart was in it.

Tonight, I saw his master with a sleek new guide.
My question met a tearful answer, "Dandy? He died."

--
Stephen Moran

<< Previous | Next >>

(Updated June 2022)

Michael Longley

As English as Irish can be (Guardian)

" 'You take your poems seriously,' he instructs, 'but you don't take yourself seriously. What the muse hates more than anything is self-importance. Shakespeare wasn't self-important, was he?'
[...]
The Ice-Cream Man, is a lovely elegy for a murdered shopkeeper: 'I got a letter from his mother thanking me for the poem. I treasure that letter. It's worth all the good reviews put together.' " (Guardian)

Collected Poems (Cape, 2006)

Ossian

Israeli uranium bomb radioactivity in Lebanon

Independent Online Edition > Robert Fisk

"I saw two dead babies who, when taken from a mortuary drawer in West Beirut during the Israeli siege of the city, suddenly burst back into flames."

Think about that. Here is a country with a history of invading neighbours and using WMD's against them. So when are the U.S. and Britain going to invade Israel?

Zoz

Cheney endorses torture

Hitler smiles

"Mr Cheney's comments set him at odds with the Military Commissions Act, which bars, under all circumstances, treatment of prisoners that inflicts serious physical or mental pain or suffering."

Britain: Do you want to fight alongside this low-life Cheney, to go down together with him in the annals of tyranny?

Zoz

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am

We have turned Iraq into the most hellish place on Earth

"British ministers landing in Aden in the 1960s were told always to make a reassuring speech. In view of the Arab insurrection, they should give a ringing pledge, 'Britain will never, ever leave Aden'. Britain promptly left Aden, in 1967 and a year earlier than planned. The last governor walked backwards up the steps to his plane, his pistol drawn against any last-minute assassin. Locals who had trusted him and worked with the British were massacred in their hundreds by the fedayeen." (Simon Jenkins)

Zoz

Lullaby of Gaza / Mockingbird

1.

On seeing a picture, not necessarily from Gaza, of an armed soldier hiding in a doorway, with two children in the street nearby, "unicef193-0634 / betty press"

Crazy paving, crazy wall,
Concrete floors. When curfews fall
F-sixteens will come to call.
Rocket bye baby, the cradle will fall;
Down will come gunmen, mothers and all.

Iron shutters, iron gates.
Out of sight, a soldier waits
On girl and toddler, under eights.
The elder with her friend debates
Oblivious to their future fates.

Not the chosen, not the just,
They are children of the dust,
When hovels with no papers must
Be razed in order to adjust
Collateral in a stateside trust.


2.

Hush little baby, take your rest;
Papa's gonna buy you a suicide vest.

And if that suicide vest don't blow,
Papa's gonna make you a bomb to throw.

And if that bomb won't kill someone,
Papa's gonna get you a tommy gun.

And if that tommy gun goes wrong,
Papa's gonna build you an atom bomb.

And if that atom bomb won't blast,
Papa's gonna make you a plague to cast.

And if that plague turns back on us,
Papa's gonna buy you a house of dust.

And then before the sun goes down,
You'll look sweet on each wall in town.

--
Stephen Moran

<< Previous | Next >>

Author's note: When I was writing the second one I forgot that I already had one called "Lullaby of Gaza". So it became a series (of two). S.J.M.

Update: Included in "Day of the Flying Leaves - Selected Poems" (Amazon/Kindle, 2021)