Towards Break Of Day

WAS it the double of my dream
The woman that by me lay
Dreamed, or did we halve a dream
Under the first cold gleam of day?

I thought: “There is a waterfall
Upon Ben Bulben side
That all my childhood counted dear;
Were I to travel far and wide
I could not find a thing so dear.’
My memories had magnified
So many times childish delight.

I would have touched it like a child
But knew my finger could but have touched
Cold stone and water. I grew wild.
Even accusing Heaven because
It had set down among its laws:
Nothing that we love over-much
Is ponderable to our touch.

I dreamed towards break of day,
The cold blown spray in my nostril.
But she that beside me lay
Had watched in bitterer sleep
The marvellous stag of Arthur,
That lofty white stag, leap
From mountain steep to steep

If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

MANIC STREET PREACHERS

And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next

Manic Street Preachers – If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next https://youtu.be/cX8szNPgrEs via @YouTube

The future teaches you to be alone The present to be afraid and cold So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists. Bullets for your brain today But we’ll forget it all again Monuments put from pen to paper Turns me into a gutless wonder.

As per usual with the Manics, the lyrics were draw from art, culture and history – as they put it, ‘using the past to illustrate what’s missing from the present’. Inspired by George Orwell’s ‘Homage To Catalonia’ and a phrase written on a poster calling for recruits to fight in the Spanish Civil War, Wire was driven to write one of their most rousing rallying cries.

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”  George Orwell ‘Homage to Catalonia’ … and more …  

“For some reason, all the best matadors were Fascists.” GeorgweOrwell

“If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: ‘To fight against Fascism,’ and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: ‘Common decency.” George Orwell

AT LAST SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME – EMILY HILL author of the short-story collection ‘Bad Romance,’ published by Unbound. DIOLCH EMILY.

The trouble with Normal People

The BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel was suicidally boring.

The Lonely Hunter by Fiona McLeod

Green branches, green branches, I see you
        beckon; I follow!
Sweet is the place you guard, there in the
        rowan-tree hollow.
There he lies in the darkness, under the frail
        white flowers,
Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet
        midsummer hours.

But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he
        is sleeping now,
And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may
        crown his moon-white brow:
And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden
        hollow
Wherein he dreams I am with him – and,
        dreaming, whispers, “Follow!”

Green wind from the green-gold branches,
        what is the song you bring?
What are all songs for me, now, who no more
        care to sing?
Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
        me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
        a lonely hill.

Green is that hill and lonely, set far in a
        shadowy place;
White is the hunter’s quarry, a lost-loved hu-
        man face:
O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow
        of failing breath,
Led o’er a green hill lonely by the shadowy
        hound of Death?

Green branches, green branches, you sing of
        a sorrow olden,
But now it is midsummer weather, earth-
        young, sun-ripe, golden:
Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-
        tree hollow,
But never a green leaf whispers, “Follow, oh,
        Follow, Follow!”

O never a green leaf whispers, where the
        green-gold branches swing:
O never a song I hear now, where one was
        wont to sing
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to
        me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on
        a lonely hill.

A LONELY HUNTER? I HOPE NOT

I had to smile to myself when I heard this just now on TV news – when a Turkish Muslim man standing outside Hagia Sophia, uttered these words …

“TODAY IS THE DAY HAGIA SOPHIA RETURNS TO ITS ORIGINS …” Really!

ORIGINS – HISTORICITY – FACTS THAT CAN NEVER BE ‘COVERED UP’

Dedicated on 27 December 537AD as a basilica or cathedral church for Greek Orthodox Christians. Emperor Justinian declared: “My Lord, thank you for giving me the chance to create such a worshipping place.”

It became a different kind of ‘worshipping place’ in 1453 after the Ottoman Conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul), when it became a Grand Mosque.

I think the Muslim gentleman was referring to the event of 567 years ago and not the original Christian dedication of 360A.D, 1,660 years ago or the dedication of the current building to Sancta Sophia (Holy Wisdom) 1,483 years ago.

Blessings on all who continue worshipping on this site. May its Christian origin and history continue to be respected and honoured – a heritage that can never be covered-up, erased or denied.

WOW! ALL IS REVEALED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Russian Embassy, UK@RussianEmbassy·2h”So what has Russia done?” – “That’s the question.” https://pic.twitter.com/fnBG0hVesC

I think that’s a word that gives a lot of people pause and it certainly should … the attempts to erase a people, to just erase them, to erase their history …

writes Ben Ehrenreich ( author of ‘The Way to the Spring‘)

This blog is primarily about my films, my screenplay, the influences behind it and my efforts to get ‘The Fugitive Stag’ on the small or big screen – OK, sometimes a few other interests sneak in from time to time. Last night we both enjoyed an excellent black comedy, as above. An intriguing story, brilliant acting all round, great screenplay, producing and directing, by Martin Mc Donagh. Don’t know how we missed it when it came out in 2017. It was a great cast, with superb performances from Frances and Sam.

While traveling through the southern USA at thr end of the millennium, Mc Donagh came across a couple of accusatory billboards about an unsolved crime, which he described as “raging and painful and tragic” alleging the murder of a woman named Kathy Page by her husband Steve Page in Vidor, Texas. The billboards highlighted the incompetence of police work and deeply affected McDonagh; he said that the image “stayed in my mind […] kept gnawing at me” and presumed that they were put up by the victim’s mother. This incident, combined with his desire to create strong female characters, inspired him to write the story for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Wikipedia.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 387 reviews, and an average rating of 8.41/10 – On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film had a weighted average score of 88 out of 100, based on 50 critics, indicating “universal acclaim.

We both gave it 9/10.