This is the first time a xylophone was used in classial music
The xylophone was first used 4,000 years ago {Wikipedia}

Oxford said it’s time to lower the bra for new entrants
Meanwhile the older students must keep their mettle up for now

Safety is too much for us to bear
Drive to Dorset in your motor car

I know it ‘s not PC but what a shock
People being grilled might run amok

Let one have a heart attack  and die
999 can’t get there, though they try

Where can an air ambulance descend?
It’s very dangerous now, let’s not pretend

They want to send more folk to A and E
It’s  our duty to be stung by any bee

What about excretion  of all kinds
Or the thing that makes us all go blind?

Privacy has gone and we’re all seen
Urinating on the nearest screen

If your dog gets nervous he  will  bite
He has no choice it’s either flee or fight

https://youtu.be/28jL8w_9M1U

There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip
Get  measured for a bra at  Mark & Spencers,We sell lingerie
 from slips to thongs,bras   up to J cup, knickers, nightdresses to please
anyone, gender free vests also available on request

Let the dead bury the dead

Let them arrange the funeral too and pay the bill

I’d far rather be

How the Irish discovered meditation

Familiarity breeds contempt

Only in  people   with egocentric minds

What’s done is done

Sounds like Himmler  In 1945

Or, a woman  upon  losing her virginity
Can you  find your  virginity?

Irony

Come to Gaza and enjoy  the sea and sands.See the latest weapons
 in use, kindly donated by the USA

Half price  holidays in our Refugee Camp.Journalists welome
Warning: don’t leave children on the beach.They look too like terrorists
At least that’s what we are told

God  has got a blog but not in words
He uses as his text the entire world
From  lions  in mountains  down to little birds
The colours of the sky, the leaves uncurled

Every day he leaves his message clear
We  are blinded by our own desires
Some say that God is dead, why should we fear?
For without his Eye we have  no hellish fire

From Joan of Arc to most of Europe’s Jews
Afghanistan or Syria, who is spared?
Were any of  those deaths read on the News
So  civilised we are, so fake  our prayers

We want high self esteem, so how see  Job
Sitting on a dunghill with no clothes?

Jesus born again in Gazan camp
He sees the planes the USA have bought
Flying overhead, his eyes are damp
With horror,pity, not contempt

He understands the history of the Jews
The Palestinian people he loves too
So often we have seen them on the News
Bleeding on the border fence like clues

This war is a projection of our hate
We are good and they are full of sin
The British left the “Arabs” to their fate
The endless fight should never have begun

Jesus was a problem, he was killed
But who will pay the escalating bill?

The living haunt the dead with screaming eyes
Natural ,murder, war or suicide
Epidemics,plagues, the double crossed
The cemeteries would have been surpassed
Reduced to ash, the bodies once caressed
Disappear in flames, a Candlemass
We linger on the borders ,loth to move
Every cell with grieving is imbued.
The knock on the front door, the English  park
The victims of the knife, the once blessed hearts
Is this England, where the tea, the pot?
All our old civilities forgot
No home fire burning coal  with leaping flames
Boilers burning gas to heat our homes
Remind us of the dead, the Jews and Gays
Gypsies, backward children, where the graves?
In the end all selfhood gone, removed
No individual plot, no flowers ,headstones
No flesh, no eyes, not even just one bone
Haunt your cemetery if you must
The sun shines on the evil and the just

Eating your own eggs is not allowed in this cafe
Beach:rescuers will be persecuted
Old people, please die slowly in town
Please fall off another cliff.This is too low.
What is a mortal tin?
Stop paying in the Cathedral
Please dye your hair before breakfast as drips may cause offence 
The village green is brown
We are short of torture.Do not take a bath till you are going home
Does God have a mouth?
Draughts expected, no  recent pain
Please contrive  well on main road
Cognitive  homework for teens  banned
No taps should run in this motel
En suites in C major
Do read music if able
Do not gnaw your own bare hands.We have gravy

Mary woke up as she heard a strange noise.Except it was not as she had overslept.
She put her head out of the window where a young man was standing by the wall
You can leave their parcel here, she cried in her muffled shriek
I have come to collect one, he responded
But they are not at home, she informed him.They have emigrated
No wonder, the man said.I’d like to escape from Dominic Cummings
Has he captured you?
He damages my soul and God is angry
Let’s leave God  to one side.I  know how you feel, I think
Thank you very much.God will remember
Mary sat in bed and wondered where Stan was.Suddenly she realised he was dead.
Emile came in purring loudly
Emile, is Stan really dead?
I think so although sometimes I think I see him in the kitchen with his Rober Carrier cookbook
Tears came into Mary’s eyes remembering all the meals Stan cooked
He would be horrified if he saw her eat a  frozen shepherd’s pie or macaroni cheese straight from a tin
At least I still use Earl Grey Tea, she thought intelligently
Mary drank tea from a large blue mug; in fact it was half a pint of tea. She looked at her phone to see if any emails from her  friend’s   were there  but none of her friends had written to her which could hardly  be surprising as they had  all written to her the day before

She saw a letter from British Gas offering her  help during the lockdown  but she didn’t use gas anymore.  if they  had been more compassionate when she was having trouble with her boiler she might still be using it but she had decided that gas was a bad thing; it made her think about horrible things like Sylvia Plath and the Holocaust
On the other hand electricity has also been used to harm people and kill them in the United States ;what was the answer?
The best thing is to get up at once. she said and read The Guardian the Times, Independent newspaper The Telegraph and the London Review of Books.By the time she has read all of those who would go back to bed?
Only a sex addict and has she had no husband that was impossible
After all, who prefers a plastic vibrator to a loving man or woman?Mary decided 4 Weetabix and some milk  would make a very nice breakfast
Where is my breakfast,  called Emile  louder?

Oh dear I am very sorry , would you like some kippers for your breakfast
Thank you, Mother
How many times do I have to tell you that I am not your mother; I am human and you are a cat

 But you are my mother in a metaphorical sense :you look after me, you feed me, you bath me
On the other hand I sleep on your bed and if I was your son you would not want me to sleep on your bed would you since I’m 18 years old?
No, it might look like incest Mary replied humorously  but would an 18-year old youth be attracted to an older lady
Don’t ask me, he said, I am just a cat
I would not know my own mother if I met her and if she was willing I might even mate with her without knowing that she was my mother. God is very kind to animals in some ways but on the other hand why does he let people hunt and kill for fun?

Well he would not tell Job  nor his so-called comforters so I don’t know whether he’s going to tell  me; if he did tell me I might not be able to understand
Why not,  said the cat?
 When we don’t know what language God speaks  how can we talk to him?
Only by paying attention in the Silence in the middle of a wood or a cathedral as long as it was not full of tourists and and dogs
Are dogs allowed to go inside a cathedral?
I don’t know said Mary I have never thought about it before but I would imagine they are banned because they might start Barking at the wrong moment
 I could go to church, Emile   cried
Do you want to go to church , Mary  asked him

If  there is nothing else to do, I will go to church, he mewed
That is not the right attitude, she told him, God is more important than anything else at all
 How do you know God is not here in the house
Yes he is; he is everywhere but we can’t see him except in the eye of a child or or the smile of an old man when he is going to die peacefully in the arms of his wife
And what about the wife? the cat pondered<Shall I have to hold you in my arms so that I can see God in your smile as you pass away
Oh dear me said Mary. I never thought of that I am too big to go into your arms. I can go on a diet  and save money by only eating half a tin of Heinz macaroni cheese for my supper and half a tin of vegetable soup for my lunch
It is impossible, the cat told her, because even if I eat a lot my legs will never go any longer and as mathematician you should be able to see that you would have to become as small as a tiny baby before I could put my arms around you
The end of a wonderful dream,sighed Mary
I’ll have to ask somebody else Dr Patel maybe  if I can die in his arms|
It is like the ultimate act of love to allow someone to die in your arms but one can’t do it too often as it is too emotionally and spiritually demanding
I agree, mother, the cat told her and now I’m going outside to try and catch you some frogs from the pond next door, goodbye.

In the room, the air vibrates  and moves
Touching us with   melodies ungrooved

The sky is stark, the air is cool and still
The black cat’s run, the birds unfold all day
I sit down here and with my totty pray
Ye cast o’ foolish thoughts, you raped my will
. We’ve each enraged the bureaucratic mill.
Oh frigid purse, I never meant to pay!
The sky ‘s a-spark, the air is warm and shrill
The saturnine demoted knelled their way
With this feathered pounce, my sample quill,
I cite the cheque and date it for next May.
Oh, tit for cat, the tiger’s bed ‘s astray.
Yer life is settled by a harlot’s will
The sky ‘s a shark, the air is sharper still.

The  heartfelt gaze, the hand  that helped me stand
The energy, the concentration
The feet  on earth, the head in the beyond
The body noone else would understand
The  heartfelt gaze, the warmth within his hands
The person for whom I, still arid,long
The  heartfelt gaze, the mind intact,unbanned
The fury and the consternation
The  heartfelt gaze,  the love, the marriage banns
Oh  cruel  the others’ eye, the Cross, the end

I think Stan is having a nervous breakdown.He hasn’t cleaned  the windows for a week and he says he hates the vista.
I know this vista well and to a cat it’s quite intriguing,though we have better vision..
He says he can’t do a back up…why can’t he park up front ?
Now he says there’s a virus in here.Well,I’ve seen some beetles on You Tube but not a single virus….
He says the touchpad needs freezing………….well,it won’t fit in our freezer;it’s full of kippers.My pads are still ok despite my climbing trees.
Now he’s shouting “Bugs” at the computer but so far it’s not replied.
I said it’s time for coffee,to which he replied:
“To be or not to be”
So I said,”Measure for measure.”
Then he leered nastily
So I said,
I want to change sex for my name is Cordelia.
He said,you’ve got your own blog now,Emile.
I said,Lend me your ear.
He said,You have two already!
So I said,Much ado about nothing.
He said,Are you barking?
I whispered,It’s a dog.
He said,Persuade me.
So then I barked and he passed out on that old chair.
We’re waiting for the ambulance now…
Then we’re off to see
Timon of Athens
or was it
Timor of Athens?
It’s all Greek to me.
It could be Hebrew…the concept appeals to me.
Was it Aramaic they spake?
One image is worth a thousand words.
My horse,my horse,My king came for a horse.
Some have funny habits!
Thank you,Henry 4 that.
Willy will you wink for me tonight?
Emile wants a drink with you tonight.

Mathematics is full of signs which are often used as metaphors by non-mathematicians.My husband, for example, used to say: The distance from zero to one is bigger than that from one to two.I fully agreed with him, realising what he meant.However, I refrained from saying that was why he could not learn maths at school.But it would be a good thing if maths teachers realised that some children live in rich worlds and find it hard to strip down to  the bareness of mathematical signs and equations.

A student once told me she saw Zero with a  lot of tiny numbers floating around it  like butterflies which showed  possibly great insight into infinitesimals but which would not  aid her in learning Econometrics or any other such  nonsensical stuff hich was her  chosen destiny.

And the precision and clarity [up to  a point] of mathematics does not do well when applied to broader issues as a “friend” kindly pointed out to me before being very rudeNow we mathematicians criticise each other’s  methods but we are rarely rude as it does not aid the mind.And it’s in the mind we live.Which is not a good idea but maybe we went there as a safe place when life was too much to bear.

For life is much harder than Mathematics,as King Lear might have said.

Art by Katherine 2014

The path on Arnside Knott came to the shore
Where river and sea  meet at my heart’s core
Where wild flowers  grow, where butterflies float on
The views of Lakeland Hills ,so ravishing

My heart was  only half alive till then
The land surpassed imagination
I was used to mills and dirty air
Despite the heather moors and hilltops bare

Later death came near on Langdale Pike
My fingertips were hurting,feet agape
Then my toe was back on a foothold
The shadow of the mountain huge and cold

Beauty,love and death, the opera calls
Singing as we walk the danger walls

A beam of light passed through my eyes
And showed to me a world disguised
So near,yet far,we do not see,
Unless by gift of grace redeemed.
That world is full of peace and calm
Its colours mingle,like a balm.
In such a moment all thought dies,
Revealing Love which underlies.
Colours caress my naked eye.
Sunlight blesses new designs.
I stand enthralled,and do not wish
For one delight,other than this.
My breath slows down, and filled with joy,
I rove my eyes with bliss to toy.
Everything is just itself.
This is now my living wealth.
Beneath the noise of city traffic,
This mellow joy,love soporific,
This depth and peace, is always near
When we choose Love and turn from fear

Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

Photo by Geran de Klerk on Pexels.com

Photo by Casey Allen on Pexels.com

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/11/israels-annexation-of-the-west-bank-will-be-yet-another-tragedy-for-palestinians

 The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

If one could possess, grasp, and know the other, it would not be other.