february

Mike's Monthly Message to the Planet

February
2003

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As you may be able to tell, I am not really having much luck with those automatic passport photo machines The latest disaster is featured above, and I at least have the consolation of having a fair idea of what I am going to look like when I'm 64, and with a bit of luck I shall be able to use the same photograph for my OAP Bus pass. My father atually said to me that he thought the four photos of me on my homepage were done on purpose and were supposed to represent "four sides of Mike" I think he said that melancholia, tiredness, and utter confusion were amongst them, but I thought that they were really too bad to inflict on the Russian Consulate for my visa application. I try to be self-deprecating you know, in an effort to appear endearing......

I have had a couple of favourable reviews to what has appeared thus far on this website, and I do feel that geocities.com does seem to offeer quite a good way of combining pictures and text that I couldn't really do before, so do have a go yourselves, even if like me you end up running out of things to say. Catherine, my ex flat-mate paid me quite a compliment, observing that the website is neither "dull" nor "self-obsesssed", but given time I may prove her wrong on that. I have yet to receive a writ from my former colleagues of L!berata concerning the publication of my own piece of samizdat, but maybe they are just happy to see the back of me. I do wonder about the thoughts of people that came up with the company name L!BERATA. Do the experiences, nay current non-existence of such institutions as L!VE TV and Hear'say prove that we mess about with well founded rules of punctuation at our peril? But then again, as my sister said to me over a rather expensive pint and glass of wine in Islington the other day "you don't really know how to win friends and inflence people, do you?"

Which brings me conveniently to the face that my latest temporary assignment at (the former People's Republic of ) Islington, where again have been entrusted with the administration of Council Tax, so I feel a great advance in my career as I was doing exactly the same thing 10 years ago, if for rather less money than a temp in London can command. I think that that is suppoed to assuage my feelings of inadequacy on this point, but I can't say I feel a whole lot better about it. I did temp in Morden for the London Borough of Meron for a couple of months, and I did rather enjoy my time there, although Morden has been infested with a plague of Pound Shops. Islington is well, rather more trendy, so of course I feel very at home...ahem.

Has Mike got religion?

I used to joke to people that one day I would turn up on their doorstep, dressed in a white robe and proclaim "Halleluia, Brother I am saved". I don't suppose that anything I do these days surprises anyone, but it might have been worth trying once or twice, just to see if anyone said "oh, that's good Mike, we'd always hoped you find a new career..do come in for a cup of tea.."

The only reason I am babbling along like this is that, haviung despaired of ever really finding myself enjoying the Lord of the Rings, I thought that I would have a go at the Big B instead. It's the King James Edition with a picture of a rather worried-looking deity on the cover- not that I'm going to be reading it on the Tube- heaven forbid- people might come up and talk to me!.

At close of play, I have now read up to and including the book of Joshua, and I have to say that I haven't either been cut down by a lightning bolt or else suffered the fate that generally seems to smite anyone who gets in the way of the chosen people's way. The fact that God spends rather a lot longer telling Moses how to build a tabernacle than he does in explaining how he creataed the Universe, might seem a tad unbalanced, but then I suppose if the early founders of Judaism were hell-bent on creating a Hobbesian God, they had to make sure that every avenue was covered..., it's interesting that Leviticus seems to make eating a prawn sandwich as much as an abomination as Homosexuality. I wonder how the Bible-Bashers of the Deep South cope with that? Anyway, I shall let you know who I get on with the next 1500 pages..

Poetry, please?

      I wandered lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:


          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.

Followers of my late, lamented website may have come across my amazement at the wonderful skills of the wwww.google.com translation service- indeed, I have grudgingly recommended its use in deciphering some of the websites you may come across in Mike 's World News Service.

Here though, I invite you to compare and contrast the original version of Wordworth's Daffodils to my Directors Cut edition, which has been approved by the European Commission, after having been transgiberrated through French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portugeuses

click here to read revised version:

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