The Workforce from Praga

Oh good, I thought, when this came up on Google alerts, a review at last. But "workforce"? Were they going to be accusing me of lucubrations?

So I wandered over and found myself in an alternative universe. As Gary Larson says of another malfunction entirely, the results are disquieting but inexplicably hilarious:

Anne writes:

"Besides as on recent 50p coins, Britannia employed to look on the old British pennies. The influence of society 's, and the province 's, demands on single individuality is something that holds upseted me for many geezerhood."

I love "geezerhood"! I'm having that. I don't care really, so long as they've spelt my name correctly. And below that, they've printed the poem. They shouldn't really do that without permission, should they? I can tell it's my poem from the shape of it. But hang on, this isn't right. Not right at all:

Britannia
Anne Berkeley


Careful not to bemire her delicacy Ferragamos,
the grand locomotes discreetly through the herbaceous borderline,
a bundle of cuttings in her bag:
a cardinal, the Queen 's gynecologist, a twelve QCs.

She holds come for the music, course,
but the ambience 's lovely, such elegant lampshades.
There is e'er some Authorities in the garden
where the sheep are maintained in their rightful spot
safely cropping beyond the haha.

There are twenty-two transactions before pall upwards.
The wind is cold, there Holds a whine of rainfall
but the outing must locomote along and be such merriment:
an unfastened window functions coloratura with rap de pate de foie gras.
Everyone holds a carpeting for their genus, and she reminds us
again of her dark at the Albert Hallway,
the swallowing blueness of a million delphiniums.
We can nighly believe in her cloak-pin and shield.

It Holds not what it was, she states: the coarse new edifice,
annually the way to the lily pond more overgrown -
a dialolog of green blackberries and birtwistle.
Hemlines are uprise; already comptrollers rinse au fait the lawn.

Even today, out mazed with Rebel Alien,
I hear her jubilant arpeggios over the waves,
the Broadwood 's V policing round the fiddles.


Britannica ' is printed in The Manpower from Praga

( Salt Publication, 2009 ).

Read more about Anne and The Hands from Praga

[That link above is a pukka link handcoded by me to take you directly to Salt.]

I love the way there is a different translation of "Men" each time, not all of them politically correct. I shall never again see the words "Albert Hall" without thinking of a humble corridor, and the neglected vaudeville entertainer, Albert Hallway. And when the going gets tough, I might well consider getting out mazed with Rebel Alien.

As for jamesmarshallko, the name behind this odd tribute, he seems to be a bot who has crawled over Peony Moon, extracted my poem and run it twice through a translation tool. In case there's any malware floating around, I'm not linking. It is hosted by livejournal, a place I normally associate with keen-eyed ficcers. I didn't click on any of the links over there, which probably take you to Canadian pharmacies or worse. I'm keeping this poem, though.

Entre les Murs

Compelling movie. I knew nothing about it when I went. I loved the documentary feel of it, the absence of music (save the poignant offstage Schubert during the parents' evening, a telling counterpoint to the dialogue). I loved the ambiguity of the teacher's role. He is idealistic but an insensitive loudmouth. He fucks up. He compromises himself with the disciplinary board, and even before that he is faking good in his account of the run-up to Suleiman's disastrous outburst. The earlier grading meeting is similarly compromised by the vested interests of the student representatives: a lovely piece of symmetry. I loved the vitality of the kids, all the more so thinking that this was largely improvised.

And I loved the subtitles. Someone had thought about them. At one point, a pupil has to conjugate "croire", so the subtitler went for an equivalent irregular verb rather than a straight translation, and had a lot of fun with "swim". It kept all the fun of the mistakes, and wouldn't have mattered a bit to anyone who doesn't know French, but flattered anyone who does.

I despaired of the bureaucracy. Of the low expectations. Of the student representatives on the grading committee, even though they are bright girls. Of the slovenliness. Should it matter that a teacher goes to school in t-shirt, jeans and trainers? Hmf, in my young day teachers wore suits, or at least sports jackets and flannels or cavalry twills. They certainly wore a tie. And Mr Brown wore a linen jacket in the summer term, and a panama hat. The past is another country.

Baffleboard

A present from my sister, acquired in Bordeaux market. This is her photograph. She understands me very well.

Made in China of course. Just look at the size of that car! (Click image to enlarge.) I imagine the manufacturer had overstocks as he had so few orders from the catalogue. Alas, no instructions were included, but I'm just being greedy.