Monday 29 October 2007

*EXCLUSIVE* - McCanns to Split!


If the media has anything to do with it.
The psychological warfare they are waging against this couple, alternately sympathising with their plight one day and casting aspersions upon their presumed innocence the next, is disgusting. Time was when reporters reported the news not wrote it! Not made a story fit the 'exclusives' they sought, no matter what the truth or human cost. And what happened to innocent until proven guilty? Notwithstanding in the unlikely event charges are brought against the McCanns and made to stick, trial by jury, rather than by the media?
As for the Portugese police, for a force not permitted to comment on a live case, one bizarre theory after another has emanated from their ranks - one suspects, if not in collusion with the media - just to get rid of this nuisance British couple blighting one of their tourist hotspots with the worst economically-disastrous scandal that can befall a tourist hotspot. Arresting them certainly did wonders for the McCann departure from embarrassing Portugese shores.
While I cannot claim to have read every word printed on the story, from the sizeable chunk I have read and McCann interviews I've seen, I cannot think of a single reason why the McCanns would want to kill their much wanted (IVF) eldest daughter. Had they done so accidentally, why on earth would they not have admitted it? However stupid it might be to (allegedly) drug your daughter to make her sleep, it still would've been manslaughter, rather than murder. But the sudden death of a young daughter from whatever cause is hardly a thing a couple can fail to blame each other for or otherwise hide - particularly a couple expected to behave entirely normally at dinner with friends who knew them well that night. As for launching an international campaign to find her (which mushroomed into a phenomenon that neither of them could have predicted), hardly the act of a guilty couple either, albeit unusual, but then they are both unusual people as I detailed in my earlier posting.
So the question remains, what do the media WANT from the McCanns aside from lots of newspaper sales? A marriage split is obvious, as the McCanns cannot be seen to buck the trend of 80% relationship breakdown following the death/disappearance of a child, but do they want mental breakdowns as well? Suicide by one or both? Some kind of 'confession' perhaps?
Kate and Gerry McCann may not fit the demographic of the usual parents of a missing or murdered child, but I'll eat my hat if they turn out to be guilty of anything other than not fitting the usual demographic.
One can only hope they get some sort of closure (good or bad) before the media takes things one step further and pays someone to frame them up for Maddie's disappearance

Thursday 25 October 2007

What's an Environmentalist to Do...?



When she actually finds fast cars and planes (worse still, evil planes) rather sexy?

But perhaps I should content myself. Have I not done my best for the environment by never having succumbed to the temptations of driving an Aston Martin Lagonda or piloting a Stealth Bomber?

Monday 22 October 2007

A Walk Round Autumn

(CLICK ON TITLE OF THIS POSTING TO RE-ACTIVATE SLIDESHOW IF IT HAS STOPPED)



August October

Crunching across the beech
Another leaf fall each wind tide
The dog days of summer
Turn a thousand shades of earth.
Eddying whirls of russet crisp
Sweep themselves into heaps
Just right for jumping into
When no one's looking
Save a tree dappled low-slung sun.

©LS King 2007



Beautiful sunrise over Adderbury, Oxfordshire, 7.20am this morning.

Friday 19 October 2007

The Ladders (& Snakes) of Housing

To The Lighted House

'Five hundred pounds a year
And a room of ones' own'
Was Virginia Woolfs’
recipe for happiness.
Then she saw the small ads
For rooms among the Spires
Worthy of writers.
Five hundred pounds a month,
(excl, and broadband extra)
Filled her pockets with stones
And walked into the nearest river.
Perhaps God had a room going
In one of his many mansions
A little bit cheaper…

© LS King 2006

Photo by

Monday 15 October 2007

All I Wanted Was a De-Tangle Comb!

I had to ask an assistant where the brushes and combs had gone to as all I could see was a sea of unidentifiable pink packaged 'goods' of no recognizeable use to man, woman or beast.
Someone should get this 'Chemist' under the Trades Descriptions Act. And where are the Packaging Police when you need them, if we're remotely serious about saving this planet? The contents of these gifts seemed to consist largely of packaging! Which begs the question, how much disposable income do they think we earn, proportionate to our intelligence in disposing of it?

Wednesday 10 October 2007

I Was Locked in a Cupboard For Longer Than You!

I thought I'd share with you a sneak preview of my forthcoming misery memoir - 'I was Locked In A Cupboard For Longer Than You!'

In it I will shockingly reveal how my parents abused me by;


.Forcibly strapping me to a 'pushchair' and restraining me with 'baby reins' until I was three, not to mention unlawfully imprisoning me in a 'playpen' whilst they abandoned me, to do the washing up or make a phone call.
  • Force-feeding me liquid carrots and other disgusting mushy foodstuffs between the ages of six months and one year.
  • Deliberately humiliating me in that ridiculous garb known as a 'nappy' and dressing me in embarrassing home knitwear with mittens sewn onto the sleeves, topped off with mismatched bobble-hats.
  • Forbidding me from running around in restaraunts and annoying other diners.
  • Forcing me to potty train and take baths while they watched, claiming I'd 'missed a bit' and assaulting me with a loofah.
  • Unplugging the phone every time I attempted to call the Police for help.
  • Cruelly depriving me of dessert until I'd eaten my greens.
  • Sadistically claiming there was no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy.
  • Refusing to buy me a television for my bedroom.
  • Making me attend a state penitentiary every day which they called 'school' and insisting I do 'homework' every afternoon before I was allowed to watch Blue Peter.
  • Imprisoning me in a dining chair until I was given 'permission' to leave the table.
  • Demanding I go to bed before 10.30pm on a school night.
  • Making me brush my teeth until my gums reddened.
  • Not letting me eat marshmallows for breakfast.
  • Withholding pocket money if I wasn't 'good'.
  • Refusing to buy me designer gear when Angela Gaston had it.
  • Denying me a Gameboy (pathetically they claim these weren't invented before 1989).
  • Confiscating my declaration of undying love to Simon Le Bon before I could find a stamp.
  • Not letting me take the cat up to bed

    These and many more abuses are laid starkly and rawly naked in my no-holds-barred last taboo bestseller-to-end-all-bestsellers ' I Was Locked In A Cupboard For Longer Than You!' - available exclusively from all Wainsburys supermarket outlets and budget flight airport vending machines. The wounds may have healed, but the scars remain festering.
    The ideal pop-up stocking filler for Christmas at only £8.99 or six-for-one multibuy with every packet of coco-pops.

    Photo by
  • Monday 8 October 2007

    The Travel Bores Have Landed

    Well the students are back in Oxford with a vengeance, regaling each other with Gap Year travel tales at the tops of their voices in pubs. Which reminds me of an ensemble piece they inspired some while ago...


    • Gap Year Travels

    1st Student:
    I was robbed by a hussar
    In a Baghdad bazaar

    2nd Student:
    Well I was molested by a gorilla
    At a bus stop near Manila

    3rd Student:
    Well I was kidnapped by a Yeti
    In the Serengeti

    4th Student:
    Well I raised a few grand
    by shagging my way to Thailand

    5th Student:
    Well I lost my backpack in Sydney
    And was murdered for a kidney

    1st Student:
    Cool.

    © LS King 2003

    Friday 5 October 2007

    Philosophy on a Friday



    Revolving Round The Sun (A Time Has Come)

    Seasons of cycles. Cycles of seasons
    Networks of connections, rhymes, rhythms, reasons
    Pattern, co-incidence, symbols, cues, meanings
    Is serendipity osmosis or a process of symbiosis?
    Wherefore part plays timing? Wherefore dreaming?
    Random acts of kindness
    Senseless acts of wickedness
    Disturbing and restoring, disturbing and restoring
    The knock-on pendulum to zero balance
    Revolution, evolution, extinction…
    A butterfly flaps its thunderous wings
    China quakes on the world's web
    A piece of luck lands in your lap.
    A snowflake falls. Or is it an angel's joke?
    Is it Year of the Spider? Is it written in the stars?
    What action behind the reaction? What cause behind the consequence?
    Instinct or intellect? fate or fatalism? motive or grace?
    Like age and change and death and taxes and night and day,
    Luck if you're lucky, statistically more often, if willing to meet luck halfway.
    Explain the bad things that happen to nice people and innocents
    The 'necessary evil'…
    Is there a God? Does He love a trier?
    Is the devil in the detail or the big G?
    Do the doors of perception lead to the gates of paradise?
    Is superstition the road to perdition, one magpie short?
    Can you re-negotiate your part if unhappy with the script?
    How any homsap can live or die (or kill) by any creed
    When 'belief' means a chance we could be wrong.
    Beyond admiring the neat graphics, daubing our own tribute freestyle
    And wondering at the power that links the human electro-magnetic field

    © LS King 2007

    Monday 1 October 2007

    Scouting For Squirrels

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    Taken by me yesterday (Britney the squirrel demanded soft focus). I'm going through my nature phase at the moment. All poets have to have one, it's the law! (click on View All Images to see witty captions accompanying 'poetry-in-motion')
    For my previous posting on these delightful critters see Ethnic Cleansing of The Grey Squirrel