Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Le Mystère de Madame Boyo


That Hague Tribunal, the London School of Tropical Medicine, HM Immigration Service, a wife-swapper from Chippenham - they all ask me the same question: "what's Mrs Boyo like?"

Let me just say this. She's the only person I know who can use the words "Anti-Dühring" and "obvious" in the same sentence and make it sound normal.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

A funny thing happened on the way to the crypt


As a public service employee with a good degree, to whom the world in a very real sense owes a living, I spend much of my time pushing the boundaries of discourse with my colleague and landsman, "Gyppo" Byard.

Today we were struck by a headline in Olly Onion's web blog noting "Strong winds forecast for Marcel Marceau funeral". This set us to thinking about a sub-genre of comedian funeral jokes.

Gyppo (his real name) recalled Peter Sellers's insisting on having the much-despised "In The Mood", the anthem of the GI seducer, played at his service, and I fondly remembered Spike Millgan's chosen tombstone inscription "I told you I was ill". Thither we proceeded to:

George Burns to put on two shows at own funeral. 2300 show is a bit blue.

Tony Hancock's ashes amounted to barely a sleeve-full.

Jacques Tati's coffin was accidentally placed on a conveyor belt leading into a hotel laundry.

Harpo's funeral proceeded in complete silence.

Chico missed his altogether on account of he was playing pinochle at the time

Groucho refuses to attend funeral home that would have him as client.

Rabbi asked to take Henny Youngman's funeral.... Please!

Rabbi Jackie Mason not to take own funeral due to prior engagement.


Oh please yourselves!

Best gags wins Welsh citizenship, again.

Pointy black hat tip, Olly's Onions.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Anti-Danube: Chapter VI


In Which I Encounter the League of the Wives of Dr Bohdan Naxajlo

Although words are the tools with which I fashion rude furniture from the stuff of my life, on this occasion I had to defer to our national poet Lub Farmaceuta and his epic The Sanding of St Bronislovlj:

"O Lord you judge men harshly
And none so more than me
Sometimes you pass by my affliction
With a mocking glance
Other times you return with an accordion
A flask
And a Turk."


It was as if the bard, diplomat and necrophile himself was convulsing with me there on the floor of Colonel Nadroth's office, as if he too knew what it was to have hot gravel fly simultaneously from your throat and fundament, to be raised from the Slovak shagpile on the blistering brand of your engorged glans, then spun around by the roaring trump from your own rear, and to have your nostrils slit by the stench of your spilt groin gravy. The editorial board of Literaturna Ruthenia disagreed, hence their failure to publish "Tropes of Contemporaneity in the Works of Farmaceuta". Nonetheless I stand by my analysis, which was more than I could do that grim afternoon at NAKRO headquarters.

"Tschtjetz, hose down Citizen Zhatko, he seems to have stopped erupting. Citizen Zhatko, kindly fill in this form, once you've been sufficiently hosed, paying particular attention to the sections on asphyxiation, blindness and rectal prolapse. You may use my pen." With that, Col Nadroth scraped his boots on his sword and retired to contemplate the lignite clouds from his window banquette.

Agent Tschtjetz hosed me as requested, using what he called the "organic method". He rolled me back onto the chair and handed me my unsullied trousers.

"Got 'em off in the lift. All part of the service," he grinned, pushing a form in front of me. It read:

Ministry of Disproportionate Defence Measures of the People's Democratic and Popular Republic of Ruthenia
Department of Unlicensed Chemical & Biological Warfare
Release Form

Dear citizen/relative of the deceased [delete where applicable]!

On behalf of the Cabinet of Ministers and Politburo we, the progressive scientists and troops of the People's Military and Apothecary Vanguard wish to acknowledge your ex post facto agreement to and/or sacrifice in pursuit of ever more drastic and economical means of defending the interests of the workers, peasants and revolutionarily-inclined bureaucracy.

Strychnoparalaxicum is the latest achievement of the shockworkers of Experimental Laboratory 547 of the Department of Unlicensed Chemical & Biological Warfare in the Name of Dr Paul Kammerer. You/your recently departed are/is the first person to encounter this toxin in objectively-voluntary, non-laboratory conditions. Your treatment/burial is conditional upon your completion of this form.


There followed a series of sections assessing the effects of this potion on my mind, organs, evacuative processes and ideological attitudes.

"Biological warfare," I whimpered.

"Cheer up, comrade, it's chemical in your case. All part of Prodekon," said Tschtjetz.

"Correct," continued Nadroth, lighting another Karbin filter-tip with a handful of confessions."Prodotvyrna ekonomikalyzatyja - productive economizing - the Party's new policy of saving money by having one state association farm out some of its activities to another. In this case, the Ministry of Disproportionate Defence Measures has paid us to combine its weapons research with our recruitment of informers. It's not all so challenging. The Batko Voskoboynikov Slyvovytz Distillery is trying out its new 120-proof batch on the five-year-old violin class at the Henadz Katz Special School for Panda-Eyed Prodigies. Teatime is quite an event there these days, and some of them have been signed up by the jazz department of the Gramodisk record company."

"Could be worse. Mrjakobes Meat-Processing Plant has this line of eel sausages that, well…, just don't eat out in Breb, that's all I'm saying," whinced Tschtjetz.

"You know Breb well, of course," smiled Nadroth as I tried to stuff my elephantine feet through my trouser legs. "The swelling in your extremities ought to subside within a few hours, but I suggest covering that with a waistcoat unless you want to attract the attention of the Vice Squad."

I took his second hint and adjusted my tripod stance. As for his first hint, I braced myself for further unpleasantness.

"The good if unlettered folk of Breb are convinced you're - " Nadroth glanced at some inky scrolls of what looked like toilet paper before him "- a pre- and post-war collaborator with the monarchists, social-democrats, Nazis, Trotskyists, 'so-called Hungarians’, real Hungarians and even us Communists, for dialectic's sake!"

"What did I do during the war? I forget, it’s being 20 years before I was born,"
I inquired mildly.

Nadroth leafed back a few rolls. "You were engaged in decadence, male prostitution, profiteering, and preparing for your post-war treachery. Ah, you also collaborated with 'Topo' Zjyvkowytz."

"But he was a cabaret comedian!"
I wailed.

"They didn't like him in Breb. Told Breb jokes apparently," noted Nadroth over his tinted, half-moon frames.

"That's right, comrade colonel. Where did the first Brevian come from? A Slovak banged a monkey and chucked it across the Danube! That was one his," recalled Tschtjetz.

"Thank you, sergeant," signed Nadroth. "The point is, Zhatko, that you have been denounced and condemned by an entire village of worthy if gastrically-troubled citizen-peasants, not to mention the Comrade First Secretary of the Party, for dissidence and lack of dissidence. On top of that, you've violated Socialist norms of morality and taste in your grubby ruttings with Comrade Madame Lottie Slavko and that librarian with all the Hungarian uniforms, while impersonating the son of a late possible Zionist, Professor Yitzhak Zhakto. In short, there's enough on this charge-sheet to get you a forced-labour camp all of your own, if that's what you and the Will of The People Made Manifest in The Deliberations of the Security Organs want. So I suggest that you put your addiction to collaboration to good use by performing some simple, patriotic tasks of personal betrayal for the Party, fatherland and your dear old mum."

"Prisoner 4567049/D, we were going to call her,"
explained Tschtjetz.

I pondered for a moment as my fingers slowly defused under the gentle encouragement of Tschtjetz’s truncheon. "I am ready to serve," I declared. "Can I have the antidote, and some clothes that aren't coated in most of me, please?"

"All part of your rehabilitation!"
smiled the colonel. "Tschtjetz will give you a fuller briefing later on, once you've rested and that thing's turned a normal colour. In the meantime, read this."

As I hopped away to a cell of my own, I glanced at the title of the bulky folder Nadroth had eased between my teeth. It read "The League of the Wives of Dr Bohdan Naxajlo".

Friday, October 26, 2007

Walesffact no.6: The Welsh Language


The BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme ran a feature yesterday morning on the oppression felt by literally millions of super-qualified monoglot civil service drones in Wales, who are literally scared of speaking out - except to national radio - against the tyranny that requires them to accept that some people in the service sector ought to be able to deal with Welsh-speaking tax-payers in their own language in their own country.

Or so I gather. I dunno. That time of the morning I'm having my sac shaved by a strumpet in a Glenys Kinnock mask, and can rarely muster the strength to re-tune from Radio 3's weekly rediscovery of Alexander Zemlinsky.

Since then, the bucket next to the mangle that serves as my post box has been full of crayoned requests from concerned No Good Boyo readers, Cymru Rouge cadres and junkmailers asking, to quote them all, "what the ffyc's all this then?"

I have therefore taken some time off mining literary gold to provide this brief primer on the Welsh Language.

Welsh is a language spoken by people in Gwynedd pubs about 15 seconds after someone an Englishman knows once walked in.

Most languages are written in ink. Welsh is written in green paint on road signs and cars belonging to passing morticians from Birmingham.

Welsh has only two genders - masculine and feminine - thereby proving its reactionary nature through this deliberate deprivileging of the hermaphrodite community.

Welsh is the only language that cannot be taught. The traditional means of transmission to non-members of Plaid Cymru is through being "rammed down the throat" and the denial of toilet rights to apocryphal children on Anglesey.

Welsh has no vocabulary to convey complex modern ideas like "engine", "love-grinder" or "tea", and Welsh-speakers from the south use diametrically opposed opposite words to those from the north, and perhaps vice versa. According to a bloke in the Cader Bookshop in Dolgellau who smelled of Deep Heat.

Welsh is an ancient language, having been invented by the BBC in 1928. For many years it was only spoken by the late sister of George Thomas, quondam Secretary of State for Wales, Speaker of the House of Commons and pit-pony, until JRR Tolkien made it the official language of Trollland. Since then computer scientists and the t-shirt community have taken it up.

It was later promoted by a vigorous Luftwaffe bombing campaign during the Second World War, when pacifist native-speakers set fire to heathland around Wrexham in the hope that someone might one day build a holiday home there.

Welsh books are very small, so the language fanatics that make it up as they go along randomly double-up letters like "ll", "dd", "nn" and "ff" to make them look longer.

Being able to speak Welsh is considered a racial characteristic by some Labour Party supporters, which comes as a surprise to the Welsh-speaking Sikh bus-driver on the Dolgellau-Aberystwyth Arriva route.

Speaking Welsh is the only remaining requirement for joining the South African Broederbond.

Irish is less threatening. As is Gaelic, as long as you pronounce it "Gallic". And have it sung by Enya.

Monday, October 22, 2007

For Our Ruthenian Reader


Sorry for the lack of posts. My head is farshtopt mit possibilities, and it's gummed up my hands like the mouth of a Piccadilly pansy. In the meantime, I have a literary announcement for our Ruthenian and Sub-Carpathian reader.

Czytajte szvidko, zabuvajte zavsze!

Vyshla nova knyzhka zloricznoho anhlyys'ko-amerkyanks'koho pismenchyka Yjanu Plenderlyt'ju (Ian Plenderleith) czeszkoju movoju, z jakoj-toj prychyny. Linkolnskyj xlopczyk maye dvy nohy y tylki jednuu hlavu, szczo ridke v tomu centri krovozmishennja y kultusu Cthulhu (Iä, Iä!). Tematyka je pilkanyzhka y neuspyxa v koxannjy, yoho druzi durenyczni y mat' mat' mat'!

"For Whom The Ball Rolls" zasluhaje pevnu uvahu y Politzyjy, i psyxyatrycznyx doslizhen'. Centralnist' pilkanyzhky v anhlyys'koj svitskoj zhyttj'ja namnoho poyasnjuje rozpid Brytanskoji Ymperyjy y vvspyx lezbianizmusu posryd zhinok Albionu. Dlja toho, Plenderleith meszkaje za kordonom.

Na zhal', tzi czeszki depravnyky vydali knyzhu vpersze v Slavjanskomu sviti. Ale Brevska Vyddruknytztva "Ozhynyk" je rad byty na poczesnomu, druhomu misti, jak zavsze, z svyjym rutens'ko-pidkarpatskom tlumaczinnja tzej vazhkoj knyzhky, pid nadzvyzko "Dlja koho dzvoni tantzjuvalnyj veczir", szob uspili do Zelenix svyt y Ivana Kupala, abo Malanky.

Redaktor Vyddruknytztvy "Ozhynyk"
Bohdan Naxajlo

Sunday, October 14, 2007

The Cymru Rouge School of Business Schools


Colleagues gaze adoringly at me and say "No Good Boyo, how did you survive being a manager during that halcyon age when The Bosses appointed anyone who'd sat in the same place for long enough?"

Now that I'm back among the workers by mutual agreement with the Board of Directors, the Crown Prosecutors and solicitors acting for Ms Jenny Agutter, I've decided to share some of my managerial insights with those who have yet to learn The Ways of the Welsh.

No. 1: If the Job's Worth Doing, Let Someone Else Do It.

Simple, n'est-ce pas? And yet how many aspiring young executives ignore this golden rule. Remember that you were appointed a manager for one or more of the following reasons:

a). The leathery chairman likes having you around because you remind him of dear, dear Justin from Brasnose, and you might be amenable to dressing up in a deep-sea diving suit filled with Swarfega sometime;

b). You got through recruitment because you're a glib sociopath who is to responsible working what Ed Gein was to bespoke tailoring, but employment legislation makes it impossible to sack you; or

c). you're a wall-eyed drone who loves to work, who wants to work, who loves to work, who's got to work, and so can be counted on to carry out such gruesome tasks as talking to staff and clients, implementing strap-on business plans, and chairing endless meetings with coked-out 500k outside consultants.

If you're a). then you probably have little to trouble your honey-hued, tousled head with but preparing for the chairman's marketing trip to Morocco and San Gimignano.

If you're b). it's congratulations time for, as long as don't actually bite anyone, you will be able to spend years plotting against that deputy accounts bastard who looked at you, you know, that way, at the inter-departmental do where that minx whatever her name is wouldn't stop crying. Maybe you could call Customs & Excise next time he goes on holiday. I wonder what colour he is inside, you know, deep inside, and would light come out of his eyes when you press them in and would he speak with God's voice? That sort of thing.

If you're c). then this post is for you. You were appointed by the boss because he has understood that If the Job's Worth Doing, Let Someone Else Do It. This presents you with a choice:

Option One. You have been conditioned to act like a gimp, and can go along with it for ages, mocked and despised, racking up the hours, losing your hair and physique, gorging on tubby food, panting eagerly as the chairman's PA (signing off in his name) flicks through your unread reports with the sticky fingers of an odalisque just to make sure the pagination is right, on and on until your heart shrivels then bursts open like a jelly supernova in your mid-50s.

The sale of the expensive house you never really saw will fund your slatternly wife and Emma/Toby kids through a few years of gardening boys, designer drugs and novel surgical procedures, and with that all memory of you ends.

Option Two. You can seek out a gaggle of wannabe drones still at shopfloor level, appoint a sociopath to coordinate them, and let them do the job for you. This is how all successful organisations work, from the Early Church to Stalin's NKVD and Murdoch's Sun.

Then you can lie back and laugh, ideally after pleasuring one or more of the drones' neglected life-partners, and take the credit for their sterling efforts.

The drones will be grateful that a manager is pleased with their work, especially if he gives the impression that he might have been willing to rein in the sociopath but, well, you know how it is...

The sociopath is buoyed up, sensing in you a tool in his plans to destroy all known life and build a Mary Chapel out of his secretaries' pelvic bones.

And you showed your colleagues that you appreciate the gravitas of their trust by Not Trying To Do the Job Yourself.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Электрические ли друзья?


I for one am delighted to have people of all races, class, creeds, genders and species visit my web blog. It makes a pleasant change from the months of silence when even I didn't bother writing anything on it.

Only yesterday we saw our first guest from Africa; from the Sherifian Kingdom of Morocco to be exact - marhaba, ya habibi! I trust you did not reach us via a Google search on "Charlotte Church custad bukkake" as did a young visiter from the United Arab Emirates.

Mrs Boyo, however, has not been slow to put my euphoria into some sort of rational perspective. She raised red, Caligulan eyes from her copy of The Intelligence of Evil long enough to say "The Inter Net is a living, alien organism. It senses your pathetic, Silurian longings, and manufactures little friends to post on your site. They no more exist than do human pity, compassion or that Brithdir Wife-Swapping Society you're always going on about. Read this!"

She tossed a copy of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris into my pen, and let me get on with it.

I'm easily alarmed and confused, not least of all by my own clothing, but the diary of this Polish cosmonaut was a chilling revelation. Mrs Boyo insists it's science fiction, but I'm not so certain.

All science fiction books have so far come true - Brave New World, Planet of the Apes (book, not the film), Minority Report; you take your pick - all except for Colin Wilson's seminal "Topless Lady Space-Vampires from Outer Space". And that's only a matter of time.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Cymru Rouge Citizenship Test

Literally millions of ordinary, working-class Ruthenians, Sub-Carpathians and Uzbek billionaires have taken one look at the British government's citzenship test and said "Ffycs this, mun, I's going to become a Welsh!" And we in Cymru Rouge are only too happy to have them as a counterbalance to the waves of Brummie white-flighters, Giro smack-heads and hey-nonny fans of everything Celtic (except Welsh) who clutter up our slate-laden land.

Nonetheless, standards is standards, so the Edjucation (and Fighting) Committee of the Cymru Rouge Great Angka (myself, Ta Moq, Huw Samphan and Paul Pot), have devised a series of questions to assess the suitability of these massed huddlers for Welsh citizenship, bringing as it does many rights as well as obligations.

So here's the first section. Watch this video, and answer the following questions:




1. Is Charles Bukowski a Welsh?

2.
Is Rheinallt H Rowlands right to want to be like him?

3.
The countryside in the video lies near Llanfihangel-y-Pennant. Which side of the road should Rheinallt be driving on?

4.
Those Welsh girls look lovely, don't they?

5.
But what if they're dirty?

6.
How come Rheinallt has such a lovely deep Welsh voice if his pods don't look like they've dropped yet?

7. What will Rheinallt's mam say when she gets hold of him?


Answers will be assessed and sentences passed in the coming week.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Latin America: An Open Letter


Dear readers,

I'm often accused of being parochial. "Youse blog is all !Welsh!, mun, apart from some Eastern Europe. Show a bit of cosmo-fycin-politanism, innit?"

So I am happy to announce a series of No Good Boyo Open Letters to the people, or peoples, of the world, highlighting their shortcomings and suggesting ways in which they could overcome them.

First off are the Latin Americans. Like most newspaper-reading types I thought Latin America had sorted itself out, but then along come the likes of Snr Chavez and various disgruntled Andean rustics and -!Ay mira! - they're at it again.

A young lady from Mexico, now living in Amsterdam, complained to a colleague of mine that Europeans use the term "America" when the mean the United States. Latin America is America too, and has an untold history that the rest of the world needs to hear, she opined.

I hereby reply to her, and all of her ilk.

Dear Maria,

If that's your real name. Given that you are a female native of Mexico now resident in the Netherlands, I assume that your professional line of work permits me to call you anything I'd like for a reasonable fee.

To hear a Latin American complain of injustice pains us Europeans greatly, given the fine record your continent has on human rights, fighting drug-funded organised crime and keeping the Catholic Church in business.

This unknown history of Latin America that you mention is a catalogue of madmen building Toblerone temples in the middle of jungles, then amusing themselves with unnecessary surgical procedures and scrawling glyphs on the walls with their fishbone-spliced members.

The Aztecs thought a syphilitic Spaniard was their god, the Incas ran around the mountain tops like ninnies when there was perfectly good llamas to ride, and the Amazonian natives never quite grasped that strapping a gourd to your johnson does not a fashion statement make. There are some histories that one simply choses to know less about.

Latin America is so benighted that the only vaguely normal people who considered colonising it were clap-ridden Iberians (who were in fact looking for Indonesia), confused Scots, some religious maniacs from Bala and the remnants of the Waffen SS.

America brings to mind an image of power and plenitude, whether you approve of it or not.

Latin America conjures up the tableau of an unshaven army officer in shades shoving a cattle prod up some student's arse.

!Hasta la victoria siempre!,

No Good Boyo

Friday, October 05, 2007

The History of the Welsh Economy (Short Course)


You have two ewes.

You sell both and buy a ram.

You don't know what to do with it.

It looks at you funny.

You fight it.

You sell the ram to pay the hospital bill.

You get a job in Tesco.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Anti-Danube: Chapter V


In which I attack the Secret Police with my lunch

A secretary brought in plates of papanasz and glasses of afinata, all embossed with the NAKRO crest - a fist clenched around a hank of hair, punching through a top hat.

Colonel Nadroth was a long, knobbly man armed with a blood-clotting mustache that made him look like the sceptre of St Hryhor the Becalmed.

"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" he remarked. "Here we are, a shield and a sword of the revolution respectively, eating papanasz and drinking afinata with you, a shock-worker in the salt-mines of meaning. In some ways, this is a model of what Comrade Yutz had in mind in his speech at the disbanding of the Academy of Sciences in 1949.

"And yet, this comradely spirit could so easily be dissipated by, say, some misplaced familiarity, a lack of awareness of forthcoming Central Committee decrees, or inappropriate enquiries about the current location of one's relatives. And then - lo! - Agent (Class II) Tschjetz is giving a practical demonstration of Newton's First Law down the back staircase. Please bear this in mind, Citizen Zhatko."

(- "Who is this Comrade Newton, the new minister of justice? And what is his law? What am I doing here? Is this afinata from La Roata's? It's very good. My legs aren't right" - These were some of the thoughts that passed through my mind as I tried to work out how I had got from Tschetjetz's car into the colonel's office, and where my trousers had gone.)

Colonel Nadroth lit a Karbin filter-tip.

"The question today," he continued "Is one raised by Comrade First (General-)Secretary Novak K. at next month's inner-Party plenum. I quote; 'The elder-fraternal Soviet Union has Academician Sakharov, an eminent nuclear physicist. Czecho and Slovakia share Vaclav Havel, the oblique playwright. Even the Poles have attics full of cuckcolds churning out mimeographed clerical nonsense while their hatchet-faced wives practice French inhalation at various film festivals. And what do we have? The trainee philosopher Zhatko, and the one they call Kodoba.

"'Have any of you read Zhatko? Has anyone? Here is the poem he wrote to mark the 34th anniversary of the 1947 All-Ruthenia Referendum to Abolish Elections. It is called "The Apocalytic Vision of the Father". I could go on. (Calls expected from the audience: Please Do Not, Comrade First (General-)Secretary!).

"As for the one they call Kodoba, his tirades against the 'rotten rootless cosmopolitan liberal rot of consenualisticism' are no more interesting now that he's an ultra-nationalist than they were when he worked for our own Ministry of Propaganda and Adult Education.

"'in short, comrades, we must raise the quality, speed and service of our dissidence, enhance its accessibility to the workers, and raise its profile among the capitalists and their comprador hirelings."


Nadroth lowered the paper, and glinted bloodshot at me over its mealy brim. "You agree, of course. Any comments?"

"Bearing in mind the staircase,"
I ventured, "I would like to propose that I am not a dissident."

"Until this speech by Comrade First (General-)Secretary Novak, that was objectively true," said the colonel. "Now, you will have to modify your behaviour to accommodate the Party Plenum ruling. You will begin by committing an act of sabotage against Agent (Class II) Tschtjetz. Tschtjetz!"

"Comrade Colonel!"

"Hand the Accused Zhatko your chafing iron and proffer him your ears."


The contrary waters of another Danube lapped about my lungs, and I deposited a half-portion of papanasz onto the Shield of the Revolution.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Singalonga Slorc II


"Country road
Take me home
To the jail
I belong

"Cell Block 9B
Pyintaw Facil'ty
Country road
Burn my home."

Monday, October 01, 2007

Save Energy - Burn a Witch


As we approach the end of October, sentimental minds turn to mush at the thought of witches, goblins and other leathery Devil's playthings. Not mine. We Welsh have learned the hard way not to give any quarter to these broom-brandishing banshees.

Feminism, cat-fanciers and the Millennium have earned witchery an unthinking eclat, aided by the Emo phenomenon and the popularity of the Melanie Phillips look among our yoghurt-fed pubescents.

I'm happy to report that all of these fancies have passed Wales by, and any witch who dares clutter up our Cambrian mountain-tops with cauldrons and the like will be dowsed with willow, kettle and llymru ladle by the Snowdownia National Park Power Rangers, then packed off back to her creative writing class before you can say dream-catcher.

In the long centuries between the Tudor sacking of the monasteries and the rise of Calvinist Methodism, which met local demand for something livelier than bland old Swiss Calvinism, Wales was a predominantly pagan country.

Men wandered around oak groves clad in grubby dressing-gowns and monged on fly agaric, while our rosy womenfolk pleasured themselves on menhirs. Goats had the vote, hallucinating craftsmen decided that triple harps and round boats were an advance for two-armed people who wanted to go somewhere, and the rabbi of Llanelli Hebrew Congregation filled the village of Gorseinon with his estuarine golems.

In short, oedd 'na le yn ty ni.

The Godly advent of literacy, four-part harmony and public humiliation spared us this hippy nonsense for the last two hundred years, but now it's trying to creep back. No bloody road!

You seen one of these, you burn her. Simple as that. It's good for the environment, it brings communities together, the kids love it, and - who knows - you might save some old biddy's immortal soul.

And you can't say that every day, unless you're the Pope or something.

Singalonga Slorc


O, tie a pink accordion
Round my empty head
If you walk the streets
Of Rangoon you're dead

If I don't see a pink accordion
Wrapped around my head
I'll drop all the fuss
Step under a bus
And frankly that's nuff said
If I don't see a pink accordion
Wrapped around my head.