Valentine's Day is not marked in the House of Boyo, as we Welsh have our own Dydd Santes Dwynwen on which to shower our loved ones with oats and cockles.
Mrs Boyo resists this practice, and rejects International Women's Solidarity Junta Day on 8 March on the grounds that the Soviet mafia grew out of Chechens' cornering the flower market. I suspect that the commercial failure of her "Deny the Floral Compradors!" range of Socialist greetings cards may have played a role, but this suspicion I keep to myself.
Nonetheless, I decided to persuade Mrs Boyo otherwise by spending a spare morning before Arianrhod's monthly declawing session searching the Intern Net for images that combined dialectical rectitude and diaphonous pulchritude - a pursuit also popular with all manner of non-revolutionaries these days, I gather.
My trawl uncovered some rectitude and much diaphony, but little that combined the two in a satisfyingly Hegelian manner.
Now, we in the Cymru Rouge have little time for the narcissistic violence and poor dress sense of the Baader Meinhof Group, and as Maoists we consider their alliance with the nomadic nationalists of the PLO to be a juvenile distraction from the important work of planting slate and indoctrinating infants.
The smudged faces mooning out of those wanted posters may have driven a generation of over-excited students to abandon sit-ins and advanced smoking techniques in favour of blowing up civil servants and stealing white Mercedes, but they did nothing for The Rouge.
Then I found this:
Ulrike Meinhof the Terrorist may have looked like the sort of yoghurt-skinned drab you bumped against while trying to escape from Bauhaus concerts, but Ulrike Meinhof the 60s Journalist was a Hot-to Trot! A cuddly cushion of Klassenkampf with adorable dimples, plump vowels and a nice line in tailored jackets.
O Ulrike, where did it all go wrong?
12 comments:
Was that really her? She was quite attractive, in a hefty kind of way, but the signs of emotional instability were evident in the way she continually raised her eyebrows to emphasize her points. It might have turned out so differently if a lyrical Welshman had wooed her with chocolates and flowers, perhaps introducing her to the delights of ladies' rugby. Back-row forward, I would have said.
I was also surprised by what a total and utter fox she was, my low-knuckled friend - the photo at the top is her too.
Alas, as is so often the case, she was also a nut of Stockhausen proportions. Still some Lebkuchen and back copies of Simplicissimus might have done the trick.
I hope I'm not offending anyone here, but ladies rugby is the last pursuit I'd have suggested to Ulrike on arrival in her new, Welsh home. Whereas the male game is an academy of athleticism and chess-like strategy, ladies rugby attracts gym mistresses with Eton crops.
Astrid Proll might have gone for the ladies rugby. Except I suspect she would've been too lazy to obey the rules and would've demanded a fag break every half hour.
I'm with Astrid on the fag breaks. Sporting events go on far too long. If students lose the thread after a 45-minute lecture, how can a dope-addled Kraut anarchist keep up with line-outs?
Moreover, being a Baader Meinhof she'd want a group discussion on the rules, a half-time self-criticism session, and the subsequent execution of the "pig" linesmen.
True enough - sport should be back in the hands of the idealistic yet unfit and pink-eyed amateur rather than these modern professional types! And I'm imagining, with the free-love bunk-up style of the Baaders, the rugger scrum might have turned into a scene from Lars von Trier's The Idiots.
Very well, I'll consider your mollusc-based ethnic porridge next year if it might wean you off this Sparticist necrophilia.
She looks like a prop to me. A modern loosehead. Destructive in the set pieces and a bit nifty about the park with a ball in her hands. Who was the Nazi in the clip walking along behind the water canons? It looked like Himler, not that I am an expert in dead ex fascists of course.
Whence the reference to mollusc-based ethnic porridge, Mrs. B? Has Boyo been treating you at that Mr. Heston Blumenthal's restaurant?
Also, I hope that you’re providing a negativist counterweight (Cioran, Adorno, Paul Celan??) to his overly hopeful Hegelian dialectic of totty and terrorism!
Mr Birdwatcher, I see what you mean about the peaked-cap merchant in the leather coat. He could be a member of Berlin's literally vibrant gay S&M community. My favourite is the beatnik in the mac who does a standing somersault when hit by the water cannon. That must count as a 10 for the copper in charge of the cannon, and some serious karma for macman's dharma.
My Ulrike might have been handy in a scrum, but I doubt whether she had the speed to move the ball up the park, frankly. The police caught her within two years, after all.
I like to think of her joining Merched y Wawr, the Welsh WI, and teaching them how to conceal semtex in custard slices and to revolt against Baptist patriarchy.
Gadjo, I think Mrs B is referring to cockles and oats. I wasn't planning to cook them together, frankly, but you make a good point. Wales is filling up with tony English tourists these days, rather than the white-flight Brummies and Scouse thieves we normally have to put up with, and they'll eat any old dreck if you call it ethnic.
Given the cockles and oats revelation, was Mrs Boyo aware you were a Welsh when she married you? If so, you must be one hell of a charmer. I raise my red Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra baseball cap to you!
Mrs Boyo relishes a challenge, but now seems to have decided to treat our life as an exercise in sociological observation. She introduced me to her Aunt Ynka as "my thesis".
Heh! Mrs B. is clearly related to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, and you are clearly clinically fascinating. Enjoy!
Post a Comment