How Many Owls

This is a poem by Alison Bunting written during the great Covid-19 confinement of 2020

How Many Owls

How many owls would you need?

Majestic and wise

Eyes wide open

Knowingly surveying

Stoically purveying

Openly displaying

Their wisdom

And saying

Breathe

How many owls would you need?

One or none or

Seven hundred?

To give the commander in chief

Some wisdom?

Can wisdom be shared?

Or learned?

Or earned?

Or yearned for?

Breathe

How many owls would you need?

To heed

The warnings of the learned

The science you discard

The silence of a graveyard

It is so hard

To watch

America

Die

Breathe

How many owls do you need?

Even if we gave you

All the owls on earth

It wouldn’t be of worth

To fill the dearth

The lacking

The wracking to find

Your wisdom

Breathe

Where would we store it anyway?

If we could milk

The owls of all their wisdom?

Silhouetted against a super moon

Majestic and wise

Eyes wide open

Momentarily gazing

Patiently waiting

Hopefully sharing

Their wisdom

And saying

Breathe

How many owls would you need

For the commander in chief

To empathise

And not chastise

To Realise

Not stigmatise

Our grief

In the hours of our confinement

There is no refinement

No realignment

No intertwinement

No reassignment

Of your disposition

Only dispossession

And disaffection

Because of your transgression

And our great depression

Breathe

I’ll make a confession

How many owls do I think you need?

To give you wisdom?

Try as I might

To shed some light

On the number of owls 

Infinite



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 Photo by Cris DiNoto on Unsplash

Alison tries to book a hotel room in Miami....

Now you know I don't write much anymore, but this needed to be shared....

Miami Marriott Hotel: So, where are you phoning from?
Me: France.
Miami Marriot Hotel: Oh ok, so is that like in Italy?
Me: er...No. It's in France.
Miami Marriott Hotel: Oh, ok, I thought France was in Italy.
Me: No, France is France. Italy is a different country. Although Italy did try and make France Italy during WW2.
Miami Marriott Hotel: You're confusing me now. So are you in Italy or France?
Me: France.

Saint Mary found in penne arrabiata

Bamako, Mali

An Australian woman has claimed to have found an image of Saint Mary MacKillop in the leftover sauce of her penne arrabiata, just after the official canonisation of Australia's first saint.

This afternoon Mary MacKillop was canonised in a special mass at St Peter's Basilica in front of 8000 pilgrims.

Alison Bunting was visiting Mali for a conference and ordered room service, where she chose the penne arrabiata, along with a tropical fruit salad for dessert.

"I just could not believe it", she said. "When I ate the last penne, there was an image of Saint Mary in the tomato sauce. I knew immediately it was her because of the time difference. It's late afternoon in Rome and I knew she was being canonised as I ate my lunch."

The image was not able to be verified by a second person.

"I took a photo with my phone and ran down the hotel corridor hoping to find someone who would attest to the miracle appearing on my plate. But nobody knew who she was or that she was being canonised.

"By the time I came back, the image had gone. Instead it looked like Chris Mainwaring.

"I am certain she visited me in my hotel room because my middle name is Mary and because I am a feminist and she went and told Pope Pius he could go shove it if he thought she was going to be told what to do by him and also because she knows I like tomato-based pasta".

When asked if she enjoyed her penne arrabiata, Ms Bunting said that "it could have been a bit more spicy and the bread served with it was wafer thin".

Some pics from our adventures....

Follow the links and you will find some pics from our adventures in Germany over the new year period. It was baltic!! I love the fact that the history of 20th century Europe is contained in one city - Berlin. Go there if you haven't been already. That's an order!!

Berlin and A Berlin Wall

'Allo 'Allo.....Oui are moving to Paris

Oui, il est excitement! Bill Gates somehow got Jock's email and offered him a job with Microsoft in tres romantique Paris. Et moi? I am going to habite a Paris avec Jock and will become a lady who dejeuners for the time being. I will most likely étude a CELTA course in teaching the French business fraternité how to speak propa English.

I do recall my folks sitting me down, âgé 14 ans, at the proper dining table (not the kitchen table, thus meaning BUSINESS) to inform me that I would regret not continuing mes études de Français. I have to say, that a la mode, I did not see the point (please pronounce this pwau in the context of une petite vignette) in continuing a language belonging to a country on the other side of the planet. Ah, mais non! my parents cried....There are so many other countries in the world that speak French, said Maman....You will need French to do the Times crossword and understand high brow political cartoons, explained Papa. Comme çi comme ça said I, with a resolute shrug of the shoulders and the facial expression of enfants terribles.

So now, 20 years later, Je ne regrette rien.... Non! Rien de rien... For I 'ave it on very gid authorité that I wid 'ave fergot-ten maste of it in eny cass. You can now catch me répétition vocabulaire de français from the iPod whilst trotting around Glasgow, much to the amusement of passers by.

So, in preparation for the road ahead, I am learning Français from these two gentlemen

Also, please enjoy le snippet de 'Allo 'Allo - no doubt how I shall parlez Français in Paris...

• René: I would like to turn myself in
  

Officer Crabtree: Do you wash to confuss to a cream?

René: What? Oh, oh yes. Cream galore!

Crabtree: Do you wash to confuss to mordor?

René: No.

Crabtree: Minslatter?

René: No.

Crabtree: Biglary?

René: No.

Crabtree: Biglary woth minaces?

René: No.

Crabtree: Roop?

René: No.

Crabtree: Arson?

René: What is arson?

Crabtree: Setting fire to places.

---

• Officer Crabtree: Good Moaning, I have come to arost your mither
  

Yvette: Arrest her mother, why?

Crabtree: She has been pissing fudged bank notes in the hot shop.

Edith: What does Crabtree say Vyette?

Yvette: I think he said "she has been passing forged bank notes in the hat shop.

Crabtree: Presoasly

René (Dressed like Fanny, doing a poor impression of her): Edith, remind him that he is supposed to be on our side.

Crabtree: Who is the ugly old bog in the bid with your mither?

Fanny: I have been asking the same question.

René (takes off his wig): It is I, Rene.

Crabtree: My Gid that was a god disgeese, I was complotely decieved by the wog.

René: Edith, give him 500 francs from the till and tell him to pass off.

Crabtree: There is no need to be rode.

COUNTDOWN The blog is restarting!

That's right folks, the blog will be resuming its regularly scheduled program shortly, due mostly to popular demand. I have received so many emails from friends and family missing the Inivisible Inkblot's vignettes which do so much to enhancing one's experiences of procrastination.

So stay tuned! It's the final countdown!

Triptych Reflections

I am having to rethink the blog - not because I've run out of things to say - far from it - but my new job as the official Red Cross schmoozer of parliamentarians means I have to be a bit more considered about issues I write about, particularly my whimsical and oft hip-shot political opines.

Speaking of which - isn't China going to be v. interesting over the next few weeks? How organised are the Tibetans? Or the people who have lost their homes in favour of grand olympic stadiums? The world is watching....I can't wait!

So, in the meantime, while I rethink this inky blot in cyberspace, please enjoy these three pics taken at the Glastonbury festival with my lomo. I have decided they are a triptych in the manner of fete galante and am thinking of entering them in the Glasto pic competition. It's called L'embarquement pour Glastonbury (if you click on the pic it will enlarge and you can look at it properly...) and was taken at sunrise on Sunday morning at the stone cirlce sacred space at Worthy Farm.