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  #11  
Unread 02-18-2014, 12:24 PM
Rob Stuart Rob Stuart is offline
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I daresay that this isn't what Lucy had in mind at all, but it's what she's getting.


Our merry band grows smaller as the years go flying by;
Now Graham too has sadly passed away.
What’s left of us are gathered here to bid our chum goodbye,
Disposing of him in our special way.

We didn’t know each other back in 1965,
But when our plane crash-landed in Tibet
We wretched, bruised and battered few who’d managed to survive
Soon got as firm as friends can ever get.

We melted snow for water, and for several weeks ahead
We rationed every bit of in-flight meal.
They ran out all the same, and so we started on the dead;
A moral and gustatory ordeal.

But by the time the rescue came, we’d eaten twenty men,
And all of us had come to love the taste.
We’ve never murdered for it since (we swore an oath), but when
A comrade dies he never goes to waste...

Last edited by Rob Stuart; 02-18-2014 at 07:03 PM.
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  #12  
Unread 02-18-2014, 12:29 PM
Rob Stuart Rob Stuart is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Adrian Fry View Post
There's a reunion dinner anecdote in Brian Sewell's autobiography. Dining with former schoolmates in middle age, he finds most are married and homophobic. This provokes him to point out the room that there's not a man in the place he hadn't slept with in adolescence. Silence. Exit Mr Sewell, pursued by glares.

Now, if only I could do a rhyming version. . .
I read an extraordinary anecdote once about a youthful Sewell visiting Salvador Dali at his home in Cadaques and obligingly putting on a *ahem* 'solo performance' for him. It's an image I've never been quite able to shake out of my head.
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  #13  
Unread 02-18-2014, 02:57 PM
John Whitworth's Avatar
John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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Rob, I think what Lucy had in mind is a blind alley. If that's what she had in mind. Your take seems much more interesting.
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  #14  
Unread 02-18-2014, 03:30 PM
Chris O'Carroll Chris O'Carroll is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Stuart View Post
I read an extraordinary anecdote once about a youthful Sewell visiting Salvador Dali at his home in Cadaques and obligingly putting on a *ahem* 'solo performance' for him. It's an image I've never been quite able to shake out of my head.
"In Dirty Dali: A Private View on Channel 4 on 3 June 2007, Sewell described his acquaintance with Salvador Dali in the late 1960s, which included lying in the foetal position without trousers in the armpit of a figure of Christ and masturbating for Dali, who pretended to take photos while fumbling in his trousers." -- Wikipedia's account of the incident Rob describes.

Curl up in Christ's armpit and whack off for Salvador Dali -- That's the "event score" for one of the great performance art pieces of all time. How did Sewell get from there to a career as a fire-breathing enemy of conceptual art?
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  #15  
Unread 02-18-2014, 04:41 PM
Rob Stuart Rob Stuart is offline
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Sewell's taste isn't always quite as conservative as people think, but he doesn't have much truck with conceptual art, it is true. You have to admire his writing even if you don't share his views (as I often don't). That obscure, baroque vocabulary of his ( 'cacafuego', 'panjandrums') is a thing of beauty and wonder.
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  #16  
Unread 02-19-2014, 05:18 AM
Jerome Betts Jerome Betts is offline
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Blind alley, John? Could be interesting. Might meet the shade of T.H. up there.

Last edited by Jerome Betts; 01-18-2019 at 12:36 AM. Reason: Withdrawn for tinkering
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  #17  
Unread 02-19-2014, 05:43 AM
Rob Stuart Rob Stuart is offline
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I think this is worth a prize for the coinage of 'bank-arachnid' alone.
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  #18  
Unread 02-19-2014, 10:45 AM
Sylvia Fairley Sylvia Fairley is offline
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Prof, you look fine! (Due box and hearse,
Poor doddering memento mori.)
My fate? Could well have been far worse . . .
(I’m not, like some, a daft old Tory!)[/quote]

Nice, Jerome, but don't forget the Speccie is a blatantly Tory magazine! Still, maybe even some Tories have a sense of humour...
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  #19  
Unread 02-19-2014, 11:55 AM
Jerome Betts Jerome Betts is offline
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Thanks Rob and Sylvia. Hmm, sent now, but I suppose I should have found something to rhyme with 'Kipper' to be on the safe side. (Reactionary and essay-ripper ?) Let's hope Lucy sits on a cloud aloof from party strife.

I have a vague memory of a similar competition in the 1970s, possibly in the New Statesman, where the TV reporter Gerald Priestland won a prize.

'Gowing, once the sixth form sadist, buys and sells Rhodesian shares' and Smothering youthful indiscretions with a lawful wedded wife' to quote two lines, possibly from different entries, lurking in the fallible mind-cloud. It may have been Priestland's that ended 'Lord. dismiss us with thy curse/Who have made a bad thing worse'.

And was there one called Summoned by Belles, in which Pam and the others catch up with Betjeman in later life?
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  #20  
Unread 02-20-2014, 02:35 PM
Peter Goulding Peter Goulding is offline
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Our tongues became loose and our glasses drained faster
as we toasted again our great business class master,
a wily ex-trader we knew as Old Hodges
who focussed on financial loopholes and dodges.

And thus we recounted with increased hilarity
each desperate deal daubed with irregularity,
each cynical scam, every corporate killing,
each fortune conned out of investors unwilling.

The evening flew by, the confessions kept mounting.
We roared at the tales of creative accounting.
With every example, we raised high our glasses
and drank to old Hodges’ unique business classes.

But then up piped Weasel, whom we’d cruelly spat on
and wedgied, debagged and one time even shat on,
who grimaced while telling us it was a pity
his job entailed tracking down fraud in the City.

Last edited by Peter Goulding; 02-21-2014 at 03:18 PM. Reason: 'Old' changed to 'great' in L2 as per Jerome's observation
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