Michael Praetorius ✒ with the fifteenth act in his satirical series.

Amazing grace

You know that thing saved people have ... ? Where they love talking about their particular moment of personal revelation ... ? Well, you won't be surprised to hear I'm no different.

I was 14. At St Colman's College. In Newry. And back then Newry had a terrific record shop: Carlin Records. Carlin's had some eclectic stuff. One day, flicking idly through boxes of LPs, I saw a compilation album called The Mike Raven Blues Show, going very cheap.

Later that day, back home, and not before homework was done (good boy), I gave it a spin. All went very well until the final track on Side 2. Something called Knocking At Your Door, by someone called Elmore James.

An opening salvo of rowdy and fierce guitar, a drum shot, repeat, then an anguished, demanding holler of, I said, baby, who's that knockin' at your door ... ?!? (2x) It must have bin my best friend, 'cause I don't live there no more ... !

There was a flare, a light, a vision almost, so dazzlingly brilliant that I fell off my horse. Next thing I knew, I'd woken up in a field at dawn, after a hard night's drinking, knowing that God had intervened to rapturous effect in my rotting, wasted, evil life. I realised that in the previous 14 years I’d been in hock to a shameful orgy of selfish wank and bluster.

But now ... no more auction block ... ! Yes, the malign, random indifference of the universe, the cruel pointlessness of everything ... they were still there, but had finally, triumphantly, been put into meaningful perspective.

Rejoice! Saved! I was able, at last, to say to myself.

Even now, a lifetime later, I only have to hear the Lord run that bottleneck up to the 12th fret, pause, then cry out in a voice full of angst,

The sun is shining, but it's raining in my heart (2x); I'm in love with my baby, aaagh, and I hate to see us part ...

... and I'm fulfilled and justified. It's what we're here for. Plus, of course, to die roaring.

It has to be admitted, mind you, that the Saviour led a brief but ... er ... colourful life, so when I get to Hell, which can't be far off now, and it may be a bit of a long shot, I'm hoping I might share a lake of fire with Mr James.


A man's a man for a'that ...

Out walking Miss Lotte Lenya this afternoon, I noticed my neighbour was faffing around in his garden with wheelbarrow and spade and so on, doing manly things no doubt ... as he saw it, anyway.

When I got back home I said to Jean, Forget the Scrabble, darling, it's action stations, for I'll not be bested by that bloody GAA poser ... !

And out to the hay shed I marched. With chainsaw and two batteries, ear protectors, face shield, and reinforced gloves. A well equipped real man ready to hit the forest a buck it wouldn't forget.

I don't mind telling you - the chainsaw was soon red hot. I slashed and hacked, ripped and tore, raked and gouged through log after log, branch after branch, stump after stump. Sheep and lambs scattered in terror. Birds fled the nearby trees, shrieking in panic.

I knew he could hear my rip-roaringly manful industry across the little field that separates our houses. And I was delighted to think how humiliatingly, and painfully, aware he must be that his poovey raking and scraping and brushing and wheelbarrowing was piteous and feeble, compared to my raucous, murderous machismo.

When I adjudged that I'd taught him who the manly man around here really is, I downed tools and swaggered back to the house, grinning mirthlessly, well satisfied. I looked across at his place ...

Jesus, Mary and Josef fucking K, but whatever he'd been fiddling at, it had involved lighting an outdoor fire and burning stuff ... !!! I could see flames. And smoke was drifting towards me. He'd obviously, and deliberately, waited for a day when the wind was from the south so as it would blow, witheringly, right into my face ... !

Christ almighty ... lighting a fire outside is way beyond me, something that terrifies me, it's so dangerous ... you could get burned ...

What an evil, sneaky, real manly bastard ... !!

A woman’s a woman for a'that ...

Jean is furious.

The fact that we are even discussing the possibility of a convicted rapist serving his time in a women's prison shows the insane depths we've reached ... ! she fumes.

Listen, darling, I replied, you need to be careful what you say here: Nicola Sturgeon says that some critics of her government's gender recognition reforms are using women's rights as a cloak of acceptability to cover up what is really just transphobia ...

Jean can't see that this is not the time to worry about rapists or their victims. Never mind them. Far more worthy of her concern are people like me: yes, those of us who thought at one time that, unlike most politicians, Nicola might have had a titter of wit.

'Some critics ... ‘, Nicola ... ? That's neat. It's called the argumentum ad hominem fallacy: a strategy whereby the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument, rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.

But when in Rome you do as the Romans are doing. So ...

Fuck off, Nicola, you misogynistic twat ...

Case still closed

Just finished Gerald Posner's excellent book, Case Closed, on the assassination of JFK. His exhaustive research and the compelling evidence amassed by him leave us in no doubt that Oswald acted entirely on his own, with assistance from absolutely no-one except the late Duke of Edinburgh.

Phil the Greek had long harboured a grudge against the King of Camelot. JFK had hit the hay with a very enthusiastic Marilyn Monroe, something Phil had been trying, unsuccessfully, to do for many years. Her famous putdown, You're making Arthur Miller look sexy, Chrome Dome, rankled all his life.

Phil had the right contacts. His good mates from the Cambridge Spy Ring, Burgess, Maclean and, eventually, Philby, had all lit out for the USSR, but he still kept in touch with them via mutual chums in the Foreign Service and British Council. [It has, in fact, long been rumoured that Phil was actually the Spy Ring's notorious 'Sixth Man' - codenamed Sponger by the Reds.]

Hence when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union for a short time, the KGB alerted Philby, who then gave Phil the heads up that an unAmerican screwball was on the loose. And when it emerged that said looney was heading back to the USA, Phil saw his chance, did some research on Oswald's future Stateside plans, JFK's schedule, etc. and made his move.

His people met secretly with Oswald in Helsinki, where the latter changed planes for the USA. The deal was outlined. Big money, from Brenda's slush funds in the British Virgin Islands, changed hands; also an MI6-forged letter of introduction from the Dalai Lama to boss man at the Texas School Book Depository, recommending Oswald for a vacant post there, quietly shelving books, which Phil had initially thought would be an ideal berth for Prince Edward.

The rest is history. Phil got his way. JFK bit the dust. Jackie panicked and tried to crawl out over the trunk, and to Hell with Don Juan. As collateral damage, Edward bottled it in the Royal Marines.

A similar examination of Phil's actions before and during that night in a Paris underpass (he was there) when Diana died, would be most welcome.

Michael Praetorius unplumbed

You will not be surprised to hear that I'm a member of a Facebook group called Deep Thinking About Great Books. One of the other members was so impressed by my amusing, but insightful, banter, that he sent me a friend request.

Everything fine. Until I put up a post accepting Mr Elmore James as my beloved Lord and Saviour. My new pal messaged me privately to say it was, if not blasphemy, highly improper at the very least. And he unfriended me. So I lost 3.7% of my friend base overnight, which is a big deal when you have as few as me.

But it made me think. There's nothing in the Bible which Elmore hasn't said much more eloquently and concisely, hallelujah, somewhere in his recorded catalogue of anguished vocal delivery underscored with blistering slide guitar.

So why not mine this rich contemplative seam for a series of Thought For The Day type ruminations on what Mr James might teach us about how we live today, eh ... ?

Excitedly, I told Jean about my idea. If you must, she said somewhat wearily, for some reason.

Anyway, here's the very first in a new, occasional series:

Standing At The Crossroads, with the Rev Elmore James.

In his raucous Done Somebody Wrong (1960), Elmore declares:

Everything that happens – you know I am to blame (2x);

I’m gonna find me a doctor, perhaps my luck will change.


Thus he foresees, and succinctly delineates, today's existential crisis in personal responsibility. At first Elmore seems to accept that his own conduct is to blame for whatever hole he finds himself in.

But then, with an uncanny nod to our 21st century take on things, he decides to find a doctor (counsellor, as we'd say). And his luck (we'd call it frame of mind, or attitude, or lived experience) will inevitably change for the better when the doctor/counsellor reveals that he (Elmore) is, in fact, a victim of circumstances, misunderstood and abused, and entirely blameless, regardless of how stupid or wicked he's been.

Next time: Rev James suggests a modern woman's best bet is still just to Shake Her Moneymaker ...
 

Brave new Ireland

Hats off to woke vigilante, RTÉ presenter, tedious schoolmarm, and sanctimonious nincompoop Emer O'Neill. She knows a good joke all right ... !

Have you heard this one, Emer ... ?

So I was at the zoo the other day and looking at the penguins; they are like little nuns walking around with rosary beads. Then the wolves so Irish fierce/strong, then we went to the African Savannah and ….. it was full of taxi drivers.

Or what about this one ... ?

A gay man was being executed by firing squad, for being homosexual, in some Mad Mullah country or other.

Have you a last request ... ? asked the presiding officer.

May I tell a joke ... ? replies your man.

Ok, says the officer.

Right, says he, these two gays go into a bar ...

Now, interrupts the officer, you're only making it worse for yourself ...

The Queen is dead

A grievous blow to the Empire of Woke. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, has read the signs, and is jumping ship before a mutiny forces her to walk the plank. Let women the world over don burkhas in homage ...

Jacinda is the kindly face of 21st-century authoritarianism. Her speech last year at the UN exposed the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks within the velvet glove of wokeness. From a brutal lockdown, which forbade even New Zealand’s own citizens from returning to their home country, to her longstanding war on ‘extremist’ speech, this is a woman who poses as liberal but can’t even spell the word.

But now, alas, we must say goodbye to the smiling PC championess who was feverishly fawned over by virtue-signallers around the world.

Please, God, let finger-wagging, sanctimonious, brownface, saviour of 'people' kind, woke illiberal Justin Trudeau be next ...

Do librarians dream of killer dogs ... ?

I've got my mojo working, woman, y'hear me ... ? I said to Jean this morning.

Call The Midwife is on tonight, she replied.

The thing is, Jean thinks blues is just too repetitive, except if it's the sort the Nobel Laureate calls 'that B B King shit'. The Howlin' Wolf might as well be Jack the Ripper. And if she hears, even just once more, that slide guitar part in open G (the only solo he knows) by Muddy Waters, she'll cash in her chips. As for my Lord, Saviour, King of the Red Hot Slide Guitar, and field holler boss, Mr Elmore James ... let's not talk about it.

I'm going down to Louisiana to get me a mojo hand, I added threateningly, I'm gonna have all the women under my command ...

But she turned the TV on for Homes Under The Hammer.

And after that, Bargain Hunt, she said.

So I took Miss Lotte Lenya for a walk. As I watched her run, in terror, away from a few sheep, I thought, So much for my dreams of a killer dog ...

Darby O'Gill and Joan

Eight years ago it was, but I won't forget my first date with Jean. After she insisted that she let me pay for her four course lunch and bottle of wine (I'd merely had a glass of tap water), the talk turned to whether we should meet again.

Well, she said, full-on sex is, for me, a very important part of any relationship, and, to be honest, you don't look like, or come across as, someone who has the faintest clue about raunchy bedroom shenanigans.

In fact, she added, getting your slippers on and settling down with a boring old book seems be more your style.

You can imagine the effect these comments had on me, a 62 year old, bashful, repressed, lapsed Catholic, taught by twisted priests, terrified of going to Hell, well aware that Proddy women had a reputation for being 'loose' and diabolically unsatisfied with just doing it in the missionary position.

Furthermore, I have, in fact, read some books over the years, and am indeed the sort of man who appreciates a good index, and prefers footnotes to be placed at the bottom of the page - rather than all clumped together at the end - thus avoiding a good deal of awkward fiddling back and forth.

In reply, and to get away from the terrifying subject of carnal knowledge, I informed her that by phoning around I had recently saved nearly £100 on my heating oil, some of which I'd subsequently spent on an OXO Good Grips Dishwashing Brush, a powerful scrubber-scraper that doesn't slip in wet hands.
 

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.

Joy And Fun Are Fucking Killing Me ✑ Act XV

Michael Praetorius ✒ with the fifteenth act in his satirical series.

Amazing grace

You know that thing saved people have ... ? Where they love talking about their particular moment of personal revelation ... ? Well, you won't be surprised to hear I'm no different.

I was 14. At St Colman's College. In Newry. And back then Newry had a terrific record shop: Carlin Records. Carlin's had some eclectic stuff. One day, flicking idly through boxes of LPs, I saw a compilation album called The Mike Raven Blues Show, going very cheap.

Later that day, back home, and not before homework was done (good boy), I gave it a spin. All went very well until the final track on Side 2. Something called Knocking At Your Door, by someone called Elmore James.

An opening salvo of rowdy and fierce guitar, a drum shot, repeat, then an anguished, demanding holler of, I said, baby, who's that knockin' at your door ... ?!? (2x) It must have bin my best friend, 'cause I don't live there no more ... !

There was a flare, a light, a vision almost, so dazzlingly brilliant that I fell off my horse. Next thing I knew, I'd woken up in a field at dawn, after a hard night's drinking, knowing that God had intervened to rapturous effect in my rotting, wasted, evil life. I realised that in the previous 14 years I’d been in hock to a shameful orgy of selfish wank and bluster.

But now ... no more auction block ... ! Yes, the malign, random indifference of the universe, the cruel pointlessness of everything ... they were still there, but had finally, triumphantly, been put into meaningful perspective.

Rejoice! Saved! I was able, at last, to say to myself.

Even now, a lifetime later, I only have to hear the Lord run that bottleneck up to the 12th fret, pause, then cry out in a voice full of angst,

The sun is shining, but it's raining in my heart (2x); I'm in love with my baby, aaagh, and I hate to see us part ...

... and I'm fulfilled and justified. It's what we're here for. Plus, of course, to die roaring.

It has to be admitted, mind you, that the Saviour led a brief but ... er ... colourful life, so when I get to Hell, which can't be far off now, and it may be a bit of a long shot, I'm hoping I might share a lake of fire with Mr James.


A man's a man for a'that ...

Out walking Miss Lotte Lenya this afternoon, I noticed my neighbour was faffing around in his garden with wheelbarrow and spade and so on, doing manly things no doubt ... as he saw it, anyway.

When I got back home I said to Jean, Forget the Scrabble, darling, it's action stations, for I'll not be bested by that bloody GAA poser ... !

And out to the hay shed I marched. With chainsaw and two batteries, ear protectors, face shield, and reinforced gloves. A well equipped real man ready to hit the forest a buck it wouldn't forget.

I don't mind telling you - the chainsaw was soon red hot. I slashed and hacked, ripped and tore, raked and gouged through log after log, branch after branch, stump after stump. Sheep and lambs scattered in terror. Birds fled the nearby trees, shrieking in panic.

I knew he could hear my rip-roaringly manful industry across the little field that separates our houses. And I was delighted to think how humiliatingly, and painfully, aware he must be that his poovey raking and scraping and brushing and wheelbarrowing was piteous and feeble, compared to my raucous, murderous machismo.

When I adjudged that I'd taught him who the manly man around here really is, I downed tools and swaggered back to the house, grinning mirthlessly, well satisfied. I looked across at his place ...

Jesus, Mary and Josef fucking K, but whatever he'd been fiddling at, it had involved lighting an outdoor fire and burning stuff ... !!! I could see flames. And smoke was drifting towards me. He'd obviously, and deliberately, waited for a day when the wind was from the south so as it would blow, witheringly, right into my face ... !

Christ almighty ... lighting a fire outside is way beyond me, something that terrifies me, it's so dangerous ... you could get burned ...

What an evil, sneaky, real manly bastard ... !!

A woman’s a woman for a'that ...

Jean is furious.

The fact that we are even discussing the possibility of a convicted rapist serving his time in a women's prison shows the insane depths we've reached ... ! she fumes.

Listen, darling, I replied, you need to be careful what you say here: Nicola Sturgeon says that some critics of her government's gender recognition reforms are using women's rights as a cloak of acceptability to cover up what is really just transphobia ...

Jean can't see that this is not the time to worry about rapists or their victims. Never mind them. Far more worthy of her concern are people like me: yes, those of us who thought at one time that, unlike most politicians, Nicola might have had a titter of wit.

'Some critics ... ‘, Nicola ... ? That's neat. It's called the argumentum ad hominem fallacy: a strategy whereby the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument, rather than addressing the substance of the argument itself.

But when in Rome you do as the Romans are doing. So ...

Fuck off, Nicola, you misogynistic twat ...

Case still closed

Just finished Gerald Posner's excellent book, Case Closed, on the assassination of JFK. His exhaustive research and the compelling evidence amassed by him leave us in no doubt that Oswald acted entirely on his own, with assistance from absolutely no-one except the late Duke of Edinburgh.

Phil the Greek had long harboured a grudge against the King of Camelot. JFK had hit the hay with a very enthusiastic Marilyn Monroe, something Phil had been trying, unsuccessfully, to do for many years. Her famous putdown, You're making Arthur Miller look sexy, Chrome Dome, rankled all his life.

Phil had the right contacts. His good mates from the Cambridge Spy Ring, Burgess, Maclean and, eventually, Philby, had all lit out for the USSR, but he still kept in touch with them via mutual chums in the Foreign Service and British Council. [It has, in fact, long been rumoured that Phil was actually the Spy Ring's notorious 'Sixth Man' - codenamed Sponger by the Reds.]

Hence when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union for a short time, the KGB alerted Philby, who then gave Phil the heads up that an unAmerican screwball was on the loose. And when it emerged that said looney was heading back to the USA, Phil saw his chance, did some research on Oswald's future Stateside plans, JFK's schedule, etc. and made his move.

His people met secretly with Oswald in Helsinki, where the latter changed planes for the USA. The deal was outlined. Big money, from Brenda's slush funds in the British Virgin Islands, changed hands; also an MI6-forged letter of introduction from the Dalai Lama to boss man at the Texas School Book Depository, recommending Oswald for a vacant post there, quietly shelving books, which Phil had initially thought would be an ideal berth for Prince Edward.

The rest is history. Phil got his way. JFK bit the dust. Jackie panicked and tried to crawl out over the trunk, and to Hell with Don Juan. As collateral damage, Edward bottled it in the Royal Marines.

A similar examination of Phil's actions before and during that night in a Paris underpass (he was there) when Diana died, would be most welcome.

Michael Praetorius unplumbed

You will not be surprised to hear that I'm a member of a Facebook group called Deep Thinking About Great Books. One of the other members was so impressed by my amusing, but insightful, banter, that he sent me a friend request.

Everything fine. Until I put up a post accepting Mr Elmore James as my beloved Lord and Saviour. My new pal messaged me privately to say it was, if not blasphemy, highly improper at the very least. And he unfriended me. So I lost 3.7% of my friend base overnight, which is a big deal when you have as few as me.

But it made me think. There's nothing in the Bible which Elmore hasn't said much more eloquently and concisely, hallelujah, somewhere in his recorded catalogue of anguished vocal delivery underscored with blistering slide guitar.

So why not mine this rich contemplative seam for a series of Thought For The Day type ruminations on what Mr James might teach us about how we live today, eh ... ?

Excitedly, I told Jean about my idea. If you must, she said somewhat wearily, for some reason.

Anyway, here's the very first in a new, occasional series:

Standing At The Crossroads, with the Rev Elmore James.

In his raucous Done Somebody Wrong (1960), Elmore declares:

Everything that happens – you know I am to blame (2x);

I’m gonna find me a doctor, perhaps my luck will change.


Thus he foresees, and succinctly delineates, today's existential crisis in personal responsibility. At first Elmore seems to accept that his own conduct is to blame for whatever hole he finds himself in.

But then, with an uncanny nod to our 21st century take on things, he decides to find a doctor (counsellor, as we'd say). And his luck (we'd call it frame of mind, or attitude, or lived experience) will inevitably change for the better when the doctor/counsellor reveals that he (Elmore) is, in fact, a victim of circumstances, misunderstood and abused, and entirely blameless, regardless of how stupid or wicked he's been.

Next time: Rev James suggests a modern woman's best bet is still just to Shake Her Moneymaker ...
 

Brave new Ireland

Hats off to woke vigilante, RTÉ presenter, tedious schoolmarm, and sanctimonious nincompoop Emer O'Neill. She knows a good joke all right ... !

Have you heard this one, Emer ... ?

So I was at the zoo the other day and looking at the penguins; they are like little nuns walking around with rosary beads. Then the wolves so Irish fierce/strong, then we went to the African Savannah and ….. it was full of taxi drivers.

Or what about this one ... ?

A gay man was being executed by firing squad, for being homosexual, in some Mad Mullah country or other.

Have you a last request ... ? asked the presiding officer.

May I tell a joke ... ? replies your man.

Ok, says the officer.

Right, says he, these two gays go into a bar ...

Now, interrupts the officer, you're only making it worse for yourself ...

The Queen is dead

A grievous blow to the Empire of Woke. Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand PM, has read the signs, and is jumping ship before a mutiny forces her to walk the plank. Let women the world over don burkhas in homage ...

Jacinda is the kindly face of 21st-century authoritarianism. Her speech last year at the UN exposed the iron fist of authoritarianism that lurks within the velvet glove of wokeness. From a brutal lockdown, which forbade even New Zealand’s own citizens from returning to their home country, to her longstanding war on ‘extremist’ speech, this is a woman who poses as liberal but can’t even spell the word.

But now, alas, we must say goodbye to the smiling PC championess who was feverishly fawned over by virtue-signallers around the world.

Please, God, let finger-wagging, sanctimonious, brownface, saviour of 'people' kind, woke illiberal Justin Trudeau be next ...

Do librarians dream of killer dogs ... ?

I've got my mojo working, woman, y'hear me ... ? I said to Jean this morning.

Call The Midwife is on tonight, she replied.

The thing is, Jean thinks blues is just too repetitive, except if it's the sort the Nobel Laureate calls 'that B B King shit'. The Howlin' Wolf might as well be Jack the Ripper. And if she hears, even just once more, that slide guitar part in open G (the only solo he knows) by Muddy Waters, she'll cash in her chips. As for my Lord, Saviour, King of the Red Hot Slide Guitar, and field holler boss, Mr Elmore James ... let's not talk about it.

I'm going down to Louisiana to get me a mojo hand, I added threateningly, I'm gonna have all the women under my command ...

But she turned the TV on for Homes Under The Hammer.

And after that, Bargain Hunt, she said.

So I took Miss Lotte Lenya for a walk. As I watched her run, in terror, away from a few sheep, I thought, So much for my dreams of a killer dog ...

Darby O'Gill and Joan

Eight years ago it was, but I won't forget my first date with Jean. After she insisted that she let me pay for her four course lunch and bottle of wine (I'd merely had a glass of tap water), the talk turned to whether we should meet again.

Well, she said, full-on sex is, for me, a very important part of any relationship, and, to be honest, you don't look like, or come across as, someone who has the faintest clue about raunchy bedroom shenanigans.

In fact, she added, getting your slippers on and settling down with a boring old book seems be more your style.

You can imagine the effect these comments had on me, a 62 year old, bashful, repressed, lapsed Catholic, taught by twisted priests, terrified of going to Hell, well aware that Proddy women had a reputation for being 'loose' and diabolically unsatisfied with just doing it in the missionary position.

Furthermore, I have, in fact, read some books over the years, and am indeed the sort of man who appreciates a good index, and prefers footnotes to be placed at the bottom of the page - rather than all clumped together at the end - thus avoiding a good deal of awkward fiddling back and forth.

In reply, and to get away from the terrifying subject of carnal knowledge, I informed her that by phoning around I had recently saved nearly £100 on my heating oil, some of which I'd subsequently spent on an OXO Good Grips Dishwashing Brush, a powerful scrubber-scraper that doesn't slip in wet hands.
 

Michael Praetorius spent his working life in education and libraries. Now retired, he does a little busking in Belfast . . . when he can get a pitch. He is TPQ's fortnightly Wednesday columnist.

2 comments:

  1. Long suffering Jean - and when the Woke lead a torchlight procession at night to your door screaming 'Writers raus' and burning all her books will she still look at you so adoringly or hand you over to the baying mob threatening to fulfil the promise of joy and fun?!!!
    Great writing as always

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elmore James....I love him. All the wannabes talk about Hendrix.. Then again the wannabes are woke.

    ReplyDelete