Poet: Elvis McGonagall
Tartan troubador Elvis McGonagall describes himself as a poet, twit & armchair revolutionary, who can disagree?
There is no better explanation than that given on ...
On the 3rd of March 1960 Elvis Presley spent two hours at Prestwick Airport, Scotland en route home from national service in Germany. Big Agnes McGonagall, a starstruck baggage handler, was left with the memory of a lifetime. Nine months later, on 22nd December, 1960, Elvis McGonagall was born on Carousel B in the North Terminal. Coincidence? Not according to Big Aggie. Stuffing wee Elvis into a duffle bag, she set off in hot pursuit of Mr Presley and her American Dream. The rest is histrionics.
If you want to find out more, why not ?
Here are Elvis' poems written during this week's show:
Sir Paul McCartney鈥檚 Unlucky Heather Haiku
Now he鈥檚 sixty four
She digs his autumnal gold
Does he still need her? (No)
The Chauffeur Philosopher
Guess who I had in the back of me limo?
It was only that Winnie the Pooh
His expression was full of depression
Bedtime Weltschmerz was making him blue
鈥淵ou see, as soon as I hit the hay鈥, said Pooh
鈥淚 snuffle, I snort and I snore
Now the neighbours complain and they grumble
Particularly Eeyore鈥
He said they simply can鈥檛 visit The Land of Nod
To sleep, perchance to dream
Because of Pooh鈥檚 hullabaloo
Their insomnia is quite extreme
I said 鈥淣othing ventured, nothing gained guv
If yer mates want a slumberous snooze
They don鈥檛 need a Late-Night Line-Up
Of barbiturates and booze
They don鈥檛 need to count sheep or drink Horlicks
Or flirt with the sandman鈥檚 charms
They don鈥檛 need to be lulled by a lullaby
To fall into Hypnos鈥 arms
You tell Tigger 鈥榥 Piglet 鈥榥 Eeyore
Take a chance and take my advice
They should club together and buy you
A mandibular advancement device
Just pop it in yer mouth like a gumshield
And when you grab some shut-eye 鈥 in a twinkle
All will be silent and still
And yer kip鈥檒l be like Rip Van Winkle
I pulled up by The House At Pooh Corner
Where his hunny pots lie in a heap
And I turned to declare to the bear we were there
But Winnie the Pooh was asleep鈥.zzzzz鈥.zzzz
Miss Moss Lands In Oz
Drifting like thistledown high in the sky
Underneath the Australian sun
She suddenly plunged to earth
Like Icarus quite undone
But afloat on her angel鈥檚 gossamer wings
She fell short of the dirt and the dust
And she hung by a thread in lush foliage
Dangling, tangled and trussed
鈥淪trewth!鈥 shouted Shane, a koala
As he chewed on his eucalyptus leaf
鈥淭here鈥檚 a Sheila up me gum tree!
That鈥檚 a sight that beggars belief鈥
Shane told her he slept 18 hours a day
鈥淵ou can share my branch, it鈥檚 quite boring
Though I do play the didgeridoo
I find that it helps with my snoring鈥
With that the marsupial struck up a tune
鈥淲hen The Trumpet Of The Lord Shall Sound鈥
As his visitor swung upside-down-under
Just three feet above the ground
Then 鈥淵o-Ho-Ho And A Bottle Of Rum 鈥
Thirteen Men On A Dead Man鈥檚 Chest鈥
He moved on to some pirate sea-shanties
He thought that she seemed quite impressed
But having had quite enough of his music
And swaying around in mid-air
She jumped down and got out of the outback
Exit. Pursued by a koala bear
Can i make a heartfelt plea for poor old Fi Glover (of whom i am an admirer by the way) to be given a new trailer - i will go completely mad if i have to listen to 'finding something stuck to your shoe' again. Do you really want the programme to be endlessly associated with dog messes? SURELY someone could think up something new????
Complain about this postFantastic! something fun for saturday morning at last. I don't know who I love more, Fi Glover or Verity Sharp. (I know Verity Sharp hasn't been on Sat Live yet but she will be).The antidotes to porn sluts, fashion sticks and Jennifer Aniston
Complain about this postCare? for the elderly.
I have just come away from a meeting with my mother鈥檚 consultant, her social worker and her community psychiatric nurse wondering if officialdom, in the guise of care for the elderly has finally taken leave of its senses altogether.
I made what seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable request. Can somebody help me out if I take my 84-year-old Mum who suffers from vascular dementia, from her care home to visit my 84-year-old Dad in his care home and she refuses to leave? The answer is 鈥楴o鈥, even though it is much more likely that she would go quietly for somebody 鈥榦fficial鈥. No one can help us because of rules, regulations, the law, funding, insurance, etc, blah, etc, etc, blah, blah.
However, according to them, it would be acceptable under common law for members of her family to forcibly remove her on the grounds that she has dementia and would be behaving unreasonably. I cannot bear even to think about the immense distress this particular option would cause to both my parents.
This brings me to the other option I am invited to consider; that Mum is never taken to visit Dad鈥檚 home at all. Dad is suffering from cancer and heart problems. Currently we take him to visit Mum, but the time will soon come when he is not well enough for us to do this. Quite reasonably, he wants to carry on seeing her. After 64 years of marriage, they still love each other. They are only apart because my Dad is too frail to cope with Mum on a full-time basis.
I am not cruel enough to deny my dying Dad the chance of seeing Mum. That leaves me with the last option, which is to hope and pray that Mum co-operates. She is unable to understand why they are not together and it is quite possible she will insist on staying with Dad鈥︹.
Dad has cared devotedly for Mum for many years as she has become more and more difficult and aggressive without any help from officialdom. Indeed, he nearly lost his life because they refused to intervene when he was becoming seriously ill and being badly abused by my poor demented Mum.
Things might have gone better if officialdom had actually listened to what their family said, but it seems that the default attitude is to believe that the family does not have the expertise to assess the situation properly. We only know and love them!
Needless to say, my father, who was in the RAF in World War II, who has worked and paid his taxes all his life and Mum, who has likewise taught and paid her taxes except for when she took time out to look after us, will have to pay the full price for their care. Like many others, they will have to hand over their life savings and sell their home. This upsets them a lot because they believed that they had already paid for their care through their taxes. Both their homes charge more than the government will pay for somebody who has no assets, so they are also subsidising somebody else鈥檚 place.
In their worst nightmares, my parents never imagined that the government would try to stop them using their hard-earned money to give their usual generous presents, pocket money to the youngsters and help to any family member at university or in financial difficulties. However, I have been told that I should limit their spending to the very small allowance that a person who is having their fees paid by the Local Authority is allowed each week. If I don鈥檛, I risk having to pay the Local Authority the difference between the allowance and anything they spend above this if they run out of money to pay their home fees. My Dad summed it up nicely. They thought they had paid for their care once, now they are paying for it again and subsidising someone else. If they want to enjoy spending any of their savings, I will end up paying some more in the future. I take my hat off to Gordon Brown for some exceedingly creative accounting. He is certainly encouraging me to save up for my old age!
As you can imagine, I have been reading articles and listening to programs on care for the elderly with great interest. I was told at this morning鈥檚 meeting that both the hospital and social services are having to cut back on what they currently offer.
It鈥檚 mind-blowing stuff, this care? for the elderly.
Thank you very much, Fi, for giving me somewhere to let off steam on a day when I badly need it.
Complain about this postFirstly - the tedious web designer in me wants to point out that a very good comment on Elvis was under 'zzzzzzzzzzz' and the 3 comments, apparently pertaining to Elvis i.e. below, are pertaining to ... other things.
Oh god, i always wondered what sad losers pretended to contribute to these things, whilst actually only writing to themselves and all I wanted to say was:
Fi - me and maltby were late for our AA meeting on saturday - all because we HAD to listen to elvis' last poem. And it was worth it.
Complain about this postPoets, The Universe & Everything!
Much though I love Elvis McG and Matt Harvey I think poets are best enjoyed in their own right rather than being forced to write on the subjects being tackled by the programme on that particular morning.
Saturday Live is still feeling a bit patchy to me and not really knowing what sort of beast it is, and for me as a listener, forcing the poets to act as cohesive glue doesn't work. I would rather have the poets given their own decent sized slots, albeit not excluding a topical poem or two on the week's news/latest trends perhaps. Otherwise no one who hasn't seen them live will realise how good they really are, which isn't very fair. It's like looking at a work of art meant to be grouped as a single piece!
Conversely some guests seem to be allowed an inordinate amount of air time bearing little proportion to how interesting they really are, while the more interesting ones always seem to have less time, though maybe that's just because they are more interesting and so time flies quicker! Shorter links might aid with this. Even when John Peel did Home Truths, I sometimes wished for a little less of him and a little more of the programme! (then of course he died and I felt horribly guilty that I'd gotten sick of the sight/sound of him!)
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