If Laughter Were Medicine

We all know how physicians
have to take the Hippocratic oath
as part of their professional commitment
to both each other and to their patients.

I wonder how humour might change
if comedians had to take an oath of care
before some board of professional of humour
to uphold the standards of their acts
and there were measurable standards
complete with units of measurement
for how funny their jokes were.

Would it change our mission for humour
and how soon would it be before we saw
the need for a national laughter service?

The Humour Of Ownership

The measure of absolute poverty
is when a people have so little
that they cannot afford
even the slightest irony,
about what they have
and don't have.....

Enduring Friendships

Over the decades I have had many friendships.
Broadly they divide themselves into two types.

Those with who it took a long time
before the foundations of the friendship
were firm to the point of unshakeable
however much life shifted us around.

Those where I have held on,
and I kept some sort of peace
 in spite of my not needing their aggro,
or their almighty ego.

In these friendships people assume
that when other people know them
for who they are
then they never need to learn
who they were for themselves.

In the former the recognition,
as we both relearned who we were
when circumstances tested us,
has been remarkable and positive.

It has been a proving of our instincts
about what was right with hindsight,
that we could not see at the time.

In the latter life was exciting
but telling the friendship
apart from the stoney ground
that it was set in
made for rather testing times.

Both ways, here's to endurance.  

The Universal Tenancy

For over two decades I have lived
in a property that I have rented
from a wealthy private landlord
where the state keep him well
because it also pays my rent.

We rarely see each other
but it seems better that way
-we have so little in common
with each other that there are
no grounds for friendship there.

I have said to friends who rent
that a relationship that works
between landlord and tenant
is of the highest priority
for the longevity of the tenancy.

Repairs to the house might be late,
but for the tenant/landlord relationship
to fall into long term disrepair
within a competitive society
will mean that sooner or later
the tenancy is doomed to end.

Beyond the human realm,
but still with tenant/landlord terms,
if more of us held to the attitude
that we are merely brief tenants
and the Planet Earth is our landlady
then how much more shared
would our sense of tenancy be?

The hardest part with that view
is how terminal and absolute
the end of the tenancy will be........

Irresponcible Heroism

I find it highly suspect
when we put some folks
and professions on pedestals,
the better for us to avoid
being as responsible for others
as they so clearly are.

From Bertol Brecht (1939)
Andrea 'Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero'.
Galileo 'No, Andrea. Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.'

Existential D-I-Y Metaphors

He said that he was 'fixing the roof'
when what he was was doing
was paying off the previous firm
of even more dodgy builders
so they could repay their old loans.
He was keeping what he was doing
to himself when he repeatedly said,
until we all stopped listening,
'I don't like disappointing you'.

So the hole in roof never got fixed
but we kept possession of the house,
unaware of how it would fail us
as much as it could never comply
with failing building regulations.

It was airy in the summer
and draughty in the winter.
As long as we were young and strong
then life seemed okay -
there was no sign of the rainy day
we were meant to saving against.

Then the mild winter came
and whilst the draught seemed less
for lack of a thorough frost,
the weather killed too few germs.

A deadly virus spread far and wide
which made owning the house
with the hole in the roof
that we had never got fixed,
on which there were now new debts,
an empty act of nihilism.   

Picture Set of The Month - April - Lock Down Special

Evening on the estate I live in  (1)

Evening on the estate where I live (2)

A scene from the garden.