The Why I Hate England and Book Burning Literary Festival

  My conversation with a horse at breakfast in the kitchen of the Stable Cottage, Novington Manor - Plumpton England ... and the guiding principles for choosing a theme for W.I.H.E. Festivals. 1) Profoundly Foul 2) Not Politically Correct 3) Zeitgeist 4) Culturally Inappropriate

You have been chosen to Re - Member Dear desperate and shaken participant of the annual WIHE Literary Festival: After the last three successful Literary Festivals with infamous themes as:  Why I Hate England, Why I  ate  England and Dis- Member. After no discussion of other themes such as ‚Who Would Have Thought‘ and ‚Say What and Why‘, the chosen theme for this, our Fourth Festival is: RE - MEMBER Hence, you have been selected to write a 1 to 3 page essay expounding on this theme. The reading or singing of the texts will occur after sundown,  on Saturday 29. August . At the: Stable Cottage Nottingham Manor Plumpton, Sussex, England Great (soon to be Little) Britain  Before reading or singing your essay, all will participate in an evening meal which means that everyone brings nutrients to share with others.  This will start before sundown, say about three-issh in the afternoon on the 29th.   Prerequisites for Participation and Publica...

  To Remember you must Dismember - Andrew Towgood Latin rememorari "recall to mind, remember," from re- "again" (see re-) + memorari "be mindful of," Latin de "take away" (see de-) + membrum "limb" The act of remembering is a flaky one - unreflexive and often faulty attaching as it does to the ego. To truly remember you must dis-member - a painful process. At 60 I spend a lot of time dis-memberring my remembering - trying to construct a personally and morally satisfying narrative arc of my life - sometimes, on good days my remembered life seems to have arrived smugly and satisfyingly at a ‘good’ full stop - something I can reflect on as valuable and great. Other times the dis-membering brings cognitive dissonance between where I think I should have arrived and where my examination says I have dissatisfyingly/distressingly/too late arrived at to do any remedial work. Buddhism and other mindful practices suggest we should no...

I remember dreaming that Carol and I were in my mothers garden. There was a mighty storm and we were watching massive trees all around us falling. We would make exasperated/disappointed noises whenever one fell - as if saying ‘oh no, there’s another one gone’. We had to dodge them and aim to find a place in the garden where we wouldn’t be hit if a tree fell. At one point å ‘thought’ that a particular tree, a skinny pine like the ones near Lilac Cottage) would fall and just as I thought it - it fell.  Two: a dream I’ll never forget. I was standing on a shore with Juliet and Cherry, two prolific women in my life, both academics. We were looking out at two pillars in the ocean. Atop them were two males peacocks tied down with heavy chains. We swam out to them, the three women that we were, and they helped me to untie the peacocks so they could escape upwards into the sky. The Game.  It’s a shortened group ‘essay’, written in the ‘heat’ of the festival moment:  Title:...

  How I met Carol Being surround by artists and literary cultured people like everyone one of you made me think a lot of what I wanted to read tonight, I can’t quote any poets of writers because reading is not a strong hobby for me, but what I can do is to tell the story of how I met Carol. I believe that everything started 25 years ago in a little island in the Mediterranean sea called Ibiza, I know more about what I call my island through the stories and experiences of other people more than my own, always knew it was a really cool and fun place to be from by the reaction of people as I was answering the classic question of Where are you from? … but one of the most satisfying reactions I got it from Carol, some time early last year in the open day at Plumpton College I was dressed in a traditional Georgian attire serving some orange wines to the brave that dare to taste it, Carol and I where chatting for a bit before she asked me where I was from?, I am from Ibiza, I sai...

  Tired of predicting the future?  Tired of complaining about the present?  Tired of Re - membering the past. Tired of preaching to the converted. Tired off getting knocked down.  Tired of getting back up again?       Oh Danny-Boy ... Take a lager drink, take a cider drink ... my next door neighbour. Now sit back and enjoy,  I am going to tell you a tale. It is  about the four Saxons . Mama Saxon and the three kids; Anhalt, Nieder (not to be confused with their cousin Nieder land) and Anglo and it is called: Re - Member. After sirering the three kids, their father Franken divorced Saxon and went on to get a life which he called France. Mama had trouble early on raising her children alone and soon they had abandoned her and also got on with thier own lives . Anglo was radically rebellious and wanted nothing to do with his family. He went so far and made up new words and, new ways to measure things.  It seems he just did the oppo...

  Remembering How to Heal When the sculptor found her, she was sick. She just sat and stared blankly out at the hill, and it felt as if she had been through much trauma. She wore thick, stuffy, drab clothing, she was in mourning. The bad spirits swirled around her; the dense pines of grief and neglect surrounded her and encroached on her, keeping her always in the darkness.   The sculptor immediately wanted to help her. The sculptor saw a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes and knew that she could be revived.  She was dirty and cold, so we took her in, washed her and cared for her. We brought her healing honey wine and pure living water for her malaise.  Her condition improved a little, but something was still stuck. She needed more movement. There was only one thing for it. The sculptor called the vicar. The vicar rode in like a cowboy as if coming to help a wounded cow, and yet riding on a breeze of beauty. He helped her to open her eyes to see life anew...

  Home   Home is The crook in your shoulder, under your right arm, where I lay my head when sleep doesn’t come. The bath, where I am on those evenings when you get in later than me,  And come through to catch up on the day.   The short, striped curtains that I draw in the morning, sleepy on the Hymer’s soft shelf, To reveal some new landscape, our next adventure from the safety of our bed on wheels.   The car, waiting at the airport pick up spot, when I come back after too long a flight and too many days away. And then the lurch to the left it makes as it comes up the pot holed road To the house, changed by new plant growth that has sprung up since I was here.   And the house, our house, built by our own hands, to grow our own family in,  from which to send them out, one by one, into the world. And welcome them back in when that world gets too tough.   Home, its struggles and its triu...

Re-member Undecided whether to take Theodor’s 4 th Plumpton/Carol/Ook-burning festival title Re member as recalling and holding useful or useless pieces of recollection and thought or to expound on getting back together with lost friends, groups or even in the John-Wayne Bobbit sense, with one’s own member. I have fudged it and gone with both. Amidst what filters and feeds to us through the portal of the media we consume it is easy to wallow mired in the awfulness of sumptuously messy, end of days apocalyptic* dread that this ghastly diet nourishes. However, reading a film review and interview on Friday, William Nicholson the playwright and director reminded me to remember, “there is a narcissism about thinking we’re in some especially bad time. This is normal. I don’t despair about politics or the disease or whatever. Things have been really, really shitty forever actually, in different ways. If you have any sense of history, you know people have frequently been saying “This is...

RE: Member by Miriam (mim) King August 2020 Standing at the doorway, …..waiting….. a coming back together, the pieces joined into a - picture, a memory. I re:member – eyes I re:member – words I re:member – textures I re:member – touch I re:member – sounds I re:member – joys I re:member – sadness I re:member – expectations I re:member – disappointments I re:member – surprises I re:member – delight I re:member – knowingness I re:member – …….being…. 1/ Re: Member – Clouds, floating in blue through the fringing of the pram hood. 2/ Re: Member – The flap, flop, whack, splat, fall – squelch, squash, then something on the table, too high up for me to see, other than newspaper wrapping up a…something and it turning, red. 3/ Re: Member – Picnic blanket army surplus, too little to yet speak words,  and falling back, rough grey sides around me- soft sky above,  sand dune below. Being swung from side to side, like a forgotten jam pot or depos...