donderdag 1 april 2010

April's Fool, Avrill's Folly





Well I’ve been getting myself into hot water by being too critical of all the goings on around me, just sort of firing off a running commentary on allsorts and being a bit prickly pear shaped and hopping grumpy... must be springtime...
The grey and depressing sleet of the last months has found a way to the surface and spews forth even without encouragement from my natural tendency to be critical of all things... it seems to be an automated function by now and less the product of careful consideration and/or thought... Wondering all the while if it’s just me or is the world getting fatter and more obnoxious all the time?
To cheer me up I think of all the thousands of Gulag detainees who dug out the white sea canal and paid with their lives for the glory of father Stalin... that way I can consider my small and feeble existence as quite comfy by comparison... and so escape my own irritating nagging for a bit... This came about through the theme of this year’s Ostend retreat proposed by Hioco: Belonorkanal – though the unsmokeable smokes are mostly just empty tubing, the little bit of tobacco they stuff down the end hits you like a howitzer just when you don’t expect it... a real working class hit.
I think I still have a packet bopping around somewhere... but in any case this easter Monday seems a good moment to stand still and consider the many thousands of nameless victims that dug the trenches though which even today ships float freely from St. Petersburg to Archangel.