Herewardi Up Front For England v France ( For the Soul of England by P...

This video and sound-world remains oddly relevant. I wasn't sure what I meant when I put together a film before the game linking Harold's (Harry Kane, Harry MacGuire etc) close defeat through the South Gates of England (Hastings) and the subsequent unconquered resistance of Hereward with a football final soundscape that (if you listen carefully) spookily narrates a 1-2 defeat in exactly the order the game took. Of course I wanted it to mean we would win and go on to conquer the world in the Final but the weird prescience now feels more like "well we narrowly lost that one but some unconquerable spirit is unbroken this time and remains to fight another day" I have never felt so represented by and proud of an England team; as well as being fabulously talented with an abundance of young players they are also the first England football team I can remember who actually model and promote a better English society than the predatory one we have. And it played better than it did as semi-finalists of 2018; it just met the world's best earlier. As one Gareth to another, Gareth (a) please don't go and (b) just add someone to your tactics team who can help with the biggest game changing substitutions at the highest level.

Let us expiate

 

1970   (England 2 Germany W. 3)

"At 2-0 up, my England never lose!"

Swore Dad, and twenty minutes later I

Had lost my father too, wondering why

He'd cheated me like foreign teams, or news

Of English captains nicked, or fools who'd choose

To take wor Bobby off: the Sixties died

In Pontypool exile then, in Groveside

Villas with its Nineteenth Century views.

Pan's People changed to Legs, the Oh No band

Yoked John, Starrs fell, Paul's flare stopped making sense,

'uddersfield 'arold became "Hampstead" Heath;

Brazil were back and in the sun they'd tanned

Our English hide, so '66 had meant

Nothing, meant all things pass - except defeats.

(Pic- performing this piece at the Granary Theatre, Wells, 2000.)

Gaz and Morra Raise Hell, Gin Fest 2015

 

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Two scenes from T.S. Eliot's Waste Land; a homage to Dante ('The Night Train' and 'At The Gate') and a hymn to the Beat (the opening of 'Beat Music') at a folk festival in a pub garden. You can't say we don't go for it! Making a stand at the Gate with  the poet of the shamrock and the rose ( bruva by anuva muva Anto). As Bruvva Luther once said, we can do no uva. 

 

 

 

 

big pics above by Perce Paradise

below by Festival dude kind of in order 

 

The SAGA louts

Beautiful Days and Paradise

 

 

 

Joe and Mary 

 

The Fried Pirates

 

'Gaz and Morra Raise Hell' came to Gin Fest on 8 August 2015. It started as a hastily reconceptualised version of Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz on 19 July (see below) as 'Heaven and Hell' - two of the three Hafiz astronauts vacated the tardis after 3 months of gruelling training at the last moment (all part of the divine plan) but the trip must go on and it did in the most delightful way - and two weeks later we're back with a high speed version that we think you'll like. We get you from hell eg this  and this to heaven a hell of a lot quicker.

Who's Left?

Who Am I to do this alone?

Show pix by Tony Rafferty.



Right, Morra, so how are we going to do this...?

The Last Bus to Tombland

Zeus

Up The Kuber Pass,

Shiva's cobra round my neck

The grail maiden Julie provides S and OM sounds

All in the Mind, man. Morra re-finds his inner hippy



All in the Heart. I sing mine out.

Oh heart  of hearts...

Gypsy Smile

Grooving with my down to earth angels.

Do you like Morra's heavenly bowler?

And home..

 

The Ballad of Freeborn John

The Ballad of Freeborn John

The bloodiest war in our history
And one in four of us died
For a castled king on a stagnant throne
And a revolutionary tide.

‘I spilt my blood so I need a voice!’
Cries Freeborn John at Putney,
‘Who dies for England is England’s king,
We are no grandee’s army.

‘The poorest man in England has
The right to live as the greatest,
Our All in all is God the king
In every soul and breast.’

The bloodiest war in our history
And one in four of us died
For a castled king on a stagnant throne
And a revolutionary tide.

We’re the voice of the Freeborn Englishman
That was raised at Magna Carta,
The deathless flag of the Good Old Cause, the Bold
Dissenting Leveller.

I rose with Tyler, Straw and Ball
When peasants shook the kingdom,
I was sold down that river of blood by a king
Who hawked the soul of England.

We need no manor house and land
To fix our permanent interest,
We fight for England, our rights and ourselves:
No mercenary business.

The bloodiest war in our history
And one in four of us died
For a castled king on a stagnant throne
And a revolutionary tide.

I will strike with the Tolpuddle Martyrs,
I will die at Peterloo,
March to bloody hell at the Westgate Hotel
To win this England for you,

Die a million deaths in two world wars
Though the portion’s not so many
As died for Charles, that Man of Blood,
And in our redcoat Army.

A new model England truly advanced,
Through the royal ranks of sin
In a cavalry charge to a Future Now
Where God not man is king.*

The bloodiest war in our history
And one in four of us died
For a castled king on a stagnant throne
And a revolutionary tide.




*the epitaph on Cromwell’s tomb



During the English Civil Wars - in June 1647, at Putney, with the king under arrest - a proto-democratic assembly of elected New Model Army representatives debated a new constitution for England. The vision of ordinary men and what they had fought for received articulate expression and a level of consideration far beyond the intellectual level of the Stuart court or of the aristocratic 'Parliament.' 'Freeborn John' Lilburne was one of the key voices but there are many others like John Ball through history. The debates, often regarded as the cradle of modern democracy, were cut short by the 'Man of Blood' (Charles I) escaping and a second war beginning. Incredible that this Civil War, fought on principle rather than for tribal loyalties or pay, cost one in four English lives proportionally higher than World War I and II combined. The poem was first composed on St George's Day 2013, and the intention is to include it as a new folk song in my Cromwell's Talking Head show as a musical collaboration.

The chorus emphasises the two world views of the antagonists. Charles I was set up to fight the civil war in sieges from castles but it was decided by cavalry charges in pitched battles - the verb of dynamic progress against the noun of mediaeval reaction.

Rhetorical Question?

Here's one. Because we allowed the USA to pinch our place in the World Cup (as it has in the world), we now have to beat Germany, Argentina and Portugal to get to the final in a competition where France and Italy go out shockingly early. When has that ever happened?

I'll tell you when, Mr Rhetoric. 1966.

The one team we didn't beat then and the world said we needed to to really prove our case (flash in the golden pan winners 1958, 1962 and 1970) was Brazil, whom we will doubtless keep waiting in the rain this year before beating them 1-0. Just to put 1970 straight.

That's the way I'd write it anyway.

New Elizabethan Sonnets 2 v Algeria

“Inglorious and goalless Ing-ger-land”
The mourning papers Nayed in ‘66
In hopeless headlines that, like Ferdinand,
Stood not the test of time – but stand for this.
A team without a heart, a head, a smile,
A hurst, a moore, a charlton or a ball,
A drab grey outfit, no nobby yet no style,
The walk-on-waters sinking in the pool.
A sponsor-burdened team who could not play
A season with this globe like Germany
Because ‘our’ ball is some fat cat’s, and so are they
And paid each draw more than my salary.
We grub all week for victory’s floodlight
To stare down a black hole of endless night.



Note. Apparently we're not playing very well because the 'boys' are bored. They need more freedom.

They don't need more freedom. They need to grow up and start earning their celebrity lifestyles by winning a trophy for a change instead of going on a jolly and getting knocked out in the quarters and expecting us all to carry on cheering !

Forward to Adelaide!

This one was written on Friday and Saturday Dec 1-2 after long nights half awake to the progress of the Adelaide test. I posted it to Sportsworld and for the second week running, they broadcast it to the world shortly afterwards in the middle of interviews with proper grown up Australian cricketers, the nearest I've got to facing some of the bowling my heroes are currently dispatching...

Forward to Adelaide!'
Was England’s team dismay'd ?
Not tho' the Aussies knew
Fletcher had blunder'd:,
Freddy the heart of the side
Made head, its head (Strauss) belied
Monty again denied
But into the valley of Death
The bruised and bashed lumbered

M. Clarke to right of them,
McGrath to left of them,
Brett Lee in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with seamers’ spell
Boldly they batted well,
Back from the jaws of Death,
Out of the mouth of Hell
The once-losers clambered.

Flash'd all their willows bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the seamers there,
Charging the bullies while
All the world wonder'd:
Spun by that portly bloke
Right thro' his line they broke;
Colly and Pietersen
Dealt him him a boundary stroke,
Blocked him and bludgeoned
Knocked off a fifty - then
Knocked off a hundred….

Pompada, Verse II

On Saturday 25 November I wrote a poem about the Ashes based on Sir Henry Newbolt's Vitae Lamapda. I called it Vitae Pompada. Five minutes later, it was being broadcast to the world....

Pompada, Verse II

The dust of the Gabba is stained with sweat
Wet with the wreck of a team that broke
The plan is dead and the bowlers wrecked
And the batters are blind with Ashes’ smoke
The Aussies are rubbing our nose in the dirt
And England’s far and honour a name
But don’t kick a Pom when he’s bloodied and hurt,
”Stand up, pad up - and fight again!”