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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
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Some thirty years ago, back in the midst of a rather hot Summer, I was quietly minding my own business traveling, innocently and obliviously, through Upstate New York; when by chance I happened, quite suddenly and peremptorily, to be married by an American woman. The precise date of this unexpected occurrence being July the fourth 1980.
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 On the 16th of May in the Year of Our Lord 2009 (a day that will live in infamy) Simon, his scintillating Sunshine Show and Salmagundy, the Show for Working People were brutally hurled onto the trash heap of history. We, his hangers-on and toadies, of course immediately joined him there. To celebrate this so-called Morning of the Long Knives, we his hangers-on and toadies, were 'encouraged', by means the like of which has not been seen since Dick Chainey1 had to give up waterboarding2, to contribute memori... I mean testimonials to him, sort of like at the end of Beowulf.
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I've been back home in England for a few weeks: of course at work they tease me by always claiming that I do it merely to work on preserving my accent, which seems a strange thing to say (especially in jest), since I don't even have an accent (speaking as I do the perfect accentless received pronunciation of English) but be that as it may or may not, I have yet again been there (and anyway even if they were right, there's no one now left in England who can even approximate to proper English---now-a-days they all mumble some sort of vile lumpenproletarian Estuarine ugliness that's totally unqueenly and even worse than Teyuxian into their mobile phones whilst driving, in spite of the Law, and usually (as far as I can tell from loads of coverage in the news) into other people .
Yup I'm the only one who can still speak it and I'm usually over here not there---so there!
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Our story opens to the sounds of macho Nihongo stuff:
[sucking sound]; Katana; Wakizashi; Bokken etc. [a deep hoarse O-o-o-o]
"Sumimasen, Kojiro san: kaisuiyoku ni ikimasen ka?1" as Miyamoto Musashi once said to Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryûjima . Oh sorry, sorry I'm sure you don't have the faintest idea what that's all about, and that's simply because you probably don’t realise this is the famous, or at least infamous Talk Like a Samurai Day---I mean I suppose you wouldn’t really since I’ve only just invented it.
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Someone (I think it may have been on the ANSAX-L list: source of so many inspirations for me), someone made the very funny comment that 'Heorot must have been a Geated community'
[Ha! Ha! Ha... Uh! ... Oh!]
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There is a frantic fascination now-a-days with translations of that great Old English poem Beowulf, from the poetical transmogrification into the Oirish of Heaneywulf by Seamus Heaney, through to more ; even more ; and to absolutely totally ; weird translations to film.
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Having heard her alibi; that, at the exact moment that her boss was beaten to death with a halibut, she was home in bed with a bad cold, the detective couldn't help thinking the whole tale was a tissue of lies and that there was something fishy going on. Then of course the case broke and then she learned that the Scales of Justice were nothing to be sneezed at, when investigation of her boss’s main rival, the Dutchman Hans Boomp-Zeedazi, revealed that her name was not Anne Bloater, nor was she pregnant (merely a bit bloated), and that behind a string of ingenious aliases---Anne Drogenous; Anne Aconda; Anne Onymous to mention but a few--- that he was her uncle, so she was really Hans niece, Anne Boomp-Zeedazi!
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There's an old song from the forties that I've actually mentioned here from time to time "There'll Always Be an England". Written at the start of WWII (or W-Wii as I suppose young Nintendo players now think of it) it became intensely popular as we stood there, defiant, backs to the wall, faces to the channel, all alone, while you guys dithered about whose side was going to pick you and whether you'd be the last to be picked. Anyway with songs like that how could we fail? It epitomized Britain, and casually, almost inadvertently, subsumed the whole into its part: bigger as part of smaller; Britain as a part of England, and only allowed to be part of England if those buggers in Scotland, and Wales, and bits o' Ireland behaved and kept their claymores, and leeks, and shillelaghs off the furniture and maintained an attitude of decent respect for Old England, Oh yes and the Empire too, bless their fuzzy brown heads, "freedom remains these are the chains nothing can break" and however oxymoronic that line from the song may have been, we knew what England was: probably all of the above.
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The full title of this essay is actually:
"When some guy serves a writ
"'Cause you Haka-ed a bit,
"That's a Maori"
but there wasn't quite enough room to fit it in, and a good job too because if I had I'm sure that the descendants of (should there be any), or lawyers acting on behalf of the corpses of (bound to be a whatsit-load of them) Warren and Brooks (respectively composer and lyricist) would sue the pants (and not just the American ones) off me for making absolutely nothing at all out of their hit song "That's Amore ".
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As my Father always used to say "Never allow yourself to be trapped by a woman in the Men's Department of a clothing store." Well actually he never did say that, but he should have done.
Repeatedly and forcefully.
My life would be so different if he had.
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