A poem from Napoleon Bonaparte to his lover Mademoiselle Georges the beautiful French actress

In all of Europe
From Iceland to the Caspian Sea
Which some people actually consider to be
not a sea but a really big lake
Being as it is an enclosed body of water
You are the most beautiful young woman
For obvious reasons I’m so glad you’re not my daughter

Tennis Elbow

Jill: How’s Phil?
Jackie: Oh, he’s all right. You know Phil
Jill: Yeah, I know Phil.
Jackie: He says he’s got tennis elbow.
Jill: Tennis elbow, what’s that then?
Jackie: It’s what you get when you play tennis.
Jill: I didn’t know Phil played tennis.
Jackie: He doesn’t. He’s never played tennis in his life.
Jill: Oh, so how’d he get tennis elbow then?
Jackie: I don’t know, he says he went to the doctor’s and the doctor said he’s got tennis elbow.
Jill: Is there a cure for it?
Jackie: He’s not allowed to play tennis six weeks.
Jill: That shouldn’t be too hard.
Jackie: Not for Phil, no.
Jill: It’s funny isn’t it?
Jackie: Do you want to know what I think?
Jill: What?
Jackie: I reckon he might be having an affair.
Jill: What, Phil?
Jackie: Yeah, Phil.
Jill: With a tennis player?
Jackie: Yeah, a tennis player. You know Phil.
Jill: Yeah, I know Phil.
Jackie: How’s Brian?
Jill: Oh, Brian’s all right. You know Brian.
Jackie: Yeah, I know Brian.
Jill: He says he’s got Athlete’s foot but apart from that he’s fine.

Ego Death and Sensible Shoes

Today I experienced what I can only describe as an out of body mystical transcendental ego-killing experience. I thought to myself: what is this self I am thinking to? If I am not myself then who or what is I? I was suddenly detached from my own self in the most exhilarating, liberating way and all my anxieties and insecurities vanished. Then I went to Clark's and bought some sensible shoes - not for myself but for my feet.

Hounslow Gray saves the day

Hounslow Gray, semi-famous explorer and environmentalist extraordinaire
Convinces the balding polar bear
Who's down in the mouth
About extinction
To move down south
To avoid extinction

The ice caps melt, the sea level rises
As Hounslow Gray surmises
It's a bloody disaster
There's no happily ever after

But the polar bear doesn't care
Or even give a toss
He's now living in Brent Cross
Having an affair with his boss
And lamenting the loss
Of his hair

a list of people from the borough of Hounslow (alphabetical order)

Cecil Aldin - artist and illustrator. Best known for his paintings of animals and rural life, for example "Debbie does Calculus" and "Socially awkward sheep wanders off on his own".

Jack Beresford - British rower who won medals at five Olympic Games in succession, was so devoted to rowing that he slept in a boat. When he got married, he compromised and got a water bed.

Alec Dickson - founder of Voluntary Service Overseas. Conceived the idea of sending volunteers to developing countries. Legend has it that no-one asked him to come up with the idea, he just proffered it. Just like that. On a plate, made out of recycled elephant dung.

Michael Flanders - entertainer, lived in Chiswick from 1971 to 1975.
One half of Flanders and Swann. First half. Hobbies included ducking and breathing.

Sir Stephen Fox - politician, had a country retreat in Chiswick from 1663. And with a name like Fox, boy did he need it.

E. M. Forster – famous author, a blue plaque in Arlington Park Mansions commemorates the flat where he lived until his death in 1970. Very nice flat, but no windows.

Elias Henry "Patsy" Hendren – cricketer. Was a first-class batsman despite having no knees.

William Hogarth - country home at Chiswick from 1749 until his death. His next door neighbour had a highly contagious rash. Died by chicken poxy proxy.


Joe Miller - actor, lived at Strand-on-the-Green from 1686 to 1738. Some historians claim he didn't actually live there but was merely playing the part of a local resident.


Alistair Overeem - mixed martial arts fighter, born in Hounslow. Specialised in combining jujitsu moves with recitals of Italian Renaissance Feminist poetry. Once paralysed a man with a sonnet.


Lucien Pissarro - artist, coined the term piss-artist. Key influence on Tracy Emin.

Redgrave family - actors, lived at Bedford House from 1945 to 1954. Divided their time between the following four rooms:
1945-47 Kitchen. 1947-50 Dining room. 1950-53 Living room. 1953-54 Bedroom.
1954 Moved into a new house with a toilet.

Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky - Russian revolutionary. Famously started his day with supper and had breakfast before going to bed as a political protest against the Csar.

Tuke family - mental healthcare reformers. Campaigned tirelessly for the humane treatment of the insane. Quaker family who believed fervently that Jeremy Kyle was the devil incarnate.


Vincent van Gogh - lived briefly in Isleworth, before moving to France where he cut off a bit of his ear, shot himself in the chest. In a letter to his brother he reveals that things would have been a lot worse for him had he stayed in Hounslow.

i didn't vote in the last election

i didn't vote
in the last election
i couldn't vote
in the last election
i was in a boat
in the last election
nowhere near a polling booth

cherie booth
was sailing by in a brand new fishing smack
i waved at her and she waved back,
with a brand new yellow jack
"are you not voting today, cherie?" i asked
"no way, you have got to be joking" said cherie, "for years my husband was a political hack -
i'm through with all that crap"

dugong dreams

coffee and lemons

gemma's chair

frederick goodge is out of the office - will be in Brighton on the 6th and 13th May

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ball point banana

The Fantastic Reality of Frederick Goodge

Exploring the life of an explorer

Baffin Island, not to mention Baffin Bay, is named after a man named William Baffin who was named after his father, who was named after his father, who was named after his father, who was named after his mother, who unfortunately looked like a man.

It is perhaps no coincidence that Baffin Island is named after a man who was in many ways an island himself. Or was he rather, as John Donne would have said, “a piece of the continent, a part of the main if a clod be washed away by the sea”?

While the truth is we will never know, the question is will we ever care? All we know is that William Baffin was born in 1584, a small child of humble origin. He was born in a shoe on Brick Lane, his father was a cobbler, his mother was insane. You’d have to be to marry a cobbler, people used to say. Nowadays, there’s much less stigma attached to mending shoes, it’s just like being gay. His parents were impoverished, poor and broke, they had nothing to eat; nevertheless William was a fussy eater and his father used to beat him. He was a punctilious man, yes, he was most attentive to punctilios, or fine points of etiquette and would only ever beat his son with his right hand.

“Eat your peas, young William Baffin, or I will beat you soundly,” he would say.

“No, father, I do not like peas,” William Baffin would reply without missing a beat.

“You will eat your peas and you will eat them with a fork and a fork only. Woe betide you if you push them onto your fork with a knife. It’s a question of etiquette”.

“Why don’t you stick your fork up your arse and go take a poke?” replied William Baffin. “That is not so much a question of etiquette as rhetoric.”

Then his father would promptly beat him with a shoe, (the right one of course) an ordinary shoe without a buckle, as buckles had not yet been invented. They were an important innovation, no doubt but one, which did not appear until the middle of the 17th century. In his diary on January 22nd 1660 Samuel Pepys wrote:

“This day I began to put on buckles to my shoes.”

Sadly William Baffin would not live long enough to have this pleasure.

William Baffin grew tired of his father beating him and one day requested that he be beaten by his mother instead. His mother was much less punctilious than his father and simply gave him a slap round the face and told him to stop being such a cheeky so and so.

William Baffin hated his parents, in particular his mother and father, and longed to distance himself from them. He considered the best way of doing this would be to go away, preferably as far away as possible, and if this were not possible, then really quite far would have to suffice.

William Baffin left home early one morning and with him he took one of his father’s shoes. He felt sure this would vex him greatly and he chuckled to himself as he made his way to the docks and indeed the rest of his life. While literally waiting for his ship to come in, William Baffin meditated on one of the great metaphysical conundrums of all time; if you had a different father would you be the same person and more to the point would you have the same shoes?

William Baffin concluded that he would be half a different person and one of his shoes would be the same. From that moment onwards and for no good reason whatsoever William Baffin dreamed of having only one leg.

For many years William Baffin lived the life of a wandering soul. He was an itinerant spirit, a travelling vagabond, a nomad in no-man’s land. Whatever that means. He lived out of a suitcase, not in a suitcase but out of a suitcase. He might have been able to live in a suitcase when he was a small child but he was no longer a small child, he was a fully-grown man with a regular sized suitcase if you can imagine such a thing, in the spring of 1617.

Yes, he was a fully-grown man, with a fully-grown suitcase, which was essentially his home. He didn’t have many possessions: “if you are not careful, your possessions will possess you”, he would have said. But he didn’t, he didn’t say anything, you see he didn’t speak very much at all. He was eloquent, yes there was no doubt about that but hardly loquacious. If anything, he was more laconic than loquacious, he had the utmost respect for the sanctity of language, the precious nature of words and was anxious to do the right thing by them. Whatever that means.

William Baffin died on January 23 1622. As well as Baffin Bay and Baffin Island, there is also a flower named after him: a scentless rose, to commemorate the fact that the poor chap had no nose.