P A U L  B U R A

BURA’S BLURB December 09

MERRY THINGY, AMIGOES!!!

By now I should be ensconced in my bungalow at 93, Albany Drive, Herne Bay in Kent. Albany Drive was where all of us kids were brought up: Josie, Melly, Kevin and me! And where my mumma spent her happiest of days. At 6 years old when we moved from Albany Drive and all the furniture was piled into the van, I sat on the front step and refused to leave! “You can all go without me,” I cried, “but I’m staying!” Talk about famous last words!

I WANT TO BE AN ACTOR, SIR!
“Roberts! What, pray, do you want to do when you leave this excellent educational emporium?” Mr Hancock (“mathematics are BE-AU-TI-FUL!” he was apt to say to all and sundry, he even muttered it when he nodded off!) was our head teacher at Greenhill Secondary Modern and was likely to take you off guard with his musings!
        “Umm, I want to be a technical drawer, sir!”
        “In what field, Roberts?”
        “Umm…..”
        “Come on, come on, boy, in what field?”
        “Don’t know, sir!”
        “Onion?”
        “Sir?”
        “Same question, boy!”
        “A ladies hairdresser, sir!”
Mr Hancock winced. “Have you thought it through, Onion?”
“I’ve already started on a Saturday, sir!” said Bob Onion proudly. “Yeees, so I’ve heard, boy, so I’ve heard!”
        “Jones? Same question, boy!”
        “I want to be a plumber, sir”
        “Are you sure, Jones?”
        “Yes sir.”
Finally he came to me:
        Bura, what do you want to be?”
        “I want to be an actor, sir!”
        The whole classroom fell silent! What was this crippled boy think he was playing at? The whole classroom resounded with this silent cry!
        Mr Hancock paused, a very long pause… “Hummmm, yes, well…” Then he continued on:
        “Brown? Same question, boy!”

        Even when I was in hospital (having left the Secondary Modern School in Herne Bay: I won the talent competition playing harmonica with Roger Hext and played a limping Sea Captain in ‘The rainbow’s End’ which the school had put on) lying flat on a Plaster-of-Paris bed - having had a spinal fusion - I asked my parents for my grease-paint box.
        I made my face up like a clown…until sister saw me (well you could hardly MISS me: a row of beds and me made-up like a clown!). She marched straight over and confiscated the lot. “You’ll be getting (she was Irish) dis stuff all over de sheets,” she cried!  

        Years later I proved them all wrong. I had a talent for voices and I wrote a small 5-minute animated pilot film (with my brother-in-law – he of the busking experience – on bass clarinet) calledProfessor Who-Dunnit with me doing the voice of the professor and the Genie (don’t ask!), a German professor. My cousin George (it was his idea and his characters) DuBoush did the animation. George and I happened to be showing the film at my uncle Bob’s studio where the producer of LARRY THE LAMB, (Hedrick Baker of Toy Town fame)was making an animated series of Larry the Lamb for Thames TV. Hedrick hated the five minute pilot but loved my rendering of the little German professor. One thing led to another and before I knew it I was auditioning for the part. I had to do about four voices in all but the main voice was that of Dennis the Dachshund who had a Germanic voice. I got the audition and went on to do three series of LARRY THE LAMB!
         I was now in demand for TV and Radio commercials, a radio actor and a performing poet!
        So, in the end, I became an actor after all…using my voice and not my body - which was just as well!

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UN'T NOW ZA POEMS!

MAY YOU HAVE
LUV N’ LITE N’ LARFTER
AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS, AMIGOES!

Paul

BURA’S BLURB November 09

HELLO AMIGOES!

Everybody has those characters whom they model themselves on (Don’t they?), even if it’s only an actor or film-star, or even a teacher whose influence guides them, even unconsciously, for the rest of their lives. This was such a person:

JAY DEVEREAUX

He was swath and casual. He wore pale-green elephant cords, dark roll neck sweaters and neat, little fitted jackets and suede shoes. He was dark-haired and reminded me of Gene Pitney (the singer:’24 Hours to Tulsa’ etc). He came down from London and was a mechanic in the Arcade that I worked in as a cashier. He smoked Gold Blend king-size cigarettes with such finesse and style I almost took up smoking! Jay was the coolest dude that I had ever met!
         Girls swarmed around him like flies on a discarded bag of chips! Gradually I found myself buying (I couldn’t find green elephant corduroy trousers) a pair of cords (brown) and wearing the roll-neck sweaters and little casual jackets thinking to attract the same flies that swarmed around him.
         His name was Jay Devereaux and he was my (consciously or unconsciously, I didn’t really know) role model!
         He used to clear the pennies, which accumulated around the shoots of the penny slot machines (he having the keys to the machines – he was a mechanic after all!). You could see the weight of their bulge in the pockets of the light canvas jackets that we all had to wear! He persuaded me to cash-in his ill gotten gains, out of sight from the boss! He was such a charmer that I did exactly what he said.
        From this cash he bought an old 1946 Austen 10 for £35 quid. He enticed many a willing girl into that old banger.
        He and I went out once after work (we packed-up around 10pm). I had a sister who was going out with a musician who had a gig in Margate and we were invited.
         Before that, however, we went to Fenners restaurant where we ordered mushroom soup and a mixed grill (I ate meat in those days). A strange persona came and settled over Jay in that restaurant. He started ordering the waiters around!
        When our mushroom soup came the chef had put a thinly-cut, delicate profusion of mushrooms on top of the soup. I was about to say that the chef had gone to a lot of trouble to make the soup as an attractive a dish as he could when Jay clicked his fingers at the waiter and ordered him to “Take it away!”. I had no say in the matter. “If I had ordered mushrooms on top of the soup I would have ordered them,” he said loudly, “Now take it away and bring us (he even said us!) just plain mushroom soup!”
         He complained about the toughness of the steak (it wasn’t tough), the eggs (they were fine), and the wine: EVERYTHING! This was a side of him that I hadn’t seen!
         Then it clicked! I was only 17 and he was about 22 and he was – in my view – just showing off! That HAD to be it! He wanted me to feel that ‘he was in charge’ and this was the way to ‘have a good time’. Never mind that I was quietly embarrassed by the whole episode, in fact I was squirming!
        When we arrived at the Jazz venue which my sister Josie had invited us he was the old Jay again: charm and genuine warmth personified.
       All of my family were smitten, especially my younger sister. He became one of the family; Jay not having a family of his own…at least to my knowledge!
        The season came to an end; he still came down for the odd weekend though.
         Then, quite suddenly, without a word to anyone, he immigrated to Australia!
        We still kept in touch. That is for a year or so.
        Then about 8 years ago I got an Air Mail letter from a J. DEVEREAUX. Excitedly I ripped open the letter. It was from his daughter ‘Jacqueline Devereaux’ (I didn’t even know that he was married!) to tell me that her father had died in a tragic car accident on his way to work!
         She had been going through his things and came across a book of my poems and so she had written to me asking me about her father and what he was like back then? She had sent me a photograph of Jay who now sported a full beard and glasses [see poem below] and was distinctly scruffy (not the suave dude of old) and to Jacqueline he hadalways dressed this way! He worked in coloured glass now, a creative process where he made brightly coloured swirling, decorative, windows!
        She told me that now and again he suffered from depression and that his marriage was rocky. She had a brother too whose name I forget!
        I still wear corduroy trousers (don’t know why!) but smocks now instead of roll-neck sweaters! Every time I see an old Austen 10 I think of Jay Devereaux*… and all those girls! I didn’t tell his daughter about the girls. Perhaps she’s reading this now? Oh well, no harm done eh, Jacqueline?
         [Email me soon, Jacqueline! Its years since I heard from you!]

NOTE: I remember it was the summer when I devoured anything I could get my hands on by Lobsang Rampa: THE THIRD EYE, DOCTOR FROM LHASA, THE CAVE OF THE ANCIANTS etc.

INTERESTING STORY

    An interesting story: Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees is a friend of my brother Kevin's, in fact when they go away Kev and Maureen usually act as caretakers to his country 'pile'. Kevin used to cut Robin's hair...and still does. Anyway, when Kev did the Trafalgar Square (4th plinth) gig Robin tried to get in and COULDN'T! Usually Robin can get in ANYWHERE he bloody well likes because he's a Bee Gee, but on the entrance were a Russian and some other nationality bloke who didn't know who Robin was from Adam. Kev and Maureen were staying at Robin's London gaff (which he had offered them) and didn't expect Robin to turn up. Anyway, after the set Robin said to Kevin: "Immaculate timing, man, immaculate. You owned that plinth!" Kev was flabbergasted and said: "Coming from you that's a real honour, up until now I was very careful not even to whistle around you let alone sing!"

JUST ONE POEM!

ADIOS AMIGOES!

LUV N‘ LITE N‘ LARFTER!

Paul Bura.

BURA’S BLURB OCTOBER 09

HELLO AMIGOES!

AMBULANCE MEN
Ambulance men (or ‘Medics’) are a breed apart: jovial, strong, friendly and compassionate. I should know, I have been using them on and off for over 50 years: from when I first caught polio to my now condition of post polio syndrome. I don’t know the process of how and why they choose them; probably intimate questioning of a personal kind. All I know is that they are as I’ve described them above: always cheerful, helpful and appear to love their job (though their pay could do with an airing). Nothing is too much of a hassle, nothing is too much trouble. Always friendly banter and – it appears – they wouldn’t let anything happen to you if their life depended on it!
        My old friend Peter McKay was an ambulance driver (same training except you had to pass your advanced driving test). Peter was the personification of all that I’ve described above – except he couldn’t stand the sight of blood! I really couldn’t imagine Peter picking up severed limbs: fingers, hands etc. from a road accident! (Or road-kill, come to that!)
         However, part of his training was to spill a small phial-full of imitation blood onto a sheet. You’d have thought it was a full pint – or an ‘arm-full’ as Tony Hancock in The Blood Donor said. He soon got used to it! Mind you, he nearly fainted at first with the shock of all that fake blood.
        All went well during their training except for an incident with laughing gas, otherwise known as nitrous oxide! He and a mate of his had to attend a training lecture whilst under the influence of this gas and try as they could they couldn’t help pissing themselves with laughter. As you know laughter is infectious and before you knew it the whole hall was rocking with laughter. The lecturer caught on right away and ordered the two of them out of the lecturer hall. A bollocking followed!
        From then on nobody could pick me up if I fell over like Peter McKay. He was trained for the job. However – as with quite a few ambulance men (AND nurses) – his back went. Where did his back go? I hear you say…
        During my period in Anglesey, North Wales, (I’ve just sold my bungalow and hope to be moving to Herne Bay in Kent) I had to call upon the services of these guys in blue.
         “There’s a brand new Hoist in the other room!” I said. “Don’t know how to work ‘em!” said this ambulance man who was built like a brick out-house.
         With the minimum of effort he picked me up to a standing position even though he was now breaking the new code of practice that he and the nursing profession should now abide by: they had to use a hoist of some kind!
        Checking to see if I was okay – even offering to make me a cup of tea – and after filling in some forms he was gone!
       
        This is my opportunity – after all these years – to say in print: Thanks guys! Thank you very much for all the quiet humour and sometimes loud gags; your strength, skill, and kindness…but most of all: your compassion!

*******

THE OXO CUBE
(UFO sighting on Anglesey)

On the 20 June, on the Isle of Anglesey 2009, Mrs Scott, her daughter and a neighbour all witnessed, in broad daylight, a stationary light whose brilliance nearly matched that of the sun and was the size of a car! It was right above their heads and remained there for about 10 minutes.
           Every time they tried to photograph it with their mobile phones they failed. Either they couldn’t get their phones to focus – an unusual event in itself! - Or there was just a blank screen! (Typical phenomena where UFOs are concerned of all electrical gadgetry: they all tend to fail!)
          The huge light then turned into a ‘dark cube’ which suddenly moved off quite fast toward Bangor, North Wales!

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HERE COME DE POETRY!

ADIOS AMIGOES!

LUV N’ LITE N’ LARFTER

Paul Bura

BURA’S BLURB

HELLO AMIGOES!

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!!
My brother Kevin will be in Trafalgar Square at 10pm on September 12th (live!) on the 4TH plinth singing his little heart out. It’s organised by ANTONY GORMLEY (creator of ‘The Angel of the North’ and other sculptures). He won a lottery where each artist has an hour on the plinth doing whatever they bloody well like picked up on every PC on the planet!!! He will be dressed as a Pearly King and – amongst others – will sing his song about LONDON. When the producers heard about this they asked him whether he would arrive 2 hours earlier as they want him for a foto shoot! The sky’s the limit, little bruv! (Go, Kev, go!)

       Google: ANTONY GORMLEY/4TH plinth

BARIUM MEAL

For those of you that are a little squeamish or consider this material more lavatorial than you can bear, perhaps you shouldn’t read this piece!

        I went to my doctor in Lancing, Sussex, and told him that I had occasional constipation (strange isn’t it that TV ads for constipation and urinal problems tend to be aimed at ‘women!’ rather then men, even mentioning the vigina. Why IS that I wonder?). After prodding and poking at my stomach he thought that he detected a small obstruction and right away wrote to my local hospital in Worthing for an X-ray!
        Which left me worrying as to what it might be? I put this little niggle to the back of my mind, which was difficult because the C-word kept rearing its head!
        Three weeks later the hospital sent me some Barium Meal (which, as it so happened, was invented by my friend Lesley’s father. Who is Lesley? She is not part of this story so I’m not going to tell you; so there!), which I had to take prior to starving myself for a day and night.
        Now Barium Meal is a substance that comes in powder form and which you add to water. Come the morning after a night dreaming of eggs, chips and beans and mounds of buttered toast, I added the water and immediately the substance became warm (I believe it’s the chromium in it?).
        I was warned before hand that I had to be near a toilet and not to GO OUT at any time!  Now pretty well ALL laxatives ordered through the doctor come with this warning, but this warning came in large red letters. “Ah’oop,” I thought, “this stuff means business!” 
        Within 15 minutes I was in the toilet and taking down my trousers at the speed of light, which for a polio person aint easy! Human volcanic magma burst from my being like there was no tomorrow…and indeed it seemed that there WAS no tomorrow!
         Five minutes seemed like five hours. In the basin below me was a veritable storm of activity. The wind and noise was terrible – and that was only the weather! It was a continuous barrage, the absolutereverse of a storm in a teacup!!!
         Then all on a sudden it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I was exhausted. I waited: then cleaned myself up, pulled up my trousers and…you’re ahead of me! Yes, another five minutes of thunderous reports!
        This time I felt the ‘all clear’ was genuine…and it was.

        My appointment at the hospital was 2.30. I was ushered into a large changing unit (which had a toilet incidentally, now WHY did it have a toilet?), where I disrobed, including my spinal jacket, and put on this special gown that did up at the back (a nurse helped me into this).
         They were ready for me, so a couple of rather attractive nurses helped me (I can walk without the spinal jacket but they didn’t know that - as I said they were rather attractive!) into a room that had a special ‘up and down’ bed, a large type of tank with tubes, and a screen.
         The doctor greeted me (he seemed friendly enough) and then indicated that special ‘up and down’ bed by patting it.
        “Hello, Mr Bura,” he said cheerily, “and how are you today?” I shot a nervous smile at him. “Ah, no need for nerves, Mr Bura”.      “Yeh, they all say that,” I thought.
        “Nurse will now administer a tube up your rectum, alright?”       “No, it bloody well wasn’t alright!” I thought-screamed!       “This is merely a special liquid which we will pour into you. You can see it going in on this screen here!” He indicated the screen. (Any minute now and he will say: “Ve haf vays of making you talking!”).
        The nurse inserted the probe. I winced. “This will be a little uncomfortable,” she said, “but when we pour in the liquid don’t worry if your stomach starts to swell, alright!” (Huh?) I grunted and nodded that I understood.
        Yes, it was uncomfortable but not painful!
        “Righto,” said the doctor, “perhaps you’d like to look at the screen. The liquid (which was white in colour) has a dye that shows up on the screen; see?”
         He pointed at an image of my bowl and stomach on the screen. “You see it’s gradually creeping up the small intestine and…”       He paused for a nano second.
         “What’s up, doc?” I said, sliding into my best Bugs Bunny impression!
         “No…umm…no-o-o-o…just a little more nurse!” I was being blown up like a balloon with this liquid.
         “Ah,” said the doc, “That’s better! You’ll be pleased to know, Paul, (He’d dropped the ‘Mr Bura’ tag) that you’re all clear,” said the doctor, triumphantly.
        “You mean that’s it?”
        “Yup, that’s it! All done!
        “Thanks doc, thank you very much...oh, by the way?”
         “Yes, Paul” he said, looking up from the screen. “Does Barium Meal ALWAYS work? I mean does it melt down even the hardest faecal matter?”
        “Never known it fail yet, Paul, never known it fail yet. Anything else you want to know?”
        “No, that’s about it, doctor, that’s about it!”
        With that he just smiled!

        Now very carefully the nurse extracted the tube from my bum
 and instructed me to ‘keep your cheeks together and be careful how I walk!’ (For obvious reasons) whilst she and the another nurse helped me off the ‘up and down’ gantry and into the changing room.
 
        NOW it all became clear! The reason why - in this huge dressing room - there was a TOILET! The nurses led me over to it!

        Directly my posterior hit the porcelain comfort zone of the toilet a huge outpouring of the white stuff together with what amounted to a huge, strangled fart rattled the windowpanes.
        The nurses didn’t even blink! Without skipping a beat one of them said that I would be welcome back anytime. When I enquired as to why? She said: “Well some people make such a fuss, whilst you were an absolute pleasure,” she said, “an absolute pleasure!”
        “I don’t mean to make a habit of this, nurse!” I replied.
        I sat on the loo for a further five minutes (I wasn’t taking any chances), got dressed and went home!
        My mother greeted me at the door. “How did you get on, dear?” she said.
         “All clear, mother,” I said, “In fact it was a gas, an absolute blast!”

*******

ONE POEM:

ADIOS AMIGOES,
UNTIL NEXT MONTH!

Paul Bura.

September 2009

BURA’S BLURB

HELLOW AMIGOES!!!

VANITY PRESS AS APPOSED TO SELF-PUBLICATION. NO CONTEST!

Vanity Press usually offer cash prizes for competition poems. Vanity Press’s are in it for the dosh, playing on your ability (or inability) to publish your own work. Of course they claim they are NOT a vanity press; however if you were to send a poem (or poems) you will receive in the post a ‘proof’ of a chosen poem which will go into an anthology together with praise for your effort! Yes an ANTHOLOGY! At last, you cry, I will have my poem or poems in print! Oh joy!  
          Then cometh the catch. They (of course) will charge you anything up to £17.50 for two copies. Then before the publication date they offer a handsome 45% discount (in the hope that you will order at least a dozen copies…OR MORE!). Of course BEFORE the publication date there is a FULL refund if you are not satisfied. It’s £13.70 for ONE copy and £17.70 for two. No matter which way you look at it they are VANITY PRESS!!!!
          However, to be fair you can have the anthology (CONTAINING YOUR POEM) on a 14 day free trial, with no obligation to buy…apart from vanity blackmail!
          Where have I heard this sales pitch before? Usually in the newspapers, where cash prizes are dolled-out for your poems; no matter how good (or bad) your poetry is, they will, on the whole, accept them!
           UNITED PRESS LTD, are offering the same deal ON LINE!!! As are many companies! Don’t fall for it! NEVER pay to get your work in print!!!!

SELF-PUBLICATION

          Now SELF-PUBLICATION is a different kettle of eels all together. T.S. Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, Rudyard Kipling D.H. Lawrence, Lord Byron, and many others, all published their own stuff, so you are in very good company, especially if you read your own work at poetry venues and can then sell your wares. AND you make a darn sight more money.

          I used to publish my own stuff (still do) at 500 copies a throw. And if you are into computers it’s a piece of piss. Mind you, choose your firm of printers wisely and always add an ISBN number (£50 squids for ten ISBN numbers. Email me and I’ll provide the address for the ISBN numbers). All booksellers require an International Standard Book Number. An ISBN number provides them with an address and other details. Some printers provide these but don’t rely on it!

OH, NOW THE POEMS:

ADIOS AMIGOES
TILL NEXT MONTH!!!

August 2009

BURA’S BLURB

HELLO AMIGOES!

Consistent Revelation and Changing Awareness of the Infinite.
          As far as man can discern (so far) the central ‘building blocks of creation’ are the same throughout the universe (s) as is the furthest star, which can collapse at any time and is reborn into ‘something else’.
          This is the Infinite ‘doing its thing!’ and this is the essence of reincarnation.

REINCARNATION
(A personal view)

Apart from what I experienced in A QUESTION OF TIME (above this piece) reincarnation to me is a reality. I mean nothing else seems to make any sense, and we have all probably had hundreds if not thousands of lives – even other parallel universes – all of which make up our present characters, abilities, gifts, faults, and so on.
        But what we are NOW is what really matters and we can blame NO-ONE but ourselves.
        As we progress then we can have a say in what life is best suited for us and our progress by the union with the Higher Self, the real you.

        The Roman Emperor Constantine lorded over the Council of Constantinople in 553 and was considered to be the prime culprit for striking out of the bible every reference to reincarnation because his third wife - considered a prostitute by many - was mortally afraid of karma because of her evil ways (cause and effect, thus: life after life), though she was not in fact a Christian!
         However they overlooked more than just a few. One example sticks heavily in my memory banks (apart from: ‘As you sow so shall you reap’: Life after life?):
        Remember when the disciples said to Jesus that Elias would come first (to herald Jesus’ coming)? Jesus replied that he had already come and that the disciples understood that he was referring to his (2nd) cousin (Mary’s cousin Elizabeth was John’s mother) John the Baptist! John the Baptist WAS Elias! (Matthew 17.10)
        And Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do the crowd say that I am?” And the crowd was rumoured to answer: “Elias, Jeremias, or one of the prophets!” (Matthew-16: 2-3)
         Therefore – in my view – it was obvious that it was taken for granted that reincarnation was well established amongst the Jews! This new teacher (Jesus) could well have been Moses or Elijah or any of the mystics of the Jewish faith!
        When his followers asked of a certain blind man whether he or his parents had sinned (an obvious referral to reincarnation) he answered to the affect that in this case neither was true. He did not say that hereditary was the cause either (well he wouldn’t would he: his disciples wouldn’t have known what he was talking about!) nor did he say that reincarnation was the culprit (the life prior to this one) par se. I mean a man could not have sinned [sinned: a biblical term for erring, not mine] before being born unless he had sinned in a previous [physical] life, now could he? (John-9: 2-3)
        Karma throws up many clues in its wake!
       Who knows whether genetics/hereditary was responsible in itself for the playing out of this particular karmic dance?
       
        I was regressed a few years ago and apart from a successful life as a soldier/warrior on semi-retirement I taught some gentleman of royal blood and bearing the art of swordplay and the art of the longbow in the middle of a forest somewhere. However, these ‘gentleman’ shot a deer whilst drunk and made a right mess of it. I had to (humanely) finish the poor beast off, whilst my anger was kept under control, and the royals looked on inebriated and laughing. After all, they were royalty and under my tutelage. There was nothing I could do!
        But I also regressed (again) to that life as a priest that I acted out (video above) and was able to put in another missing piece: I escaped from that prison with the aid of a soldier who was secretly on the side of the pope.
         The splitting of the churches were frightful times, frightful times indeed!

(Yawn!) AND NOW THE POEMS!

ADIOS MY AMIGOES

Paul Bura

July 2009

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HELLO AMIGOES!

THE COMMON COLD RESEARCH CENTRE
Being a ‘voice over’ artist or ‘radio actor’, as is common in most of the arts, you are more out of work than in! So I decided – having just read an article on the subject – to enrol as a volunteer for The Common Cold Research Unit at Salisbury. After all I could take my typewriter and get a bit of work done and get paid for it (£12 squids a week). Also get my petrol (or train fare) paid for, get fed, bedded and boarded to boot!
        We were a strange motley, spotty crew (mainly spotty as they were mostly students), and there were also some GIRLS!
        We all trundled in and were given the low down: the rules and regulations of the set-up:

        I was billeted with a guy just out the army (or just about to join, I don’t remember which) who brought with him a pal. I didn’t exactly see eye to eye with the army bloke who insisted on calling me a Kentish ‘*+£&’ (the second word rhymes with hunt) and taking the Mickey out of my (seemingly to him) posh accent. I studied this bloke over a period of days.
        Then I wrote a small play incorporating ‘us three’. I made sure that my character on the page was called ‘Kentish …’ and that the two other guys were called by their real names. By the time we had read through this nonsense play the army bloke was very subdued to say the least… he even had difficulty calling me a ‘Kentish …’. I can’t remember a single word of what I wrote but it did the trick. He treated me with a little bit of respect! And by the time we had the ‘end of term party’ where ALL the units got together (I can’t remember whether the Common Cold Unit paid for the wine or we did) we were - more or less – friends.

        My 2nd trip to the Centre I took with me some friends. Denny was an ex-Pirate DJ (Stage name: Alex Dee) on the Forts that had been constructed to protect our shores from the Nazi hoards just off of Herne Bay and Whitstable where Screaming Lord Such made his name as a Disc Jockey. In those days he was a rock and roll singer but soon became a Pirate DJ, the rest is political history!
        Denny was a babe magnet. He used to swan around Hernia Bay in an old hearse using his followers as chauffeurs and you could guarantee that in the back of this hearse were at least two gorgeous women!
        Meanwhile, back at the Common Cold Research Centre, Denny had brought with him a portable record player and he and I set up the phone to these two attractive ladies and we took it in turns to play records and DJ between records over the phone. Well it was something to do until the end of term party!
        Anyway, I ended up spending the night with one of those ladies (the other one didn’t want to know) and that bastard Denny and his mate Chris climbed into the roof and did his best to spy on us. Not only that but they also piled furniture up against the door so that we couldn’t get out! Thankfully they didn’t succeed, well perhaps they did have a peep but I’ll never know!  All I know is that from then on we didn’t speak. Jealousy reared its head and for once the great lover and babe-magnet had his nose put out of joint!
        Thankfully after a while we made up!

        I visited the Common Cold Unit for a 3rd time. The 3rd time my best pal Peter McKay came along and he met his future wife there! I met a girl there also, a nurse called Hilary.
        Funny isn’t it, but the girl I spent the night with on the 2nd occasion was also called Hilary and she was also a nurse as was Peter’s first wife! Both the 1st Hilary and the 2nd I saw again out of the confines of The Common Cold Research Unit. The 2nd Hilary immigrated to Australia! Was it something I said?
        On the 3rd occasion I ended up with a ‘cold to end all colds,’ I was three weeks shaking it off, never have I had a cold like it before or since.
        The funny thing about it was that I haven’t suffered from a cold – except for the odd snuffle – since, and that was 30 odd years ago!

And so the poem,
only one this time!

ADIOS MY AMIGOES!

Paul Bura

June 2009

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HELLO AMIGOES!

FOUR DIMENSIONAL REALITY
THREE DIMENSIONAL HABITS!

I’m talking about a 4 Dimensional reality experienced during this 3 Dimensional reality (Earth life). The 3D reality or experience is not necessarily a religious experience nor a mystical one, come to that, unless you are that way inclined!
        It can be an unconscious search (OR a conscious one!) for truth. Already we are delving into the realms of religion or mysticism. But it could very well be that you are in fact – by nature – a sincere believer in that powerful concept of TRUTH, truth as you yourself conceive it to be!

             (I personally have always concluded that TRUTH can be tough but never changes, it is only our conception of truth that changes. It is also my opinion, and ONLY my opinion – for what it’s worth – that LOVE [like truth] – the creative principle – is ever evolving. Love just cannot stand still: it is a DOING word even if it is only the embracing adjective.)

So therefore you have a different take on religion or mysticism. Personally I believe there is a large dividing wall between religion and the mystics of this world.
         (Religion is a belief system where mysticism just IS! Many of you will suppose that you can’t have one without the other!)
        Consider the old man (or young man, come to that) that never left his village, never went to church, yet in the fields and forests and woodlands would find more wisdom and enlightenment and Oneness than you and I could discover in all of the world! Yet the furthest he would travel to the so-called civilised world would be the next town 10 miles away!

        But supposing – as long as you believe that life is a continuum, that is – just supposing that you leave this earth in the condition known as death, whether by natural causes: to die in your sleep (my personal favourite), or by drowning, electrocution, or by (God forbid) an act of violence, on or off the field of battle. Whatever the cause, you will find yourself in what can only be described as a 4 dimensional reality.
        Now this 4 dimensional reality, just like being born into a 3 dimensional reality, takes some time to adjust, but THIS time, instead of being born a baby in the 3D reality, you find yourself a fully grown adult!
        Now what do you do? You find that a great many of your relatives (mother, father etc.) are there to greet you – unless you were such a bastard to them in general that there is NO ONE, no-one but your Higher Self to greet you.
        “Higher Self, what the hell is that?” you scream.
         The Higher Self is the real you, the creative spark that brought you into being in the first place: the perfect mirror reflection of your true self.
         This Higher Self, this ‘witness of all you have said and done since time was created and before’ shows you all that you have said and done on this your LAST earth life! The Higher Self can manifest as a blinding light or a little old man with a beard (or a little old woman without a beard!), whatever it deems will not scare the living daylights out of you!
        Death after all is a glorious release, a sense of freedom like no other, the joy of joys. Unless you’ve been programmed SO severely by some sect or religion that you have to go through the motions of what that sect or religion dictates…but it is NOT real!
        Some of you will be very pleased at what you’ve achieved in your life just past, considering what you ‘set out’ to do, and a lot of you are down right ashamed at what you have done.
        But this Higher Self, does not judge you!
There is no PETER AT THE GATE, no heaven or hell, no wrathful God to judge you: YOU JUDGE YOURSELF. Of course – as already stated here – if you are into religion (especially Catholicism that programs you with the ‘guilt trip’, and I don’t mean just Catholicism) that takes some time for you to throw off!
        Free Will – to a certain extent – exists in the 4D reality just as the law of like attracting like; all depends on your state of consciousness and awareness, or progress if you like. Just as your 3D reality (earth life) was governed by your spirituality (Like attracting like again) so then is the 4D reality just in its vastness (not in the sense of size you understand).
         So then this law of Cause and Effect, for those of you who are in an enlightened state, does not exist! However for most of you (I include myself in this category) religion or self awareness will give you peace and solace just as it did in 3D reality…or not as your individual case may be.
        However, you tend to bring your 3D habits IN TO your new 4D reality. Just as you started earth life by kicking and screaming at your mother’s breast!
        It takes time to get used to it. At first you have a good rest. By rest I mean real rest: a condition known as ecstasy, the peace that passes all understanding. Because you’ve earned it; at least 99% of you have!
        Then you start by partying with all your relatives and friends – if you are INTO partying, that is. But if its harps and bells and angels on clouds that you are into then harps and bells and angels you will get (it’s all up to how you are programmed!). If you do then you’ll soon tire of it! Boredom is just as real in the 4D universes as it used to be in the 3D. You are a human being, and by nature you are an inquisitive animal and craving for inquiry does not end!
        Oh and time just doesn’t exist. If you insist on still wearing a watch you will find that you can squeeze five days into five minutes or five minutes into five days and end up throwing the damn thing away!
        Food and drink? You won’t starve, that’s for sure. However you will find that you just don’t need it, but that takes time also. Another 3 Dimensional habit! (Oops, I just told you: time does not exist, does it?) Now personally I would find that going without food very hard because I adore food, the preparation and cooking of it.
        Even FREEDOM takes time (Oops!) to get used to, it being a whole new concept, a whole new ball-game! Freedom to travel with the speed of thought and freedom as a state of being!
        But when all is said and done:

*Death is the homing motion of the soul
But not a passport to enlightenment.

*The 4th Dimension. You can become enlightened here on earth with one foot in the physical (3D) and one foot (mind and spirit) in the etheric (4D).

POETRY

ADIOS, ADIOS AMIGOES!
SEE YOU NEXT MONTH!

MAY 2009

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HELLO AMIGOES!

ONCE UPON A TIME

When I was sixteen I put all thoughts of becoming an actor aside because the government in its infinite wisdom had decided that I was to be sent to a Training Centre in Wadham in Croyden to become a hairdresser (If I couldn’t become an actor I was going to be a barber. Christ knows why). I was to stay at a YMCA in London and catch the bus each day to the Rehabilitation Centre.
        For the first time in my little life I was ‘let loose’. But it was hard work walking to and fro from the bus-stop. I knew that if I tripped up and fell I was going to have to ask a complete stranger to get me up! However, after breakfast at the WMCA and the 2-3 hundred yard stroll to the bus-stop every day, I just put the thoughts of falling right out of my mind.
         I remember distinctly, just on a corner before the bus-stop, were large globs of greenish phlegm. Every morning they were there. They appeared like mushrooms, the spores of which were deep in the throat of a bloke I did not know: well at least I assumed it was a bloke! If I slipped and fell in that phlegm infested piece of London I was in deep doo-doo! (More than a little, I fancy) I carefully navigated my way through and round each sticky blob every morning! I named this corner: Gob Corner.
        I queued up for the red double-decker bus to Wadham and when an impatient lady behind me asked me to ‘hurry up, for Christ’s sake!’ as I was so slow and had to haul myself up by the grab-rails and that central pole that all the double-deckers had, I didn’t say anything but when she could see that I was a raspberry ripple (Cripple) she spluttered out: “I-I’m so sorry, I…” She then blushed and disappeared into the milling throng. I had no need of a retort, my condition shouted for me and I suddenly felt quite sorry for her, especially when the man with her apologised on her behalf mumbling that she had had a bad morning - or something!
        My attempt at hairdressing failed as I couldn’t do the standing and my weak right arm was not cut-out for a cut-throat razor.
         I was then sent for scientific glass-blowing as that was a sitting down job. I failed at that too because every time I held a glass tube over the Bunsen-burner my right arm let me down again and I ended up with bent glass!However, I felt quite at home in the machine-shop sitting on a stool in front of a lathe. In fact the ‘governor’ or the inspector of the machine-shop was impressed enough to hand me the blue-print of a nut and bolt and told me to “Make that, my lad!”
        I duly made it and the governor was well pleased.
           BUT I STILL ONLY QUALIFIED FOR OFFICE WORK! Me? In an office? I don’t think so!
        However my daily walks to and from the YMCA was just the exercise I needed for my little legs and besides there was a little theatre just next to the hostel and I saw my very first play: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller with Renee Asherson. I really fancied her having seen her many times on the tele even though she was twice my age (and more). I saw her without makeup carrying a bunch of scripts into that little theatre. My little heart skipped a beat or two!  I came out of this little theatre-in-the-round even more determined than ever to get some sort of work in the theatre business!
        On my last night at the YMCA two student Irish men that I had befriended took me on a pub-crawl. Now I didn’t even drink (don’t like the taste but the effect is alright!) let alone be led on a pub-crawl, but those silver-tongued young Irish men talked me round. I got pissed on two halves of light and bitter which I took two hours to finish, whilst those Irish lads – in the same two hours – sank 5-6 pints of Guinness…each! We weaved out of the last pub (my balance being crap at the best of times) and we bought two whole roasted chickens (I was not a veggie in those days). I got a fit of the giggles whilst going up in the lift at the YMCA and a lot of SHHHHing went on as I insisted on pressing the buttons at each floor, and whilst the doors were open kept shouting out: “WAKEY! WAKEY! I’M VERY, VERY PISSED! W-WE AND MY F-FRIENDS HERE (I slurred) THOUGHT YOU MIGHT JUST LIKE TO KNOW THAT!” Followed by a chorus of Shhhing! 
        I had to get a train home from Victoria Station the following day and I went all the way across London to get it. My confidence was growing all the time. Victoria Station was a frightening place. The memory of it I drew out of me in the poem The Drunk on the Train [below] many years later, but I can’t remember whether it was this trip home from Victoria Station to Herne Bay or the previous one.
        This time I caught an earlier train and my dad wasn’t there to meet me at Herne Bay station. So I walked home! I just knew that I could do it!
        I walked down Station Road and cut across the park and into Beach Street. Now the back-way into my parent’s restaurant was right at the end of Beach Street. I crossed over the High Street with the Gas Showroom on the corner. At a guess the whole walk was about a mile and a half. I kept stopping for the proverbial ‘rest’ but the excitement of walking all the way from the station kept me going. ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ was not even written yet.
        But I wasn’t lonely and I sure as hell couldn’t run. It turned into ‘The Exhilaration of the Long Distance (to me it WAS a long distance) Hobbler’ and when I hauled myself up the steps and knocked on the back door of the restaurant: my parents stood there, their mouths open in amazement and pride! That was all the reward I needed!

HERE COMES THE POEM:

ADIOS AMIGOES

Paul Bura, April 2009

*****

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HELLOW THERE, MY AMIGOS!

Every now and then I meet a fellow polio person along the road. The person in question now is one George Hutchingson!
I first met George – when I say MET what I really meant to say was I phoned him! It was to do with his Lift-Off products. I read somewhere that he made them and with the simple application of compressed air he was able to expand his air-bags and raise a fully grown man with the simplicity of blowing up a balloon. He was able to sit-up in bed, raise his legs up and down etc. He had one fitted as a simple cushion in his wheelchair so as to raise himself up into a standing position!

Now THIS is what I wanted. I can still walk but need to use a wheelchair now and again for restaurants, cinemas etc. I can drive a car but I need someone to help me out of the car (now that post polio syndrome has had its way with me – and continues to do so) and into the wheelchair BUT I also need help in getting out of the bloody wheelchair-thing in the first place! So George suggested his blow-up cushion. All I needed then was to plug-in to the cigarette lighter on the dashboard to activate the small 12 volt air-compressor. And hey-presto I was slowly raised to the heavens to a standing position to enable me to climb into the car!
“I haven’t got a new one,” said George, “But I can let you have the prototype for a small sum?” “That’ll do for me, George” I cried, “That’ll do for me!”
And I am still using it to this day four years later. Not only that but I broke my arm a couple of years ago (as I said in the ‘Piece for George’) and had to spend the next 6 weeks in plaster in Hospital and the only way I could get the height to get off of my chair (they insist that you sit beside the bed for a couple of hours: circulation, bed-sores and all that) was to bring in my raising cushion and fit it up to a 250 volt air-compressor! It was bloody noisy but it did the business as I hobbled around the ward, nurses in tow!
Now George has had a long standing (or in George’s case: sitting) battle with the National Health to allow his lift-off products to be used, but to no avail! He even wrote to the BBC’s You and Yours program on radio.4.
George Hutchingson died last month aged 86 after a cold got to his chest causing complications to his heart and lungs, the slight stroke and two falls was about as much as he could take. Sarah his daughter wrote to me to ask if I would contribute a piece to be read out at his funeral, a piece to show the remarkable courage of this man. I was delighted to do so:

PIECE FOR GEORGE

"I didn't know George well but what I did know of him filled me with admiration and respect. Like me George suffered the after effects of polio called post polio syndrome but he went on inventing things up until a few years ago. He made me a Lift-off pillow which I am still using to this day. In fact when I broke my elbow in a fall I used it in Hospital to enable me to stand up, much to the amazement (and amusement) of the nursing staff. It was noisy but it did the job perfectly. George - to me - was just a voice on the end of a phone. But he was much more than that: he was a voice crying in the wilderness trying to fight the 'red tape' that the National Health - in its short-sightedness - prevented him from marketing his products. But he was a fighter and would NOT give up!
Here's to you, George my friend, you paved the way with your courage, with your fighting spirit and with your love of life itself! Here's to you, my friend, here's to you!"
PAUL BURA.

Which reminds me of another polio person: She was very beautiful (as were all of her sisters) and she wrote to me having read my poems. I didn’t know she had polio at the time, all I knew was that she had won the Brighton Drama Competition, so I was immediately impressed! We swapped photographs and letters and I found myself off to Seaford in Sussex. She may have remarked briefly that she had had polio but I didn’t know to what extent it affected her and didn’t care!
The fact that she wore straight callipers on both legs right up to her thighs, didn’t actually register. Well it did but her beauty and intelligence outweighed that now, very small, observation.
We both appeared together in Martin George’s THE LAST TRIAL OF MRS M just off of London’s West End. Half the cast were raspberry ripples (cripples) and the rest were jobbing professional actors. The idea was to fool the public into believing that we were ‘normal’. And we did fool them. Then we let the press know that we were HALF disabled actors and half normal, jobbing actors!
Her name was Janie Melherbe-Jenson and she was the most vanity-stricken person I have ever met. She would go nowhere unless she put her ‘face on’. Not that she had to. She was beautiful and she knew it. It didn’t occur to her that she was disabled as it didn’t occur to George Hutchingson that HE was disabled - or myself come to that! Even when post polio syndrome crept up on us, you do what you have to do: adapt! That word ‘courage’ that folk tend to label us with doesn’t come into it. You just adapt, you HAVE to. My friend Anne Mount (polio person) wouldn’t dare let you use the word ‘courage’. Ann had her babies; wore high-heels, and brought up her family and was (is) the life and soul of the party. But PPS gradually shadowed her life, though you wouldn’t think so with her electric scooter, scattering people as she makes a swath through life!
Or Eileen Bailey who also had her babies, looked after her husband, Tom, (who died last year) and family, and is STILL driving. She too is labouring under the PPS curse! But utter the word COURAGE or BRAVE to either of the above – though kindly meant - and we will shy away! After all: it is what it is and we have to get on with it/life!
However, even I used the C-word to describe my friend George! But George was an exception!
It’s like that old adage: (‘greatness’ being swapped for ‘courage’)
“‘Courage’ (or bravery) you may be born with; some people acquire ‘courage’ along the way; then again ‘courage’ can be thrust upon you.”
I like to think that it is the latter with us raspberry ripples, and anyway I quite like the word: THRUST!

NOTE: Post Polio Syndrome is like having polio all over again. Or to put it another way: it’s like putting 5000 volts through a 500 volt circuit, eventually something MUST blow! Not ALL polio victims suffer from PPS. Ian Dury, the singer/song-writer (who I wrote about in my bloggery) to my knowledge never suffered from it!

AND NOW A POEM:
Taken from the hardback:
“The Space Between the Syllables”
(No longer in print!)

ADIOS AMIGOES

Luv n’ Lite n’ Larfter!

March 2009

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HELLOW AMIGOS,
HOW YER DOING?

They say it’s the coldest winter in 31 years and I just have to believe it. Christ knows – and if anyone knows he does! – what the Winter electricity bill is going to be. My bungalow is still on the market and I think it will remain there for sometime to come – mind you miracles DO happen. But then there’s not a bungalow for sale – so far – in Sturry! A double miracle is called for. Somehow I think it will all work out. My glass is half-full and will remain that way!

THE MANNA BANGER

When Peter McKay and I opened our Whole and Health Food Store (called MANNA) I was always messing about with recipes in the back kitchen. What does a vegetarian or vegan (I’m a non-meat eater but eat a little fish: a fishatarian?) crave more than anything else? Bacon AND sausages! When I gave up meat it was for moral reasons and not because I disliked meat…I LOVED it, and even now, 36 years on, the smell of bacon makes my mouth gush and slaver!
          Now I knew of the existence of synthetic sausage skins. Now all I had to do was work on a recipe for the non-meat filling. I started with onions, a special blend of herbs, rusk, yeast extract (Marmite) and for protein soya mince and ground up sunflower seeds, water and sunflower oil plus seasoning!
          I messed around with these ingredients until I thought I had it just right. Meanwhile Peter bought a sausage making machine – up till then we were messing around with a domestic machine! At first we just sold them in the shop and they were so popular that we made more and more. We called them: THE MANNA BANGER!
Meanwhile we graduated to making the bangers down in the cellar (where we bagged up all the lentils, beans etc.) mixing the ingredients in huge plastic bins!
          A gentleman came in to the shop. I asked him what he wanted and he replied that he didn’t want anything! Then he lifted onto the counter a small suitcase, he opened this small suitcase and proceeded to tell me, whilst taking a white overall and white trilby out of the small suitcase, that he was from Canterbury City Council’s Health Department and he was going to have a look round. Immediately I called up Peter who was labouring away in the bowels of Manna mixing up huge quantities of Manna Banger mix!
Peter must have noticed in my voice a note of desperation for he took the stairs three at a time! Now a sausage had escaped from the batch and Peter had trodden on it and in his haste was stuck to his foot as he presented himself to Mr Health Man. Mr Health Man hadn’t noticed this but I had and Pete had!
          Mr Health Man wandered around the shop, meanwhile Peter was frantically trying to shake off the offending sausage. Every now and then Mr Health Man gave us a certain look and all we could do was give a weak smile in return. Then Mr Health Man wandered into the kitchen in the back! We followed like guilty children, guilty of what we didn’t know but when the Health Dept lands a visit on you, you immediately (for some reason guilt being lodged in the guilt department of your mind!) become as little children caught in the very act of scrumping (stealing apples)!
          He pointed out some facts about wanting a 2nd sink, one for the washing of hands and one for domestic reasons (cooking etc). It was at this point that he spotted the stairs to the cellar. “What’s down there?” he said.
 “Oh, that’s where we bag-up. You know: lentils and beans…and pasta.” (Peter swallowed hard, sweat was already beading on his forehead) “And where we make the vegetarian sausages!”
Mr Health Man had a look of disbelief on his face. “Vegetarian what?”
 “Er, vegetarian sausages,” said Peter again, “we make vegetarian sausages and we call them the Manna Banger and…”  “I don’t care what you call them,” said Mr Health Man, descending the stairs, “but this I must see!”
          After inspecting our equipment and ingredients and satisfying himself that all was clean he made – after considerable thought – this short statement:
“There appears to be nothing illegal about the making of vegetarian sausages as there is no animal meat involved so I can take this matter no further, but there appears to be – apart from the 2nd sink upstairs – rather a shortage of working surfaces. I will return in a month and expect to see the 2nd sink and the extra surfaces in place!”
With that he ascended the stairs, put away his white trilby and overalls back into his small suitcase and bade us a fond farewell!
          After all this work Holland and Barratt, the famous chain of health food stores (after sending them a sample), decided to put in an order for a quarter of a ton! This was an impossibility for us to complete, unless we worked all day and night for a bloody week! Therefore a manufacturer was employed to do the job. The recipe was handed over and we waited. The factory did a lot of frying and we did a lot of sampling.
          Then the factory dropped the bombshell: the artificial sausage skins that we were lead to believe contained no animal by-products what-so-ever did in fact contain animal.
 Sadly, when we tried to make a skinless sausage the factory told us that they were not ‘tooled up’ for skinless sausages!
          We could have, I suppose, changed to a different manufacturer but our hearts were just not in it now (unintentional pun). But to this day – and you can get vegetarian sausages in any supermarket these days – they STILL can’t make a completely animal-free sausage skin! After all, a banger is not a banger unless it has a skin, now is it? I mean that’s where they got their name in the first place!  

*******

HERE ARE THE POEMS:

THAT’S IT AMIGOES!
UNTIL NEWT MONTH!

LUV ‘ LITE ‘ LARFTER.

PAUL BURA

February 2009

*****

BURA’S BLOGGERY

HAPPY NEW YEAR, AMIGOS!!!!

Oliver Postgate died this month (December: the time of my writing this piece). Oliver Postgate, creator/writer/animator of such children’s classics as BAGPUSS and THE CLANGERS and many others! He not only wrote them but narrated them as well!
        Why am I writing this piece as I didn’t exactly know him, but my uncle Bob did, my uncle Bob of Bura and Hardwick: animators of equal classics as CAMBERWICK GREEN and TRUMPTON!
I was 12ish, maybe 13, and my uncle Bob was waiting for the arrival of the then little known animator Oliver Postgate. We waited in the front of my father’s fish restaurant. Every stranger that walked past was a candidate for Oliver Postgate because we didn’t know what he looked like.
        Suddenly a 1936 Austin.7. parked outside and a dishevelled looking character: crumpled suit, crooked tie, the very opposite to my uncle Bob and John Hardwick who were very sharp dressers indeed, eased himself out of his little Austin!
        I began to laugh. “SHHHHH” shhhhed my uncle Bob, “It could well be him…and it was! I made myself scarce as Mr Postgate and my uncles Bob and John were about to talk business!
        Many years later, when I had started to make a small name as a writer, the phone rang. It was Mr Postgate. “Paul Bura?” said Oliver, “Yes,” I said, “who is this?” “It’s Oliver Postgate. I have a gentleman here called Pierre Pickton the famous clown – he has an exploding car in his act. Now Paul, he wants me to write a script for him and I just haven’t got the time, so I thought of you! Are you interested?” “Ahaaaummm,” I swallowed, “I think I can squeeze him in. Send him along!” The phone was handed to Mr Pickton for directions! Oliver Postgate only lived just outside Whitstable and I was a mere 6 miles away in Herne Bay.
        A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud slowly pulled up outside our then council house and a suitably suited and booted, good looking man got out! I welcomed him into the front room, made him tea, and he started to talk about his little project.
 He wanted a five minute pilot script about his character Pierre the Clown. He wanted his character to be animated, just like BAGPUSS, and I was to write it as an animated clown! I can’t remember much about it except that he mentioned something about a ‘bread and butterfly’ which had slices of bread for wings! The scene started with Pierre the Clown driving his exploding car along a country lane when this ‘bread and butterfly’…well you get the picture!
When Mr Pickton had gone, sliding up the road in his silent Roller, I immediately set to work. Within a couple of days I had completed the script and sent if off to him with my fee!
I waited and I waited. After a couple of months I sent him a further account. A further two months went by. I sent him a further bill. Eventually I had to get a dept collector on to this rich (well seemingly), elegant Pierre the Clown in his Rolls Royce for a mere twelve quid (this was 40 years ago). He eventually paid up, less the dept collector’s fee!

A lesson to be learned: never laugh at ragged men in 1936 Austen.7s and don’t trust suited and booted men in a Rolls Royce!  
Oh, by the way: Oliver Postgate was known in his local as -‘Ollie Gatepost!’

*******

Now for the poems:

A HAPPY AND FOREFILLING
NEW YEAR, AMIGOES!!!!

Paul Bura
Luv n’ Lite n’ Larfter