read my lips

This may be indicative of the pass we've come to in world affairs generally. Is it that there's such urgency? Or is it that we've forgotten the power of suggestion, used as we are becoming to one utilitarian layer of politically-correct meaning? Is this why people think - mistakenly, of course - that poetry is no longer 'relevant'??

It looks small, but it is about how we order our perceptions (& I don't mean order them about).

Ms Baroque's brother - yes, the rellies are figuring rather large here at the moment - Ms B's brother, the Count of Baroque (except that he's sort of anti-baroque in his leanings - being an emergency nurse with a crew cut) went to see Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young the other day. They were playing in Bethel, New York, in an amphitheatre on the site of Yasger's Farm, where the original Woodstock festival was. Get that.

Amazing! Neil Young too! Was it fun? But then he says, scarily, 'at least it was better than that anti-war crap he's playing nowadays'.

So I go, neutrally, trying to think if there's anything I don't know about my brother, 'oh really, I haven't heard the new stuff - there was a big picture of him in the Guardian though, he looks absolutely fabulous'.

'Yeah', goes His Grace, 'he does look great. But' - here I know it's still him - 'the new stuff is terrible. You know what, he's lost his metaphor!'

Ohhh?

'Yeah, it's awful! It's like - it's like he has to, you know... say everything outright...'

(And in this picture from the cover of Rolling Stone, do we think our Neil looks ever so slightly like a turtle? In the nicest possible way?)