Reading Virgil

Virgil Tracy is one of my heroes - rather like OUSA he is adaptable but slow, with a sensitive side that appeals to minorities. I am the lucky owner of a Virgil doll who lives in a box that says 'Try me - I say five phrases!'

Anyway, we have to do Virgil for AA309 this week and so in a celebration of post-modern receptionism, the best thing to do is declaim Virgil in two ways at once - hopefully this will be a good revision aid. Warning - it goes on too long and the main message is drowned out - but that could be said about a lot of things.

OUSA Belgium prepares for Conference...

This is top secret footage of course - lucky you!

Snow Mouse sings

Those on Facebook will have followed the adventures of Snow Mouse. Here he is, singing along to Nana Mouse-kouri.

Wipers

It's Remembrance Day in Britain (but not in the rest of the world more or less) and here's a beer from Ypres celebrating how they used to throw cats out of belfries - no wonder really that war exists.

REMEMBRANCE DAY IN WHITEHALL

This is the funniest day of the year.

Old soldiers shall pass by like gentle sheep
While that old ram, the State, speaks
In staged silence.

I don't think it matters much
That most marching past will be agèd white men,
Or that we take red poppies as easy ciphers
For something too bloody for words,
Or that we say, 'Charlie died in the desert, you know!'
As if we can bask in the heat of his final sigh,
Or that we put it all back in a box for next year
Like the Proms and the Ashes and Miss World and Lent.

I'm honoured to be here,
Pressed up against Chelsea lads in waxed shooting coats
And blue-faced chavs half-sullen half-mad
And an army of toddlers shoved through to the front.

It'll be over by one
And the tarmac shall bear wet petals and the smack of old shoes,
And the crowd in Saint Stephen's Tavern
Will chew on a hotpot lunch
Served up by forgetful youths.

The Orange Time

Here we are in November - all the leaves are yellow and brown and orange, as is the lowering sun. These berries (swirled round like digital custard) are kind of orange too.

NOVEMBER SONG

She had a sweet dream
that made her laugh hard
in the orange time.
She stood by the stop
and held out her hand
lit by leaf-light and sun
in the orange time.
Her boss was half-cracked
and gave her the sack
but she wasn't surprised
in the orange time.
She came home and
cried and he
kissed her like mad
in the orange time.

In the cold hour of
dawn they went to
the sea, in the
orange time. Gulls
grabbed their bread and
they felt good and kind
in the orange time.
He hugged her hard
and she wept just a
bit, in the orange
time. A year of hard
knocks topped by the sack.
In the orange time.

He raced to a tree
and he climbed it
and yelled, in the
orange time. She
followed his path and
they shared a dead
bough, in the orange
time. The sun came
out strong and they
sang a mad song,
in the orange time.

It hurt when they jumped
down to earth with a bump,
in the orange time.
They got in the car
and home wasn't that far
off in the orange
time. But a drunk in
a truck meant they'd
run out of luck
in the orange time.
Now they rest in
a grave swamped
by leaves in the haze,
in the orange time.
And the Earth travels
on but for them it's all
gone and they just don't
belong in the orange time.

Trick or Treat!

When dealing with consultants calling at the door on Hallowe'en we in OUSA Belgium recommend an open approach.

Evensong

OUSA Istanbul Branch has a unique way of opening meetings - it might not be constitutional but it gets the crowd's attention.

So - farewell summer!

Well the clocks have changed and so from one of the last days of summer is this piccie of the OU's latest student support system.

It seems a long time since the hottest day of the year (Ed: do you have to use so many clichés?) and writing this poem about it.

THE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR
I'm sitting here, reading the bed.
Sunbeams kind of turn
out wrong when they land
here, on this foreign bed.

I stroke one. My hand is warming up,
paddling through persecutory light.
I'll use the sun to save this love.
One thought of him,
emerges from my breath, sinks.

The little mite falls to sheet,
winces, bounces, fades.
I'll rest now. Head on bed, I'm
not sure what to do with that
angel outside the windows,
so will shut my eyes and
wait to hear its saving words.

Brussels art

I can't remember who did this, but it has a nice polly-chromatic feel and shows that a trip to Brussels is always worthwhile.

Green days

This hotel corridor in Madrid looks like it is made out of recycled i-Macs, but was quite a good way of waking up in the morning (it was on the way to the breakfast room).

Other corridors had different colours - we were in red. AA300 students will want to ask whether the hotel is a globalized product or celebration of Spanish identity - you could get an omelette, if that helps.

Waiting

Our poetry group was talking about waiting - not sure why. We definitely thought that waiting was something there was too much of. Here is a picture of some birds waiting for food, or could it be a bus? My effort was written after doing some ironing.

WAITING

Waiting is kneeling before what you want:

the hottest tears jut from your face,

a salty crust might form:

just wait.

Waiting might mean tearing your clothes:

you'll shiver like a monk's turtled loins,

eviscerated by cold;asexual in dark blue limbo

but the only choice is to wait.

Waiting will require greeting

those who do not understand

the famine: like an ox cooing at other oxen

on a simulated TV plain,you'll just shuffle along

nothing doing: simply wait.

Waiting - you'll need bloodlike steel,

a blade cutting through doubt

like an icecream through August mouths,

or an eel chomping through weed

not knowing if that carp child

is really there: just go and wait

for a bit, eschew agnostics,and wait.

Wait - why wait - this is just tin-town chit-chat.

You're not stopped by Auschwitz wire

or the massed armies of evil

glaring across the living-room floor;

you're not a mouse held hostage

in a no-reprieve Midlands lab

or a cat wrapped up for good by flat-cheeked Egyptians.

You won't be damaged forever

if you pick up life like a juicy roast leg

- just leave the bone but remember

its job. Why not decorate your room

with cheerful suns of what is to come,

jump right now in the wide warm sea of your life

and swim to its furthest fun-filled depths?

You turnip: rooted in the muck of your mind

you're frazzled by patience: grow up!

What's that? that thing you're waiting to do

disgusts you. I can read it too:

no worries, yes, it's bad, and

I, I, I, I, I must dash.

Structure

This new training video demonstrates OUSA's post-Futures structure in a nutshell.

Me - how?

On being told by a cynic that the aim of OUSA Futures was to abolish all dissident units, especially European ones, this distant cousin of OUSA Belgium's most important member said that she found that really hard to believe.

No more theatre

Here is a wide (currently under renovation) plaza in Targu Mures - real 'place for the people' stuff, or at least that was my outsider's feeling. Fluid borders are here: not just in the Hungarian-Romanian dual identity and the clash between Communism and capitalism, but in the border between past and present, men and women and the tourist and its target. Borders are wet, permeable, and always handled by women who are adept with a hose.

Modes of address

Visitors to Conference 2011 found this type of signposting helpful when being assigned to working groups on key policy issues.

Conference fun

Delegates to Conference 2011 were pleased to be met at the station by a special bus, but were not sure whether the idea of Conference being fun instead of business-like needed closer inspection.

Feline hungry

It was very strange in Apold to see a distant cousin of OUSA Belgium's most important member giving afternoon tea to two copy-cats of the late, great Treacle.

Apold

This place is a 'Saxon' village in Romania. We went here to hunt for one of our biggest friend's roots (I don't mean a fat lady with hair-dying problems) and ended up talking to some Roma and climbing up a church tower to take this picture (it's in arty black and white mode - how louche).

If you click on it to blow the picture up you can see people on bikes!

If it fits....

The OUSA delegation to Romania were impressed by this helpful warning.

Room for the bite

When scouting possible future Conference venues, OUSA reps were duly impressed by the accommodation on offer this bid from Romania, although they were not sure about the vampire lurking between the windows.