Give Us This Day Our Daily Paper

We get a paper because my mother has always had one. She likes to see it sitting beside her breakfast plate. Occasionally she'll puzzle out a headline and ask us what it means. 

The paper she gets from force of habit is The Telegraph- which is deeply conservative (Boris Johnson writes for it, as does William Hague) and weirdly supportive of Mrs May, though it rarely offends against human decency in the manner of The Mail. The Barclay Brothers own it- and run it from tax exile on the Island of Sark.

 In the afternoon I go prop myself up in a well cushioned corner and do the cryptic crossword- which I enjoy. Afterwards I flick through the pages, rarely finding anything to detain me. None of its writers appeal to me much- though I quite like Janet Daley.  

The Telegraph's Saturday and Sunday editions are enormous- padded out with supplements that consist of advertising lightly disguised as information. Most of it goes straight in the recycling bin.

Sometimes we're treated to a substantial supplement about China, its booming economy and its wise and dynamic leader-  all paid for by the Chinese Communist Party. Weird.

The trees deserve better. 

All this costs us a very large amount of money.

But we're helping keep a local newsagent in business. He delivers every day. Some mornings I hear his van bumping over the sleeping policemen in the early hours. We continue to have milk delivered for much the same reason. 

One does what one can to support the rural economy.

Ikkyu Says...

Ikkyu Says

I was feeling  low.
And all I'd got to hide in
Was this old coat.

I had a  plate and a spoon
But I left them in the temple.
They weighed too much.

Shut up about Zen:
It's such a bore.
If there's one thing I hate
It's the smell of incense.

Religion is for grown-ups.
Give me rain on the river,
The moon among clouds,
A fisherman singing,

Me and a girl in a hot bath

Or my daughter dancing.

People are so greedy.
I lost my ink stick once
And It nearly killed me.

I'm not going anywhere 
So I'm never lost.
If you want me
Try the pub or the knocking shop.

If I forget the Lady Mori
Let me burn in hell.

She raised the sap
In these old sticks
And my monks were happy.
Ah well,
My hand looks much like hers.

I dreamed my poems
Would live for ever.
Such a pity
There's no-one to read them. 

Ikkyu, medieval Zen master and poet- the Japanese Villon. These are some bits and pieces I found online, put into my own words, and strung together.