Image: Urban Daffodils

Grandview 5th August 1920

Province, 19200805, p.7

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Grandview 4th August 1920

Vancouver Sun, 19200804, p.11

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Chatting with the Donald and Family

Earlier this summer. I was somehow signed up for emails from the Trump Campaign. I didn’t mind — it is always useful to see what the enemy is saying.

Each of the emails — and I now have received 60 since 16th July when I started counting — is a request for money, a demand for money to save the country from the Socialist Hordes, a suggestion that giving money will have me meeting with the President or at least membership in something called the Trump Gold Card!

I receive all these emails because, as they write, I am one of Trump’s “most loyal supporters” and “as a most loyal Patriot.”  Lara Trump wrote to me that as “one of his most loyal allies … he wants to use this time to discuss a few key campaign strategies” with me.  On 21st July, my donation would gather an additional “600%” of matching funds. By the 30th, this had gone up to 700% plus entry into a draw for dinner with the President on 8th August.

On the 22nd July, I was told I had been “identified as one of the few Patriots who qualified for the Trump Donor Hall of Fame.  This is a HUGE accomplishment, Jak. Congratulations!”  And all that without donating a penny.  For just $35, I would get a “limited edition Freedom 2020 hat.”  And just a few days later I was described as |one of “the ones who have been there for me from the beginning and haven’t stopped since,” and I was therefore liable for immediate entry to the Trump Hall of Fame, for a small donation.  For just $75, I would get a signed copy of Don jr’s new book Liberal Privilege.

The next day I was a offered “a once in a lifetime opportunity” to become a 2020 Trump Platinum member.  For just $23, I could have “an Official Donald J. Trump Fine Point Marker – an exact replica of the pen” the Donald used to sign the executive order banning illegal aliens from the census count, and for $100 I could have a personalised photo of the President.  They didn’t say if he would be using his Fine Point Marker to sign the photograph.

By 1st August I was getting confused because I had been offered membership in Trump Exclusive, Trump Gold Card, and Trump Platinum Card.  Do I get all three, and a book and a hat and a pen and a signed photo?  It is like Christmas!  Not bad for someone who has and will donate nothing, who lives outside the USA, and who fills out the Trump surveys with what I REALLY feel about Trump.  Hard to imagine what those suckers who actually send money have to endure.

 

*  *  *

One last note, all the Trump emails have the same return address (contact@victory.donaldtrump.com) but there are various names of the sender in the header.  So far:

Donald J. Trump — 22 emails

DonaldJTrump.com — 8

Official Trump Campaign — 6

Donald Trump jr. — 4

Bill Stepien, and Meet President Trump — 3 each

Eric Trump, Lara Trump, and Trump Match Alert — 2 each

And one each from Kimberley Guilfoyle, Trump Finance, Mike Pence, Trump Gold Card, Trump Founding Member, Trump Hall of Fame, Trump Platinum Card, and Trump Executive Member.

I just need emails from Ivanka and Melania to complete my set!

 

Image: Bands of Gold

Grandview 3rd August 1920

Province, 19200803, p.17

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Poem: Calculation

 

It’s the poor that give

to the poor.

Those who can actually afford it walk by

the outstretched hand and box

with sneering dismissal.

 

“Get a job,” they whisper under their peppermint breath,

knowing, as bosses,

they would never hire some bum

begging on a street corner.

 

“Have a nice day, anyway”

 

Spitting on a well-polished shoe

gets you six month’s jail time;

letting the poor starve

gets your picture in “Fortune”

 

Go figure.

 

Grandview 2nd August 1920

Vancouver World, 19200802, p.7

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Image: Salsbury Blossoms

Grandview 1st August 1920

Vancouver Sun 19200801, p.8

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Image: Carbonara

Grandview 31st July 1920

Vancouver Province 19200731, p.5

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Eid Mubarak!

Grandview 30th July 1920

Vancouver World 19200730, p.15

 

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Image: Two Cyclists

Grandview 29th July 1920

Vancouver World 19200729, p.18

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Grandview 28th July 1920

Vancouver Sun 19200728, p.2

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Grandview 27th July 1920

Vancouver Sun 19200725, p.32

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Image: Library Exterior #1

Poem: I Used To Be Homesick

 

I used to be homesick

 

for the smell of the old Sainsbury’s butchers shops, the sawdust, the red raw hands of the fat-armed butcher’s boys;

 

for the extinct pink Financial Times and the Sporting Life, for their columns and columns of incomprehensible numbers and symbols of form and potential, neither suitable for fish and chip wrapping;

 

for the smell of the Tube tunnels as a rushing train pushes warm stale air across faces and platforms;

 

for the hop skip and jump it used to take to keep drinking all day in the days of the mysterious licensing hours;

 

for the certainty of location in a spoken voice, always the region and often the very suburb or streetscape;

 

for the red squirrels in the parks and the water rats in the ditches and the horses that pulled the rag and bone mens’ carts on a Saturday morning;

 

for the hordes of rednosed rawboned hoop-shirted hooligans whooping it up on a Saturday afternoon, street level nationalists;

 

for the exciting stink of the Standard Wallpaper Company fire way back before the clean air acts when the thick smoke billowed invisibly within the choking smog;

 

for Toots & The Maytals and Cliff Richard & the Shadows, and the Yardbirds and the Uxbridge Fair, for Eel Pie Island, the Marquee Club, and the Orchid Ballroom, Purley;

 

for the taste of raw beer hoppy and alive in an alehouse more ancient than America where ₤100 is a busy night and the beer and the bread and the cheese are homemade;

 

for the rank taste in the mouth when the gasholders were full and leeching and the air smelled green;

 

for Prince Charles and Coronation Street, and Mastermind and Marjorie Proops and the Sunday Mirror and the Evening Standard and the Guardian crossword, and the suckers getting taken at Piccadilly Circus;

 

for eel-pie and mash, for meat-and-potato pies, for streaky bacon and fat-filled bangers, for two pieces of rock and six pennyworth o’chips, for Bisto and Bovril and Daddie’s Sauce, for Marks & Sparks Christmas puds, for hot runny custard, mushy peas, black pudding and kippers;

 

for the china chink of cup on saucer across the village green as your team takes to the field in whites and off-whites and green-stained creams, running and stretching and yawning off the dozen pints of the night before;

 

for the narrow roads and tiny cars and miniature houses and rose gardens and muddy resorts and back lanes where it is safe to walk.

 

I used to be homesick before you.