The Sport Of Tomorrow

In the future there will be no war.
In the future there will be only Roller Derby.
Faster than frisbee disc golf.
Sexier than competitive eating.
More violent than dwarf-tossing.
Not as Flemish as vinkenzetting.
A kind of British Bulldog on wheels,
Roller Derby is a game of Blood-and-Thunder.
A game of Pluck-and-Fidelity.
A game of Style-over-Substance.
A game of Razz-and-Matazz.
6 Blockers 2 Pivots and a couple of Jammers in the rear.
Three periods of between eight and ten minutes in length.
Each period divided into a smörgåsbord of two-minute jams.
And inbetween? Plenty of good clean unsportsladylike conduct.
Ministry of Neo-Burlesque meets Queercore riot-grrrl.
Rockabilly meets NWOBHM meets Beastie-Girls meets Cybergoth.
Kiss-curls and Monroe piercings.
Polka dots and desert camouflage.
Coloured gumshields, fishnet burn and Betty Page tattoos.
Welcome to The Thunderdrome true believers.
Welcome to Do-It-Yourself Third Wave
Skate-Punk Feminism in all its glory.
Caution: Do not interfere with Rollergirls who skate out-of-bounds.
Remember: Getting a Rollergirl in your lap
is not a right
but a privilege.

London Rollergirls official website

Official list of Rollergirl names

Wild Radishes Are Falling On My Head

Batten down the hatches
and pack away the easels,
there’s a mistral wind
blowing in over The Bald Mountain.
It shakes the bell-tower of the old church
and rattles the grapes upon their vines.
The wind serves merely as a precursor.
An early warning system if you will.
It heralds the arrival of a storm on the horizon.
But don’t worry. There’s no need to panic.
For the dark bumpy clouds approaching
the Lubéron Massif are in no especial rush.
For Things happen a little slower around these parts.
This storm requires some time to brood a little.
Time to procrastinate. Time to shrug its shoulders.
If this were a game of pétanque,
we’d be bracing ourselves
for a thirteen-to-love whitewash.
If this were a game of pétanque,
we’d be about to be "Made Fanny" of.
Sheet lightning strafes the nearby Plateau d'Albion.
Thunderclaps echo out across the Golden Triangle.
Further up the garrigue a stray cat comes into season.
Further up the garrigue a hunting dog is ritually slaughtered.
And then, finally, a sudden drop in barometric pressure.
Starlings swarm for the safety of nesting spots.
Earthworms pour fourth from the rich red earth.
Geckos drop their tails. Fire ants self-replicate.
There’s a phrase in the local dialect for the kind
of unrelenting deluge of raindrops soon to betide us.
Literally translated, it means “wild radishes are falling”.
The hatches are all battened down.
The easels are all packed away.
The radishes start to fall upon noble Occitania.
They pommel the ochre deposits at Roussillon
They pound the hilltop enclave of Gourdes.
They pepper the melon fields of Cavaillon.
Wild radishes fall upon the tiled roof
of a converted Farmhouse
sheltering just behind
those tall cypress trees right here.
Further up the garrigue a hand chokes the engine of an old Motocross bike.
Further up the garrigue a voice on a car radio raps in Arabic and verlan.
The lights flicker once, twice, and then they go out.


The Cloud Appreciation Society

Oh Train Of Great Speed

I’ve seen enough French New Wave to know
that the roads to Provence are piled high
with the wreckage of burning bourgeois automobiles.
The TGV high-speed locomotive is the quicker option by far.
Faster even than Japan’s famed Shinkansen bullet network.
Sculpted long ago by slow-moving glaciers
the rich rural folds of this fertile landscape
now hurtling past my window at over 500km-an-hour.
Human hands planted the potpourri of lavender fields.
Assembled the sleepy village perches hewn from local stone.
Rustic panorama sung softly into existence by troubadours.
Agricultural patchwork painted into being by Cézanne’s brushstrokes.
A true sense of place for all the senses.
The high-speed TGV locomotive is also the safer option by far.
I mean, think about it for a second; when was
the last time you heard of a cross-channel train catching fire?