The Angry Exile: Must be nice...

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Saturday 5 February 2011

Must be nice...

... to be a ~~self obsessed media whore with ridiculous fake tits~~ a celebrity if only for the extra police attention you get.

I bet they'd even turn up in twenty minutes if she got burgled.

In a short video of the incident posted on YouTube, a police car can be seen holding back traffic behind Ms Price's silver Range Rover as it speeds away.
A scrolling message in the police vehicle's rear window reads "Rolling road block, hold back", as traffic on the M25 was reportedly slowed to 50mph to assist the 32-year-old.
An official complaint about the incident was made to Surrey Police on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the force insisted that the officer who created the roadblock had done the right thing.
"We support the officer and there is no case to answer," he said.
"There was a call made regarding a convoy of vehicles. That officer took stock of the situation and decided to intervene," he added.

What "convoy"? The cryin', talkin', shaggin', walkin' living cosmetic surgery sample was in just one car, so the convoy was presumably all those other cars you can see briefly through the rear windscreen of the car the camera was in. Were they all paps? You checked? Not one regular member of the public simply wishing to go about their daily business, quite unaware that they were sharing the road with a celebrity cock holster?

Paparazzi - known for using small coupés, trucks, light vans and single rider motorbikes

Bollocks.

It's practically a given that this inconvenienced members of the public, but fuck 'em, eh? It seems that as far as the plod are concerned members of the public are not as important as a media-addicted parody of a Sid James wank fantasy with a pulse when, for a change, she isn't in the mood for press attention.

No, Surrey Police, I think there is a fucking case to answer here. Katie Price has chosen the life she has, and done inexplicably well out of it. She chose long ago to make a living from courting media attention and she should therefore expect that getting attention from the media is going to be a part of that - in fact it's kind of the entire fucking point. If she was delusional enough to believe that she was ever in control of the media, ever able to turn off their attention when she wasn't in the mood for it, then she's a bigger fool than I took her for. The reality of choosing that life is that the paps will occasionally turn up without an appointment and want to get photos to help shift piles of magazines with titles like Wotcher! and Slebs and Ooooohlook, and not being in the mood for it doesn't give her the right to call you lot in to inconvenience other people while trying to control the cars with press in them. Fuck, it doesn't even give her the right to have you inconvenience the press. In my imagination the conversation should have gone something like this.

Ring ring. Ring ring, Ring ri -

Surrey Police, Sergeant Exile speaking. ... Yes, and your name, please? ... As in the basketball player? ... Ah, yes. And your actual name? ... I, C, E, yes, thank you. And what exactly can we ... Right ... Okay ... And where are they doing this? ... On the M25? ... I'm not sure there's much we can do ... Well, they're on a public road, you see, and so are you. You've each got as much right to be there as each other, and if they want to take pictures of someone in a public place they can. ... Yes, I might be inclined to call them that too. ... Yes, and that. ... Maybe not that, though. ... But look, none of this changes the point that they're in public and so are you and you don't have any reason to expect a right to your privacy in public areas. If they were in your garden looking through your windows, yes, but not on a public road. ... Sorry, but that's just how things are. ... Look, I'll tell you what. We'll send a car or maybe two along with instructions to keep an eye things and pull over any of them for any kind of unsafe driving, but if they get there and everyone is driving sensibly and safely then I'm afraid you'll just have to put up with it. ... Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. ... Yes, goodbye.

Instead it seems to have been "Yes, Ms Price, how high Ms Price?" and fuck everyone else on the road. And in the absence of any info to suggest that any paps were pulled I can only assume that they were all driving safely and responsibly. If not then we should also be asking why the fuck the plastic-titted one was considered more important than stopping an idiot for a nice long roadside discussion of their driving.

Any way you cut it I think there is a case for Surrey Police to answer here. It will be mildly entertaining if this all rebounds on Katie Price - and I think the paps will be even happier to go with the 'Jordan sics police on paparazzi to clear M25 just for her" angle than they would have with "Jordan in a Range Rover just sitting there not doing much" - then it serves her right. I can't understand what the fascination is with someone who seems to have been put on this earth just to make Sally Bercow look good, and if she manages to annoy the media into turning on her before dumping her altogether then that's fine by me. But what really pisses me off is that the police's role is likely to get forgotten before long. "With you, making Surrey safer" is apparently their slogan at the moment, and it's laughably inappropriate. "With the wealthy, powerful and famous, making Surrey less free" would be far more like it.

Oh well, at least they've stopped treating photographers as suspected terrorists.