Here’s… Johan!

While reading a book in midwinter,

Alone in the meadows that weave

Their rich and English tapestry

I felt a tugging at my sleeve.

My little daughter, Alice,

Was urging me to go

And meet the man who stood at the door,

So I went and said, “Hello?”

“Hello,” he said and smiled at me

And Alice smiled at him.

”I’m calling from IKEA,” he said,

“To assemble your homemade gym.”

Well, everyone knows IKEA,

The Swedish furniture mart,

That sell you things you put together

Which promptly fall apart.

“I didn’t order a gym,” I said,

“I know,” the man replied.

“But I have to use your lavatory

“So kindly step aside.”

He ran upstairs with frightful speed

And then we heard the chain

And then he called out, “I love your lav!

“I must come here again.”

When he came down the stairs I asked

Him what gave him the notion

Of impersonating an IKEA salesman

Simply to pass a motion.

He said that being resourceful

Was a feature of the Swedes

And that he stopped at nothing

To satisfy his needs.

While reading my book that evening,

I say “reading” but I’m more of a browser,

I felt my spaniel, Biffo,

Tugging at my trouser.

The man at the door informed me

That he came from North Korea

And was anxious to use my privy

On account of his diarrhoea.

Since then we’ve had Iranians,

Canadians, Greeks and Poles.

I’m running out of patience,

Not to mention toilet rolls.

I’m now the first port of call,

The house that they all choose

To do their Number Ones in

If not their Number Twos.

You’ve got to hand it to the Swedes

For impudence, I thought.

They may not be the tallest tribe

But they never get caught short.

The Ballad Of Steve Jobs And Lief Ericsson

Steve Jobs didn’t borrow,

He stole.

In fact, let’s not quibble,

He wouldn’t just nibble—

That just wasn’t Steve.

If he wanted to thieve

An idea with legs, he’d swallow

It whole,

Legs and all. Oh,

It’s often said,

You should never speak ill of the dead,

But nobody seems to have any obs

When people speak ill of Steve Jobs.

Nobody needs

To speak ill of the Swedes—

And they only speak ill of the Danes,

Who they think of as yobs—

Yes, Swedes can be snobs,

But they can’t be called whiners.

They’re brilliant designers—

A Swede never complains 

(pace the Danes)

Except if some swine

Steals a design

And in this case the swine was Steve Jobs.

In 2005,

(When Steve Jobs was still alive)

He badly needed a hit,

So he hired Motorola

To turn out the lolla-

palooza of phones,

But the Rokr E1 “iTunes” phone was shit.

(When he sees it he groans—

But Jobs still has a Jones 

For a phone as he sobs!

That’s Steve Jobs!)

Ericsson and Sony,
Sweden/Japan,

Had been working together for only

Four years when in 2005

They produced the revolutionary and elegant P900

(This was the year, you’ll remember, Jobs blundered,

When the miserable “iTunes” phone failed to thrive),
And the P900 was no flash in the pan.

Jobs hacked Ericsson’s emails

And poached Sony’s technical elite,

He stole their ideas and began

To develop a plan.

His intentions were clear;

The very next year

He presented a clone

Of the Ericsson phone

And called it his own.

Jobs said, “This is my phone—

I call it the iPhone.”

Friends said, “Lief, you must sue! It-

’s not fair! ”

No, Lief, don’t you dare!

Don’t grapple

With Apple!

If you do, you will rue it!

He has lawyers in mobs:

That’s Steve Jobs!

*     *     *

Steve Jobs is dead and gone,

His knell has been rung,

But his lawyers live on—

Apple’s now suing Samsung

For stealing the look

Of the iPhone Jobs took

From the Swede…

Traveller, take heed!

When you come

To Stockholm

Leave your iPhone at home! 

Möjligheter för alla i den svenska filmbranschen!

At the end of The Seventh Seal,

a film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and rel-

eased in nineteen fifty-seven, Jof, the cheery

idiot actor cursed with second sight, wakes bleary

on a bright morning under a sky

so recently washed clean of the Black Death it’s not yet dry

and as he potters round his little caravan

preparing breakfast for his little family, the little man

sees - and calls Mia, his idiot wife blessed with bland

good sense, to see - Block the knight and Jöns the squire

and all their friends silhouetted against the fier-

y sky, holding hands and dancing up a distant hill-

side to the music of the piper (still

bringing up the rear), drawn from the front

by a figure in a dark cloak, and tells her with a grunt,

“Their strict Lord Death bids them dance,”

to which she throws him a sideways glance

and replies with good-natured derision,

“Oh blimey, not another bloomin’ vision!”

It’s a little-known fact that Max Von Sydow

and all the other actors on the show

had left for the day when cinematographer Gun-

nar Fischer caught sudden sight of the sun

as it fell behind the hill and started to suffuse

the sky and cried, “Ingmar! A light too good to lose!

Quick, get the actors!”, and when there was none

to be found, a man and wife out cycling with their son,

two lovers and three farmer’s-boys were bundled

quickly into costumes and trundled

up the hill before the sun could go in

to create the most terrifying tableau in

all of cinematic history -

Sweden, land of opportunity!

Concerning Idaho

All smiles atop the ocean wave,

We leave the land behind,

I turn once more to scan the sky

With Idaho on my mind.

The time has come, the Captain said,

To break the ties that bind.

I nod, a trifle tearfully,

With Idaho on my mind.

The blizzards come, the blizzards go,

The blizzards make us blind:

We sail into uncertainty –

And this is what we find.

I hurl my clothes off on the deck

With one thought on my mind:

If only Idaho could see me now –

But that fucking dog is blind.

Oxenstierna Faces Down The Pessimi Exempli

The éminence grise that springs to mind

Is Richelieu, astute even at prayer,

But the Swedes boasted a contemporary

Who was, arguably, even greyer.

Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre

(Whatever you do, don’t call him Gussy)

Was, when it came to politics,

Elaborate I’d say rather than fussy.

And in this regard he presided

Over Sweden’s victorious campaign

To bugger the burghers of Germany

And reduce the power of Spain.

Imagine what would have happened

When King Gustavus died

If God hadn’t had the wily

Oxenstierna on His side.

Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper

Is adamant about one thing:

The whiff of revolution

Threatened every Queen and King

In seventeenth-century Europe,

Where we set our tale:

The execution of Charles in England

Was but a preliminary nail

In feudalism’s coffin.

Thus threatened with the rise

Of the va-nu-pieds, Oxenstierna

Saved the throne with compromise.

Some say his legendary deftness

Was virtually unique,

Such that Sweden remains a kingdom

Even as we speak,

Though he felt that Queen Christina,

In spite of her fine regalia,

Might have made gains less exiguous

From the treaty of Westphalia,

Had she listened to him more carefully,

Like guitarists heed Bert Weedon,

But she never – and that’s why things are

The way they are in Sweden.

En Älskare Reser Norrut

If the weather gets any worse, I’ll spend the night in Skellefteå.

I can get snökedjor fitted in Umeå.

If a gloso with blazing eyes came out of the skog, 

And even if its borste were razor-sharp,

And if it chased me all the way to Gällivare,

It wouldn’t prevent me from returning to Gnarp.

When Hannes and Gunilla spent the summer in Harnosand,

They went fishing one day on Sundsvall Fjord.

A nordanvinden came down the Bottniska Viken,

And the lovers were both pitched overboard.

Iskristaller are the frozen tears of sjövættir;

The coast-road out of Ornsköldsvik is thick with spökyttare;

The dimma off the mörk havsvik bears drauge att skrömta—

Hannes and Gunilla are kärleksfulla strandvaskare.

If the weather gets any worse, I’ll spend the night in Skellefteå.
I can get snökedjor fitted in Umeå.

Letters to The Daily Telegraph

Letters to The Daily Telegraph

An Englishman’s garden…  SIR – Marion Snivel’s complaint about poor workmanship (Letters, June 9) reminds me of an occasion during the General Strike of 1926.  Upon finding a copy of the Daily Worker in our gardener’s shed (I say, “shed”, but to him it was home) I confronted the fellow and demanded an explanation.  He replied airily that “the working class” (who were conspicuous at the time by not working) were “no longer going to bow down to the bosses” and, in consequence thereof, I should consider my lawn “not to be mowed”.    Donning a pair of workman’s trousers, I mowed the lawn myself, receiving huge plaudits from my wife (and her very attractive sister, who was staying with us at the time).  If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing oneself.  It’s a pity that Karl Marx couldn’t grasp this elementary principle, considering the havoc he unleashed. TUBBY TOWELS                      The Dower House,                               Old Breeches,              Devon A patriot at the pump SIR – I would like to know why the petrol I put in my Morris Oxford has the sheer blasted effrontery to call itself British? BERNARD “DUSTY” REAR “Ganders’ Retreat”, Old Chelmsford, Essex. Ministering to our former colonies SIR – On a recent visit to the USA, I was surprised and delighted to see our own David Cameron competing with Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry to lead the Republican charge against Barack Obama in November. I’m sure everyone joins me in wishing our Prime Minister the best of luck. I feel very proud. MUHAMMAD AL-JAMIL IBN NIDAL IBN ABDULAZIZ AL-FILASTINI “Dusty Holes”, Chelmsford, Essex  The truth about the Midlands SIR – Sylvia Podmore (Letters, November 23) couldn’t be more wrong,  There are no bears in Wolverhampton. GLORIA GUSSET                     “The Smalls”,                                      Panties Lane, Dorset  No country for old rope SIR – I recently bought a piece of string at an auction but I’m damned if I know what to do with it.  Do any of your readers have the foggiest?   HUMPHREY SPOON     Cabin 5,                          “Sailors’ Rest”,               Penge Free speech SIR – Can someone please explain to me why my son, Tyrone, was denied access to the members-only Pavilion at Lords for wearing a shirt with the words, “Black people not welcome here”?  Everyone knows they aren’t.  What is happening to our venerable British institutions?  Is it now obligatory to say, “I support the right of Muslim paedophiles to rape and bomb our children” before being allowed to watch a cricket match? STEPHEN SHIT      Home Farm, Market Snodsbury, Lincs Ducks over Dorset SIR – We have become so accustomed to familiar species of wildlife being washed off the map by rising tides of toxic waste and deprived of their ancient habitats by Huns and Vandals disguised as “town planners” and “developers” that it might seem churlish in me to express alarm at an extraordinary increase in the population of a particular—and particularly well-loved—species. I refer to the Mallard duck and I confine my observations to the county of Dorset, particularly that area of Dorset that lies between and around Blandford Forum and Wimborne Minster. There are Mallards covering every river and stream, every lake and pond. Our walks and country rides are overrun, or rather overwaddled, by multitudes of the creatures. The “wing’d air”, as Milton had it, is “thick with plumes” and we are deafened, even indoors and at dead of night, by their incessant din. I have considered taking my guns to them, but I’m afraid of mass retaliation.      I would be fascinated to know if any readers in other parts of the British Isles are experiencing the same thing. MUHAMMAD AL-JAMIL IBN NIDAL IBN ABDULAZIZ AL-FILASTINI “Standing Pools”, Poole, Dorset.

Errors in the fields SIR – How I miss dear old Brock Hurley! The Countryside Diary has not been the same since Old Brock went to that great slaughterhouse in the sky. Like everyone else, I find Ben Silage a poor replacement for the great man. Silage knows nothing about the domestic animals, wildlife, food-crops or the trees, plants or wildflowers that make our land so lovely and brought poetry to old Brock’s pen. Last week Silage demonstrated that he doesn’t know the difference between a tractor and a combine harvester. He can’t tell one season from another and his ignorance of pigs is abysmal.  WELLESLEY HUBCAPS “The Old Misfits”, Pork Wheldon, Wilts Nature calls  SIR – In all the arguments for and against the proposed high-speed rail link to Birmingham, has anyone considered the otter?  SALLY SURRIDGE      “The Chilterns”,                         Coxley Womb,  Bucks                  Adopting appropriate names SIR –I recently got a letter from a Mr. กาญจนา  ประเวศ สมเพียร and I believe this is just the kind of thing that should be nipped in the bud. Shouldn’t immigrants adopt names appropriate to places, professions, characteristics and accomplishments? This after all is how our own names came about. And shouldn’t the names they choose be English, for heaven’s sake?      I have a Welsh neighbour called Admiral Sir Viscount Sidcup Sensible Pyjamas. The man is clearly an idiot, but I applaud his attempt to be “one of us”. HOPELESS ERNIE RUBBING VIGOROUSLY “The Rubbing Vigorously House”, Rubbing Vigorously Under Sluther, Wilts. Without let or hindrance SIR – I am sure I am not alone in wishing to emigrate to The People’s Republic of North Korea. My local Citizens’ Advice Bureau informs me that since the United Kingdom has no diplomatic relations with our fellow island fastness, there is no government office or department to assist me in my quest. I therefore appeal to you, Sir, and to my fellow-readers, for advice - particularly to any readers who may be perusing these pages north of the 38th Parallel.  LAURIE “LAIRDY” LAIRD “Casanova’s Castle”,                         Ludeleigh Old Swelter, Bucks            Baloney! SIR – Ivan Oates is wide of the mark in suggesting that sausages cause herpes (“Bangers and rash”, June 6).  Last year, on a trip to Sweden, I contracted the disease and saw the doctor immediately.  She was an attractive blonde, with full breasts and a stunning derriere and, when she crossed her legs, her short skirt rode up her rippling thighs to reveal – but I digress.  She asked me: “Have you eaten sausages recently?”    “Certainly not!” I ejaculated hotly.  Need I say more? TREVOR STIFF The Old Pencil Shop, Lewes      A Scot or not? SIR: I wonder if any of your readers with long memories could solve an ongoing dispute that has been ruining family Christmases for several generations. Is Fyfe Robertson a Scotsman? Ah hae ma doots, frankly. BEAUMONT O’FLETCHER “Legs Of My Fathers”, 23 Palmerston Road, Mumbai, ED16 Pl4, India