This month I’m reading Tony Geraghty’s original non-fiction novel, “WHO DARES WINS The Story of the SAS 1950-1980″ published by Fontana/Collins in 1981 (first published in Britain by Arms and Armour Press in 1980).
Authentic Authorial Hands ~Tony Geraghty [from a 2008 photo]
This book was a special find in the BBC Children in Need charity book sale at our local Post Office some time ago now. (Sadly the charitable sales were ended with the store’s change of hands. However…) I’ve fallen long behind with reading the books I intended reading and not in desperate need of extra reading material.
By the way, as a contrasting companion read I’m also making my way through Ann Waldman’s recent book, “Trickster Feminism”, received as a Christmas gift, but that’s not at all ‘dusty’ so…
I’m only about a sixth of the way through Geraghty’s book so far, but if you’ve read any of my earlier attempts at keeping up with this reading challenge you’ll already know I am not a well-practised book reviewer(!) – I often don’t fair well with linear reading either. I have an inkling I’ll be itching to review this book better than my effort here and now.
“Who Dares Wins” is an intriguing read so far and I’m determined to see it through to the end. The end is intriguingly abrupt – yes I skipped to and skimmed the last few pages and there’s some potential relevance in current world affairs, the final pages only briefly enlightening…
Tony Geraghty’s 1981 non-fiction novel WHO DARES WINS
Reading about British involvements in military histories, other nation’s SAS regiments, and the strategic food denials inflicted by some commanders and combatants seems resonant with contemporary news stories of recent years. ‘Enjoying it’ isn’t quite the turn of phrase I’d choose, but I’m struggling for a better alternative descriptor.
I delved a little into some online research earlier today, hoping to discover a little about the author. A puzzling mish-mash of amalgamated info returned in my search results, so I’ll have to seek more credible sources than the (potentially) criminal-cultured corruptive copywriting currently pervading the web(!)
The original ISBN for Geraghty’s “Who Dares Wins” is 0006362354. There are newer versions on the market, apparently an updated version appearing to be of dubious origin, in a different authorial voice -although purporting the same author name and that potentially being creative Trademark theft in English Law – and, from that newer version’s text, confessing a ‘recycling’ of Geraghty’s original content (described in third person as “Geraghty’s garnish”), as per my screenshot from the preview option on this otherly newer books sales page, shown below:
Online sales pages for the authentic version of Tony Geraghty’s book, WHO DARES WINS are swamped by otherly versions such as the one shown as a potentially evidential example above. Apologies if my speculation and conjecture are in error of fact, although I have many a reason to doubt it.
Disclaimer: I have no known association with the author(s) or publishers featured in this post. Photos are my own; screenshot images were saved by myself during my personal computing (research and reference purposes) and constitute Fair Use within the circumstances of making my post here at my blog (and this being personal and non-commercial) and this right being established in English Law. N.B: Any issues of query or complaint should be addressed directly with myself at my contact form should the public comments field not be preferred – however please allow up to 90 days for action ie. reply, should circumstances beyond my human control arise.
The Recycled Book Reading Challenge page suggests challenging a blogging neighbour to participate, maybe that’s You? (If so, don’t forget to check the host’s page link near the top of this post!)
I keep getting so distracted and bogged down and cloth-eared with a head-cold persisting on and off for two or three weeks now – so yet again I’m late and behind with the Recycled Book Reading Challenge post I always mean to make at the start of each new month. Photos planned for that lingering for a while so i will get around to it. Sometime soon.
I kept up fine for the first five or six weeks of my return to the ModPo MOOC (fourth year attempt, failing to complete every time during the Autumn’s annual 10-week mad-dash to cover the syllabus’ requirement). Then, six weeks into it, the poem for the third essay assignment really left me gob-smacked. A poem comprising two poetic voices (one main part being the text stolen from a British adolescent in the early 1960s, the other a British-migrant voice ‘completing’ the poem). Those facts of the matter not arising in the taught materials and feeling unable to write my essay due to the distress and disturbance of noticing the attributed pen-name of that poem (now titled ‘The honey bear’) and how that has been usurped to create some kind of construct as if the pen-name belongs to a ‘New York School’ contemporary poet. Looking at some of the other works now attributed to that pen-name it is clear there are multiple voices in the mixture combining a miscellaneous collection of work, some of which might be originally created by the persona now fronting the probably falsified CONSTRUCT. Crazy! (It’s not beyond reason someone might actually have that same name given to them as their birth name but they’d know ‘The honey bear’ is not their poem!)
If I ever doubted the foundational literature learnings of my childhood and teenage years, into further education and onward, here was living proof of the reasoning behind so many English Literature teachers in Britain absolutely refusing to teach American authors works. or glossing over it so quickly where it became mandatory to include American Literature examples within the English Literature class.
Of course it, the usurping ‘construct’ issue, is not at all the fault of the ModPo course providers.- it’s just ‘one of those things’.
Everyone having their (germ warfare) NHS flu jabs and spreading the attenuated virus to propogate this persistent ‘common cold’ effect gave me a new excuse to boot for my falling even further behind. Never mind. SloPo season starts from this new end-point and now there is all year to immerse in the wonders and dilemmas of Modern American Poetry and all the amazing and awesome international English learning I can wrestle with and explore through poetry. (Awe apparently meaning dreadful in formal American language meaning, or so I’m led to believe.)
Among other things distracting since that stumbling block essay/poem issue have been: witnessing a local fire-crew in chemical protection suits attending a terrorist fire in our neighbourhood; witnessing the bizarre presentations of local news presented out of time and disguised ‘factual’ details; many British people getting prosecuted for things they haven’t done that appear to be engineered by bogus operatives from wherever and an influx of visiting gofer-doofers assisting some kind of insurgency drive, again from wherever. Very recently, on Armistice Day, a single adult (presumed to be African-American) with three teenagers got out of a foreign four-by-four looking suspicious. They walked straight into a near-ish house, refused to leave when the householder yelled in shock “get out of my house!” at the intrusion and then by the sounds of it the householder(s) were attacked while the family’s young children were screaming in fear from upstairs. Hopefully it was the police who attended the scene because there have also been dummy ambulances, fake local authority vehicles and weird stuff like that around sometimes too. Freaky!
This last half-week has brought the opening of a new creative writing MOOC from UIowa’s international distance learning programme, ‘Stories of Place and the Natural World’. So far it seems as much about human nature as it is about Nature. This one has a non-fiction bias, though it’s difficult to see any difference much these days. The initial (certificated) phase ends on December 31st but the programme remains open until March for self-paced learning before moving to the mooc-pack site. Hopefully I remember the detail correctly. Earlier writing and poetry mooc-packs can be found there from 2014 to the most recent ‘Moving the Margins’, (fiction and non-fiction) for independent self-led learning. Something to keep busy with through cold, dark winter days and/or nights.
Obtaining any real news is nigh on impossible. It’s so frustrating that even the BBC is no longer a reliable news outlet. News articles aren’t even written in real English anymore. We’re presented words like ‘penciled’ to confuse us, meaning ‘pencilled’ but sounding ‘pen-sigh-ld’ when reading aloud. There’s so much bullshit propoganda around too. Pushes for a no-deal Brexit from foreign western journalists (and maybe some of our own if maybe ‘on the take’) leave Britain at risk. EU food regulations are already being flouted and dangerous foodstuffs have entered the retail market, including fake products in some bio-terrorist crime racket. Things like aspirin in kids popular snacks; biscuit/cake/confectionery/snack items containing amphetamine, LSD, Daturic acid, sleep medications, stevia – all examples of things turning up in food items in the UK that could have awful negative health impacts. It’s as if there’s an elsewhere determined to impose their economic migrant job creation scheme by ‘evidencing’ how the British public either need false imprisonment or an army of mental health workers and cognitive behaviour therapists(!).
Up in arms? Not likely. Cottage gardening is more the British way, even if only a windowsill available – and it’s beyond time to breathe life into the home-grower. Grab a spade and dig in. (We don’t dig with a shovel, we dig with a spade, although a trowel or re-purposing any old spoon’ll do for a planter or pot.) Why is ‘spade’ a racist word? It’s certainly not in British English. Language oppressions and bogus standardisation are making me more sick than I can tolerate. So fluff that for a game of soldiers and folk IT!
My twitter keeps getting interrupted, interfering with my endurement/enjoyment and all sorts of tech intrusions glitching things out here and there. Bullybuoy guys and gals mostly, actually, it seems are back at the ole bulldog bash game.
However Russia seems to be the main propoganda target again lately in latest fear-mongering war-mongering efforts. It’s been going on a while and gathering pace. Do people really believe all the fekkin’ shite put out there for consumers’ perusal? An interesting video clip turned up on my twitter feed from an account I had expected to be our British “Radio Times” (a weekly TV and radio schedule magazine) but turns out to be some other ‘global news’ account. The video showed young Russian-speaking soldiers firing short-range missiles from armoured vehicles in the desert and the accompanying text suggests it’s a military excercise “at Russia’s largest foreign base in Tajikistan”. It somehow begs fact-checking…
If it’s a foreign base is it another rogue area take-over alike the criminal military takeover at Kesteven in middle-England by our so-called allies ‘post-war’ and remaining? Hopefully not. Who knows! It’s hardly top secret that that (Kesteven) shit’s there!
The CIA website usually offers public access online to recent enough information that seems reliable and trustworthy enough and of course it runs high in the search results while I barely have time for visiting all the world’s online sites to balance the impacts of cookies on search algorithms (if that’s how it even works!). So a quick look into it and I discover that not only is Russian the official formal language of the Tajikistan peoples, but they also have a national military service conscription for all young men aged fifteen plus. Hence I deduce it is probably the Tajikistan army in the clip and not the responsibility or instigation of the Russian government. A major economic activity in Tajikistan is mining for metals and minerals and perhaps the training excercise somehow contributes to that. Double-whammy. Mind, I’m a dozey female without a clue so I’m maybe in error.
Talk about distracted. Forgetting to post my lingering draft I’m now into Tuesday, 2 minutes past midnight. Procrastinating my mooc-time with this ramble I wandered away trying to find online ANYWHERE still containing previously found Eastern Orthodox / Eastern European information on Saints Days, as there’s an important one this month I hoped to remember and participate quietly at home and maybe learn some more about it. Maybe I missed it. Under such dire circumstances maybe any ole day will do. Maybe I have an offline copy saved goodness knows where. Return of the dark ages has been creeping upon us via online corruptions and manipulations, wiping out much of our cultural identities that does not fit the template of tyrants responsible for such hideous incursions. So much reminds of the religious oppressions of the 9th and 10th centuries. Perhaps that’s the olde that I feel!
Hope everyone had a safe and peaceful Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day commemoration. Traditionally in England/UK after the solemnity of the morning and afternoon ceremonial / service we might continue to mark the occasion into the evening(s) as a giving thanks for peacekeeping and relief missions in celebrations of life. With all our old soldiers in mind and recent/currently active servicemen in our thoughts. Hopeful for global safety. Grateful to be well enough today for outing (oops, yesterday now). Essentially, as generations of British families for whom fathers, uncles, grandfathers etc were all drafted into National Service, we should support and give thanks for the efforts of our troops every day of every week, every month, every year.
The oppressions against “British colonialism” and “white Europeans” from some small quarters of those belonging to the world’s largest established aggressors/serious organised criminals (the nasties) are bizarre and unsettling. But it’s important to remember that’s from a minority. And be on guard only enough to notice the very unusual. Tourism is the biggest threat against our nation while visitors appear wealthy and “proper” enough. Shame the British government has been bankrupting the country these last few years and sees the tourism industry as ” desirables”. It’s wreaking havoc, all over. As it has, elsewhere.
It’s never really bothered me too much how the music genre ‘New Wave’ such as Blondie et al is coined (as if) punk rock in the States but is nothing like British Punk Rock music. Borderline perhaps, and of course, we punks love some if not all of it, and often have quite eclectic musical taste (very wide). But the new wave of criminally-minded capitalist’s deceptive devisive faux ‘archival’ footage across all types of popular music is (a) quite concerning and (b) nothing we Brits have had to battle against and/but resist in earlier decades/centuries.
I wouldn’t have expected while listening to my FM radio to be hearing British Broadcasting of pretentious propoganda. Shocked and disgusted by contemporary American digitally overlaid voice-over obliterating the authentic American radio file(s) of Armistice Day 1918 speeches, backgrounded by the authentic musical backing of crackly vinyl record I had to switch over. Very few channels left here in Midlands that haven’t been overtaken by American ideals. Very sad. Insurgencies are quite terrifying and impacts are so reminding of all those nasty war stories. As if the war never really ended at all. How stupid is this for so-called intelligent beings…
Anyway, back to the point of this point. Having abandoned the radio and falling back on CDs to play (plenty contemporary English music, a bit old skool now but timeless quality, followed by some Blues Brothers, B52s and Beach Boys et al) I was interested to read an article about ?What?and the mysterians leading me to a song called ’96 Tears’ attributed to them and coined (as if) the first ever punk rock song. Hilarity abounds.
The YouTube video for ’96 Tears’clearly features doppelgangers/look-alikes. This is only conjecture but they appear to be miming to a very poor rendition of a typically sixties pop-Mod style. The video content is staged and manipulated to appear as if authentic and the tune’s lyrical content leaves much to be desired. The lyrics appear to be written post-1996. Internet history is missing most facts and poorly documented not something, so fact-checking is contentious and not something. I’m minded to spend much further time with while so low-energy.
Curious to find an authentic musical reference file for ‘…the mysterians’ I was glad to find their song ‘Up Side’. Thank goodness for something REAL.
So much fake shite around online. Much by way of corrupted manipulations. Shame. Looking at the photo for ‘Up Side’ confirms the first file’s personae are actors and not the original band shown in the ‘Up Side’ track photo. Why would anyone bother faking them?!
Finally the up-shot is the experience inspired an off the cuff (ad hoc) reflective poem retaliating against the hodge-podge dodgey lodge type issues that make the world so bogus these days. To what end? Dirty nasty money? Shove it!
Goodwill and Peace, Health and Happiness to all, Hopefully. Here’s my poem inspired by ’96 Tears’:
?What? (hilarious) Not
By hook or by crook?
tri_o’d an’ tri_age?
Faux ho-beaux diddly dumb down
staged archival rock
And swayed by the checkpoint
so not monochrome
by the digital filter
there falsehood be shown
Harlequin collar
almost pudding bowl hair
puppets string dance steps
and music score bare
O’ who might believe
they c’u’d call it punk rock
try and steal our youth movement
EN titles and stock
See those signs in the background
and fore ground re-boot
call ?WHAT? as you will
AmEn t’wit-t’woo-hoot.
PS: I am aware that American English is an opposite foreign language variant ‘english’ and my natural original English writing is open to potential misinterpretations and mistranslations (as are all foreign languages). Also, text to speech automation may be problematic. Please do not hesitate to contact me or leave a comment here (or use my contact form) if you have any questions, concerns or additional needs. Thank you for reading.
Where is everyone? Busy celebrating inauguration? I was very glad to see there is still somewhere that LOOKS like Washington – and not surprised to see it so quite quiet. Quite surprised to see that an apparent extortionist can actually proceed to such circumstance. Maybe I should be begging forgiveness for my bare English cheek but I wouldn’t waste my breath! That man has no authority whatsoever in my mind’s eye and I shouldn’t waste my breath even giving him a mention! I do try to remember he is just an old man from another place, a father and grandfather. Just a man. Shoddy as any other. And worse besides…
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m just a shoddy woman too! But I’m not a bully like some appear to be – and I won’t put up with it either!
I assume to be as entitled to freedom of speech and creative expression as previously but…
This is what happens when my energy supplier blocks my online account and forces me to trek to the store to get prepaid electricity to feed to my meter. I bought newspapers. Just in case the world collapses overnight and there might never be anymore. And I’ve been using my Facebook as if it’s a blog in the most unwise ways lately –like answering that ‘what’s on your mind?’ question … in bits and pieces and all at odds, with…
In some parts of the world,for many people, their world might have collapsed. Anytime between now and then…
Not so long back, pre-November 2016, online news headlines was suggesting that the British public should NOT be going online, as if there were some great threat and that we should only be receiving our news from our newspapers. How do you get a newspaper if you can’t get out to the shop and WHY would anyone not wish to check the propoganda campaigns against other sources for some measure of reliability? Not long after, and having ignored the ‘stay offline’ suggestion, there was a more sensible headline about hoax news stories. There seemed to be plenty of them. For decades.
I should get about reading blogs more. But everything’s changed at WordPress. A reflection of how the world has changed? How the poor have no equal rights even to an online blogging platform that previously encouraged amateur use, simply as humans, blogging for enjoyment and community and a sense of being human, connecting with other humans.
All of a sudden there’s this ‘premium’ with the ‘best for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs’ slant to it. That’ll get a lot of us Brits in trouble as hobbyist-bloggers, just passing time. When it’s your only way of having ‘social contact’ with the outside world it’s a very precious thing. In some cultures we’re not worthy enough for their sense of elitist privelege and should be weeded out – is how it feels. Maybe that’s why Brits should have been staying offline? Until it’s safe? Or what was there to really be scared about and why should we hide our online natural selves when propoganda instructs us to do so? The real world seems far more dangerous and abuse usually occurs from someone known, rather than from strangers.
Apparently we can ‘build a business website in just 10 days’ and with no offence intended to the Blogging U team, there’s a lot about that notion that flouts English Law and risks devastating deprivation to UK bloggers who might then be assumed to returning £250 weekly income as a minimum. Some of us blog to learn and practise and communicate and would NEVER wish to ‘monetise’ our blogs with advertising revenue. [If that’s what monetising a blog means, because there’s no clear info anywhere.] Some of us are fussy. Monetisation? That’s not BUSINESS!
I’ve not seen any statistics for quite a while, but a couple of years ago something like 94% ‘small businesses’ were failing within their first year in Britain.That’d be for these vague ideas of how easy it is and for inappropriate ‘support’ from Employment Services. Wondering how many made it to their second full year?! No doubt online service providers are getting more than their fair share of the blame for that too – although individuals should always accept responsibility for their own choices and actions. It’s been an oppressive and pressured experience for many tens of thousands of UK welfare claimants to ‘just start a business’ while set up to FAIL and having no viable alternative choice.
It maybe ok in some parts of the world to ask for donations as an individual in need too. But in the UK it’s illegal to beg, or even to give to someone who’s starving, homeless either money or food, or we risk a fine or arrest and a criminal charge. Crazy as that seems. I tend to ignore that law on the rare occasion I get anywhere, but with due care. And aware of the risk for myself and the other person. But I don’t have an active PayPal account and so can’t even buy anyone their coffee online and no way I’d risk that charge! And it’s a bit sickening seeing (local) professionals with a salary asking visitors to their website to donate by PayPal when you were expecting to find a method for giving an item for their art project!
Now it feels like it could be risky even visiting to read some blogs I’d normally visit, for the association with other individuals engaging in what might be entrepreneurial or professional writerly progressions. I’m not knocking them at all and mean no disrespect.
My poem inspired after reading Cid Corman in SloPo last week and doodled this alternative presentation of it, just for fun. [I don’t write poetry often. I’m not a writer.]
But my blogs here are my personal creative space. If whenever i were to start self-employment, there’s no way I’d be bringing it into my personal /our community spaces.and it’s gonna take me maybe about five years to regain my health and maybe get my own Empty Plan together somehow in the meantime. There’s a lot of very complex issues to take into account. And I know it might not look like it, but still…once upon a time and every fairytale begins and ends in a nightmare of a tale.
ColetteB.... 