Suppression of the Truth – Part 2: Gary Lineker and Radioactive Poison

Suppression of the Truth

Part 2: Gary Lineker and Radioactive Poison

IT was the summer of 1990.

Like many, I was held bedazzled as the Italia 90 World Cup unfolded on our TV screens, and England found football glory with David Platt, Gary Lineker and the irrepressible Paul (Gaza) Gascoigne.

Earlier that year I had moved to be a reporter on a busy weekly newspaper in North Wales, leaving behind four care free years working for glossy computer magazines.

So, I sat on the warm evening of Wednesday, 4 July in a large pub near Conwy, with my new pals from the paper to watch a truly memorable game of football on a large TV screen.

The semi-final of the World Cup: England versus West Germany.

It was a game you couldn’t miss. It was a passion.

We were a happy bunch as we forgot about work and chatted about football and whether Gascoigne was the answer to England’s lack of a creative midfield.

We drank beer, cheered loudly as Lineker scored, shouted obscenities when Gaza was booked and cried into our beer after we lost the game on penalties to the Germans.

More beer was consumed until we wended our ways home.

The next day was press day at my newspaper in nearby Llandudno Junction – the day our weekly work went to press… a hectic morning, followed by feet up and a chance to recharge batteries in the afternoon.

Nursing a hangover (in more ways than one), the morning flew by in a blur, and after a sandwich and a coffee I sat at my desk and began to write a list of stories and tasks for the following week.

The office was empty as the phone on the neighbouring desk suddenly rang.

Out of routine I picked up the call.

“Weekly News, Nic Outterside, can I help you?” I asked.

A woman’s voice answered: “Are you a reporter?”

“Yes,” I replied, and began to listen.

Within a minute the lady on the phone had me listening like I had never listened before, and scribbling notes like there was no tomorrow.

She explained nervously that she was a nurse and the local hospital and her husband had worked for the past 20 years at Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power station, situated some 36 miles away on the outskirts of Snowdonia National Park.

The previous evening her husband had planned to come home early to watch the World Cup semi-final and enjoy a few beers.

Instead, she explained, he had arrived home crying and handed to her an official letter he had received from his employers Magnox Ltd, which informed him that, following internal testing, his body had received more than 20 times the safe clinical level of radiation during his years working at the plant.

He was to be transferred to another part of the plant for his own health.

At this point the lady on the phone began to cry uncontrollably.

“I don’t know much about radiation or my husband’s job, but I do know two of his friends there have recently been diagnosed with cancer, and my husband has been having stomach pains and had bleeding from his bowels,” she stuttered.

She explained that she was terrified, as the letter her husband had brought home was marked “Confidential” and he had been told he and his work colleagues were bound by the Official Secrets Act.

“I can’t even tell you my name or where we live” she added, “Or we could both end up in prison.”

I sat gobsmacked by what I had heard.

But I knew that as a journalist I could not do anything with this news unless I had proof.

I gently informed the lady of my dilemma and suggested we could maybe meet somewhere neutral so I could see the letter for myself.

After a moment’s hesitation she agreed, and gave me the location of a bus shelter on the Penrhyn Road, some three miles from my office.

A meeting time of 4pm was made. I explained I would park near the bus shelter in my black Fiat Uno car.

And so my first “Deep Throat” liaison was arranged.

But as I put down the phone, something worried me… if this news and indeed the letter were bound by the Official Secrets Act (OSA), would that stop me revealing the information in our newspaper?

I knew a little about the OSA as my dad had signed it at least twice on contracts he worked on for the Ministry of Defence, but I needed to know more.

A quick phone call to a legal friend gave me the answer I needed.

“It is a sham and a lie,” he told me, “A frightener employed by the company to keep their workers quiet.

“While the technical data about the reactors may be deemed as being in the national security interest, the health of the reactor workers definitely is not.

“This is a civil nuclear fuel facility, not bloody Faslane,” he added.

I was relieved and thanked him.

Two hours later I sat nervously in my car, parked across the road from the arranged meeting place.

A few minutes passed and a lady in her early 50s, with dyed blonde hair and wearing a green coat walked up to the bus shelter.

She looked in the direction of my car. I caught her eye and beckoned her across the road.

She bent down and looked in my open car window.

“Mr Outterside?” she asked nervously.

Her eyes were red from crying as she opened the passenger door and sat next to me.

We started to chat about the sudden change of weather – it had begun to rain – as she hurriedly took a folded letter from her handbag.

“Here it is,” she whispered.

I tried to explain that the Official Secrets Act threat was bunkum, but quickly knew her fears did not allow her to believe me.

I read the letter from top to bottom – even glanced at her husband’s name and their address which gave me a bona fide – and scribbled a few notes in my note book.

I no longer have the technical data that was included in that letter, but I was quickly able to ascertain that this poor lady’s husband had indeed received something like 23 times the safe recognised level of radioactive contamination during his years working at Trawsfynydd.

Seven days later I made my first exclusive front page splash at my newspaper. The headline rang out: “Workers health fears over radioactive poisoning”.

I was delighted to break some news that the nuclear industry did not want to become public.

Inside I felt my first buzz as a proper journalist.

But, I also thought deeply about the man – and his colleagues – who had their lives ruined by their toxic work environment.

Some years later I discovered that the man had died in 1991, “after a long illness”.

Earlier this year (2015), it was reported that the now partially decommissioned Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station may be responsible for elevated levels of cancer found in communities downwind of it.

Research supervised by Dr Chris Busby, attached to the Latvian Academy of Sciences in Riga, showed the incidence of breast cancer was five times higher downwind from the power station than would have been expected.

Some other kinds of cancer were found at around double the expected rate.

Trawsfynydd is the only inland nuclear power station to have been built in the UK.

It has two “Magnox type CO2 cooled graphite moderated” reactors and is situated on a lake, Llyn Trawsfynydd, which acts as a cooling water source and is also a sink for radioactivity released from the plant.

A significant amount of radioactive material exists in the lake bed sediment.

The prevailing winds at the site are south westerly and more than 90% of those living downwind of the power station were surveyed by researchers working for Dr Busby.

The paper, published by Jacobs Journal of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, states: “Trawsfynydd is a ‘dirty’ nuclear power station. As it has carbon dioxide, gas-cooled graphite block reactors its releases to air are higher than most other types of nuclear reactor.

“In addition, all the liquid releases are discharged to the lake, where they have accumulated to the lake body sediment.

“Results show very clearly that the downwind population has suffered because of these exposures. This is most clear in breast cancer in the younger women below 60, where the rates were almost five times the expected.

“Additionally we see a doubling of risk in those who ate fish from Trawsfynydd lake, which supports the conclusion that it is mainly a nuclear power station effect that is being seen.”

Other forms of cancer showing elevated levels included prostate, leukaemia, mesothelioma and pancreas.

Altogether, 38 people in the area researched were diagnosed with cancer between 2003 and 2005, against an “expected” level of 19.5.

The report says: “These results are remarkable and relevant to political decisions about nuclear energy.”

Last month a spokesman for Magnox Ltd said: “Comment on the details of the study is a matter for experts in public health.

“However the radiation exposures of our workforce, and that of the general public, from authorised discharges from the nuclear industry, are well below the maximum levels authorised by independent regulatory bodies.

“The limits are set to ensure members of the public are properly protected.”

Dr Jill Meara, director of Public Health England’s Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards (CRCE), said: “Identification of disease clusters are matters for local public health teams. If those teams needs specialist support, such as in radiation epidemiology, they can talk to CRCE for assistance.”

Suppression of the Truth – Part 1: Nothing Prepared me for This

Suppression of the Truth

Part 1: Nothing Prepared me for This

SOMETIME during the winter of 1987, while recovering from my battle with cancer, I sat with my late dad and watched a rented VHS video which ultimately changed my thinking about everything.

The movie was called The Whistle Blower.

Let me tell you a bit about it:

The Whistle Blower is a 1986 British spy thriller, starring Michael Caine, based on the novel of the same name by John Hale.

Frank Jones is a retired British naval officer. His bright and idealistic son, Robert, works as a linguist at GCHQ, the top secret British intelligence listening station, using his love of Russian to listen to various pieces of communication on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Robert tells his father that strange things are happening at GCHQ, and he’s planning on leaving the service.

He tells his dad: “We live in an unseen world of shadows.”

“Then there are the lies. They start on the very first day. Nobody is as they seem, nothing is what it is made out to be.

“The truth recedes. Our secret world is beyond the law”.

The scene cuts to a room in British Intelligence, where operatives are listening to a tape recording of the conversation between Frank and his son.

A few days later, police tell Frank that Robert has died in a fall from the roof of his apartment, in an apparent suicide, and a verdict of accidental death is recorded.

But Frank is puzzled by the circumstances of his son’s death and decides to use his old skills to conduct his own investigation. He approaches his friend Charles Greig, who had joined MI6 after his service in the navy. Greig agrees to make discreet enquiries on his part.

Returning to Robert’s flat, Frank is confronted by a left wing journalist Bill Pickett, who had arranged to meet Robert to discuss the problems at British Intelligence, but Frank rejects his investigative approaches.

Pickett is also killed in mysterious circumstances in a bizzare road traffic accident (hold that thought!) having found out the name of the man who Robert wished him to meet before meeting Frank.

As the movie unfolds we find that Greig had a part to play in the MI5 murder of Robert and the Soviet mole is a high ranking member of the British aristocracy Sir Adrian Chapple.

The movie ends with the death of Chapple and many loose ends.

It is truly gripping narrative.

But the words: “The truth recedes. Our secret world is beyond the law”, have stayed with me and grown like another cancer as I began to discover the truth.

But my initiation didn’t end there.

Some three years after watching this movie, and on the eve of my entering newspaper journalism, my dad bought me a book which would change my thinking forever. And in many ways prepared me for my unforeseen journey.

The red covered 260 page tome was Tony Collin’s Open Verdict: An Account of 25 Mysterious Deaths in Defence Industry.

This remarkable book contains a detailed investigation into a series of strange deaths linked to the British defence industry during the 1980s.

As my dad was working for Marconi on a “Top Secret” contract for the MoD at the time, I immediately found his gift of the book intriguing.

Here is a short taste:

In March 1987, in Popham near Basingstoke on the A33, David Sands did a U-turn at 80mph on a duel carriageway at high speed crashing into a derelict café, strangely with two extra cans of petrol in his car boot.

This led to him being burned beyond recognition by the fire that engulfed the car.

He worked for a company named Esams, (Elliot Automation Space and Advanced Military Systems Ltd) Marconi’s sister company on Star Wars contracts. Specifically “on the simulation of signals technologies and a secret application” directly related to Stealth.

On 10 April 1987, Stuart Gooding drove across to the wrong lane in Cyprus and hit a lorry coming in the opposite direction, the same day that David Greenhagl fell from a bridge in Britain.

The only personal details given was that Gooding was aged 23 and a scientific officer, and at the Royal Military College of Science. Since independence in 1960, Britain has held 93 square miles of Cyprus for its military bases which include an outpost for GCHQ and EW related operations.

Greenhagl worked as a “defence contracts manager” at the defence division of ICL (International Computers Ltd). His death occurred 130 yards from a police station.

Michael Bakers worked at Plessey Major Systems in Poole on System X when he had his accident on 3 May 1987. He was also a signals specialist in the territorial unit of the SAS (Special Air Services).

Allegedly Baker was taking two friends to Kingsbridge Lakes to teach them fly fishing when his BMW crashed went` through the central reservation of a dual carriageway and overturning.

Although, strangely yet again, neither of his passengers were injured, Baker died of brain damage at the scene of the crash. It was claimed he had “lost concentration” which led to the coroner recording a verdict of accidental death.

In 1982, Professor Keith Bowden whose work involved sophisticated military computer simulations, drove his BMW across a duel carriageway and down a railway bank.

According to Collins, “an accident investigator hired by her (Hilary Bowden, his widow) solicitor says someone removed the new tyres on the car at some point before the crash and replaced them with worn-out retreads”.

With echoes of Henri Paul, it was claimed later by the police that he had been drinking, but Hilary Bowden said: “We were very shocked by that because l had been told by a doctor that he had not been drinking, by a policeman he had not been drinking, and by the man who he was with all evening that he had not been drinking.”

Joe, a former RAF engineer was an informant of Collins when he worked on Computer News – the first mainstream publication to highlight the coincidental deaths or workers in the British defence computer industry. Joe described a crash which had remarkable similarities to some of the incidents detailed above.

He related to Collins how he spun his car at high speed across a dual carriageway, only being saved by the fact that the car: “hit dense brush on the central reservation and came to a halt facing in approximately the right direction. When he realised with some surprise that he was unhurt, apart from a minor whiplash injury, he tried to move the car and found that the handbrake was on. He had no recollection of what had happened, but assumed that for some reason that he had attempted a hand brake turn at high speed. He felt his life was still in danger”

Within a few days of the alleged Soviet spy and GCHQ worker Geoffrey Prime appearing in court in 1982, a senior GCHQ radio operator Jack Wolfenden died instantly “when his powered glider went into a shallow dive and crashed into a Cotswold hillside in perfect flying weather. He was an experienced pilot and they was no sign of illness or mechanical failure to explain the crash”.

His colleague, Ernst Brockway was found hanging a few months later, leaving no suicide note. His widow, Janet, told reporters “my husband was a sick man and that’s all there is to it. I have been told by the police and GCHQ to say nothing”.

Mark Wisner, was a Professional Technical Officer who worked on the Tornado aircraft at the Aeroplane and Armament Establishment (A&AEE). On 24 April 1987. According to Open verdict, he was found dead at his home wearing high-heel women’s boots, suspenders and a PVC top with nine feet of cling film wrapped around his face.

A hole had been left for the mouth, and a plastic bag had been placed over his head. No exact time of death is usually given in cases of this nature. It was reported afterwards that he was a transvestite, although none of his work colleagues were aware of this.

Wisner died exactly a week after Shani Warren, a secretary to the Divisional Manger of a firm called Microscope, which specialise in “intelligent electronic systems”.

Soon after her death on 17 April 1987 her company was bought by GEC Computers – its first acquisition for seven years for £16 million. She was found dead in a lake, “gagged with a blue scarf, a noose was tied around her neck, her ankles were secured with a tow rope and her wrists were tied behind her back. She had been face down in 18 inches of water for an indeterminate period”.

Her car – which was found parked in a layby adjoining a lake, was “an immaculate black Vauxhall Cavalier”. However, Collins reports that it was later found “to have a faulty gear box which prevented it being driven away in first or second gear”

It was later determined by a Home Office pathologist that Shani had tried to strangle herself, gagged herself, bound her ankles, tied her hands behind her back, and hopped in stiletto heels into the shallow water were she drowned”.

Richard Pugh, who had recently left a company which was involved in “digital networks and exchanges, C3i for NATO and associated EW equipment” tied himself virtually head-to-toe with rope and was “accidentally asphyxiated”.

Stephen Drinkwater, who worked in the highly classified copying department in GCHQ was found asphyxiated with a plastic bag over his head in his bedroom by his father in 1983. Collins reports that there was speculation at the time that his death may have been linked to the Prime affair – but the coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure.

Stephen Oke, in 1985 was found hanging from a beam from a beam in a loft in his home in Cornwall where he was employed at GCHQ’s most advanced listening post at Morwenstow.

The coroner was “puzzled by the fact that a piece of string was found twisted around Stephen’s hands and tied in a reef knot, but he was told by the police that Stephen could have done this himself”.

At the time his wife and children were on holiday in the Midlands whilst he redecorated the kitchen. Amongst the unanswered questions of the case was that cigarettes were found at the scene – although Stephen did not smoke – and a brandy bottle was found in the dustbin – although he did not drink spirits.

Now 25 years later we could add MoD scientist Dr David Kelly, Tory Defence PPS Stephen Milligan and former Labour Cabinet Minister Robin Cook to this frightening and still growing list.

But I digress.

The initiation is fulfilled.

Let’s go back to 1990, where my own journey into this secret world of shadows, lies and cover-ups begins.

Jerusalem to Riyadh: an Axis of Evil

TODAY it was revealed that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asked members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) not to take into account a report submitted by the UN Board of Inquiry that accused Israel of targeting UN buildings and killing scores of civilians in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

Documents released by WikiLeaks reported: “Ban Ki-moon secretly worked with Israel to undermine a UN report into Gaza war crimes.”

“Ban wrote a letter to the UN Security Council asking its members not to take recommendations by the UN Board of Inquiry about Israeli bombings in Gaza into account,” the report says.

The UN Board of Inquiry had concluded that “Israeli Defense Force (IDF) targeted UN buildings in Gaza Strip in seven of the nine attacks.

According to WikiLeaks, White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice spoke four times with Ban Ki Moon “to discuss concerns over the Board of Inquiry’s report on incidents at UN sites in December 2008 and January 2009”.

“Rice urged Ban not to include the recommendations in the final report’s summary, which was supposed to be transmitted to the UN Security Council on May 5,” says WikiLeaks.

But the Secretary-General replied he was unable to alter the report and recommendations of the Board of Inquiry as it was independent.

Rice, in the second conversation, “urged the Secretary-General to make clear in his cover letter when he transmits the summary to the Security Council that those recommendations exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and no further action is needed”.

Ban told her that his “staff were working with an Israeli delegation on the text of the cover letter”.

The WikiLeaks revelation is a startling insight into the global conspiracy which exists to support and sustain an axis of evil between the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia to maintain organised instability across the Middle East.

At home Israel has been allowed under this cloak to steal an entire country from Palestine, murder tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians and arm itself with nuclear weapons as the Middle East’s own neighbourhood bully.

Israel and its unregulated Intelligence agency Mossad carries out the dirtiest of deeds, including many False Flag attacks: 7/7 in the UK, the Bulgarian bus bombing of 2014, and the Charlie Hebdo outrage in Paris.

From the very start after the formation of its own nation state, Israel’s secret services ran rogue operations, stealing money from the Swiss accounts of Hitler’s victims, bombing a synagogue in Baghdad during prayers in 1951 to scare Jewish Iraqis into moving into tent villages in Israel, and bombing British and American offices in Cairo in 1954 (the Lavon affair) to discredit Egypt’s Nasser regime.

Using American funds provided for other purposes, Mossad bribed its way across Africa and Latin America. The late dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceaucescu—who edged Sadat toward Jerusalem and Camp David—received about $30 million from the agency.

Elsewhere, Mossad spies threw in their lot with established power, however autocratic: Iran (where they trained the SAVAK secret police in interrogation methods), Zaire, Chad and other African countries, Singapore, Sri Lanka (where they helped the Sinhalese go after Tamils), South Korea, South Africa (where Israel aided the birth of nuclear weapons), and Argentina (supplying arms during the Falklands War).

They helped Morocco capture and kill an opposition leader, Mehdi Ben Barka, in Paris. While in Beirut, they murdered Palestinians and blew up MEA Caravelles at the airport.

During the 1967 war, they protected the disinformation communications which brought Jordan into the conflict by directing the attack on the US spy ship Liberty, an action in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded.

Misinformation has always been a Mossad trademark.

Many theorists and experts now believe that a Mossad / Saudi axis was behind the 9/11 atrocity.

Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain: planners to financiers, cadres to foot soldiers, ideologists to cheerleaders.

The dictatorship of Saudi Arabia which systematically transmits its sick form of Islam across the globe, instigates and funds hatreds, while crushing human freedoms and aspiration.

Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are honoured by the West in a sickening open display of back slapping support as “our great allies”.

Last week Saudi Arabia was appointed chair of the UN Human Rights Council, a choice welcomed by Washington and Westminster.

The choice defies all common sense and human decency,

Saudi Arabia executes one person every two days. Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is soon to be beheaded then crucified for taking part in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring. He was a teenager then.

Last week, 769 faithful Muslim believers were killed in Mecca where they had gone on the Hajj. Initially, the rulers said it was “God’s will” and then they blamed the dead. Mecca was once a place of simplicity and spirituality.

Today the avaricious Saudis have bulldozed historical sites and turned it into the Las Vegas of Islam – with hotels, skyscrapers and malls to spend, spend, spend.

The poor can no longer afford to go there. Numbers should be controlled to ensure safety – but that would be ruinous for profits.

Even more seriously, the pernicious Saudi influence is spreading fast and freely. King Salman has offered to build 200 mosques in Germany for recently arrived refugees, many of whom are Muslims.

He offered no money for resettlement or basic needs, but Wahhabi mosques, the Trojan horses of the secret Saudi crusade. Several Islamic schools are also sites of Wahhabism, now a global brand. It makes hearts and minds small and suspicious, turns Muslim against Muslim, and undermines modernists.

The late Laurent Murawiec wrote in 2002: “The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadres to foot soldiers, from ideologists to cheerleaders.”

Remember that most of the 9/11 killers were Saudi; so was the al-Qaeda hierarchy.

A second irony on this day of revelation is that the pro-Zionist Jerusalem Post has now led a call for Israel and Saudi Arabia to tie up diplomatic relations and publicly become allies.

The JP leader runs to over 2,000 words, but its statement is clear in scapegoating Palestine and Iran as the common enemy. The Jerusalem Post’s words are chilling in their purpose:

• Saudi Arabia regards Iran as its primary competition for leadership in the Muslim world, and it fears that the recent US-Iranian kinship could lead America to replace the Saudis with Tehran as its primary Persian Gulf ally.

• In the oil and gas market, the Saudis and UAE are quickly losing major ground to Iran amid reports that Saudi Arabia is taking huge hits and could face an existential financial crisis by the end of the decade as a result of other emerging markets as well as its own, risky, and largely-failed attempt to flood the market to drive out rivals.

• Iran’s energy sector, by contrast, is on the rise. Iran’s biggest oil-shipping company, which boasts the world’s largest fleet of supertankers, is already preparing to return to European and international markets in the wake of any agreement in Vienna. At the same time, clearly anticipating massive sanctions relief, Iranian companies last month signed a $2.3 billion agreement to construct 800 miles of pipelines, which Iran has identified as its most critical conduit for future gas exports to the West. The Iran Gas Trunkline-6 will transit Iraq and Turkey to ultimately deliver gas to Europe from the country’s massive South Pars field.

• In their desperation, the Saudis have increased their behind-the-scenes cooperation with Israel to unprecedented levels. This extends to major joint security cooperation in the event of an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, including Israeli technical aid to defend against a second wave of retaliation against Saudi targets.

• Israel and the Sunni axis are also united in a fight against the Islamic State and Salafi jihadist groups seeking to impose an extremist Sharia state on the entire region, while harbouring larger designs to conquer Europe and the United States.

• For the time being, Sunni Arabs can be instrumental in encouraging the replacement of the government of Mahmoud Abbas, with a Palestinian leadership interested in being on the right side of history. If he is willing, perhaps Mahmoud Dahlan can be brought back from the EAU to help clean things up in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

If Saudi Arabia and Israel are going to ‘clean things up’, one thing is certain: it will be a dirty process.

The Birth of Pendragon

Source: The Birth of Pendragon

No Time to Cry

They sat together by the darkening sky

He looked at her as the carriage pulled by

The wind it whispered

The day grew dim

He knew right then it was up to him

Don’t cry

Time goes by

She looked closely at his face and caught a spark

Lovers walked hand in hand across the city park

The music it talked

The day bore down

He had carried too long the thorny crown

Don’t cry

Time goes by

He took her hand gently and held it tight

Neon lights flickered into a midsummer night

The memory it lingered

And the day was reborn

The undertaker blew his frugal horn

Don’t cry

Time goes by

They both shared this treasured place in time

He tied her green shawl and drank her wine

The coldness cursed

That the day did not last

Her grey headstone now just an echo of the past

Don’t cry

Time goes by

My Mirror

You are my mirror

You reflect me

Tell me my child

What do you see?

An old man

Growing older

Whose love for you

Does not grow colder

Our twin natures

They might collide

But my feelings

Will never subside

Your mirror reflects

The waning moon

And in a blink

You were gone too soon

Inter Stella Overdrive

A piper at the gates of dawn

Told me today a new star had been born

From the cosmos my darkening life

Your reality cuts like a sharpened knife

A 9/11 baby cast from a planetary shell

An echo from when the twin towers fell

You are alive, alive, alive

Rock on my Inter Stella Overdrive

Café picnic

Sitting here with a glass of Malbec in my hand

Looking at pictures of the River Danube

Making a stand

Wearing a smile under my homburg hat

Wishing I was somewhere else

Stroking my cat

Then old Alexander burst upon the scene

Saying he needed to tell me where he’d just been

I looked him up and down with a withering eye

Told him to roll again and not even try

He laughed and cried with tears of rage

Opened his beak like a bird in a cage

The waitress walked over with a frown of concern

I looked at my wallet as it started to burn

There are lessons in life you have to unlearn

And mistakes are too many for me left to yearn

Oh, it’s fine to feel to free

Oh, it’s good with eyes to see

Oh, I want you and I to be

Lead me down again to the capital C

Sitting here with a glass of Shiraz in my hand

Looking at pictures of Strauss’s blue Danube

Making a stand

Wearing a smile under my old felt hat

Wishing I was somewhere else

Stroking my cat

The young waitress she sat down next to me

I smiled at her wanly and signed the billet for free

She looked me up and down and started to laugh

I told her my name and pulled up my scarf

She laughed and cried with tears of pain

And just at that moment it started to rain

The waitress walked away muttering French

I looked and my glass the dryness to quench

There are lessons in life you have to unlearn

And mistakes are too many for me left to yearn

Oh, it’s fine to feel to free

Oh, it’s good with eyes to see

Oh, I want you and I to be

Lead me down again to the capital C

Sign Language

You sign to me in semaphore

You talk to me in Greek

You leave me hidden messages

But I cannot hear you speak

The words they dance before you

Like mummers in a play

Your mouth it makes to open

But I cannot hear you say

“I love you”

Chance meeting

By the water’s edge

The light fades

On the reeds

The chords

And sounds pervade

Across one thousand miles

Your dark eyes smile

By the water’s edge

The music dances

Laughter chances

As the day advances

The stillness evades

Across one thousand miles

Your dark eyes smile

By the water’s edge

The ragged dream

The broken seam

And flowing stream

The fish cascade

Across one thousand miles

Your dark eyes smile

By the water’s edge

Your beauty sings

On coloured wings

The sunset brings

Songs are played

Across one thousand miles

Your dark eyes smile

By the water’s edge

My heart it beats

As my soul competes

The stillness creeps

Into the rustic shade

Across one thousand miles

Your dark eyes smile