Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

She rests her gaze ashore,
On the sinking ball of fire,
Her heart throbbing with desire.

Her chest utters a sigh of relief
Mixed with anger, longing and grief.

Worn-out sandals in hand,
She threads on unknown land.

Bidding farewell to yesteryear,
She wipes her very last tear,
And steps into the unknown …

Copyright: Sarah Carabott

It joins the other petals,
lying there bare and cold.

It had clung onto others
for weeks on end,
but life was sucked out of it,
by those around her.

Yet little did she know,
that it’s throbbing heart
would soon join the petals,
and fall onto warm soil

Soon it would nourish
on the soil’s fine grains
nurtured by its own petals
lying around …

Its stalk grew stronger,
Its heart bigger
Its petals brighter.

Copyright: Sarah Carabott

*Updated on July 30 2011*
*Posted on March 25 2010*

It was one of those claustrophobic days when heat weighs down heavy on your skin. Your shirt wet, stuck to your back, sweat beads rolling down the sides of your face.

Gasping for air, marching uphill towards the newsroom, I made a right and came to a halt. There it was, lying on the ground. Frozen in my tracks I stared at a metre-high cloth doll with a blank face. No nose, no eyes, no mouth.

Faceless.

As goosebumps shivered their way up my spine, my eyes welled up and my mind went blank. Tiny teardrops joined the sweat beads.

I could have sworn my heart stopped. I could not breath. The back of my neck tensed up, sending a sharp jolt to my skull. The skin on my skull crawled and I started shivering.

Just as my vision started clouding, I was nearly knocked over by an office employee who had just turned around the corner.

Back to my senses, I sprinted to the safety of my workplace. I could feel the doll’s blank stare burning on my back.

As the receptionist’s warm familiar smile welcomed me in the building I could not help but look behind my back.

‘But what exactly are you afraid of?’ my colleague’s words rang in my ear five hours later.

How I dreaded that million-dollar question! How I wished I had an answer!  I have never been able to pin down my irrational fear of you-know-what.

All I know is that I’m scared of dolls. Merely uttering the word makes me uneasy. I’ve always hated dolls and clowns. I despise them. It might have been Enid Blyton’s endless recounts of dolls holding tea parties at night while kids slept, or the numerous adverts of horror movies like Chucky and IT. It might have been the picture of a yellow-teeth clown hanging in my room, or the boom of the realistic dolls in the late eighties and early nineties.

‘The presence of a brain-less human-like figure staring down at you through its empty gaze gives me the shivers,’ I told my colleague.

And there I stood, infront of one of the island’s most respected journalists, feeling as stupid as ever.

The fear of dolls, Pediophobia, is actually defined as a “false representation of sentient beings.” Psychologist Ernst Jentsch once spoke about an uncomfortable feelings bred when there is an intellectual uncertainty about whether an object is alive or not.

This is enhanced when an inanimate object resembles a living being and thus generates confusion about its nature. If it’s obvious that an object is non-human, then its human characteristics stand out, however, if that object reaches a certain threshold of human-like appearance, its non-human characteristics will stand out, and be disturbing.

Pediophobia  and Coulrophobia (fear of clowns) is more common than you might think. American actor Ashton Kutcher, among others, publicly stated he is afraid of his wife Demi Moore’s collection of dolls.

I lost two grandparents, and nearly lost my daddy. Twice. I got my Bachelors and Masters degree … and one of my dream jobs. For the first time in my life, I fell in Love. Not a crush. Love.

Me. Copyright of Jasen Ogle.

One hour after handing in my last undergrad Final exam paper, with a bag in one hand, and an address scribbled on a piece of paper in the other, I caught an airplane to a country I had never been before: Belgium. People spoke with such a strong dialect that five years of studying French did not even get me through ‘Je suis perdue’.

Three months later, I left for London dreaming about spending hours staring at portraits in the Tate, taking silly pictures with Buckingham palace’s guards in the background, traveling to Edinburgh and Paris … and finally returning to my homeland and settle down.

Well, I spent hours staring at a Mac screen, took silly pictures with drunk people in the background, went to Bombay, Goa, Hyderabad, Amsterdam and Manchester … and have changed all plans about settling anywhere.

I rode a motorbike for hours on end, I saw snow and triple rainbows, and met people from all over the globe, spanning from Sheyang, China to Santa Clara, California. I was converted to Macism, met Susan Boyle, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, interviewed Ed Miliband and the Diversity dance troupe … and yes … Ashley Banjo.

I’ve seen a lot, and I haven’t started living yet.

I’ve learnt a lot, both culturally and academically.

I’ve achieved goals, and bred higher ones.

But the biggest lesson of all was to believe in dreams, no matter how unbelievable they may seem.

Don’t cease to believe in first love before you actually believe in it.

Don’t build any definite plans, because you can never know what you’re capable of. Whenever I fell, I picked myself up again, never looked back, and kept going.

Don’t look for and pick friends, because real friends are those who accidentally turn up in your life and stay there no matter what.

And remember … the sky is not the limit. The sky is just the beginning.

Following his Give Peace a Chance and Happy Xmas (War is Over), Nixon tried to have him deported.

Killed by four shots in his back, his ashes were scattered  in New York’s Central Park, where the Strawberry Fields memorial was later created.

Born in 1940 in Liverpool, John Winston Ono Lennon grew up into one of the most rebellious artists and controversial political activists. Feeling the pulse of a scarred world, Lennon moved to New York in 1971 … where he was shot dead on October 8, 1980, living up to his very own words. Lennon described his radical period as something he engulfed in “more out of guilt than anything else. Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.” Lennon was pronounced dead 17 minutes after Mark David Chapman shot him four times in the back.

During his 40 years amongst us, Lennon left a trail of change, triggering thought when thought was scarce. The Vietnam anti war-movement adapted his anthems, infuriating Richard’s Nixon’s administration. The artist wanted revolutionary change, and looked down on conformity: “I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.”

His most-known relationship was that with Yoko Ono. The couple protested against the Vietnam War and recorded “Give Peace a Chance”. Their style was a combination of advocacy and performative art. In 1969, Lennon added “Ono” as his middle name. It was Yoko’s suggestion to go abroad in order to alleviate the acrimony of the Beatle’s break-up, which saw the couple moving to New York in the seventies.

Copyright of Jasen Ogle

“Pastizzi?”

A medium-sized man holding a stack of tickets in one hand, and motioning people in a queue with the other, greets me as I make my way into the Westminster Cathedral hall, London, for the 10th edition of Malta Day-UK fair.

“Pastizzi here!” he shouts in my ear. A banner with the word Merħba looms over the hall, whilst the St. Sebastian’s Wokingham brass band blares its way on to the stage.

The place smells of imqaret, timpana and Jum il-Vitorja. Held close to 8th September, MaltaDay-UK is organised annually by the Malta High Commission in collaboration with Maltese associations set-up in the UK.

Guests of honour Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Tonio Borg, and the Archbishop of Malta Mons. Paul Cremona accompanied the Maltese community and their friends for this year’s events, held on September 11th.

Following the Maltese fair, Holy Mass was held at Westminster Cathedral, where the statue of il-Bambina was pompously taken out in the cathedral’s square to the cheers of the public and a musketterija. Upon reaching the Sacred Heart Chapel of Ease on Westferry Road, the procession saluted the statue with Marian hymns and the national anthem amongst others.

Dr Tonio Borg, Mr. Bernard Scerri, Mr. Joseph Zammit Tabona and Mons. Paul Cremona. Copyright of Jasen Ogle

Tonio Borg, who attended the event for the first time, expressed his gratitude at being invited for the celebrations. Asked about the importance of maintaining a strong feeling of identity, the Deputy Prime Minister said that this is imperative in strengthening the representation of the Maltese culture outside of our shores. “We are also planning on launching a Maltese cultural institute, catering not just for London, but for wherever there are Maltese communities. The intention is to use our own embassies to co-ordinate and promote cultural events. This cultural institute will have its base in Malta, but will be budgeted to promote such cultural events abroad,” he explained. The institute will act as an umbrella for tourism, culture and foreign affairs, which up until today are run by three separate entities.

First organised in 2000 on the initiative of former High Commissioner, the late Dr. George Bonello Du Puis, Malta Day-UK is nowadays the leading event in the UK Maltese communities calendar.

The day ended to the beat of the Spiteri Lucas band and the smell of Maltese wine and galletti at the Chartwell Suite Churchill hotel. Present for the gala dinner held at the hotel, Tonio Borg said: “I felt proud to be Maltese today. Thank you for this opportunity. There is nothing better than the Maltese community’s heart.” He explained how although the Maltese integrate well within foreign communities, their love for their motherland never dwindles.

Whilst the diners headed back home, the hosts started planning for the following Malta Day-UK. Mr. Bernard Scerri, founder of the Maltese Cultural Movement, said: “The work for the successive Malta Day-UK usually starts soon after the previous one ends. A post-mortem of the event improves our organisation for the next year.”

Scerri explained how coming from a small island, the Maltese try harder at retaining their roots, which in itself instils a sense of pride. “As for those of us who settled away from Malta a while ago, we long for the traditions that we left behind and therefore we cannot wait for such events.”

It seems as if her unusual melancholic voice puts life on-hold.

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933, she composed over 500 songs and recorded almost 60 albums. In the Village Voice in 1983, Don Shewey described her as: “She’s not a pop singer, she’s a diva, a hopeless eccentric … who has so thoroughly co-mingled her odd talent and brooding temperament that she has turned herself into a force of nature, an exotic creature spied so infrequently that every appearance is legendary.”  She changed her stage name to Nina Simone where the former means “small,” whilst Simone Signore was a French actress.

For the first time in her singing career, the debut album  Nina Simone In Concert (1964) addressed the racial inequality prevalent in the United States with the song Mississippi Goddam. It is believed that this album was influenced by the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four black children.

Since then, a civil rights message laced Nina’s songs. Contrary to Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent approach, she called for a violent revolution, hoping that African-Americans create a separate state.

She was considered to be volatile and quite difficult to deal with. Amongst several incidents, in 1995, she shot her neighbor’s son with an air gun after his laughter disturbed her concentration. After her death in 2003, it was discovered that she suffered from bipolar disorder.

Nina Simone was loved and hated, praised and criticised, idolised and laughed at, but for me she remains the priestess of Soul. She was and shall remain a legend.

The thing is … I woke up to reality some 19 years ago, at a tender age when we believe that babies fall from the sky, and that fairies are born when a newborn giggles for the first time …

And so I started dreaming … and achieving. And I have never fallen from any castle. The secret behind this? Believe in yourself.

I am where I am because I never followed any path, but I hope I have left a trail behind me.

Leaders have always motivated me:

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. – Zig Ziglar

Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T. S. Elliot