Here's a post about a magazine cover that made me cross today.

Magazines show us pictures of ladies’ bods, mocked

and we’re meant to feel sickened and horribly shocked

at the post-baby belly, the whiff of a wobble

the bare-faced ass cheek of a thigh un-remodeled.

If bouncing beach babes are disrobed as disgusting

then we feel less bad when our own jeans are busting.

Thank you mags! You have sanctioned our fallible form!

But did we ask you to have female beauty re-drawn

as a shock-fest, a horror, a laughable mass?

You have come to a terrible logic impasse:

if famous femme bodies are monstrous when flawed

are our own imperfections really, truly ignored?

You’d like us to think you’ve forgiven our rolls

you believe we’ve not spotted you’re making us trolls.

But we notice hypocrisy hiding as hugs

liking ladies is not done by trashing their jugs.

NOW’s the time to fight back and be interceders,

lazy magazines, you have insulted your readers.

Walking in the Lakes

I'm walking in the fells

breathing deep the hill-top air

savouring the beauty

and letting go my cares

when it comes into my vision

 - a Heaven-fashioned cranny!

Just one minor point,

it looks exactly like a fanny.

The second in the criminal condiments series

Coleslaw

There’s a garnish that’s often found in the vicinity

of cold meats, of baps; an unholy trinity

concocted of carrot, of shaven raw cabbage

baptised in mayonnaise, in unopposed marriage…

until now. I will not hold my peace

til this horror of sauce will desist and decease!

Its texture is slippy, its taste is abhorrent,

how dare it invade my plate without a warrant?

And there’s one other thing ang’ring me more and more

and that’s when food vendors describe it as ‘slaw’.

We’re not in the Deep South, and this is a ballad

to say ‘I will exorcise you, devil’s salad’.