The Harvest Moon

 

The Harvest Moon shone bright on our trip back from Stromboli. What a beautiful island Sicily is!

Sicilian Sketch

 

Piazza Armerina watercolor on paper. George Roberts  September 2026

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Concordia 

Temples all Greek to me

A very fine start to the day

An almost intact set of Doric pillars 

As Vitruvius might say

A fine lunch of mixed fried fish

Was the pescetarian pick of the day

Went down well with a glass of wine

As Carluccio might say.

Then off to a Romano Unesco site

By bus in the middle of the day

To view mosaics of animals from Africa

As Scipio might say

Finally all humid and hot

We dozed and ended the day

With one last 'photo opp' at Piazza Armerina

As our tour guide Renata might say.

George Roberts words to accompany a shaky painting. September 2026 

The Architecture of the Brain

The Cosmos appears to be enormous and without boundaries however you look at it!

 

Mountains do not appear to be particularly high when viewed from far above!

The Architect of the Universe 

The brain has a hundred billion neurons

Equal to the number of stars in the Milky Way

Each neuron has thousands of connections 

One hundred trillion links simultaneously at play

If we were to ride one neural electrical impulse

What patterns of thought might we witness or see

A childhood memory, an equation solved, a kiss.

What makes you you and what makes me me.

In slumber do neurons slow and cease to fire

Are the patterns of night thoughts truly our own

Is the architecture of ideas founded by demons?

Divided by two hemispheres and clasped by bone

There are many hills in the neural landscape

Many valleys and convolutions to increase capacity 

Equivalent to twenty million books in every head

Enabling civilization and sentient elasticity.

But where are morality and love located?

And why do some thoughts go to the dark side?

Is the human brain so quick to anger or otherwise?

Does a neuron address fear, severe links or hide?

What should be made of artificial intelligence?

A threat, an opportunity, a loss or a gain?

Will we  rue the day of the multidimensional tensor

Will we be washed away like tears in the rain?

 

Is the brain a unique gift from the Universe?

Selected by aeons of evolutionary force 

Have we finally reached a sentient golden age?

Or has humanity run its intellectual course?

More bleak doggerel by George Roberts September 2026

The Saxon King - Southend on Sea

 

Fantastic street art!  Fifty minutes by train from  central London..

Canolli

 

After I ate this Sicilian confection

'I cried "Holy Mowli" 

So good I ate two

Of the best Caesar Palace canolli

Pastry doggerel George Roberts September 2026

A once in a century event!

 

Image data credit: NASA

A new crater,approximately 200 metres in diameter, on the Moon. Not something that happens very often!

Gaia Awakes

 

Year on Year Growth - fiscally fucking shrewd!

Its all about maintaining the financial bottom line

Exploitation is what made our country great

In the end it will turn out all OK, and just fine

Open up an oilfield and pump a lot more oil

Contaminate another water course

Sell seats to watch seas and oceans boil.

Just do stuff because you can, not because we asked

Use the cash you make to fund our 'security'

Sheep in paramilitary uniforms, faces masked 

Fuck all the polar bears and screw all honey bees

Launch another constellation of satellites

Fell another forest and another million trees

Nothing really matters if the bank balance grows

When an elite owns all the money and  the media

It can manufacture reality and control who knows

Take no responsibility and divert all the blame

Award yourself a big annual bonus

Use economic bollocks to cover up the shame

Deny all wrongdoing, hide every bad decision  

Return all challenges to challengers

Treat adverse criticism with absolute derision 

Faith, fact and fiction, blur the distinction 

Corrupt the incorruptible 

Promote evangelical, salvation from extinction

Deny science, promote opinion, to take it's rightful place 

Cut expenditure on education and welfare 

Let blind ignorance be a grace.

Digitise, computerise and throw away the books

Ensure the elite owns our history

If anyone left subsequently looks

State the fate of 'the poor' is all 'foreigners' fault

 'Illegal immigrants' are to blame!

Keep your hand in the till, just avoid being caught 

If you don't give a shit and are rotten to the core

You can manufacture guns and ordinance

There's profit in hurting humans, pestilence, war.

If the thing you say to day is so fucking bad

What you said and did yesterday seems less so

Not really bad, but demented, mad and rather sad

Sleep secure in bunkers miles bored underground 

With no elite conscience nor morality

We're sure your sleep, will be profoundly sound

And if whilst you are sleeping there is a fall in income rate

You can deploy the troops on waking

To threaten a former friendly foreign state

But growth will inevitably come to a sad sorry end

Finite resources aren't infinite!

Resources on which both we and growth depend

Lie and spread bullshit, whilst it makes you money

Buy sex,  fast cars, yachts, large properties 

So what, if we are unable to purchase pure honey?

The glaciers are melting and slip sliding away

There is no where habitable in space to travel to

It doesn't really matter what your influencers say

Clean water and clean air aren't a human right

Because Billionaires want even more tax free

The Earth and humanity can all go to shite

Gaia has been sleeping, watching time slowly pass

But now she is awakening from her slumber

To unceremoniously and fundamentally, kick arse.

George Roberts - Bleak Doggerel of the Day September 2026.

My son threatened to place me in residential care home if I didn't 'lighten up'. This should do it then!