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Welcome, friend, to Metroland

You Betjeman

Stob When I saw that my editor had written 'Metro isn't the problem: catapulting into Metro land (and back again) is', I said: 'There's an idea - I could do try out the Betj pastiche macro in my HTML editor'. And scurried out the door before anybody thought to stop me.

Metroland

Bright with non-translucent tiling,
Pastel blobs and ribbon bands,
Lacking 'Start' upon the taskbar
Welcome, friend, to Metroland.

Digital thrill! A brand new touch screen!
Pinch-to-zoom and squeeze-to-stop,
Swipe you thumb for hidden features...
Now finger paint with Photoshop.

Natch you love your dear old programs
They still run, you can be sure,
Unless you're ARMed, in which case: tough luck.
Off you dob to the Windows Store.

Let's set up your Win 8 login:
Add a password with mixed case,
Real name, home address, gender, birth date;
Safe in Ballmer's database.

Of course .NETters are most welcome
C# folks need make no fuss.
(But if your app must run quickly
Herb says best use C++.)

Fanbois! Cast aside your iPads
Charmless iOS cuts no dash
Fanbois! Turn again to Windows,
And, what's more, it offers Flash!

Here's one tablet you can swallow:
'Surface' you will not resist.
Unlike the Nexus it's quite flawless...
Bar that it does not exist.

Bright with non-translucent tiling,
Pastel blobs and ribbon bands,
Lacking 'Start' upon the taskbar
Welcome, friend, to Metroland.

Climate Change

When I was little
the radio would say, in a posh, male voice:

Here is the weather. Today
we are expecting rain in London all morning,
later on clearing from the west.

And you knew where you were
(Poole in my case).

But now,
the Met Office has a
  big,
    black,
      1.2MW
        supercomputer
(which may only be photographed with a
fish-eyelens)
so, to assess its effect,

let's go over to
Jane Geography-Eslevel
at the Weather Centre.

Good morning Verity, and it is
a very messy picture.
Showers will bubble up
and
organise themselves
into fairly persistent bands
although western parts may catch some
hill sunshine
later on. Tomorrow we are expecting a
weather event
with
yellow rain warnings
so do check the website
throughout the day. That's it -
back to Verity for the last verse.

I wonder if
Michael Fish
could be coaxed out of retirement
just to do the weather
for where I discover I now live
here in Fogeyshire.

PS: There is a violent gale howling outside the flat as I type this, ripping the leaves off trees. The BBC local weather website says - honestly, this is Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V - 'fresh southwesterly breeze'. Plus ça change.

Cargoes

Late-night college mainframe, twinkling in its basement,
Pumping 8-bit plaintext to each lonely phosphor screen.
With a cargo of theses,
Essays and experiments,
Games of 'Life' and Snoopies and my first sort routine.

Green-and-bubbly iMac, chic, shiny teardrop,
Ornaments the studio with its snaily silhouette.
With a cargo of Swiss fonts,
Thumbnails and layouts,
Lorem ipsum dolor, sit amet

Grubby XP laptop, with a bashed-up corner,
Grinding through its boot-up 'cos its hard disk's slow and worn.
With a cargo of spreadsheets,
Contracts and invoices
Updates and virus checks and cached, soft porn.

Hoped-for Raspberry Pi-crust…
…hasn't bloody come yet.

Pieces of hair - 0

Though this they roundly do refute,
The council at Argyll and Bute,
The food they offer looks quite vile
The burg(h)ers of Bute and Argyl.

But though its grub looks like the pits
The council’s ban brings lots of hits.
I’d like fame too. How? Here’s my hunch:
A gruesome picture of my lunch.

Pic of Verity's lunch: fancy salad stuff and coffee.


Apologies due to John Betjeman, John Masefield, VEG and of course you, dear reader. That Betj Macro in Full (BBC via YouTube

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