More bad news out of Iraq. Evidently the religious self-righteous are now laying traps and luring homosexuals to their torture and death through internet chat rooms. This is all done in the name of Islam of course. Allah obviously watches it benignly and with compassion. These deluded sick murderers causing such grievous pain sorrow fear and horrible deaths are proving only one thing, that the men they murder are in all probability a hundred percent better human beings than they. Strangely enough this evidently did not happen under the rule of Saddam Hussein. A great many other people were tortured and killed but not because they were gay. This has only started to happen since the American invasion. Are the Americans going to do anything about it? I hardly think so. What matters the death of faggots? What a benighted country, Iraq that is, not America. What is going to happen as those who pervert Islam grows stronger and stretch its tentacles ever wider? I see yet another country, in the Far East this time, in which the majority of the population is Muslim has adopted Sharia law and brought back stoning to death for adultery, if you’re married that is. If you’re single and get caught out in indulging in a perfectly natural activity, it means a vicious flogging. Of course alcohol etc., is now forbidden and, here we go yet again, god help you if you’re gay and get found out. When will these people ever learn without religious bigotry what it is to be human and that paradise is nothing more than a beautiful myth? Was it the Archbishop of Canterbury a short while ago who burbled something about Sharia law coming to Britain. Was he stoned at the time (no pun intended) or utterly out of his mind? Why not bring back hanging drawing and quartering as a public spectacle?
Friend Ron Southcott in Melbourne reminded me that in my autobiography I mentioned a song my mother sang when I was a child and which included the lines “Tell me again you love me, kiss me on lips and brow” and I would duly follow those instructions. I often wondered about that song and Ron has given me the answer by sending me the entire lyric. The song is called “Parted” and is on a recording sung by Peter Dawson which I have listened to. The only part of the melody I remembered was on those two lines. It is credited to Frederick Weatherly but with a question mark and there is a question of whether it was by Tosti. Someone named Susanna May Lougheed is also mentioned with the date September 18th 1916. It is rather a lovely poem in a highly sentimental way of course and I won’t quote the entire thing, just two verses, one of which contains those immortal remembered lines and I can still see my mother sitting at the piano and turning around at the appropriate moment to be kissed on lips and brow before turning back to continue.

Dearest the night is passing
Waneth the trembling moon.
Hark! how the wind ariseth,
Morn will be here so soon.

Tell me again you love me –
Kiss me on lips and brow,
Love of my soul, I love you,
How can I leave you now?

Okay, so it goes a wee bit over the top in true Victorian or Edwardian tear-jerking fashion despite the date of 1916 but still not to be sniggered at in twenty-first century embarrassment.