Jeni Barnett

I’m not alone in feeling the enormity of Trumps victory. It was the last thing I needed what with the grey clouds and soggy damp. The alarm went off this morning at 7.30 and I climbed out of bed bent double with the realisation of the American dream. I’d stayed up till 3.30 but the … Read more

The turbulence started when our driver got lost to Gatwick. The queues were like a Polish supermarket that had one black rye loaf left. My breathing was shallow and the Northern git had a cough. Going through security was so rammed the guards just told us to chuck everything in the tray and walk through. … Read more

I have a bag of jelly babies on the kitchen table and a bag of jelly babies in the car door. If I should have a diabetic hypo then four fat jelly babies should do the trick. I dont like jelly babies on account of me eating a black one when I was a kid … Read more

Three and a half weeks ago life was comparatively normal and then wallop. I had to go to the renal unit in Brighton. An old hospital tacked onto a new build. Corridors and lifts porters and stethoscopes. The old git drove us and observed me handing over my protein rich urine sample. Sat in a … Read more

I’ve known Lyn since I was fourteen when she sported a PVC Mac. She went to art school and looked like Twiggy, I have her lithographs on my wall and drawings in the bathroom. She is dead clever, makes exemplary spinach flans with spinach from her garden and could have gone to Cambridge but decided … Read more

Eridge Village Hall has wooden floors and is surrounded by fields. The dawter went to nursery School there thirty five years ago – ‘Little Acorns’- On Thursday 4th July it was the polling station for the 2024 election. I looked up how to tactically vote. Over the years I have always voted Green as the … Read more

My mother will be turning in her grave. One roll for Shitnak, one roll for Farrago and a double axel for Stoma – the derisable name given to Keir by my friend who is about to vote Reform. I told her not to vote for the far right, thus splitting the Tory vote but, to … Read more

It’s June 11th and I’m in a swamp of electoral bilge. Watching the politicians blaming each other for the shit we’re bobbing about in. The language of electioneering that gives me heartburn. The emptiness of their promises, the Tory back slapping, the lies, the ridiculous claims, the endless clichés. Grappling with untruths. Trying to read … Read more

It’s a dirty word, Socialism is, it’s been discredited by men who are only interested in grabbing land, holding power and screwing their people. Socialism is a ‘political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.’ … Read more

Standing on Aldgate East tube station the ‘Start Rite’ advert stared back at me. I’d only been around for about three years and the image terrified me. The children, hand in hand, walking into their future, ‘places to go’, the perspective unsettled me. It led to nowhere. The children, on their own, walking alone into … Read more