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Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025, Weekend Supplement 9. This falls on September 27^th where a number of extraordinary events in history occurred across the centuries. In 1066 William the Conqueror began the Norman invasion of England; in 1592 the Siege of Vienna by Suleiman the Magnificent leading the forces of the Ottoman Empire was turned back; in 1908 the first production model of the Model T rolled off the line at the Ford plant in Detroit kick-starting the world’s love affair with the automobile and utterly transforming society.

90 years later, in 1998, two young Stanford graduates founded Google and the subsequent upheaval wrought by these tech bros and their ilk is unfolding before us- like a dystopian nightmare, IMHO. But, as ever has been the case, the opinion of an ordinary person like me counts for exactly nothing. However, the mayfly keeps on doing its mayfly thing (evanescent though it may be) and I will keep podcasting for a just little while longer.

And the retrospective view will continue for just a bit, too. In 1988, about half my lifetime ago, as April rolled round, I learned that Australia was going to let me (and my family) back into the great southern land. You see, foolishly, I had neglected to take out Australian citizenship as I had been advised to do during our first sojourn in Oz in the 1970s and, consequently, we had to jump through a variety of bureaucratic hoops to obtain the necessary re-entry documents.

1988 was the Bicentenary of the 1^st Fleet’s landing at Botany Bay. Can you guess which group in this broad, brown land decided it was not a cause for celebration, then or now? 1988 was also the year Richard Thompson recorded one of his best albums, Amnesia. Pharaoh, the final song on the record, is one I introduced to the group Banter in the mid-1990s. The feisty commentator altrockchick in her 2018 review has this to say,

Pharaoh was written during the years when Thatcher-Reagan economic and anti-labour policies transferred most of the power in those two democracies to the financiers and their elite brethren, “Pharaoh” is Richard Thompson’s attempt to wake us…up and realize just how little control we have over our lives. “We’re all working for the pharaoh” may seem an exaggeration in our… creature-comfort-oriented societies, but the painful truth is that the only substantive differences are in dress and in the means of oppression. Physical slavery has been replaced by wage slavery, and the whip has been replaced by more sophisticated techniques of control—adopt a veneer of competent certainty, scare… people, fill their ears with bullshit and give them just enough to leave them fat, dumb and drunk. In the years since, the force of this critique has intensified: [insert song]

Should you grow tired of the cool certitude of the Classical temperament, the Pre-Raphaelites will appeal: the paintings of the drowned Ophelia by John Everett Millais or The Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse at the fateful moment she looks out the window at Sir Lancelot are right up there in the Romantic pantheon.

I have a particular affinity for the poetry of Christina Rossetti having, in 2023, set her sonnet Remember to music which can be found in Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 13. Her supernatural poem, The Goblin Market was the inspiration for the song that closes out this letter- Fete (spelled f.e.t.e) and yes, the ambiguity of the homophone is deliberate! These lines from her poem provided the kernel for the song Fete,

“Lie close,” Laura said,/Pricking up her golden head:/“We must not look at goblin men,/We must not buy their fruits:/Who knows upon what soil they fed/Their hungry thirsty roots?”/“Come buy,” call the goblins/Hobbling down the glen./“Oh,” cried Lizzie, “Laura, Laura,/You should not peep at goblin men.”

Amy Troolin, MA, from eNotes provides the following synopsis of the Rossetti poem: The Goblin Market tells the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who confront the allure and danger of a group of sinister goblin merchants. Beneath its fairytale-like surface, the poem explores deep themes of temptation, desire, consequences, and self-sacrificial love.

In my song, Laura is the sensible elder sister, and I have given the name Kate to her younger, flighty sibling. There is just one evil merchant in my song and the girls escape his malevolent clutches. Unfortunately, though, in this fallen world of ours, matters are far too often not resolved in favour of the forces of good.

The exploitation of the vulnerable, especially children, calls to my mind the King James Version of Matthew Chapter 18, verse 6, But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. [insert-song]

Lest we get too downhearted, let’s console ourselves with the final ten lines from Adam Zagajewski’s poem Try to Praise the Mutilated World, translated by Clare Cavanagh, You should praise the mutilated world./Remember the moments when we were together/in a white room and the curtain fluttered./Return in thought to the concert where music flared./You gathered acorns in the park in autumn/and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars./Praise the mutilated world/and the gray feather a thrush lost,/and the gentle light that strays and vanishes/and returns.

Poets so very often get it right, don’t they? And long may that gentle light return- even though it may seem to stray and vanish.

Pharaoh (words and Music by Richard Thompson)

Pharoah, he sits in his tower of steel The dogs of money all at his heel
Magicians cry, “Oh truth! Oh real!” We’re all working for the Pharaoh

A thousand eyes, a thousand ears He feeds us all, he feeds our fears
Don’t stir in your sleep, my dears We’re all working for the Pharaoh

And it’s Egypt land, Egypt land We’re all living in Egypt land
Tell me, brother, don’t you understand That we’re all working for the Pharaoh?

Hidden from the eye of chance The men of shadow dance a dance
We’re all struck into a trance We’re all working for the Pharaoh

The idols rise into the sky Pyramids soar, Sphinxes lie
Head of dog, Osiris eye We’re all working for the Pharaoh

And it’s Egypt land, Egypt land We’re all living in Egypt land
Tell me, sister, don’t you understand? We’re all working for the Pharaoh

I dig a ditch; I shape a stone Another battlement for his throne
Another day on earth is flown We’re all working for the Pharaoh

Now you call it England, you call it Spain Egypt rules with the whip and chain
Moses, free my people again! We’re all working for the Pharaoh

And it’s Egypt land, Egypt land We’re all living in Egypt land
Brothers and sisters, don’t you understand That we’re all working for the Pharaoh?

Pharaoh, he sits in his tower of steel Around his feet the princes kneel
Far beneath we shoulder the wheel We’re all working for the Pharaoh

Fete (words and music by Quentin Bega)

The winter sun is shining down the flyers out about the town

And now the parish fete has set its wares- the people wait

The wonders that they all will see on tables and stands almost for free

There are plants in pots with macramé knots to hang about verandas plain

There are books and prints and paintings wrought and curios for you to claim

Laura and her sister Kate are laughing as they pass the gate

Revealing tables under shade with a dazzling range of goods displayed

They agree to meet under the ghost gum at the hour of half past one

Laura likes exotic trinkets Kate want to taste the range of sweets

And so they part exploring what the fete will reveal to them in store

In a shadowed corner a man sets up his stall

Baskets of strange-shaped fancies seem beckoning to all

But where are all the people the silence like a pall

Shrouds the magic table as incense rises and falls

Here comes Kate with a coin Eager the little man to join

Laura checks he