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CONTENTS
EDITORIAL Ken Clay

ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN – Jim Burns

POEMS – Alexis Lykiard

RAMBLER’S ASSOCIATION – Alexis Lykiard

YOUR DOLE CHERRY – Tanner

BOOKWORMS – Charlie Connolly

EXPERIENCE 181 – Mary Mannion

THE SIEGE PERILOUS – Keith Howden

POEMS – AND LETTERS TO BORIS – Ken Champion

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ALEHOUSE – Mark Ward

AS A TENTANT ON OUR LAND – Katherine Banner

COMPUTER DATING HITS CONNACHT – Aubrey Malone

SELECTIVE EDUCATION – Bob Wild

DON’T LET ME DIE IN THE WORKHOUSE – Tom Kelly

WARREN – Andrew Hart

A LETTER FROM FRANCE – John Lee

THE HUNTER – Martin Keaveney

EDITORIAL

Charlie Connelly was a regular contributor to The New European. I always liked his accounts of European writers and artists but I was instantly gripped by the opening of an article Bookworms which mentioned Southport’s best bookshop Broadhurst’s (now sadly defunct after the death of its proprietor Laurie Hardman)

Laurie had tweeted “I have just had a customer in the shop who does not have a TBR [to be read] pile, he reads a book and when he finishes it he buys another one and he never keeps them so he has no books at home bar the one he is currently reading. I’m having trouble believing him.”

Charlie was fascinated by a German booknut Bücherwurm Bruno Schroder – a retired mining engineer who had put together over his 88 years a collection of 70,000 vols weighing 30 tons. Bruno, being an engineer, also created shelves and even strengthened his house to accommodate this hoard.

It seemed eerily germane to my own bucherwurmist proclivities although I don’t have 70,000 books weighing 30 tons. Good to read, nevertheless, of such madness and think, in comparison, that one is relatively sane. Normal folk, including some Oik contributors, just pile the stuff in the attic or drop it off at Oxfam risking the ultimate put-down “Naah! Hegel’s Phenomenolgy of Mind? We’d never be able to shift that” But you can’t take it with you. The crematorium would probably be burning for days.

Ken Clay October 2025

AS A TENANT ON OUR LAND

Katherine Banner

I turned a blind eye to shoots. And hunts.

I practiced tolerance uneasily –

letting die to let live.

I stayed inside on days the landlord

entertained his friends and

when he rode across

as master of the hounds.

I managed to ignore

the ammunition-belted waterfowlers,

idiotically dressed in camouflage,

crouching under hides,

tooting those whistles they sell

to imitate ducks and call them in

to ponds at dusk. I found it all

ridiculous; I almost laughed.

But when I heard of a plan

to use feed as a lure then

come in force to enjoy the sport,

as the birds dropped down to eat,

I tried to draw a line.

I told the gun-cradling blokes

to leave. Fuck Off! I screamed.

And then they laughed at me,

pointing to the high-pitched,

screeching woman – so far

out of her depth in a man’s world.

Clear evidence her mind was unsound.

And wouldn’t insanity

be grounds for eviction?