On Pleasure Pieland islanders live life under a system called pie-in-the-sky. Plumbers fit pipe dreams and statistics on counting your blessings are always high.
Opticians sell rose-tinted glasses to see good things over the horizon and in every house, doors are fitted so that when one closes, another one opens.
Every silver cloud has a golden lining and everyone’s glass is always half-full. Every adult has the job they want and every pupil is the teacher’s pet in every school.
There’s love at first sight and love that lasts and, for those more adventurous, true love in blasts. Underdogs win and no-one feels like they’ve lost even when they lose. Everyone walks around in everybody else’s shoes.
Pielanders are so happy they look pie-eyed. They’re easy to recognise. Doctors prescribe magic potions for free and hospitals are only there to rest in cos nobody really dies.
John Di Girolamo was born during the swinging middle ages as the Battle of Hastings raged outside on a cold, miserable Saturday evening just outside 'The Juggler's Arms' in Oxford, Torquay and Exeter at the same time. Born to a family, he spent most of his early years learning how to open umbrellas for a rainy day, and the runnings of horses and sword swallowers and the costs they incurred. Having graduated in 'Circus Management', he took to spinning plates for a living and persuaded his father to buy a restaurant to fund what he believed would be a lucrative career move. However, in the the days leading to The Age of Post Punk', he quit and would embark upon what was to go down in history doodles as a notebook.
Few knew it then but he had already started copying poetry, and often written by other people. As the minutes passed by, and Sardinia loomed, the idea of collages and drawings suddenly hit him as a way of filling up what had become a kind of book with pages and all. One day while storming off in a huff because his mum told him to, he struck upon the idea of putting it all together over a long-playing record (later a CD) and during a commercial break in the digital age, decided a blog would end Cromwell's ill-fated republic.
Sent off by recorded post, it would be by chance that his poems would get to their ultimate destination as, meanwhile, his pigeon who had queued so loyally for so long, sadly died the day before it was sacked.
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