Hi Loren
Haven’t got Semolina Pilchard worked out yet but trying to understand the phrase enabled me to see the symbolic meaning of the following passage:
“Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun
If the sun don't come
You get a tan from standing in the English rain”
The author is punning on the word sun to indicate ‘son’. Thus “waiting for the sun” indicates waiting for the ‘son’, or in the context of the Book of Revelation the author is working within, the resurrection of Jesus. This understanding makes the passage comprehensible. It describes the ‘Easter Rising’, the name given to the Irish rebellion of 1916, which occurred over Easter.
The author know that Jesus is fictional thus “if the ‘son’ don’t come” sarcastically indicates that Jesus did not “come” to save the Catholics during the Easter Rising rebellion who, thus, would get their ‘Tan’ from the ‘English rain”. The ‘Tan’ was the nickname of the British soldiers who came and put down the rebellion – the infamous ‘Black and Tan’. The “English rain” would therefore be the automatic weapon fire that ‘rained’ on the Irish during ‘Bloody Sunday’ the name given to the event where the ‘Tan’ fired into a crowd of Irish Catholics.
Note that the author always stays within his context of symbolic genocide. His cryptic use of Carroll’s ‘Walrus’ poem, the Boer War, Bloody Tuesday, Easter Rising, Dr. Strangelove, Joyce’s four Horsemen passage and the Book of Daniel always describes genocide. The question being whose genocide is the author predicting?
Joe
