You’re probably expecting me to say this but…. No! No! No! A mirror doesn’t ‘just reverse left and right’. A mirror reverses FRONT TO BACK. We’re just so used to assigning the relative lefts and rights of (more or less) bilaterally symmetric people standing in front of us that we do the same trick for the mirror image. Try relabelling the sides in reference to the things in the room instead of left and right – you wink your ‘window side’ eye or wave your razor-holding hand, and lo, the mirror man does exactly the same.

“If you must write prose/poems
The words you use should be your own
Don’t plagiarise or take “on loan”"

Lyrics taken from Cemetry Gates – The Smiths

Suffice to say, I doubt Mozzer would be unduly disturbed by your scorn of or indifference to both him and his lyrics. When Morrissey was asked about his views on those who interpret the intelligence he has expressed throughout his career as an excuse for cynicism and apathy, the following formed part of his response.

“I always get a strong reaction, and my critics are very dedicated – they will stick with me till the end. I seem to infuriate so many people. …..If you are an artist whose career is quite persistently and attentively followed and documented then many writers will deliver unnaturally venomous articles simply with the hope of earning a special place in that artists’ history. Praise is rarely shocking whereas maliciousness is, and the writers who burst the bubble are remembered forever, alas. For me personally, most album reviews tend to review me as a living entity – the actual songs or the singing or the musicianship is secondary compared to the writer’s personal feelings towards …….my face. And, of course, my face rarely goes down well…”

It matters not to those of us who appreciate Morrissey, what the unenlightened believe about his lyrics, or indeed himself. And to Morrissey I say:

“Fifteen minutes with you
Oh, I wouldn’t say no
Oh, people see no worth in you
Oh, but I do”

Lyrics taken from Reel around the Fountain – The Smiths

Morrissey is the most literary singer in British music. His lyrics allude to Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Graham Greene, Keats and Yeats, to name but a few. He has begun concerts with readings from John Betjeman, and performed in front of a 40ft portrait of Edith Sitwell. So it is worth considering his work in a wider context than just pop music.
This is not to say we should call him a poet. He is a singer and songwriter, and his music, voice and appearance are important. But his lyrics bear comparison with other writers and Morrissey himself courts such a view. He has a song entitled Sister, I’m A Poet, and when asked who he admired lyrically, he replied: “Nobody in rock and pop. Elsewhere, the poet John Betjeman.”)
His subject matter has much in common with Philip Larkin and Betjeman. With these quintessential poets of Englishness, he shares a love of the “unpoetic” and a tendency to mix elevated and colloquial idioms (Everyday Is Like Sunday begins with the evocative assonantal drawl of “Trudging slowly over wet sand” and ends with an ironic invitation to “share some grease-tea with me”).
Larkin once said Betjeman’s poetry was capable of “swallowing anything”. The same may be said of Morrissey’s lyrics, which refer to things such as a Frisbee, phlegm lapels, Churchillian legs and a Jensen Interceptor. Morrissey aims to produce pleasure by finding such incongruous things in the aesthetic realm. Everyday things are affectionately preserved, and elevated by their preservation.
Morrissey shares with Betjeman a camp lightness and self-deprecatingly gauche self-image (he sings “I am sick and I am dull and I am plain”, while Betjeman wrote “I am bald and old and green”.) Such lightness, unfortunately, tends to be viewed as a lack of seriousness, rather than as an effect in its own right. This is true of his three-minute “Carry On” vignettes, such as Roy’s Keen or Vicar in a Tutu. For Morrissey, as for Betjeman, the silly, the whimsical, the light-hearted and the gauche are all part of the show, and it would diminish human experience to exclude them
Perhaps the last word should go to Oscar Wilde, whom Morrissey has described as his greatest influence. and who wrote: “If life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.” Morrissey also makes a virtue out of adversity. As he turns 50, we should celebrate the life of someone who has devoted himself to troubling our celebration of life.

If you want to read more…. try
Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart by Gavin Hopps

London, of course, has more than one accent. Subtleties of area, class, and the various cultures. I simply couldn’t hear ‘South-East London’ until I’d lived in Shropshire for about ten years. Then I heard some women on a coach tour, at the next table in a cafe, and thought – Oh! I must sound like that! A weird sensation. Around then I realised that I was beginning not to hear Shrewsbury accents. (Shropshire has more than one, of couse, not to mention the various Welsh and Midlands accents that are common here too.) I sometimes struggle with Birmingham speech, even now. It’s that initial latching on that’s hard, once I’ve ‘got my ear in’, there’s no problem. Perhaps that’s how it should be in print? Only seen when it is specifically noticed?