Another winter now scores our years
But my gaze falls ever gently on you
Like the slow soft snowfall outside
It gently glides down your hair, your cheeks
Then melts away on the warm loved curves of your body
Be mulled this winter by love and passion
That make you tingle and be cosy inside
May you need no gloves but my cupped old hands
Nor wine to make your head spin and cheeks flush red
A look should do, a crinkled smile,
Eyes still bright and just for you
In this season for gifts and wishes
My humblest gift is just this
Be loved this winter
Beloved forever.
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Sunday 4 December 2011
Ear Hairs... And Worms
As we ...ahem... ‘gain in maturity’, why is it that hair stops growing where you want it to, and where it happily always used to, i.e. on top of your head, and instead starts sprouting out of completely new and utterly pointless places - your ears and nostrils? And - why does it have the consistency of pubic hair that’s been taking steroids...? After these 1000's of years of evolution, why has nature deduced that one solitary curly black wire growing out of the edge of an ear-lobe is a ‘good idea’? And the tufts out of the nostrils - just why? To keep your old nose warmer in winter? Could they all be, in fact, examples of ‘negative natural selection’ to make us (i.e. the older, past- the-genetic-sell-by-date human Ford Zephyrs) less attractive, and therefore discourage potential mates who should be looking for younger partners, to better keep the species going?
Hmmm...seems to be working, then...
And do you ever get ‘ear worms’? Tunes that tunnel into your brain, and keep repeating themselves endlessly in your head, and you can’t make them stop, round and round ... like the windmills in your mind, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning... stop! stop! Stop! ...all the dancing, give me time to breath... argh! The (splendidly-named) Martha and the Muffins recording of ‘Echo Beach’ ...far away in time, Echo Beach, far away in time... is always likely to lodge in my brain for a limited run, like Panto at the local theatre, but sometimes it can be a tune that I don’t even like - now how maddening is that? They’re like musical squatters in your brain - you just can’t evict them. Mental hiccups in the key of C. Maybe the ear-hairs act like wireless antennae picking up Radio 2, like old record player stylii used to?
Ah record players... 'far away in time...' That's it now.
Hmmm...seems to be working, then...
And do you ever get ‘ear worms’? Tunes that tunnel into your brain, and keep repeating themselves endlessly in your head, and you can’t make them stop, round and round ... like the windmills in your mind, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning... stop! stop! Stop! ...all the dancing, give me time to breath... argh! The (splendidly-named) Martha and the Muffins recording of ‘Echo Beach’ ...far away in time, Echo Beach, far away in time... is always likely to lodge in my brain for a limited run, like Panto at the local theatre, but sometimes it can be a tune that I don’t even like - now how maddening is that? They’re like musical squatters in your brain - you just can’t evict them. Mental hiccups in the key of C. Maybe the ear-hairs act like wireless antennae picking up Radio 2, like old record player stylii used to?
Ah record players... 'far away in time...' That's it now.
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Down The Aisle
The thing about a little Surrey supermarket is that you do sometimes get interesting people popping in.
That Prince Albert of Monaco nipped in the other night – pleasant little chap. He rather shyly bought a packet of Durex – and a copy of The Daily Mail to hide it under, which I thought was sweet. He asked me quietly if he could get a refund later if he didn’t need them, so I just told him to keep hold of the receipt and that seemed to make the little fellow happy.
Rupert Murdoch was in. All he bought was phone top-up cards, which I thought was unusual, but then he has lots of relatives in Australia, doesn’t he, so he must be on the phone all the time...
Whenever I see The Queen going down the aisle, I always say hello and see if she needs a hand. She’s got to the age when she's starting to forget things – she’ll ask where the Marmite is when she’s standing right next to it, bless her – and she’s always asking me to get her a can of Basics tuna off the top shelf. She just can’t reach up there, the little dear. I do think supermarkets should consider the needs of short people more. Don’t tell anyone, but I put through her two cans of dog food but only rang one up on the till – well, you’ve got to help the old folk a little, haven’t you? She always gives a little wave as she leaves, which is nice.
Well – time to go, I guess. Oh - we might see Nick and Dave in the shop today. It’s so good, I think, that we’re so relaxed about gay couples now that a pair can govern the country and no one makes any comments. Nick will get his champagne, and Dave his six-pack of Stella... Nick always seems to pay though.
See you later!
That Prince Albert of Monaco nipped in the other night – pleasant little chap. He rather shyly bought a packet of Durex – and a copy of The Daily Mail to hide it under, which I thought was sweet. He asked me quietly if he could get a refund later if he didn’t need them, so I just told him to keep hold of the receipt and that seemed to make the little fellow happy.
Rupert Murdoch was in. All he bought was phone top-up cards, which I thought was unusual, but then he has lots of relatives in Australia, doesn’t he, so he must be on the phone all the time...
Whenever I see The Queen going down the aisle, I always say hello and see if she needs a hand. She’s got to the age when she's starting to forget things – she’ll ask where the Marmite is when she’s standing right next to it, bless her – and she’s always asking me to get her a can of Basics tuna off the top shelf. She just can’t reach up there, the little dear. I do think supermarkets should consider the needs of short people more. Don’t tell anyone, but I put through her two cans of dog food but only rang one up on the till – well, you’ve got to help the old folk a little, haven’t you? She always gives a little wave as she leaves, which is nice.
Well – time to go, I guess. Oh - we might see Nick and Dave in the shop today. It’s so good, I think, that we’re so relaxed about gay couples now that a pair can govern the country and no one makes any comments. Nick will get his champagne, and Dave his six-pack of Stella... Nick always seems to pay though.
See you later!
Wednesday 23 November 2011
A string of consciousness
25 Jan 2009
Use your mind.
Sometimes we echo newspaper headlines to be accepted in a group. Be careful to keep knowledge of reality. Weigh truth on your hand. Lightly, with wonderment and respect. You can dash it to the ground, or just let it slip off carelessly, or treasure it.
Every good boy deserves favour, for all children enchant.
Good God, there’s an orchestra playing in my head! (Ah - I’ve got my headphones on.)
My hip hurts. Never fall off a ladder. Never fall - off a ladder, in love, under a spell, from grace... There’s always at least a bruise, and sometimes it gets worse with age.
My ankles itch like crazy. Dry skin, or wrong wash powder. ‘Scratch my back’ we say. I literally used to for a partner - there was a spot low down that needed a good doing over now and then. Then she ended up doing me over and is now just an itch in my mind. Life’s a circle, eh?
Or maybe it’s a string (or a superstring)? I guess DNA is a string - so life literally is a string! I wonder if it’s tuned? Is that why music exists? The harmonic resonances resonate with our DNA? It’s not the music of the spheres but of the string... And though we're tied to our past, as our lives unravel we're pulled forwards...
Take more time, listen more carefully, and filter out the noise for the real music of life. It is there. I can hear this orchestra... in my head...
Sometimes we echo newspaper headlines to be accepted in a group. Be careful to keep knowledge of reality. Weigh truth on your hand. Lightly, with wonderment and respect. You can dash it to the ground, or just let it slip off carelessly, or treasure it.
Every good boy deserves favour, for all children enchant.
Good God, there’s an orchestra playing in my head! (Ah - I’ve got my headphones on.)
My hip hurts. Never fall off a ladder. Never fall - off a ladder, in love, under a spell, from grace... There’s always at least a bruise, and sometimes it gets worse with age.
My ankles itch like crazy. Dry skin, or wrong wash powder. ‘Scratch my back’ we say. I literally used to for a partner - there was a spot low down that needed a good doing over now and then. Then she ended up doing me over and is now just an itch in my mind. Life’s a circle, eh?
Or maybe it’s a string (or a superstring)? I guess DNA is a string - so life literally is a string! I wonder if it’s tuned? Is that why music exists? The harmonic resonances resonate with our DNA? It’s not the music of the spheres but of the string... And though we're tied to our past, as our lives unravel we're pulled forwards...
Take more time, listen more carefully, and filter out the noise for the real music of life. It is there. I can hear this orchestra... in my head...
Down The Roker Hotel...
17 Dec 2008
“By, but Howard Wilkinson was a barmpot, though!”
“There was ower much abstruse dialecticism in his half-time talks, man - not enough tea-cups being hoyed aboot”
“Aye - abstruse dialecticism is a bugger, mind.”
“Well, there’s a time and place, man, bonny lad...”
“Aye.”
“Aye.”
“Wee do yee fancy, like?”
“Oooh, that Penny Lancaster... legs up to me ears”
“Nah, nah, man - for manager?”
“Oh aye. Why Martin Jol would be canny, like. He’s done areet with the jormans.”
“And he’s Dutch, so he’s bound to be relaxed, eh?”
“By, we weren’t half relaxed when we went to Amsterdam!”
“Horizontal, man.”
“Nah that was later”
“Oh aye”
“Or maybe Gerard Hoooooulier? Canny name to chant that, mind.”
“Worth considering just on that basis”
“Mind... Penny’s got better legs.”
“Oh aye. Never did like frog’s legs, like, me.”
“Nah.”
“Nah.”
“My round, then”
“There was ower much abstruse dialecticism in his half-time talks, man - not enough tea-cups being hoyed aboot”
“Aye - abstruse dialecticism is a bugger, mind.”
“Well, there’s a time and place, man, bonny lad...”
“Aye.”
“Aye.”
“Wee do yee fancy, like?”
“Oooh, that Penny Lancaster... legs up to me ears”
“Nah, nah, man - for manager?”
“Oh aye. Why Martin Jol would be canny, like. He’s done areet with the jormans.”
“And he’s Dutch, so he’s bound to be relaxed, eh?”
“By, we weren’t half relaxed when we went to Amsterdam!”
“Horizontal, man.”
“Nah that was later”
“Oh aye”
“Or maybe Gerard Hoooooulier? Canny name to chant that, mind.”
“Worth considering just on that basis”
“Mind... Penny’s got better legs.”
“Oh aye. Never did like frog’s legs, like, me.”
“Nah.”
“Nah.”
“My round, then”
Monday 21 November 2011
'All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Do not land on Europa.'
Studies of data from Galileo appear to show a huge lake, not far below the surface, and it's mixing with the ice above. All apparently very good signs for potential life there.
europa
Will Arthur C. Clarke turn out to be 'on the money' yet again? The quote was from 2010, when a re-activated HAL conveyed a message from the beings responsible for the black monoliths, who had seen emerging life on Europa - and did not want it interfered with.
So my question is - do we have a right to potentially muck up life on another world? This isn't a tribe in Africa who are just going to want TVs and Man Utd shirts anyway, even if we try not to spoil their current native lifestyle. No - this is life (if indeed we find it) that has evolved entirely off this planet (assuming panspermia is not correct). Extra-terrestrial life - which could be changed/damaged/destroyed if we send probes there, contrary to HAL's warning. Haven't we ceased colonial ways of thinking? Should we not tread very carefully? Or do we have a right - or even a requirement - to spread our human seed on other worlds?
europa
Will Arthur C. Clarke turn out to be 'on the money' yet again? The quote was from 2010, when a re-activated HAL conveyed a message from the beings responsible for the black monoliths, who had seen emerging life on Europa - and did not want it interfered with.
So my question is - do we have a right to potentially muck up life on another world? This isn't a tribe in Africa who are just going to want TVs and Man Utd shirts anyway, even if we try not to spoil their current native lifestyle. No - this is life (if indeed we find it) that has evolved entirely off this planet (assuming panspermia is not correct). Extra-terrestrial life - which could be changed/damaged/destroyed if we send probes there, contrary to HAL's warning. Haven't we ceased colonial ways of thinking? Should we not tread very carefully? Or do we have a right - or even a requirement - to spread our human seed on other worlds?
Thursday 17 November 2011
Autumn
04 Nov 2009
Autumn just seems to arrive one day. As if there were a knock at the door, you wonder who it could be, go to answer and... ‘oh - it’s you’. Like a sudden splash of cold water to the face, it’s not completely unpleasant, even a bit refreshing, just a slight shock.
To be honest, a week or two before, as I walked for my morning bus, overhead a v-shaped flight of geese headed steadily away to the South. I thought ‘Ah-ha! The geese are flying South. This means that either our paratroopers are dropping into plucky little Belgium tonight to meet up with the Resistance, OR summer may be over...’ I forgot it then, but two weeks later, suddenly, one morning it was autumn.
The sky was a paler, insipid light blue. The jacket collar came up for the first time. Two Surrey dinkies kettled the windscreen of their little car in our quiet street, laughing softly, intimately. With my hands in pockets and my breath steaming at the bus-stop, I watched every car driver go past, hunched forward to peer through that one area of the windscreen that had properly cleared. (Do we all do that? Like picking our noses at the wheel at traffic lights?) The bus stopped, the door opened and the driver was wearing a cute little woolly hat.
‘Autumn - appearing now at a street near you...’
The driver actually said ‘Hi, Cliff!’ as I got on. Rather surreal, but - hey - I do surreal, so that’s fine. It's the season for changes, anyway...
I don’t think of years ending at the end of December, but rather when autumn shows up on my doorstep. The warmth of summer is finally lost, the plants will die and the world loses a little joy and sparkle. This is really when the year is expended and nearly done. I don’t mind - autumn has a beauty of its own. The wonderful variety of leaf colours. The childish pleasure of kicking up the leaves on woodland paths. Walking with a chill on your cheeks, but simultaneously cosy inside under a quilted jacket and scarf.
But there was one more surprise that morning. As the bus pulled up over a small rise into Cranleigh, low across the common, there was suddenly a massive nuclear explosion that flooded my vision with white, yellow and orange light before I blinked and averted my eyes, the incredibly bright light still ghosted on to my retina. The low early autumn sun shone right in, along the bus, sudden and startling. Why that day? Why do you suddenly notice so many things on one day? Autumn - it catches you out, I tell you.
I wonder if more relationships die in autumn too? Do we sense the time for change?
The very air is different today
A flock of geese flies honking away
Through autumn sky of pink and lead grey
Haze round the streetlights dulls every ray
And warmth ebbs away: this is the day
No talk of weather: I have my say
Love thought immortal was naught but a play
Whose scenes are done and so I must pay
Emotion flies South, cold reason holds sway
Seasons must change, so go your own way
Though long delayed, autumn came today
Yet the birds had known as they flew away
That this was the time, this was the day.
To be honest, a week or two before, as I walked for my morning bus, overhead a v-shaped flight of geese headed steadily away to the South. I thought ‘Ah-ha! The geese are flying South. This means that either our paratroopers are dropping into plucky little Belgium tonight to meet up with the Resistance, OR summer may be over...’ I forgot it then, but two weeks later, suddenly, one morning it was autumn.
The sky was a paler, insipid light blue. The jacket collar came up for the first time. Two Surrey dinkies kettled the windscreen of their little car in our quiet street, laughing softly, intimately. With my hands in pockets and my breath steaming at the bus-stop, I watched every car driver go past, hunched forward to peer through that one area of the windscreen that had properly cleared. (Do we all do that? Like picking our noses at the wheel at traffic lights?) The bus stopped, the door opened and the driver was wearing a cute little woolly hat.
‘Autumn - appearing now at a street near you...’
The driver actually said ‘Hi, Cliff!’ as I got on. Rather surreal, but - hey - I do surreal, so that’s fine. It's the season for changes, anyway...
I don’t think of years ending at the end of December, but rather when autumn shows up on my doorstep. The warmth of summer is finally lost, the plants will die and the world loses a little joy and sparkle. This is really when the year is expended and nearly done. I don’t mind - autumn has a beauty of its own. The wonderful variety of leaf colours. The childish pleasure of kicking up the leaves on woodland paths. Walking with a chill on your cheeks, but simultaneously cosy inside under a quilted jacket and scarf.
But there was one more surprise that morning. As the bus pulled up over a small rise into Cranleigh, low across the common, there was suddenly a massive nuclear explosion that flooded my vision with white, yellow and orange light before I blinked and averted my eyes, the incredibly bright light still ghosted on to my retina. The low early autumn sun shone right in, along the bus, sudden and startling. Why that day? Why do you suddenly notice so many things on one day? Autumn - it catches you out, I tell you.
I wonder if more relationships die in autumn too? Do we sense the time for change?
The very air is different today
A flock of geese flies honking away
Through autumn sky of pink and lead grey
Haze round the streetlights dulls every ray
And warmth ebbs away: this is the day
No talk of weather: I have my say
Love thought immortal was naught but a play
Whose scenes are done and so I must pay
Emotion flies South, cold reason holds sway
Seasons must change, so go your own way
Though long delayed, autumn came today
Yet the birds had known as they flew away
That this was the time, this was the day.
Underpants in Guildford
19 Nov 2009
I went into Guildford to buy new underpants. It’s not really such a big day, is it? Not really up there with ‘my first sexual experience’ or ‘the day I met Eddie Izzard in a lift in Boston...’ It was a problem though. I mean for decades I have always bought whatever pants my current partner liked. My ex-wife, of a lifetime (and a house) ago, liked boxers, so it used to be those. Mind you I was never that comfortable - they always seemed to be the loose, floppy insubstantial kind back then, and after a lifetime of things being held snugly in place, it almost felt like stepping outside naked.
My next long-term partner had a preference for slips and targas and the like and they did the job for her, which was fine by me, but years later this 59-year body looks a tad ridiculous clad like a lad from The Chippendales. So now, on my own, with no one to please, interest, (or make laugh) - what to buy? Well, working class habits die hard, and there was a deal on boxers, so that made the decision. It turns out these are the snug kind now anyway, so I’m quite happy with that. At 59 I discover new underwear - the world continues to astonish, eh?
Since when did most shop assistants start wearing all black? I noticed that nearly everywhere I go that is now the regulation uniform. It’s ok - just odd that it seems to be across the board, and it seems a bit... um... ‘military’. The security guards I see wear all black, too, and is it mandatory that all security guards have shaven heads? It’s like an audition for ‘The King and I’...
Where do birds go to die? I walked under a bridge on a path by the riverside and passed close by a sad pigeon huddled there who barely moved as I passed him - I nearly stood on him. He didn’t look too grand - and it made me wonder why I never see dead birds. The towns are always full of pigeons, sparrows (though fewer these days), starlings, etc., and gardens have their blue tits, robins and others, yet I can’t remember the last time I saw a dead one.
A white van goes past with ‘TRW Solicitors’ on the side. It has a roof rack with an extension ladder lashed to it. For a firm of solicitors? What next? A motorcycle delivery man for La Senza? Would he have to wear black leather boxers, then? Actually, I think both my ex’s would be happy with that... probably Eddie Izzard too...
My next long-term partner had a preference for slips and targas and the like and they did the job for her, which was fine by me, but years later this 59-year body looks a tad ridiculous clad like a lad from The Chippendales. So now, on my own, with no one to please, interest, (or make laugh) - what to buy? Well, working class habits die hard, and there was a deal on boxers, so that made the decision. It turns out these are the snug kind now anyway, so I’m quite happy with that. At 59 I discover new underwear - the world continues to astonish, eh?
Since when did most shop assistants start wearing all black? I noticed that nearly everywhere I go that is now the regulation uniform. It’s ok - just odd that it seems to be across the board, and it seems a bit... um... ‘military’. The security guards I see wear all black, too, and is it mandatory that all security guards have shaven heads? It’s like an audition for ‘The King and I’...
Where do birds go to die? I walked under a bridge on a path by the riverside and passed close by a sad pigeon huddled there who barely moved as I passed him - I nearly stood on him. He didn’t look too grand - and it made me wonder why I never see dead birds. The towns are always full of pigeons, sparrows (though fewer these days), starlings, etc., and gardens have their blue tits, robins and others, yet I can’t remember the last time I saw a dead one.
A white van goes past with ‘TRW Solicitors’ on the side. It has a roof rack with an extension ladder lashed to it. For a firm of solicitors? What next? A motorcycle delivery man for La Senza? Would he have to wear black leather boxers, then? Actually, I think both my ex’s would be happy with that... probably Eddie Izzard too...
A day at the seaside with Sue
11 Feb 2010
Unseen beyond the sand hill
The wind-raged sea is heard
Groaning and moaning
Growling and rumbling
You stagger up the mound
While the caged beast
Is thrashing on the other side
At the top now -
- And senses swing to overload
Foaming, churning banks of angry waves
Crash and smash before you
The wind strains your hair with its force
Pushes your head sideways
Salt spray lashes your tongue
As you turn, gulping to catch breath
Laughing, gasping,
Straining, resisting,
Exulting in agreed surrender
Raw and hungry nature
Roaring with menace - only just held back
Heaving and pounding and alive
The sea - and you.
Another day
07 Apr 2010
and a thousand and one things I want to say
but there's no one to hear this one-man play
my stage is bare and the theatre too
just these few scribbled words to pester you
so on with the wig and mask for my face
and wait for the call to take up my place
but there's no one to hear this one-man play
my stage is bare and the theatre too
just these few scribbled words to pester you
so on with the wig and mask for my face
and wait for the call to take up my place
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern LIVE !
03 May 2010
I read a book over the weekend. Now that’s not exactly world-shattering, but I’m quite pleased with it, as I was thinking lately how little I now read, yet how avid a reader I was as a teenager. Perhaps the simple option of the TV remote is too easily at hand. Perhaps the need to find reading glasses now lazily mitigates against it. Whatever - I want to get back to it, and thoroughly enjoyed reading Shapiro’s ‘1599’ - one year in Shakespeare’s life and the changing world about him that year and how each intersected and interacted. Fascinating and revealing - about both.
I always found his plays impenetrable because of their language, so had taken little interest in them, although I have long enjoyed the theatre - and especially anything by Tom Stoppard. So, having hugely enjoyed his ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’, and then later ‘Shakespeare in Love’, which he co-wrote and is full of his usual jokes and allusions, I found myself, against my previous inclinations, becoming interested in the man Shakespeare. When I then read that Hamlet seemed to have references to the contemporary debates about the cosmological alternatives of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, Thomas Digges et al., then I knew more was going on than I had realised, and I was finally, officially, interested. It’s a bit like Googling, in a way - one thing leads to another and you reach a destination that was never on your original road map. Oh - and I went to The Globe for the first time last year and suddenly I also ‘got’ the way he included the audience. Of course he wrote for them, but I suddenly realised that he really did write for them: ‘we are all players’ It was their daily Eastenders, block-buster, and comedy programme - and they were a tangible, visible, smell-able, reactive part, not invisible behind stage lights in a blacked-out auditorium.
So I’m on a new voyage. Isn’t it great when you discover a new area to investigate at this age, and know there is just loads to get your teeth into? Why then, the world’s my oyster...
I always found his plays impenetrable because of their language, so had taken little interest in them, although I have long enjoyed the theatre - and especially anything by Tom Stoppard. So, having hugely enjoyed his ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’, and then later ‘Shakespeare in Love’, which he co-wrote and is full of his usual jokes and allusions, I found myself, against my previous inclinations, becoming interested in the man Shakespeare. When I then read that Hamlet seemed to have references to the contemporary debates about the cosmological alternatives of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, Thomas Digges et al., then I knew more was going on than I had realised, and I was finally, officially, interested. It’s a bit like Googling, in a way - one thing leads to another and you reach a destination that was never on your original road map. Oh - and I went to The Globe for the first time last year and suddenly I also ‘got’ the way he included the audience. Of course he wrote for them, but I suddenly realised that he really did write for them: ‘we are all players’ It was their daily Eastenders, block-buster, and comedy programme - and they were a tangible, visible, smell-able, reactive part, not invisible behind stage lights in a blacked-out auditorium.
So I’m on a new voyage. Isn’t it great when you discover a new area to investigate at this age, and know there is just loads to get your teeth into? Why then, the world’s my oyster...
The stars are going out
06 Feb 2011
The stars are going out.
One by one – I hardly noticed at first. Then I realised The Plough was missing one star. Then Orion looked wrong...
I know they aren’t really going out. It’s all in my head. Somehow I can selectively and repetitively block out stars. I have no idea how that is possible – but then I have no idea how I lift this glass either – I just do. My brain takes care of it. Or maybe the glass isn’t there. That’s the problem now. Once you start to doubt reality – once it starts to change, and you know it hasn’t really (no one else notices) – then where does it stop? What is ‘reality’ out there, and what is ‘reality’ inside my head? And is there – was there ever – any difference? Do I really know that no one else notices the stars, or is that something else my brain has made up for me?
The stars are going out.
Or maybe it’s just clouds.
One by one – I hardly noticed at first. Then I realised The Plough was missing one star. Then Orion looked wrong...
I know they aren’t really going out. It’s all in my head. Somehow I can selectively and repetitively block out stars. I have no idea how that is possible – but then I have no idea how I lift this glass either – I just do. My brain takes care of it. Or maybe the glass isn’t there. That’s the problem now. Once you start to doubt reality – once it starts to change, and you know it hasn’t really (no one else notices) – then where does it stop? What is ‘reality’ out there, and what is ‘reality’ inside my head? And is there – was there ever – any difference? Do I really know that no one else notices the stars, or is that something else my brain has made up for me?
The stars are going out.
Or maybe it’s just clouds.
A teen in Sunderland
17 Feb 2010
Did you rebel against school uniform in your teens and start to add ‘extras’ ? Around 17, I was under the illusion that my bright yellow M&S cardy gave me the all the insouciant rebelliousness of a young James Dean. An impression which I sought to enhance by always turning up the collar of my pale green mackintosh - passed down to me by my raffish cousin, an oral hygienist in the RAF, who allegedly serially seduced young women by letting them know (confidentially) that he 'worked for the government’ but would then steadfastly refuse to say any more about it.
His best mate (who he had schooled to call him ‘James’ in blond company) had several wonderfully placid black Labradors that would always pad along calmly a pace or two behind The Master. My parents always had pets too - well, to be pedantic, a succession of strays - of varying pedigree, demeanour and ability to reciprocate emotion. There was a sad works cat which had had far too many kittens in its short life and now just wished to be left alone quietly underneath the bed. There was a fox terrier (ish) who, as soon as he got excited at all, would start chasing his tail in demented circles, and if the excitement continued would also start to bark at it quite angrily as it continued to run annoyingly away from him, until he collapsed in a panting and unfulfilled heap. And there was once a pet snail that left messages for my mother on the kitchen floor - if only she could decipher what they meant.
My favourite, though, was Percy the Pigeon. Percy had damaged a wing and so was duly adopted, and being temporarily relieved of all flying duties, was happy enough to walk around the kitchen for a week or two, skilfully dodging feet, while repairs were effected, occasionally walking out into the yard where he could look up and count his brothers out and then count them all back in again. Eventually he recovered enough to rejoin them, but never forgot his nurse and would occasionally pop in. Now the kitchen led out to a small hall, and the door to the yard was off to the left, but this did not faze the returning Percy, who banked in with a hard right turn and much frantically flappy braking to make the occasional spectacular entry if the kitchen door happened to be left open. He never stayed long, though - only flying visits...
His best mate (who he had schooled to call him ‘James’ in blond company) had several wonderfully placid black Labradors that would always pad along calmly a pace or two behind The Master. My parents always had pets too - well, to be pedantic, a succession of strays - of varying pedigree, demeanour and ability to reciprocate emotion. There was a sad works cat which had had far too many kittens in its short life and now just wished to be left alone quietly underneath the bed. There was a fox terrier (ish) who, as soon as he got excited at all, would start chasing his tail in demented circles, and if the excitement continued would also start to bark at it quite angrily as it continued to run annoyingly away from him, until he collapsed in a panting and unfulfilled heap. And there was once a pet snail that left messages for my mother on the kitchen floor - if only she could decipher what they meant.
My favourite, though, was Percy the Pigeon. Percy had damaged a wing and so was duly adopted, and being temporarily relieved of all flying duties, was happy enough to walk around the kitchen for a week or two, skilfully dodging feet, while repairs were effected, occasionally walking out into the yard where he could look up and count his brothers out and then count them all back in again. Eventually he recovered enough to rejoin them, but never forgot his nurse and would occasionally pop in. Now the kitchen led out to a small hall, and the door to the yard was off to the left, but this did not faze the returning Percy, who banked in with a hard right turn and much frantically flappy braking to make the occasional spectacular entry if the kitchen door happened to be left open. He never stayed long, though - only flying visits...
Wednesday 16 November 2011
The Big Bang
05 Dec 2008
And now, as part of Radio Four's ˜Big Turn-on Day', we go over live to our reporter somewhere deep beneath Soho - John?
Hello, Sally, and welcome to the 'LHC', or the 'Large Hard-On Collider' deep beneath Soho - in fact this massive underground chamber spans the Soho-West End border. Soon in this room, researchers will bring a male sex worker and an anti-male (or 'female') together with tremendous energy.
What do you expect to see, John?
As much as possible, Sally. Possibly the ˜Jigs with Clothes On'
John - some outsiders have questioned the huge expense of this project?
Indeed, Sally. It cost me £100 just to get in.
There have also been some concerns expressed about the safety of this event. Many have suggested that ˜the Earth may move'. What are you hearing from the experts there, John?
Well, Sally, many of the experts I have spoken to here - especially female workers - have quite frankly laughed at that idea. They say any event will dissipate almost immediately - probably with a sound described as 'rather like snoring'.
Just before we leave you, John, can you set the scene? What's the feeling in the room just now?
Sally - there are a lot of people getting quite excited down here, I can tell you! Myself included, actually.
John - thank you for that report. We'll try to get back to you for a minute - after Woman's Hour...
I... I love you Sally!
Bye, John.
A musing train
29 Jun 2008
How I came to be on a coach from Newark to Grantham along with the girls from ‘Kirsty’s Hen Party’ and the members of the ‘Esh Winning Senior Citizen’s Social Club Outing to Mamma Mia’ might sicken anyone sensitive to expositing opening sentences, so I’ll move on. Or at least branch off on a sideline...
Thoughts from a train.
The old and the young have surprising things in common.
Microwaves, for example - both pensioners and youngsters (especially students) couldn’t survive without them.
Public transport. Buses are full of both - anyone else seems to be driving blacked-out 4X4s, or Subarus, the non-thinking man’s bling on wheels.
Neither are interested in politics.
At the extremes, the very young and the very old both end up in nappies. The wheel of life...
We pass a pub called ‘Middle of Nowhere’. Now there’s some refreshing honesty - I’d drink to that. I sometimes go to one that should be called ‘Great local apart from beer’. At least you would be prepared - it could even be a perverse selling point. Like Italian restaurants (we all know one) where people go to be insulted - it’s their version of breaking plates... More inventive pub names: how about ‘The Paper Shop’, then you could tell suspicious wife - ‘I’m just nipping down The Paper Shop, dear’. Possibly ‘Toms’s Place’ might work just as well...
Thoughts from a B&B.
Who designs a shower where the control starts at scalding, life-stoppingly hot, then gets colder as you rotate it? Is it the same person who designed those little metal tea pots, that (a) you can’t grip since the handle is metal, and ...er... gets hot, and (b) always dribble down the side of the spout as you pour?
Public transport. Buses are full of both - anyone else seems to be driving blacked-out 4X4s, or Subarus, the non-thinking man’s bling on wheels.
Neither are interested in politics.
At the extremes, the very young and the very old both end up in nappies. The wheel of life...
We pass a pub called ‘Middle of Nowhere’. Now there’s some refreshing honesty - I’d drink to that. I sometimes go to one that should be called ‘Great local apart from beer’. At least you would be prepared - it could even be a perverse selling point. Like Italian restaurants (we all know one) where people go to be insulted - it’s their version of breaking plates... More inventive pub names: how about ‘The Paper Shop’, then you could tell suspicious wife - ‘I’m just nipping down The Paper Shop, dear’. Possibly ‘Toms’s Place’ might work just as well...
Thoughts from a B&B.
Who designs a shower where the control starts at scalding, life-stoppingly hot, then gets colder as you rotate it? Is it the same person who designed those little metal tea pots, that (a) you can’t grip since the handle is metal, and ...er... gets hot, and (b) always dribble down the side of the spout as you pour?
Breakfast is the single most important thing about a B&B. Even if the bed is too short, the milk is long-life that has still managed to go off somehow and the sheets are pink bri-nylon, a couple of pieces of top class black pudding and some really tasty rashers make it all worthwhile.
Thoughts from a short break
Is a doublet like a singlet, but twice as long?
I decide to be a sparky person who has a notebook on him at all times and whips it out in a flash to write down wild and unlikely ideas as they race through my brain. I make my first entry: “Bought notebook and mechanical pencil from WH Smith. Price £3.70. Got some Terry’s orange chocolate bar at a discount in consequence.” Can’t decide whether to make it into a play or a heroic poem.
Was it not Herbert Mangle, the Wallsend Poet and Ernie Wise impersonator, who once wrote
O wandering muse, help me not lose
Thy spark of poem or play
And let me note it and fast wrote it
Or I’ll be here all day!
Final thought
"Line works at Newark".
Oh no it didn’t.
God, pills and birds - another walk in Surrey
09 Oct 2010
A day off, hints of one of the last mild sunny days of the year, so it must be time for another walk through Surrey woods...
Thanks to the wonderful bus-pass, I bus it to Shere to pick up from my last walk and head from Shere to Dorking along the top of the North Downs.
The start is the most heart-pumping section as I have to head up a wooded muddy and rutted footpath from Shere up the Downs to intersect the North Downs Way that runs along the top. (˜Up the Downs' - don't you love English? And when a batsmen is in he goes out, and when he's out he comes in... )
That gets a good sweat and heart-beat going, so at the top I pretend to look at my guide for a few minutes (‘Surrey walks for alcoholics' or something like that) until I start to cool down. For the next two or three miles this is really a gentle woodland stroll - firm wide path, canopy of trees, gentle bird song, filtered sunlight - very peaceful and relaxing. Since it is early October, there has been enough leaf fall to provide a red and gold path, yet there is still a bright green leafy canopy right over me. With the brown and silver tree trunks between, I'm walking through a colourful layer cake.
The next stage starts to wind in and out of the side of the Downs, so you start to have occasional excellent views south over the valley to the next ridge - The Greensand Ridge. By this time the sun has cleared the earlier slight mist and it's a perfect walking day - a 'goldilocks' walking day, not too hot, not too cold...
I hadn't expected such good views, and another thing I hadn't expected were pill-boxes. Ultimately I pass 7 or 8 during the walk, and of course, as this was the last range of hills before London, it was the perfect line to build a range of defensive pill boxes in the 40's when invasion seemed inevitable - they are just so incongruous now along this quiet woodland walk. One of them is even preserved by The National Trust and I take the chance to have a walk inside. I wouldn't want to spend too long cramped in there, Mr Mannering...
Surprise number three is not long coming. Whenever I stop from here onwards to look at the views or the guide, I become a 'lady magnet'. Sadly though, these are ladybirds. A sudden red hail deposits 10 or 12 of these on me - tiny red limpets on my shirt. One even seems to have a go at hiding in my right ear. If it's about to lay eggs in there I'm not having it (certainly not without rent) so they get chased away each time, including on one occasion a bee who seems to think that any human lay-by good enough for an army of ladybirds is good enough for him.
The path now dips into the woods, now out on to the downs, so you get both types of walk. Ranmore Common is supposedly an absolute haven for butterflies in the summer, but it's too late now, although one Red Admiral keeps the ladybirds company for a few yards.
I can see Dorking laid out now below - very pretty from up here - and I pass a man on a bench flapping away. "Ladybirds?" I ask, smiling, and he laughs... and flaps...
I start to imagine Bob Newhart doing one of his famous one-sided-conversation monologues. He phones God:
"Hey, God, Bob here. So - what you creating today?"
"A small flying insect? Ok, but we've got a lot of flies already, haven't we? Kind of a saturated market..."
"It has what? A shell? So where are the wings?"
"Oh - ok. So how do they come out?"
" 'The shell hinges open' ? ˜Like a DeLorean' ? "
"Does it go back to the future too?"
"No, no - it was a joke, God. A joke. No, no - forget it. I'm sure it's sensible. Hey - it's not as if it were covered in polka dots, eh? Ha, ha..."
"Oh... I see. Ok. No, no - that one wasn't a joke. Sorry. No - I'm sure it looks great."
"Ummm... Look, God, you've been working really hard recently, you know. Maybe you need to have a rest? How many days have you been working now?"
"Six days, non-stop? Man, I'd be seeing spots myself... Look - take a day off, relax, ok?"
"You were going to do what tomorrow? ˜Yorkshire'? Well, you've done the rough outline, right? "
"Ok - so just leave it like that, and have a break - they'll think it's supposed to look like that... trust me..."
Approaching the end of the walk now, and after a small section of road, I enter Denbies Estate and start to drop slowly down into Denbies vineyard. It's the biggest in the UK and from here I get a wonderful (and very un-English) view of a sea of close and precise rows of vines stretching out below me in the sunshine over gently sloping green hills. Mind you, apparently there are now over 400 vineyards in the UK, so it may become a more common site. Global warming has some pluses, then...
My walk ends as the footpath levels out and I walk in the late afternoon sunlight between acres of vines, and up ahead is the visitor's centre, where they may just do tastings. This has to be a very civilised way to end a walk - cheers!
Thanks to the wonderful bus-pass, I bus it to Shere to pick up from my last walk and head from Shere to Dorking along the top of the North Downs.
The start is the most heart-pumping section as I have to head up a wooded muddy and rutted footpath from Shere up the Downs to intersect the North Downs Way that runs along the top. (˜Up the Downs' - don't you love English? And when a batsmen is in he goes out, and when he's out he comes in...
That gets a good sweat and heart-beat going, so at the top I pretend to look at my guide for a few minutes (‘Surrey walks for alcoholics' or something like that) until I start to cool down. For the next two or three miles this is really a gentle woodland stroll - firm wide path, canopy of trees, gentle bird song, filtered sunlight - very peaceful and relaxing. Since it is early October, there has been enough leaf fall to provide a red and gold path, yet there is still a bright green leafy canopy right over me. With the brown and silver tree trunks between, I'm walking through a colourful layer cake.
The next stage starts to wind in and out of the side of the Downs, so you start to have occasional excellent views south over the valley to the next ridge - The Greensand Ridge. By this time the sun has cleared the earlier slight mist and it's a perfect walking day - a 'goldilocks' walking day, not too hot, not too cold...
I hadn't expected such good views, and another thing I hadn't expected were pill-boxes. Ultimately I pass 7 or 8 during the walk, and of course, as this was the last range of hills before London, it was the perfect line to build a range of defensive pill boxes in the 40's when invasion seemed inevitable - they are just so incongruous now along this quiet woodland walk. One of them is even preserved by The National Trust and I take the chance to have a walk inside. I wouldn't want to spend too long cramped in there, Mr Mannering...
Surprise number three is not long coming. Whenever I stop from here onwards to look at the views or the guide, I become a 'lady magnet'. Sadly though, these are ladybirds. A sudden red hail deposits 10 or 12 of these on me - tiny red limpets on my shirt. One even seems to have a go at hiding in my right ear. If it's about to lay eggs in there I'm not having it (certainly not without rent) so they get chased away each time, including on one occasion a bee who seems to think that any human lay-by good enough for an army of ladybirds is good enough for him.
The path now dips into the woods, now out on to the downs, so you get both types of walk. Ranmore Common is supposedly an absolute haven for butterflies in the summer, but it's too late now, although one Red Admiral keeps the ladybirds company for a few yards.
I can see Dorking laid out now below - very pretty from up here - and I pass a man on a bench flapping away. "Ladybirds?" I ask, smiling, and he laughs... and flaps...
I start to imagine Bob Newhart doing one of his famous one-sided-conversation monologues. He phones God:
"Hey, God, Bob here. So - what you creating today?"
"A small flying insect? Ok, but we've got a lot of flies already, haven't we? Kind of a saturated market..."
"It has what? A shell? So where are the wings?"
"Oh - ok. So how do they come out?"
" 'The shell hinges open' ? ˜Like a DeLorean' ? "
"Does it go back to the future too?"
"No, no - it was a joke, God. A joke. No, no - forget it. I'm sure it's sensible. Hey - it's not as if it were covered in polka dots, eh? Ha, ha..."
"Oh... I see. Ok. No, no - that one wasn't a joke. Sorry. No - I'm sure it looks great."
"Ummm... Look, God, you've been working really hard recently, you know. Maybe you need to have a rest? How many days have you been working now?"
"Six days, non-stop? Man, I'd be seeing spots myself... Look - take a day off, relax, ok?"
"You were going to do what tomorrow? ˜Yorkshire'? Well, you've done the rough outline, right? "
"Ok - so just leave it like that, and have a break - they'll think it's supposed to look like that... trust me..."
Approaching the end of the walk now, and after a small section of road, I enter Denbies Estate and start to drop slowly down into Denbies vineyard. It's the biggest in the UK and from here I get a wonderful (and very un-English) view of a sea of close and precise rows of vines stretching out below me in the sunshine over gently sloping green hills. Mind you, apparently there are now over 400 vineyards in the UK, so it may become a more common site. Global warming has some pluses, then...
My walk ends as the footpath levels out and I walk in the late afternoon sunlight between acres of vines, and up ahead is the visitor's centre, where they may just do tastings. This has to be a very civilised way to end a walk - cheers!
Monday 24 October 2011
A Simple Gift
The friendship I offer is my humble gift
My company the plain box and wrapping
And my conversation the rhyme and verse
I worry it’s such a slight thing, so unadorned
Nothing fancy or rare or expensive
I’m half-afraid to embarrass you with the offer
But I’d like you to have it, and gladly take that risk
And if gentle rejection bruises it, then so be it
Better that than to keep it locked up, and pale.
My father's hand
My father’s hand
Was only used on me once or twice that I recall
I remember a parabolic rocket flight across the room
With one of his hands as my personal booster rocket
The shock was more effective than any pain I felt
My father’s hand
Was so big that my mam had to have two watchstraps merged
Just to get around his wrist when she bought him a watch
To replace the one he brought back from Belgium in the war
A hand that defused bombs and mines and cheated death
My father’s hand
That chalked the plates all day down at Laing’s shipyard
Then pored over the union branch books most evenings
Or wrapped itself round a pint or two, or slapped a few backs
And proudly lifted a model of The Boilermaker’s Club – his baby
My father’s hand
That shrank and grew thin as all of him did at the end
His wife long gone, and young brother also before him
That no union official or member came to shake in farewell
That had no strength left to wave goodbye to an empty room
I wish I’d held that hand.
Saturday 24 September 2011
Time Flies
Time flies when I’m sitting at the PC. Time passes slowly when I am in a waiting room. Time goes in a flash, sometimes, but drags at others. Everyone knows this and relates to it.
But we assume it’s just a perception, and not literal. Why? Suppose it’s real? It seems real enough to all of us, and happens consistently, and to everyone, so what’s the definition of reality that excludes such a consistently real event?
I don’t sit at the PC and suddenly find myself 10 feet to the left of where I was when I started – but I do find that an hour appears to have passed when I only experienced a few minutes. I wasn’t travelling near the speed of light...
Suppose there is a second time dimension, orthogonal to the one we’re familiar with – the usual one that is part of the 4D physical space-time world. Suppose we are travelling along both time axes, so making an analogy to a 2D X/Y frame, we are travelling along a gradient with respect to both time axes – i.e. a component of our personal time is along both. Now suppose increased brain activity affects our direction of travel and moves us closer to the normal time dimension, then the component of our personal time in that axis increases – the projected component is greater. The effect then is that ‘normal’ time appears to have passed much faster...
Or maybe time doesn’t exist at all? It’s just a perception?
But we assume it’s just a perception, and not literal. Why? Suppose it’s real? It seems real enough to all of us, and happens consistently, and to everyone, so what’s the definition of reality that excludes such a consistently real event?
I don’t sit at the PC and suddenly find myself 10 feet to the left of where I was when I started – but I do find that an hour appears to have passed when I only experienced a few minutes. I wasn’t travelling near the speed of light...
Suppose there is a second time dimension, orthogonal to the one we’re familiar with – the usual one that is part of the 4D physical space-time world. Suppose we are travelling along both time axes, so making an analogy to a 2D X/Y frame, we are travelling along a gradient with respect to both time axes – i.e. a component of our personal time is along both. Now suppose increased brain activity affects our direction of travel and moves us closer to the normal time dimension, then the component of our personal time in that axis increases – the projected component is greater. The effect then is that ‘normal’ time appears to have passed much faster...
Or maybe time doesn’t exist at all? It’s just a perception?
Thursday 22 September 2011
Down The Dun Cow
I was in The Dun Cow because I hadn't gone to the monthly meeting of the cynical negativists society - why bother?
Anyway, their ping-pong table was broken...
"The geese are flying South and it's a bad summer for leeks" advised the ginger-bearded Franciscan monk in the corner, over his pint of stout and copy of The Racing Post. Inspector Birkett (master of disguises) had cunningly started using coded phrases, so we would still know it was him.
"If you ask me..." declamed Jack Hatcher, vegetarian pork butcher and latent politician, who had never actually waited for anyone to ask him anything, "...that monk looks a bit dodgy."
"I think it's Inspector Birkett..." started his wife, Blanche, timidly.
"Away, woman!" interrupted Jack. "You know your trouble, Rose? You get everything wrong!"
The new barmaid at The Dun Cow was blond and nearly six feet of violin shape, and it followed therefore that Herbert Mangle the Wallsend poet and hypothetical metrosexual, had fallen instantly in love with her.
O pass me my glass, fair amazon lass
May our love, like it, never be empty
And shine like that brass, be fine as this Bass
But...er... didn't I give you a twenty?
Sadly, not yet fully understanding English, Ulrika still gave him a completely undeserved smile, and completely deserved change from a tenner, and left him sighing into his glass. Still, as Shaw remarked, 'What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do'.
"If you ask me..." informed Jack Hatcher, "...people these days don't have enough to do, Mavis!"
Blanche didn't answer, as she was blinking demurely at Herbert Mangle, whose roving spirit (and eye) was inspirationally seeking a new folly.
Jack would have declamed to the barmaid, but she was disappearing out the back with Inspector Birkett to discuss the finer details of expired work permits.
I'd have stayed for a pint, but, you know, someone is always trying to talk to you - and you can never get served, can you? I should have gone to the cynical negativists meeting after all, but I'm always rubbish at ping-pong...
Anyway, their ping-pong table was broken...
"The geese are flying South and it's a bad summer for leeks" advised the ginger-bearded Franciscan monk in the corner, over his pint of stout and copy of The Racing Post. Inspector Birkett (master of disguises) had cunningly started using coded phrases, so we would still know it was him.
"If you ask me..." declamed Jack Hatcher, vegetarian pork butcher and latent politician, who had never actually waited for anyone to ask him anything, "...that monk looks a bit dodgy."
"I think it's Inspector Birkett..." started his wife, Blanche, timidly.
"Away, woman!" interrupted Jack. "You know your trouble, Rose? You get everything wrong!"
The new barmaid at The Dun Cow was blond and nearly six feet of violin shape, and it followed therefore that Herbert Mangle the Wallsend poet and hypothetical metrosexual, had fallen instantly in love with her.
O pass me my glass, fair amazon lass
May our love, like it, never be empty
And shine like that brass, be fine as this Bass
But...er... didn't I give you a twenty?
Sadly, not yet fully understanding English, Ulrika still gave him a completely undeserved smile, and completely deserved change from a tenner, and left him sighing into his glass. Still, as Shaw remarked, 'What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do'.
"If you ask me..." informed Jack Hatcher, "...people these days don't have enough to do, Mavis!"
Blanche didn't answer, as she was blinking demurely at Herbert Mangle, whose roving spirit (and eye) was inspirationally seeking a new folly.
Jack would have declamed to the barmaid, but she was disappearing out the back with Inspector Birkett to discuss the finer details of expired work permits.
I'd have stayed for a pint, but, you know, someone is always trying to talk to you - and you can never get served, can you? I should have gone to the cynical negativists meeting after all, but I'm always rubbish at ping-pong...
I remember
Oh – I remember
And remember and remember
You have the time, on your own
Between drinking, sleeping, and working
They each blot out some memories for a while
But then you remember –
The world in blazing colours
Being alive – and glowing
Every second slowed down – and tasted
A dimension to reality that never existed before
That coming home, end of a quest, Spencer-The-Rover-returned feeling
And you just want to forget
Because you can’t bear it to be a memory.
Oh yes -
I remember.
And remember and remember
You have the time, on your own
Between drinking, sleeping, and working
They each blot out some memories for a while
But then you remember –
The world in blazing colours
Being alive – and glowing
Every second slowed down – and tasted
A dimension to reality that never existed before
That coming home, end of a quest, Spencer-The-Rover-returned feeling
And you just want to forget
Because you can’t bear it to be a memory.
Oh yes -
I remember.
Saturday 10 September 2011
What's Up, Doc?
14th Jan 2009
“Hmmm. Let’s do some tests.”
We did blood tests, blood pressure tests, we did a chest x-ray (?), we searched on-line on ‘Puffy Feet for Dummies’... and at the end of two months the conclusion was:
“Why don’t you try sitting differently?”
Hmmm....
Recently, I had some pains in the lower abdomen/groin region, so off I went to the new quack, the old one having left, (or maybe he is just lost, endlessly cycling the M25, unable to find his exit?)
“Hmmm, well one thing it definitely is not is a hernia”, he said, after more tests.
“Let’s get the consultant to look at you, eh?”.
A month later, the consultant was too busy, so his registrar saw me.
“Hmmm, it’s definitely a hernia.”
Oh yeah?
“We’d better do some tests”.
Another month later I had an ultrasound visual examination, which was interesting. My (ahem) ‘lower abdomen’ was liberally covered in jelly and they did a live scan, watching a monitor. I fought back the overwhelming desire to ask ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ (it probably wouldn’t be the first time they’d heard that one, eh?). Nothing there.
“We’d better do a colonoscopy - and have a little look around”.
Oh good.
Another month and it was time for the camera up the bum. Now the worst thing about this, I found out, is simply the laxatives you have to take the day before - they’re the industrial strength ones... The hospital visit, however, was great. First came the cabaret. As I was scheduled to be the last to go into surgery, I watched others return, still drugged and out of it, and more accurately, listened to them return. Jings - it was like the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles, but under blanket. A ward full of farting in various keys - tenor farts, alto trills and others, more 'basso profundo', shook the beds. I had to give up pretending to read the ‘paper and just hide my head for a while...
Eventually it was my turn and I was wheeled in. I watched, fascinated, as five different injections went into my arm and was just about to ask what they all were... when I woke up back in the ward an hour later. And whatever was in them, I want more - I felt great! I was ready to leap tall buildings with a single bound! My son had, as instructed, come in to help someone who ‘may still be drugged and need assistance’. Well, the only assistance I needed was being persuaded we should take the bus to the pub rather than simply fly there... And then for a large Chinese takeaway - wonderful.
The results? Nothing there either. So, two weeks later, it was back to the consultant. As he summarised the negative results, I thought to point out that no one had checked my prostate. There was silence for a few moments.
“Oh. Didn’t we do that?”
“Er, no, actually.”
“Hmmm. Let’s just pop into the next room, shall we?”
Oh, look - it’s jelly time again...
Well, that turned out to be ok, too. And so finally:
“What now then, doc?”
“Hmmm. It’ll probably just go away - whatever it was.”
Aye. Well it was a few months ago...
And I’ll sit differently. I mean, you never know, eh? Still, I’m like a Ford with a brand new MOT now - good for at least another year. Everything still seems to work as the Intelligent Designer planned, and my blood seems to be good enough to sup with a little liver and fried onion, Clarise... Even my puffy feet sorted themselves out a while ago.
See? My quack probably knew what he was talking about after all...
Hmmm....
A Kid In Sunderland
The King’s Arms. My grandparents ran the pub after the war, so I spent much of my first few years down there. You can’t tell, can you...? It was down by the shipyards, so grandad used to pre-pour 40-50 pints at lunchtime and have them ready on the counter for the one-hour shipyard lunch-break, when the door would burst open and a torrent of boiler-suited caulkers, welders and rivet-catchers rushed in, gratefully grabbing the nearest glass. Thirsty work, shipbuilding...
I’m pleased the pub is still serving excellent beer, and another good pub in town, Fitzies, actually used to be my doctor’s surgery back then. Dr Kelly - he was a doctor figure from fiction - tall, handsome, square-jawed, tweed-jacketed - a sort of Sean Connery of a G.P. At least it hasn’t been bulldozed - and the beer is canny.
There were still bomb-sites all over the town centre. My local recreational ground - right opposite our house - had been kindly donated one night by a Mr Heinkel. Trams clattering and sparking their way over the bridge. The joys of Joseph’s Toy Shop - our mini-Hamleys. Standing outside ‘The Picture House’ cinema, next to ‘Notrianni’s Ice Cream Parlour’, and asking adults ‘Take us in, Mister?’, because the Western film was classified. Putting a penny in the machine at the North End of the station that stamped your name on a metal strip - and then getting home, looking at the strip and thinking ‘er... why did I do that, exactly?’ But you did.
The magic of helping my mum blackberry-picking up Tunstall Hill - tossing our liberated fruit into my haversack. Every kid at school had either a khaki haversack or an air force blue one - mine was the only purple one.
And Roker Park. As a young kid my aunt lived nearby and my cousin and I would sometimes have a competition to guess the correct score by counting the roars we heard from the ground. I wasn’t that interested until my teens, but I remember being impressed by the huge crowds crossing the bridge - one river below, and another one above. That wonderful noise - a clunk and a fizz - as they turned on the flood-lights for a night game. King Charlie (Charlie Hurley) was my early hero - a colossus of a centre half, far more than just a mere mortal. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him much later. He wasn’t 7-foot tall any more - he must have shrunk, somehow.
Ah - footy. What do they say? You can change your job, you can change your wife, but you can never change your club.
Why do we do it?
Wise men have said
I’ve nee bloody idea, but -
I’m Sun’land ‘til I’m dead.
Memories of Roker
Lord Rowell, Todd and Gabbers
The Roker Roar went on and on
I was bloody hoarse for hours.
Beers in The Kings Arms
More bevvies up at Fitzies
Let’s gan across the bridge, man
And have a few quick whiskies.
We’re gannin up! We’re gannin down!
Every fan across the land
Is thinking just the same as me -
‘It’s the hope that I can’t stand’ !
I’m pleased the pub is still serving excellent beer, and another good pub in town, Fitzies, actually used to be my doctor’s surgery back then. Dr Kelly - he was a doctor figure from fiction - tall, handsome, square-jawed, tweed-jacketed - a sort of Sean Connery of a G.P. At least it hasn’t been bulldozed - and the beer is canny.
There were still bomb-sites all over the town centre. My local recreational ground - right opposite our house - had been kindly donated one night by a Mr Heinkel. Trams clattering and sparking their way over the bridge. The joys of Joseph’s Toy Shop - our mini-Hamleys. Standing outside ‘The Picture House’ cinema, next to ‘Notrianni’s Ice Cream Parlour’, and asking adults ‘Take us in, Mister?’, because the Western film was classified. Putting a penny in the machine at the North End of the station that stamped your name on a metal strip - and then getting home, looking at the strip and thinking ‘er... why did I do that, exactly?’ But you did.
The magic of helping my mum blackberry-picking up Tunstall Hill - tossing our liberated fruit into my haversack. Every kid at school had either a khaki haversack or an air force blue one - mine was the only purple one.
And Roker Park. As a young kid my aunt lived nearby and my cousin and I would sometimes have a competition to guess the correct score by counting the roars we heard from the ground. I wasn’t that interested until my teens, but I remember being impressed by the huge crowds crossing the bridge - one river below, and another one above. That wonderful noise - a clunk and a fizz - as they turned on the flood-lights for a night game. King Charlie (Charlie Hurley) was my early hero - a colossus of a centre half, far more than just a mere mortal. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him much later. He wasn’t 7-foot tall any more - he must have shrunk, somehow.
Ah - footy. What do they say? You can change your job, you can change your wife, but you can never change your club.
Why do we do it?
Wise men have said
I’ve nee bloody idea, but -
I’m Sun’land ‘til I’m dead.
Memories of Roker
Lord Rowell, Todd and Gabbers
The Roker Roar went on and on
I was bloody hoarse for hours.
Beers in The Kings Arms
More bevvies up at Fitzies
Let’s gan across the bridge, man
And have a few quick whiskies.
We’re gannin up! We’re gannin down!
Every fan across the land
Is thinking just the same as me -
‘It’s the hope that I can’t stand’ !
Thursday 8 September 2011
Two wee poems
Did I dream it?
It couldn’t have been me
I was at home in bed with the flow
I never saw anything
The sun in my eyes it was so slow
I knew nothing about it
I’m young and I just didn’t glow
Sir, realism is to blame -
That Ernst now, he would know.
A Dent in Guildford
I once met a girl known as Trillion
A chance that was one in a million
Impossible reduced to improbable
At a Guildford party just horrible
Near a park with a pond with a lily on.
I was at home in bed with the flow
I never saw anything
The sun in my eyes it was so slow
I knew nothing about it
I’m young and I just didn’t glow
Sir, realism is to blame -
That Ernst now, he would know.
A Dent in Guildford
I once met a girl known as Trillion
A chance that was one in a million
Impossible reduced to improbable
At a Guildford party just horrible
Near a park with a pond with a lily on.
A Fine Day For Amnesia
It was while rubbing E45 into my shins and contemplating logical positivism that it came to me. Well, what actually came to me was that I didn’t understand logical positivism. Mind you, I was still scratching my shins too. Still, being cricket scorer gives you ample time for philosophy - and scratching.
Geordie Duncan, professional gardener and amateur psychotic, was the fast bowler for Wallsend Amnesia FC against Billingham Sinfonia FC in the local football league’s annual summer cricket and sandwich and cake-making tournament. And he didn’t like symphonies - 'however they are spelt!' - or toffs, or cucumber sandwiches.
“Well played, sir!” said the Sinfonia captain from the boundary, waving a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.
“Me pease pudding and ham sarnies are going well.” said Granny Smith proudly from the Amnesia table in the food tent.
Herbert Mangle, Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, was philosophically debating internally if he, as a hypothetical vegetarian, was really eating his third pease pudding and ham sandwich, or whether this was a sensory deception brought on by a hypothetical protein deficiency, but he was definitely sure (as he had been in love fourteen and a half times before), that he was now in love with Vera Arbuthnot, daughter of Sinfonia 's benefactor, Sir Horatio Arbuthnot, as she demurely handed out smoked salmon canapés at the Sinfonia table. And anyway, as he opined to Chas Hunkers, family butcher and declamatory pessimist: “As Shaw remarked,‘Virtue is insufficient temptation’ “.
Out on the green, Geordie Duncan was striding stiffly back to his mark, eyes bulging and knuckles cracking, as the ball was retrieved, post-six, from the long grass, while the stripey-capped Sinfonia batsmen met in the middle with a toothy laugh and a ‘yahhh!’.
“I’ve always said...” said Chas Hunkers (and he always had) “...that England will perish overnight if Brussels ever bans the British banger...”
“Has anyone seen me hearing aid?” Asked Granny Smith.
“Eh?” She added, somewhat superfluously.
Herbert Mangle had written an ode to the fragrant Vera Arbuthnot on a serviette, and slipped it to her while pretending to admire her Battenburgs:
O gorgeous Vera, my heart is slain
Geordie Duncan, professional gardener and amateur psychotic, was the fast bowler for Wallsend Amnesia FC against Billingham Sinfonia FC in the local football league’s annual summer cricket and sandwich and cake-making tournament. And he didn’t like symphonies - 'however they are spelt!' - or toffs, or cucumber sandwiches.
“Well played, sir!” said the Sinfonia captain from the boundary, waving a half-eaten cucumber sandwich.
“Me pease pudding and ham sarnies are going well.” said Granny Smith proudly from the Amnesia table in the food tent.
Herbert Mangle, Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, was philosophically debating internally if he, as a hypothetical vegetarian, was really eating his third pease pudding and ham sandwich, or whether this was a sensory deception brought on by a hypothetical protein deficiency, but he was definitely sure (as he had been in love fourteen and a half times before), that he was now in love with Vera Arbuthnot, daughter of Sinfonia 's benefactor, Sir Horatio Arbuthnot, as she demurely handed out smoked salmon canapés at the Sinfonia table. And anyway, as he opined to Chas Hunkers, family butcher and declamatory pessimist: “As Shaw remarked,‘Virtue is insufficient temptation’ “.
Out on the green, Geordie Duncan was striding stiffly back to his mark, eyes bulging and knuckles cracking, as the ball was retrieved, post-six, from the long grass, while the stripey-capped Sinfonia batsmen met in the middle with a toothy laugh and a ‘yahhh!’.
“I’ve always said...” said Chas Hunkers (and he always had) “...that England will perish overnight if Brussels ever bans the British banger...”
“Has anyone seen me hearing aid?” Asked Granny Smith.
“Eh?” She added, somewhat superfluously.
Herbert Mangle had written an ode to the fragrant Vera Arbuthnot on a serviette, and slipped it to her while pretending to admire her Battenburgs:
O gorgeous Vera, my heart is slain
Run off with me - the world we’ll scorn
We’ll catch the ten past midnight train
And be in Whitley Bay by morn...
Geordie Duncan thundered in and unleashed a beamer that was but a blur. The Sinfonia batsman did manage to raise his bat enough to get two previously quite intact fingers to change the missile’s direction, in this case towards the elbow of a half-turned PC Jack Townsend, the insecure policeman, who was umpiring at square leg in his blue serge policeman’s trousers, as he felt these might lend him extra authority in his umpiring capacity.
“Yaaah, partner!” shouted the non-striking Sinfonian, setting off for a run.
“Arrrgh! Ohhh! Oooo!” shouted the struck Sinfonian, not running at all.
“Ow, yer b****r, ow, yer b****r...!” shouted PC Jack Townsend, running at least 13 in various directions.
“It’ll all end in tears” observed Chas Hunkers. “Mark my words. It always does.”
“Shaw observed” said Herbert Mangle, “that Hegel had observed that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.”
“It’s the Worcester sauce in the pease pudding that makes the difference”, said Granny Smith, winking.
Vera Arbuthnot clearly felt that the 'sauce' in Herbert Mangle’s serviette made no difference at all to her and made no response to his poetic overture. Herbert Mangle, after a few moment’s philosophical reflection, reacted both positively and logically, and soon another serviette found its way, this time to the palm of Vera Arbuthot’s shapely helper, Juanita St.John Fortinbras.
PC Jack Townsend felt it was his painful duty to exact swift justice, so changed into his blue policeman’s tunic, (but had to swap the blue serge trousers for his cricket whites as the material was making his leg itch badly). He then confiscated the cricket ball, deeming it a ‘dangerous weapon’, thereby terminating the match. Under the modified Duckworth-Lewis-Townsend formula, Wallsend Amnesia were thus awarded the game based on runs scored divided by the number of stripes on their caps.
Granny Smith’s pease pudding and ham sandwiches also took the prize for Amnesia in the cake and sandwich contest - being fulsomely praised by Sir Hugo Arbuthnot as ‘nonpareil’.
“Eh?” said Granny Smith.
Not only did Sir Hugo behave as a good sport - even Juanita St.John Fortinbras seemed to take Granny Smith’s triumph in good heart, as she was smiling shyly and quite rosy-cheeked as she left, folding away a serviette into her purse.
Geordie Duncan finished off the remaining pork pies, raising a half-eaten one in one massive paw and waving it cheerfully at the back of the departing ambulance.
“Well” said Herbert Mangle, commendably stoic in his swift recovery from Vera Arbuthnot’s rebuff, and carefully folding up a railway timetable and slipping it into his pocket as he also got up to leave. “All in all, I think it was rather a fine day for Amnesia.”
(Inspired by, and a few bits nicked from, the stories of Leonard Barras)
A walk through Surrey woods
26 Jun 2010 at 12:24
I've been a bit lazy on my days off, so I decide to enjoy the weather and get out for a country walk. Right out of my street in Bramley and I’m straight on to a footpath. This part is the green tunnel section - a straight level footpath kindly donated by a certain Dr Beeching some decades ago and now the trees and bushes have grown up and over to form the tunnel. Dappled sunlight flickers through the greenery and it’s a peaceful start as I settle into my 2nd gear strolling pace - it’s a long walk for me, so steady does it.
Right at an old stone bridge, a crossover bridge where horses could cross to the other side of the Canal and the towpath on that side, apparently. Canals seemed to have had an incredibly short life, being replaced by railways after only a few decades. The Navy apparently wanted this one for an inland route from London to Portsmouth safe from the French fleet, but once we put the French in their place it’s fate was sealed.
Up through a country lane and across a small road. I’ve seen no one so far but now pass a man strimming grass on the corner. Safety glasses, orange helmet and orange jacket - now let down over his jeans in the heat. ‘Morning’, ‘Morning’. A little nod. We can be gently polite in the country, whereas there is no time for it in town or city. Here there is just me and orange-man - and half-a-dozen little buzzy insects.
The softness of silence in the country - it’s got a ‘˜feel’ to it somehow, yet I can’t put a finger on just what that is - enveloping, familiar and I rather like it. I’ve brought an mp3 player, but I will never use it today. You become aware of your footfalls sometimes, and I do as I plod up this little track with gently sloping open fields either side. They’re a steady plodding back-beat, with the occasional crunch as you walk through a patch of pine cones (do they fall all year round?). On top of this foot-drum are the backing vocals of Midge and The Insects, and an occasional flashy solo from a bird or two disturbed from the hedgerows - flappity-flap, flap, flap, flap, cheep, and into another bit of hedge or tree further up my path. You daft b****r - I’ll be there in another minute and then you’ll be off again! A flash of yellow on that wing - a yellow finch?
Sweat is streaming down my back now. I brought a sack so I can bring a few odds and ends like a map, a couple of apples, a cagoule - just in case, dib dib dib. The downside today is a very sweaty back. I try it on one strap, but it’s no good - it creeps forward round my arm and slowly slides off.
On towards Tangley. I love this countryside. Gently sloping fields, copses and distant hills crowned by woods, blue skies, scattered clouds, soft breeze. Somewhere over there to the left is St Martha’s Hill, and that is my first target - a little church perched on the top, on the old Pilgrim’s route across the North Downs.
Now I’m on a long drag up through Blackheath Forest, and in a while, just off to my right I detour to a small War Memorial. Just a few names inscribed here from WW1, and I wonder about its lonely location in this clearing. Then as I turn around, through a small gap-toothed opening in the trees, I get a perfectly framed view of St Martha’s church up in the distance. Maybe that’s why?
On, down through the woods, some winding country lanes, then out into the open, over the railway and main road, and I start on the climb up to the church at the top. The last few hundred yards are the hardest - it’s soft deep sand on this path, and steeper - hard going. Finally, I get to a bench up next to the church and am able to sit down and take off the boots for a while and take in the great views. I angle myself on the bench so my back only touches the bench at one side - I’m drenched and hope it might cool off a bit. Not too tired - just a bit of an ache in the groin from that last steeper stretch. The view is worth it.
After a rest and an apple, it’s a gentler walk down another side of the hill and then up a roadside path, cross over, along a little wooded stretch and then it’s out into the open, halfway up a superb large open bank-side facing South. This leads in a few minutes to Newlands Corner, just off the main road, with car parks, benches, coach trips, chips and fizzy pop... but this bit is the best, and the trippers don’t come this far around. It’s such a great view I walk to the top and at the tree line there’s a bench where I can take it in and get the map out and try to plot places I know. A small plane putters overhead. Then I too need the pop and chips, so I walk on to join the throng for lunch.
Across the busy road, then along a leafy part of The North Downs Way, then sharp right and down a steep rutted path. My ex had dodgy knees and always said it was harder to go downhill than uphill - I see what she means now - must be all the bending down at Sainsbury’s. At the bottom I reach the ‘˜Silent Pool’. Think Monet and lilies and you have the idea - a beautifully tranquil spot. Agatha Christie left her car in the nearby car park once and then disappeared for days. They dredged the Pool looking for her, but she was up in Harrogate, staying in a hotel under the name of her husband’s mistress. Not much mystery there then. Now - what was the film version with Dustin Hoffman?
Over to Albury, a few more woods, fields and a small gently bubbling ford, and then finally into pretty Shere, The White Horse pub... and cider. You can’t have a country walk without cider - it’s illegal. Shere’s often used as a film location - Bridget Jones’ dad got married over there at the church, and Jude Law had a beer here with his girlfriend in ‘˜The Holiday’. No sign of Cameron Diaz today, but the cider will do fine just now. Ah....
I think it’s the bus home...
Right at an old stone bridge, a crossover bridge where horses could cross to the other side of the Canal and the towpath on that side, apparently. Canals seemed to have had an incredibly short life, being replaced by railways after only a few decades. The Navy apparently wanted this one for an inland route from London to Portsmouth safe from the French fleet, but once we put the French in their place it’s fate was sealed.
Up through a country lane and across a small road. I’ve seen no one so far but now pass a man strimming grass on the corner. Safety glasses, orange helmet and orange jacket - now let down over his jeans in the heat. ‘Morning’, ‘Morning’. A little nod. We can be gently polite in the country, whereas there is no time for it in town or city. Here there is just me and orange-man - and half-a-dozen little buzzy insects.
The softness of silence in the country - it’s got a ‘˜feel’ to it somehow, yet I can’t put a finger on just what that is - enveloping, familiar and I rather like it. I’ve brought an mp3 player, but I will never use it today. You become aware of your footfalls sometimes, and I do as I plod up this little track with gently sloping open fields either side. They’re a steady plodding back-beat, with the occasional crunch as you walk through a patch of pine cones (do they fall all year round?). On top of this foot-drum are the backing vocals of Midge and The Insects, and an occasional flashy solo from a bird or two disturbed from the hedgerows - flappity-flap, flap, flap, flap, cheep, and into another bit of hedge or tree further up my path. You daft b****r - I’ll be there in another minute and then you’ll be off again! A flash of yellow on that wing - a yellow finch?
Sweat is streaming down my back now. I brought a sack so I can bring a few odds and ends like a map, a couple of apples, a cagoule - just in case, dib dib dib. The downside today is a very sweaty back. I try it on one strap, but it’s no good - it creeps forward round my arm and slowly slides off.
On towards Tangley. I love this countryside. Gently sloping fields, copses and distant hills crowned by woods, blue skies, scattered clouds, soft breeze. Somewhere over there to the left is St Martha’s Hill, and that is my first target - a little church perched on the top, on the old Pilgrim’s route across the North Downs.
Now I’m on a long drag up through Blackheath Forest, and in a while, just off to my right I detour to a small War Memorial. Just a few names inscribed here from WW1, and I wonder about its lonely location in this clearing. Then as I turn around, through a small gap-toothed opening in the trees, I get a perfectly framed view of St Martha’s church up in the distance. Maybe that’s why?
On, down through the woods, some winding country lanes, then out into the open, over the railway and main road, and I start on the climb up to the church at the top. The last few hundred yards are the hardest - it’s soft deep sand on this path, and steeper - hard going. Finally, I get to a bench up next to the church and am able to sit down and take off the boots for a while and take in the great views. I angle myself on the bench so my back only touches the bench at one side - I’m drenched and hope it might cool off a bit. Not too tired - just a bit of an ache in the groin from that last steeper stretch. The view is worth it.
After a rest and an apple, it’s a gentler walk down another side of the hill and then up a roadside path, cross over, along a little wooded stretch and then it’s out into the open, halfway up a superb large open bank-side facing South. This leads in a few minutes to Newlands Corner, just off the main road, with car parks, benches, coach trips, chips and fizzy pop... but this bit is the best, and the trippers don’t come this far around. It’s such a great view I walk to the top and at the tree line there’s a bench where I can take it in and get the map out and try to plot places I know. A small plane putters overhead. Then I too need the pop and chips, so I walk on to join the throng for lunch.
Across the busy road, then along a leafy part of The North Downs Way, then sharp right and down a steep rutted path. My ex had dodgy knees and always said it was harder to go downhill than uphill - I see what she means now - must be all the bending down at Sainsbury’s. At the bottom I reach the ‘˜Silent Pool’. Think Monet and lilies and you have the idea - a beautifully tranquil spot. Agatha Christie left her car in the nearby car park once and then disappeared for days. They dredged the Pool looking for her, but she was up in Harrogate, staying in a hotel under the name of her husband’s mistress. Not much mystery there then. Now - what was the film version with Dustin Hoffman?
Over to Albury, a few more woods, fields and a small gently bubbling ford, and then finally into pretty Shere, The White Horse pub... and cider. You can’t have a country walk without cider - it’s illegal. Shere’s often used as a film location - Bridget Jones’ dad got married over there at the church, and Jude Law had a beer here with his girlfriend in ‘˜The Holiday’. No sign of Cameron Diaz today, but the cider will do fine just now. Ah....
I think it’s the bus home...
Tuesday 6 September 2011
The English Revolution - Part 1
Ok – the Three Lions have to go. I mean – as Billy Bragg sings – they ‘never grew from England’s dirt’. We need something indigenous. I thought about 3 red squirrels... but you can hardly find any now. I’m from the North – let’s make it 3 whippets.
And the ‘British National Anthem’? Hell – it’s England so why are we singing a ‘British’ national anthem anyway? Is there another country in the world that does NOT have it’s own national anthem? So I’ve re-written Jerusalem (daft words, Blakey lad). Did it years ago, so that will do. You can thank me later... (...quite fancy being Poet Laureate, if you must – but of course that’s up to the full council of the revolutionary committee of the People’s Popular Liberation Front for New England...)
Now – St.George. See ‘The Three Lions’ above. He was from Lebanon, for goodness sake! What we need is an English hero. Someone who is an English legend. And there is one such man. Unique amongst all Englishmen, this man did not just live at one point in our history, but at several key points right throughout our history – he is therefore the very embodiment of English history. I give you our new patron saint – Edmund Blackadder.
And the next time our rugger lads have to face the All Black’s Haka, I want our forward line to follow up by pulling out pairs of nice white hankies and bells and terrorise them with a Morris Dance – that’ll show ‘em.
New England
And were our father’s long ago
Walking on England’s mountains seen?
And did they bravely fight and die
For England’s pleasant pastures green?
And came our friends from far and wide
To make us strong and cure our ills?
And was our nation great builded here
Among these green and pleasant hills?
England the home of Will Shakespeare
England the home of Constable
England the home of brave Churchill
England the home of Charles Darwin
They did not cease from mental fight
Nor let the time slip through their hand
And they helped build this nation great
In England’s green and pleasant land.
Let me die a springtime death
Let me die a springtime death
A lambs-gambolling, daffodils-nodding, cricket on the green sort of death
Not a bare-branched, hunched in overcoats, flecks of snow in the hair, bleak mid-winter death
May the smells be of cut grass and barbeques
And the path strewn with the fall of magnolia petals
And the sounds be of birds chatter and outside-the-pub natter
Not of slush in the gutter and the swish of the gritter...
May folk be late for my wake because of cricket practise
Or miss it to make love in fields under circling swallows
Not grimly stuck in snow, ice-crystals on windows
Let my ashes disappear in new-growing grass
Rather than lie naked on hard cold soil
Let me die a death in Spring...
...but only when I’m tired of it.
(Inspired by Roger McGough)
Sunday 4 September 2011
A foot long
Feet. Do you like yours? I have to say mine are a bit too long. They’re like those DIY limos which are ordinary cars, cut in half, and an extra straight bit welded in to lengthen them. My feet go straight in the middle – they’re a bit plate-like.
Now my ex had lovely feet, like a tricky race course - all curves and no straights – yet she hated her feet and I could never figure out just why. Mind you, she had a few peculiarities like that. For example if you touched her belly-button she would scream. She wouldn’t even clean it in the bath – there’s probably lint in there turning slowly into diamonds… And her hair! Her hair sometimes made me wonder is she was really an alien. It was the most elastic hair I have ever seen – I couldn’t resist playing with any rogue ones that feel out. You could have made an excellent catapult out of what could be garnered from her hairbrush…
Anyway – feet. The play a peculiar role. Foot-fetishism is well-documented, but why on Earth does it exist? Tits, arses… perfectly understandable… but feet? How does that work? Is it perhaps those curves? Is the curvaceous foot a subconscious stand-in for a curvaceous body? I guess that could work for a man.
But what about women? Could my long feet bring me some welcome interest, hmmm? And women love shoes – and men don’t. Could that be women transferring their re-imagined and perfected self-image on to a shiny, curvy, red sling-back?
This is quite exciting stuff. I think I’d better focus on gnarled wobbly knees for a while to calm me down.
Was it not Herbert Mangle, the great Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, who once wrote:
O how I worship your plates of meat
In sling-backs red they stride the street
Your body’s curves mirrored so neat
If you should go – could I keep your feet?
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