Meet you behind the bike-shed.

In Dublin's fair city...

8:14 PM, Monday, October 20, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

After a full Irish breakfast on Sunday, I decide to be a full Ireland tourist for the day. 7 years I lived in Ireland and not once did I do the tourist trail in Dublin – I’m a disgrace. But first a wee lie-down to let the brekkie settle. Oh look – footy on TV…

Up Eustace Street and the open-top tourist bus is already there – handy. One circuit round their route is a good start. Dublin is quite compact. I notice the circular bar on top of the Guinness brewery tourist centre looks rather like a head on a pint – nice touch!

A quick 'warmer' in the Bruxelles bar (I remember that from the 70s), and it’s down to a dark and dingy Republican bar on Wicklow Street to talk about rebellion… ‘The 1916 Rebellion Tour’ is a 2-hour walk around key spots in that rebellion, but starts downstairs in a dingy bar with an introduction and some scene-setting from our tour guide. He turns out to be an incredibly lively, loquacious and interesting guide, and definitely a rebel. He also looks uncannily like Elvis Costello. He carries a leather shoulder bag – jeez, he’s opening it, has he got a pistol in there…? Ah, no – it’s copies of his book. Good fun, highly informative, and he does a great job. If you’re ever in Dublin I highly recommend it, and I hope you get the same guide. He should be the one humming a few verses of ‘Oliver’s Army’ (while showing around the boys from the Mersey, and the Thames, and the Tyne…)

The one thing I will never understand – and he couldn’t explain – was why, after the always-doomed rebellion finally failed, the British leaders of the time (political or military) decided to execute the ring-leaders. Classic martyr-making if ever I saw it. I remember reading elsewhere that Dubliners were quite divided up to that point. Many were for the rebels, but many others were against them. Until the executions of the local boys started, that is.

Dubliners and words. Like ham and eggs. Or Guinness and oysters… Not just Joyce, Beckett, Wilde and Shaw (not a bad list) or even “yer only man” from the Rebellion Tour (who was not at all plain), but everyday Dubliners. The gift of the gab, served on Dublin wit. One speciality is rhyming slang which they seem to love even more than Cockneys. The statue of Molly Malone becomes “The Tart With The Cart”, “The Trollop With The Scallop”, or “The Dish With The Fish”. The Millenium Spire in O’Connell Street (a 120-metre slim spike of modern sculpture) is “The Stiletto In The Ghetto”, or “The Spire In The Mire”, “The Stiffy By The Liffey” - and several other even tastier versions.

Did you know that under British rule, the penalty for speaking Irish in Ireland could have been Transportation to Australia? And yet they have enriched English-language literature so much. Now that’s irony, for yeh, so it is…

So anyway…

After the tour, a steak ‘sambo’ with a drop (well, maybe three drops) of the black stuff while watching Spurs embarrass themselves on TV works just dandy, then back for another wee rest.

The tourist day picks up again in the evening by locating some ‘real’ (i.e. not Wild Rover/Fields of Athenry/Molly Malone/”join in…”) folk music in a small room above the equally small but fine Palace Bar (is this the one remaining ‘real’ pub in Temple Bar?). They haven’t started, so repair to the Oliver St. John Gogarty for an Irish Stew upstairs. Jeez – what a stew! Clearly there’s no famine just now, then…

Now there was a Dublin character. Gogarty was a throat surgeon, award-winning poet and writer, record-breaking athlete, politician, pioneering pilot and socialite. He once wrote a poem for Irish troops returning from the Boer War called 'Ode of Welcome'. Published in the ‘Irish Society’ journal, someone eventually realised that if you took the first letter of every line it spelled out the message ‘T h e w h o r e s w i l l b e b u s y’. He was some boy, eh?

Back to the Palace Bar for the music. Grand stuff altogether. Pipes, guitars, mandolin and Uilleann Pipes, and some good strong singing too. Some teenage girls from Boston USA shout out “sing some rebel songs!”. Sigh.

Still – what would a tourist day be without tourists?

Colour me in

10:07 PM, Wednesday, October 8, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

Colours have connotations. I find I am wearing black (well, actually black and white). It wasn’t a conscious fashion choice, but was it actually my subconscious at work?

What I thought happened was that my son gave me a free Guinness (black and white) rugby shirt… I thought ‘canny – owt for nowt’… then in Debenhams sale I saw some black jeans for £8 and I thought ‘canny – will go with me rugby shirt’… and I acquired a black leather jacket from my son, (‘cos he didn’t like it and wouldn’t wear it), and I thought ‘canny – can’t let it go to waste’…

But was I perhaps really pre-occupied with my (at this age) approaching death and making suitable sartorial preparations? Or was I unknowingly reflecting my dull monochromatic existence now compared to earlier happier colourful times when I would skip down the lane chasing a rainbow with Mr Bluebird on my shoulder? Am I perhaps really a closet Magpie (no… no… not that!)

I used to wear blue a lot. I think initially it was because somewhere in my teens or twenties some long-forgotten girlfriend probably said it matched my eyes. Or… did she really mean I made her feel blue… or I reminded her of Blind Lemon Jefferson playing steel guitar… or… or…

Winter is the monochrome season – grey clouds and white snow. Maybe I’m mentally preparing for that onset?

As the post-modern leek grower and amateur poet, Herbert Mangle, once wrote:

I can’t forget that night in June:

You said you loved another

We parted at your garden gate

And snow fell on your mother

A Performance

9:39 PM, Friday, September 19, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

What a performance.

A one man show at Guildford this week of ‘Under Milk Wood’ – all 69 characters, each always with his or her own voice and character. Just two props – a chair and a pair of ‘Stevie Wonder ‘ shades for Captain Cat. Just one break, otherwise a continuous, swirling, enveloping word-portrait of Llareggub waking, stretching, gossiping, drinking, leaning on a wall, falling asleep on a tomb-stone…

Afterwards, waiting for the last 53, perhaps another performance in ‘The White House’ pub (good HSB). The pub singer looked like a young Hendrix – tie-dyed narrow hipster trousers, the look, a white sheepskin rug stretched out theatrically as his stage, a red hat at one side, a red feather boa wrapped round a mike stand… but… plain vanilla music, that could have been any average singer. Props do not a performance make.

God, but I love good theatre, yet hate going on my own now. It doesn’t really make sense as you just listen anyway, but who said the world makes sense, eh? My first visit was around 1971 to a modern ‘theatre in the round’ in Newcastle and it was spell-binding – ‘Play Strindberg’. Of course what I didn’t know was I was lucky to hit on a spell where the local director was talented and imaginative. Hooked, I saw ‘Oh What A Lovely War’ where the cast played WW1 songs round the piano outside in the bar before the performance, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’ where they were in full colour, but the cast of Hamlet processed across the stage in monochrome when they made their fleeting appearances, and more, several more wonderful nights… such style… such performances.

Life is a stage, wise men have said. Are we all performers? What is truth and what performing? Is this blog a stage? Am I entertaining and performing, or just reflecting my thoughts in a mirror… in a mirror… in a mirror… Words washed up on Llareggub’s shore. It means buggerall – it’s all backwards in a mirror...

Guildford has 4 theatres! Four times blessed! If only the audiences weren’t so old – who will be going in 20 years? I took my son to Aykbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough when he was only 9 or 10 – and he was on the edge of his seat, his eyes ‘on stalks’ throughout. And bless the actor who saw that and gave him his very own smile and wave at the curtain call – what a performer! Take your children… take your grandchildren… the performance must go on…

It's a foot long

12:38 PM, Wednesday, September 3, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

Feet. Do you like yours? I have to say mine are a bit too long. They’re like those DIY limos which are just ordinary cars, cut in half, and an extra straight bit welded in to lengthen them. My feet too go straight in the middle – they’re a bit plate-like.

Now my ex had lovely feet, like a tricky racecourse - all curves, no straights – yet she hated her feet and I could never figure out why. Mind, 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 into diamonds… And her hair! Her hair sometimes made me wonder if 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 fell out. You could have made an excellent catapult out of what could be garnered from her hairbrush…

Anyway – feet. They 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 imagined and perfected self-image on to a shiny, curvy, red slingback?

This is quite exciting stuff. I think I’d better focus on gnarled wobbly knees for a while to calm me down.

Herbert Mangle, the great Wallsend poet and hypothetical vegetarian, once wrote:

O how I worship your plates of meat

In slingbacks red they stride the street

Your body’s curves mirrored so neat

If you should go – can I keep your feet?

In My Life...

12:49 AM, Saturday, August 2, 2008 .. 3 comments .. Link

And I remember your smile that could light up the aisle

And you stood outside at the corner with a smile

And we sparked on the board, and I called you ‘Xa’

And we talked for seven hours one day in a bar

And we texted every day while you holidayed in France

And I sent you a message that said dance, dance, dance

And I burned you CDs of all my favourite bands

And I was always here with my heart in my hands

Now the streets are unkind, and I sit here alone

But the memories are strong and your faces live on…

A blade of grass

8:30 PM, Tuesday, July 15, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

It’s a Hazey kind of day. Not a ‘lazy, hazy crazy days of summer’ type of day (although it is a bit), but ‘Hazey’ as relates to our much-missed blogging chum.

He was a great lad for observing the simple minutiae of life, especially nature. I thought about him as I was walking into town today, and there were dozens of swifts down the road, wheeling, swooping, shrieking, darting about and flying straight at the eves of the semis at high speed and suddenly stopping just in time at their nests. It’s a great sight to watch – and further down there were some groups of house martins doing their own free air show.

Then on the way back, later in the day, crows like dark sentinels waited on each lamp post, watching. As I passed one lamp post one even changed his footing and turned round to keep an eye on me – hey, I’ve done nothing, honest…

When I lived in Ireland I once went to a series of philosophy classes and the tutor once asked ‘when was the last time you looked at the roofs and parapets of the buildings outside?’ And he was right – I had often travelled into Dublin, and had been travelling in every Saturday for a few weeks for this course, and yet had never ‘clocked’ the skyline. Of course, now I did and it was like opening your eyes just a little bit more…

I was lying on the grass on the common yesterday during my lunch break, finishing off ‘The God Delusion’, when I started to think of the number of blades of grass on that one common – millions, billions? And then how many atoms were in each blade of grass…billions per blade. Then go the other way – scale up to planet, galaxy, universe… trying to grasp the scale of existence is impossible. It is stunning, awesome, impossible to get a handle on.

And the beauty that lies in just a simple blade of grass…

I was reminded of a poem by Brian Patten, called ‘A Blade of Grass’:

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,

And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.

Write and store

10:29 PM, Saturday, July 12, 2008 .. 3 comments .. Link

Every morning, me old Aunt Emma used to get up, at 5 o’clock, to bake an oven-bottom cake…

Writing is sometimes a weird thing to do.

I remember back at Grammar school we were always pressed to write something for the school magazine. Each year we all dutifully tried our best, but nothing was ever chosen from my little ‘circle’. One year we were pressed particularly hard by a teacher to come up with something and in a fit of pique I very quickly wrote a simplistic, stupid little poem to highlight the futility of it all. It was the only thing I ever had published in the school magazine….

Every morning me old Aunt Emma used to get up at half past 4, to brasso the step…

Supermarkets and women shoppers.

I stand eagerly ready to fill a shelf, 12 cartons of Muller ‘Crunch Corner’ yogurts balanced adroitly in my expert hands, but the female shopper bends uncertainly to the shelf, stops, hovers for a second, picks up one carton nervously, looks at it unsurely, hesitates, starts to put it back, stops, looks again, pauses, puts it back, picks up the next one, pauses… WHAT THE **** IS GOING ON??? The biggest difference between men and women is in the supermarket. I have a plan. It’s brilliant. I could make my fortune tomorrow, but no – I will philanthropically share it with you. Make 2 kinds of supermarket. Female supermarkets – which consist of many ‘islands’, each of which contains just one of absolutely everything, so women shoppers can browse away at just one island, instead of having to browse the entire store (and getting in the way of employees…), with parking bays by each island so they can park their trolleys while they chat… and male supermarkets, which are arranged alphabetically in strict parallel aisles, (except the heavy slabs of beer are at the checkouts – to save having to carry them too far, obviously…)

And every morning me old Aunt Emma used to get up at 4 o’clock to black lead the grate… and did she complain, eh, eh?

A musing train

11:09 PM, Sunday, June 29, 2008 .. 1 comments .. Link

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.

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 Landlord’. 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-stopping 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 anachronistic monarchist, 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!

‘Line works at Newark’. Oh no it didn’t.

(RIP Leonard Barras 1922-2008)

Blokey tummy ache

4:46 PM, Friday, June 20, 2008 .. 3 comments .. Link

How can you get a bad stomach from potato salad?

I mean it’s pretty innocuous stuff, surely? I only made it two days ago and it’s been in the ‘fridge since, but after having it for lunch, things haven’t…er… been so good. So I’m sitting here typing this instead of wandering around Guildford. Maybe I’ll wander down tonight and do the ‘Ghost Walk of Guildford’, but I’m still feeling a bit dodgy so maybe I’ll just do the walk to the bathroom instead…

It made me think about illnesses and – touch wood – I seem to have been pretty lucky. Dodgy tummies and the occasional puffy ankle seem to be the worst things that happen to me. So I just avoid furry pork pies and re-heated chicken, and sit with my feet up – no problem, I can do that.

In fact I’ve only ever had one spell in hospital, and that was when I was about 5 and managed to scald myself from head to foot. All I can remember is lots of anxious faces peering at me with great concern as they wrapped me in blankets and all I was thinking was “I’m fine… why is everyone so worried… I can’t feel any pain at all…” and then passed out and woke up in hospital – like a snake, with a complete new set of skin. Man – I got loads of new comics, and plenty of sweeties – it was great!

Then when I was about 12, my dozy friend next door was playing around with his air rifle and meant to blast me with the air from the empty rifle – except he forgot he had a pellet in it and shot me through the cheek from about 3 inches. Once more I didn’t feel a thing – except something hit my tooth and when I spat it out it came out with lots of red gravy… Eeeeh – no stay in hospital but lots more sweeties and free comics… His parents must really have spoilt him – he had stacks of comics, and now they were all mine - champion!

So what’s my reward for having a bad tummy today? Anyone going to take me out for a beer? Or buy me some sweeties? Don’t all rush…

Folk

10:05 AM, Tuesday, June 17, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

There’s nowt as strange as folk…

In the store just now we have a deal on milk: 4-pint bottles are priced at 2 for £2. Seeing the promotional sign, a lady picked up two 2-pint bottles by mistake. “No”, said I helpfully, “it’s two 4-pint bottles for £2 – I’ll go and get you two.” “Oh, no”, she said, “That would be too much”, and she put the 2-pint bottles back - and left.

It reminded me of the legendary Jason McAteer story. How did it go? At a Pizza restaurant in town, the waiter asked him if he would like his pizza cut into 4 portions or 6 portions. “Better make it 4”, said Jason, “I’m not hungry enough to eat 6”

Stuck in traffic

5:58 PM, Tuesday, May 27, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

"Life’s a one way street..."

Well I must be going the wrong way !

Everyone else seems to know where they’re going

And look at me with whooshing puzzled frowns

When I was younger I just laughed at them

Confident this was the best way, the fools!

But lately I’m not so sure. I have some doubts.

My companions on this route seem to have gone

Turned off down leafy side-streets to the suburbs

Stopped off at expensive cafes on the way

Or have had to leave to pick up the kids on another road

But somehow I can’t turn round

And it looks even harder to cut across traffic for the safety of the kerb

Maybe if I just stop here they’ll treat my like an island

And I’ll be safe

And lollipop ladies will stand next to me

And I can just look up and watch the sun going down and the stars coming out...

Tripping on the No 53.

6:18 PM, Sunday, May 4, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

Adventures on the No.53 bus route. Chapter 2.

Coming back on Friday night we got the mad driver. I’m starting to recognise them now. This guy is quite bulky, a shock of grey frizzy hair and a slightly wild stare that somehow discourages small talk. Legend has it that he can drive from Guildford to Cranleigh with his eyes shut - and sometimes does. And some know him simply as … The Stig. We rocket round narrow lanes, missing £2M preserved Tudor houses by fractions of a rod or perch - or whatever measure you use for Tudor houses - hedgerows flash past inches from the sides and alighting passengers lurch monkey-like from handhold to desperate handhold until they can finally jump off yards past the bus stop, as he just couldn’t stop in time… Well, they record Top Gear just down the road – it could be him...

Syd Kipper – the seeing of whom I was returning from – is a genius. A complete show (nay, career) based on a spoof of a traditional folk singer. Songs that you thought you knew now seem to have slightly different words - or arre these the real, traditional words after all? Anyway – very clever and very funny. See him if you can.

A light for the soul...

10:01 PM, Sunday, April 27, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

We need to touch excellence occasionally. Few of us are fortunate enough – or work hard enough – to achieve excellence in some field, but to see it, touch it, hear it, just once in a while – is enough.

The world can be dull for a while, and you start to wonder what it’s for, what you’re for, day after grey and silent day. And then. You walk just a few hundred yards to a small concert in a local village hall, to see a little-known group play their last gig – and, six feet away from you, they are really really good, and a couple of songs are truly a bit special. So for a moment you remember again about excellence and beauty – and you touch it. You may go back to a grotty room afterwards… and tomorrow’s problems will still be there… but at least your spirit has a nightlight !

Thanks for all the fish…

You always said I was never emotional enough

Not enough ‘superbs’, too few ‘fantastics’, a dearth of ‘amazings’

Too much the realist, while I thought it honesty

And I started to doubt too – could it be so?

And sometimes I forgot myself.

But last night, in the village hall, a few songs were beautiful

And ‘Miss Austen Regrets’ on the Beeb was spell-binding

And my son dealt with me, and you, and his mother brilliantly

The emotions have always been there -

I just forgot you couldn’t see them.

Music Night - Whoo Hoo!!!

8:19 AM, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 .. 3 comments .. Link

Keep changing your mind. It keeps you young.

For some reason I used to dislike piano music until I was probably into my 30’s. I have no valid reason, except perhaps that I was pressed into going to piano lessons when I was a kid, and when you’re a kid who just wants to play footy with the lads on the bomb-site, you really don’t want to go to piano lessons (or tell the lads about it). So that may have had some effect. Mind you, one thing I did learn was ‘bunking off’ – oh, and ‘shame’, when my dear grey-haired piano teacher came to our house, concerned for my health as I hadn’t been to lessons for two weeks… Anyway – somehow the veil suddenly lifted in my 30’s and I discovered Chopin and then Rachmaninov and suddenly I had a whole new musical world to explore. It was magical.

My musical revelation in my 40’s was modern music. I’d locked the door on that very firmly shortly after Prokofiev. Schoenberg… Webern… ‘atonal music’ (how the hell can you have atonal music?)… they all seemed as mad as organised religion. The dreaded words on Radio 3: “…and now the premiere of a new work…” made me lunge for the radio 'off' switch while shouting loudly “la la la la la la” just in case a bit of atonal, 12 tone, or orchestration for a “hoover and a bin lid …” music slipped out before I got there. And then… I watched “The Draughtsman’s Contract” on TV and was blown away by the music. What the hell was that? And so I discovered Michael Nyman, and then investigated a bit further and found the minimalists, and then more, and hey, goodbye veil, there were modern composers who were interesting, and fun, and musical, and didn’t use hoovers and bin lids. Rock on! Another door-lock picked and a room re-opened.

In my 50’s, it’s been Indie music and pub music. Pub music was always some embarrassing eejit singing ‘My Way’, or kids who were so bad they couldn’t even manage punk. But it’s not. Well - not always. By accident (i.e. I was drinking there anyway), I heard an amazing local group play in a local pub. I swear he played Voodoo Child almost as well as Hendrix. And in a local pub, packed to the rafters, it was bloody good fun – and free, with real ale on tap, and I didn’t have to travel into London, or tramp through muddy fields, or experience chemical toilets. Hey – good pub music down the road is the way to go! (If you ever see Richard Sharp, remember to request Voodoo Child…)

So tonight is music night at my local in Bramley. The guy playing tonight – Willie Austin - has been around the circuit for years, and now his daughter and two sons also both play in other groups (I swear his son is Keith Moon re-incarnated on drums – just watching him attack the drums makes me grin) and they all seem to just really enjoy what they are doing, and turn up at each other’s gigs. Now that’s great to see, and their fun comes across in the music too.

What shall I discover in my 60’s? Any suggestions? Gregorian chants? It can’t be country music, can it, surely not? I hate the stuff! Well… unless you could get Shania Twain to play down my local… now, I think I might just make an exception then.

Sanctuary

4:01 PM, Wednesday, April 2, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

Life dealt you a few kicks, and time some blows

But you survived them all, so heaven knows

You had such strength to overcome any woes

And you had sanctuary

The river slides by, and the boat gently rocks

The world shoves and pulls, and you take its knocks

But still you find peace, are safe by the docks

At the sanctuary

Cars drive past - urgent people turning right

But unlatch the gate and slip down there at night

For the peace and calm, in the slow-fading light

Of the sanctuary

Leave your cares behind, get away from the town

Sit back on the bench, watch the sun going down

In this gentle place that will soothe any frown

That is Sanctuary.

A friend’s father died, and she likes to go down to his houseboat, called ‘Sanctuary’ to remember him and just generally chill out.

Hey Alfie

11:42 PM, Friday, March 28, 2008 .. 3 comments .. Link

I'm still waiting for an answer.

Here's a poem by another poster on another site I visit. Actually an ex-poster, so I can't even write to ask her permission, so I hope it's ok with her.

It haunts me.

End Game by 'Oulama'

After a time all losses are the same
One more thing lost is one thing less to lose;
And we go naked at last the way we came.

Though we shall probe, time and again, our shame,
Who lack the wit to keep or to refuse,
After a time all losses are the same.

No wit, no luck can beat a losing game;
Good fortune is a reassuring ruse
And we go naked at last the way we came.

Rage as we will for what we think to claim,
Nothing so much as this bare thought subdues;
After a time all losses are the same.

The sense of treachery - the want, the blame -
Goes in the end, whether or not we choose,
And we go naked at last the way we came.

So we, who would go raging, will go tame
When what we have we can no longer use;
After a time all losses are the same;
And we go naked at last the way we came.

A day in a life of a mail...

12:34 AM, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 .. 0 comments .. Link

It’s my day off – well, first of two. So – a lie in, bit of internet surfing, then decided to head off to Guildford for the day. Walk down to the village centre – the bus stop is just outside Sainsbury’s. Buy a Daily Mail there while I’m waiting. Twenty minutes to Guildford – just enough time to read backwards through the sports pages and then sample the rest, and then drop the paper in that little bay over the front wheel arch used for luggage and prams.

Bloody freezing – especially with my Guinness rugby top worn outside my jeans (I only succumbed to this trend about a year ago, mind…) and the icy wind whistles up it, so the first stop is Debenhams for white t-shirt vests (and new pants) and quick change in the toilets for added vesty comfort. Nice. Re-discovered scarves last year – hey they really work, me mother was right – but of course used the trendy loopy way of wearing them, not the Playtex cross-your-heart tuck-em-in-under-the arm-pits fashion she used with me school scarves.

Weatherspoons for lunch - £4.50 for burger, chips and a beer seems canny value in Surrey – hell, I pay £3.00 just for a beer in The Jolly. Then a stroll round Guildford. What am I doing here on my own? I don’t really know, but here I am, and alone I certainly am, and anyway it makes a change from Cranleigh, so poke around bookshops looking for Leonard Barras books (there aren’t any – surprise), then find myself in HMV. I haven’t spent much at all the last year, being broke, so buying CDs and DVs seems almost wicked, but I only buy the ones on special offer to stave off growing feelings of panic. Buy a coffee in the centre – make a mistake and ask for a ‘regular’, stupidly assuming that is the ordinary, smallest one. Of course, not – in modern coffee-speak that turns out to be the middle sized one that costs another 30p. Coffee-speak is a surreal world – I almost grudgingly admire them for their Alice in Wonderland use of language…

Text my friend in Morpeth (the one now passionately in love with Peter from Sunderland – harumphhh ) to ask if she thinks I should go the cinema or head home. She votes for the cinema, so go to see ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’. Indulge in lots of pick’n’mix sweets in a packet engineered for maximum noise when touched in any way

Canny film, but unengaging somehow.

Catch 7:50 bus back to Cranleigh – and there is my unwanted Daily Mail, still lying in the luggage space, doing it’s lonely cycle around Surrey. Stop off in Bramley for a session in The Jolly. Usual Suspects – usual craic, but it passes some more time, then back out to catch the last bus – 10:55 to Cranleigh. And there, pulling me up short for a second, lies my Daily Mail – on it’s last aimless circular ride of the day.

Pass by Sainsbury’s – there’s Ben, seen through the window, managing the night shift. Pass my son’s shop, turn right just before the Estate Agent that just sold my house, walk up past the school he went to… back to the house-share. Such a small world. Where did everyone go?

How to clean a microwave oven...

6:48 PM, Wednesday, March 12, 2008 .. 6 comments .. Link

I’ve moved. Well, I’ve moved out, I just haven’t quite moved in.

After a few years of drifting aimlessly, staring out of windows at 1 in the morning, writing dodgy poetry and watching debts pile up, I decided to sell up down South and move back North and… er… well… find a life. You know, at 57, it sort of felt like time to do that… It’s taken 9 months and two aborted sales but I finally completed my house sale last week.

So – end of phase 1. What furniture I had after moving out of my second long-term relationship (and house) is now packed tightly in 3 crates in store (including the box with my mini-disk player, disks and favourite CDs that I carefully sorted out to keep me amused here – and then packed in the rush. Doh!) Now, as I type from a tiny room in a house share, (with a bathroom that’s smaller than a toilet on an aeroplane – I bent down to wash my face in the ‘basin’ and my bum opened the door…) it’s probably time to start on phase 2 and look to find that life. Nowt difficult in that, like - just find a job, somewhere to live, and a sexy loving partner - all 300 miles away. Shall I do it all next month, or take my time?

It’s an adventure, says my lovely friend in Morpeth (who has now just found the love of her life in a bloke called - it would be - Peter from Sunderland. Guess she’s off the Phase 2 short-list then…).

You’re doing something really positive now, says my ex-partner Sue, who I haven’t even seen for a beer in two years as she’s always far too busy. Oh aye…

You can pay us now then, say a long list of companies…

Still – at least it made me clean the microwave. It really did need it, mind…

Literally murdering the English language...

8:54 AM, Monday, March 3, 2008 .. 2 comments .. Link

Why are some words so regularly abused and misused? 'Literally' is a poor, abandoned word that literally suffers regular abuse (as Hazey once noted). Nearly every day you hear phrases like "When I heard him say that, well, I literally could have died...". No you couldn't! How? Would you have held your breath until you expired... stabbed yourself with the office scissors... choked to death on your chewing gum... how?

This morning I heard a sports reporter say Everton scored 3 goals that 'effectively' secured their win. No they didn't - that's how the game works - you score more goals and you win - absolutely every time.

Is being niggled by language abuse a sure sign that I am finally entering my Victor Meldrew years? Am I now effectively destined to start snapping at boy scouts with sloppy woggles or people flying the Union Jack upside down? I literally don't believe it...

Who knows where the time goes?

10:40 PM, Tuesday, February 26, 2008 .. 4 comments .. Link

I need to think seriously about what I want to be when I grow up.

If I get that bull-worker back out from behind the wardrobe and actually start to use it properly, I could get my tummy into decent shape… feel better about myself.

I wonder what Heloise is up to these days – I wonder if she still lives in Hayling?

I quite fancy trying to play the guitar again. Think I’ll get one with softer strings this time though.

Where shall I live next? I always fancied Northumbria.

Maybe I should get back into Sales again?

It’s time I started going to music clubs again – I used to love going to them – yeah.

It’s getting late – damn, never did call the bank. Early start tomorrow then. Make up for lost time today.

Eeeh – the time flies, doesn’t it?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Xag3vLtsO-k&feature=related

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