written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Wednesday 6 November 2024

A Brown Study

I was having a bit of difficulty on this topic of ‘Brown Study’. I’d tried being very involved in my own thoughts and not paying attention to anything, or anyone, else. But that’s normal. I’d tried rooms and colours, corduroy trousers and the seasons. I was scrolling through the internet pages for an idea when I came across a poem by Edith Nesbit and read about the author.
 
illustration of Edith Nesbit by Julie Benbassat
This time the poem gave rise to the article. It has always been the other way round so it seems fair to start with it:

A Brown Study

Let them sing of their primrose and cowslip,
Their daffodil-gold-coloured hair,
Their bluebells, blue eyes, and white violets,
All the pale dreamy things they find fair;
Give me stir of brown leaves in the sunshine,
The whir of brown wings through the wheat,
The rush of brown hares through the clover,
And the light in brown eyes of my sweet!

Gold hair? Well, I never could love it,
Yet gold, I suppose, has its worth;
The head that I love is as dusky
As the breast of our mother, the earth;
With a gleam like the shine of wet seaweed,
Round pools that the tide has left clear,
And warm like the breast of a linnet,
And as brown, is the hair of my dear.

From the edge of the cliff we look downwards
On the shore, and the bay, and the town,
And brown is the short turf we lean on,
The fishing-boats' sails are all brown:
The sky may be blue--that's the background,--
But the picture itself, to be fair,
However it's shaded and varied,
Should be brown as the dress that you wear.

A lark bursts to sudden sweet singing--
That tuft of brown grass is his home--
And now, a brown speck, he is rising
Against the clear windy sky-dome;
And he sings--how I know? Love instructs me
To know all his notes, what they mean--
That it isn't the colour I care for,
But yourself, oh, my gipsy, my queen!

Ah! the lark knows my heart--I his language;
It's my heart he sings out to the skies;
It is you that I love, and what matter
The colour of hair or of eyes?
No doubt I should love you as dearly
Were your hair like an apricot's down,
And your eyes like the grey of the morning;
But I'm glad, all the same, that they're brown.

                                                            Edith Nesbit

If anyone had asked me about Edith Nesbit before reading about her then I might have remembered the name as the author of The Railway Children. Probably living in somewhere like Hampshire and writing poems like the above before she prepared dinner. How wrong can you be?


Sarah Watling in The Guardian writes that:
‘She was in person at once quite awe-inspiring and a bit of a nightmare, able to weather tragedy and yet a queen of melodrama, a self-supporting writer who opposed women’s suffrage. Vibrantly attractive and adored by her many proteges and readers, she was what they called in those days “advanced” – a committed socialist (she and her husband Hubert Bland were among the earliest members of the Fabian Society) who wore free-flowing clothes, gave charitably and wrote ferociously against poverty, and let her children play barefoot in the garden. Her home at Well Hall, in Eltham, was a lively hub for young writers, artists and Fabians; a place, HG Wells recalled, “to which one rushed down from town at the week-end to snatch one’s bed before anyone else got it”. She was generous with her time, her money and her husband.

Nesbit’s childhood was largely happy but nomadic. Her father, a distinguished chemist and teacher, died in 1862 when Edith was three, and from then the family moved around in reduced circumstances, taking regular trips abroad to cope with the ill health of an older sister, Mary, who died young. In 1880, the 21-year-old Edith married Bland, then a bank clerk. He was tall and athletic, powerful seeming. Nesbit herself was seven months pregnant when they married, a scandal at the time; their son, Paul, was born that summer. Two more children, Iris and Fabian, followed. Bland was never good with money; Nesbit supported the family by writing and by decorating greetings cards.

Edith Nesbit
The household was apparently always embroiled in “scenes”. Shortly after Iris’s birth, Nesbit discovered that Bland’s relationship with his previous fiancee was still going on (she had no idea about Edith). On his nights away from home, Nesbit’s friend, Alice Hoatson, kept her company. When a devastated Nesbit suffered a stillbirth, it was Hoatson who had to prise the dead baby from her arms; before long she had moved in permanently. They told people she had joined them because she was seriously ill; in fact she was heavily pregnant. Nesbit agreed to raise the child, a girl named Rosamund, as her own.

One way of understanding the menage a trois between Bland, Nesbit and Hoatson (who would have a second child with Bland, a son they pretended was Nesbit’s) is as a fruitful and long lasting collaboration between the two women. Nesbit was already an acclaimed poet by the time her children’s stories, often serialised in the Strand magazine, began to improve the family’s fortunes. The first Bastable book, ‘The Story of the Treasure Seekers’, appeared in 1899. The still-precarious family finances depended on Bland and Nesbit (they sometimes collaborated) churning out articles, stories and novels. Hoatson’s management of the home and children freed Nesbit to create. She generally set the tone. Her moods could plunge the whole household into gloom just as she enlivened everything when she was happy. Most agreed that Nesbit and Bland thrived on all the drama. But in 1900, the family came to grief when 15-year-old Fabian died after an operation to remove his adenoids and it seems that the adults were responsible.’

I think that gives some idea of the nature of Nesbit’s life, and how ironic that her married name was ‘Bland’.

Her tales of fantasy or magic influenced J. K. Rowling, C.S Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and Jacqueline Wilson, who has written her own sequel to “5 Children and It.” Noel Coward wrote to Noel Streatfeild, one of her biographers, of Edith’s “unparalleled talent for evoking the hot summer days in the English countryside.”

some of Edith Nesbit's many titles
After Hubert’s death in 1917 she met and married Tommy Tucker, a marine engineer, who had been friends with both of them and who had helped Edith overcome some financial problems. They found two wooden bungalows in New Romney, Kent where she died in May 1924.

Apologies for going more than a bit off topic but I found her story fascinating and I hope you do as well.

Terry Q.

Tuesday 5 November 2024

Brown Study - Daydreaming


I hadn’t heard of ‘brown study’. When I looked it up and did a bit of online research, I quickly realised that I do it all the time. Deep in thought, away with the fairies, that’s me and seemingly more so at the moment. There is a lot going on to fill my head with worry and make me stressful. Of course, things will improve, but I’ve got to get through the here and now. I drift off into my thoughts, trying to reason things out or work out what to do. There is rarely a solution.

This morning I was enjoying the stroll in the cool air to a group I attend. I was wondering if I would have better staying at home because I was feeling upset and close to tears, but the short walk would do me good and I love to catch up with my friends there. I stopped to cross a road, turned to check for traffic and jumped out of my skin to see one of my friends next to me. She’d been saying my name. I hadn’t heard her. I was away in my own little world of oblivion. We walked the rest of the way together, chatting about the mild weather after I’d explained that I was fine, just lost in a daydream.

I’m struggling to concentrate when reading. I’m near to the end of what is a re-read of a good book and I keep losing it, literally. The paragraphs give way to me overthinking something, so I go over it again then often nod off. It isn’t a boring book, well, some might disagree, but I love the story and it is a real rediscovery now, as a mature adult. I think I was about eighteen when it was mandatory reading and, I confess, some of the content was lost on me. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, thank you, Robert Tressell.

My personal brown study isn’t always about what I might be fretting over at the moment. Sometimes I travel way back, reliving nice happenings, or being angry with myself over doing things I now consider stupid – we make mistakes, learn from them and move on – I don’t need to beat myself up fifty years later. Most of what haunts me from the past are things and events that I had absolutely no control over and remain in residence in a brain cell.

I found this poem meaningful. It’s written by C. Vergara, published on Poetry Soup.

Deep thoughts, without blinking
In a trance, deep thinking

Voices of yesteryear, instilling neurotic fear
Deeper and deeper, across my hemisphere.

Deep thoughts, within my soul
Bringing my running to a slow crawl

Trying to avoid it, but can’t control it
Like a ‘who done it’, I can’t outrun it

Deep thoughts, take over my mind
They begin to grind what’s left behind.

It’s a sign, rectifying
My essence in time.

                              C. Vergara 9/6/2010

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Monday 4 November 2024

A Brown Study Of Brown

A ‘Brown Study’ is a mood when one is involved in deep thought and not paying attention to anything else. I am very familiar with this, particularly when lost in the midst of creative endeavours or researching something of particular interest. Writing this article caught me in this frame of mind as I researched all things brown.

Ancient Cave Paintings of Hands at Cueva de Las Manos in Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina ©R M Nunes/Adobe Stock
Etymology
The English word ‘brown’ has been in use for nearly a millennia. The word is derived from Middle English ‘broun’, Old English/French/Old High German ‘brun’, Norse ‘brĂşn’ and/or Proto-Germanic ‘brunaz’ all meaning that earthy colour that falls between the yellow and red spectrum.

The Colour
Brown is one of the first colours that humans used to create imagery as evidenced in cave paintings with pigments made from clay or hematite (a heavy and relatively hard oxide mineral that produces reds, oranges, yellows and browns). Some of the brown pigments found in cave paintings were made from a clay pigment called ‘umber’ dating back to 40,000 BC. Raw umber, a dark brown clay mined in Umbria, Italy (also found in other parts of the world) produces the colour brown with a greenish grey tint whilst burnt umber (roasted umber) creates a warmer hue. The use of umber as under-painting became popular among painters in the Renaissance. It continues to be popular with artists today.

Mia, Burnt Umber Underpainting and Final Portrait, Oil on Canvas,© 2021 Julia Swarbrick
Artists use an array of different shades of brown that can be created in a variety of ways such as mixing red, yellow and blue together or adding a splash of black to orange paint. In the printing industry and those using image programmes on a computer there are two colour systems, CMYK and RGB. Using the CMYK colour system brown is created by mixing red, black and yellow.

The RGB system mixes red and green. Both of these systems were developed during the early
twentieth-century.

When identifying different variants of brown, many have been named after something i.e. coffee, chocolate, peanut, walnut, sand, fawn, saddle brown and wood. Wood brown can be defined further into types such as ash, chestnut, mahogany and hazel. All this identification is advantageous as visual imagery comes to mind when the word is spoken. One can conjure up an idea of what shade of brown something actually is without necessarily seeing it, thus improving communication between folk. Humans seem to be obsessed with description and labelling which brings us around to people named Brown.

The Surname
The practice of using surnames in England began after 1066 eventually spreading throughout Britain and beyond. It is believed that people were originally nicknamed ‘Brown’ because of the colour of their hair, eyes and/or complexion that eventually developed into a nickname or surname. In Scotland, Brown as a surname is very common. In this neck of the woods the origins could also be derived from the Gaelic ‘brehon’, meaning judge.

There are many famous people named Brown including fictional characters like Mr Henry Brown in Paddington, Emmett Brown in Back to the Future and the cartoon character Charlie Brown.

Wikipedia lists well over three hundred people of notoriety with this surname. Included in this list are several James Browns with possibly the most famous being the American singer, songwriter and dancer James Brown (1933-2006) who had hits like I Feel Good and Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag (this musical titbit is for you Steve R.).

Other lesser known James Browns in contemporary circles, who were top in their professions at the time include James Campbell Brown (1843-1910) a British chemist, Dundee architect James Maclellan Brown (c.1886-1967) and James Brown (1832-1904) a Scottish poet/essayist who signed his works J.B. Selkirk (James Brown of Selkirk).

Selection From The Last Epistle to Tammus by JB Selkirk
And as a final fun fact, ‘Brown Cow’ is not just a brown-coloured bovine that gives milk, but a previously used playful name for a beer barrel in Selkirk’s homeland.

All Things Brown

Brown study, study of brown.
Run around in a dressing gown.
Brown like a bear - brown, brown, brown,
grr, grr, grrring in a run around town.
In and out of town through woods,
the forest, nature’s neighbourhood
filled with brown dirt, plants, and trees,
chestnut, hazel - fawns and fleas.
All things brown, all things good,
like them, love them as one should.
Brown, brown, brown and just like that
my bare bear foot stepped in scat.

Thank you for reading.
Kate
J

Sources
Ancestry, 2024. Meaning of the first name Brown. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/first-name-meaning/brown?srsltid=AfmBOorbWn5AS7LM5WLIQzwW3Tqq10Pn9gVceCOkyD78j0uW-KTvU_o8 Accessed 20 October.
Britannica, 2024. Brown. https://www.britannica.com/science/brown-color Accessed 20 October.
Cambridge Dictionary, 2024. Brown Study.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/brown-study Accessed 20 October.
Canva, 2024. Everything about the color brown. https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ Accessed 24 October.
Hansen, T.A., 2017. Natural Earth Paint through the Ages: The Prehistoric Era-. https://www.naturalearthpaint.eu/en/blogs/blog/natural-earth-paint-through-the-ages-the-prehistor/ Accessed 25 October 2024.
Harrington, J., 2020. How now brown cow. https://www.anchornews.org/2020/01/23/how-now-brown-cow/ Accessed 31, 2024.
Nova Colour, 2022. Understanding the Color Brown and its Shades. https://novacolorpaint.com/blogs/nova-color/color-brown-and-its-shades Accessed 27 October 2024.
Oleson, J., 2024. 128 Shades of Brown: Color Names, Hex, RGB, CMYK Codes. https://www.color-meanings.com/shades-of-brown-color-names-html-hex-rgb-codes/ Accessed 20 October.
Selkirk, J.B., 1905. Poems. R & R Clark Ltd. Edinburgh. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October 2024.
Wikimedia, 2024. Poems by J.B. Selkirk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October.
Wikipedia, 2024. List of people with surname Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_surname_Brown Accessed 31 October.

Sunday 3 November 2024

David Riley: a retrospective

11:00:00 Posted by Steve Rowland , No comments
I feel I am among the least qualified to introduce this retrospective piece on David Riley, as I barely knew him. He was  Blackpool-born and I understand he was among the early participants in Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society, but his involvement had pretty much ended by the time I joined in 2014. 

David Riley (extreme right) with early members of LDGPS
He was an historian, a tutor with the Open University, and  a writer of science-fiction, plays and poetry. I saw David read at a couple of open mic nights and prevailed upon him to write a trio of short pieces as a guest blogger but he always seemed to maintain a relatively low profile. The last time we met was at the funeral of fellow Dead Good Poet Christopher Heyworth in the summer of 2017, when David announced that he was relocating to Ireland to undertake an MA in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre of Queen's Belfast. He passed away in September 2018 just after having completed his dissertation.

Divine Mystery

In Whitechapel, hell clings to brick and stone
Grim residue like smog that never lifts
Blue populace wades, ankle deep in death

Behind a window's bubble-spotted eyes
Bone-handled orphans rest in caskets lined
With velvet. Feathered pens and vessels, cracked.

A desk, marked deep and faded as the day
Is strewn with cups and wands, lovers and wheels
A form, ancient and present, points to change.

Her fingers at the deck, old woman smiles
Reeking of gin and smoke, wrapped tight in tweed
A body's surfaced and she knows the hand.


Emigrant

Alehouse drink was attracting attention
to the ending of things
preceding Skipool's frigate who'd blur all consequence.

"Carried away to Amerikay,"
the stillborn song no one could finish
among the fledgeling emigres.

Anyons, Bambers, Silcocks, Hulls
most busy telling absent Hornbys Stanleys
what they could do with their bulls.

Brave on their last night in Poulton
that gentry at a safe distance
they waited on high tide to follow the sun -

"aye, where it sleeps, just beyond there
they've men with faces for chests
and dogs' heads for their hair.

It's true as I'm standing here
they've got pictures down south somewhere."
The stories were getting as strong as the beer.

They wanted a world of adventure
lied for it, stole for it, lent wives for it
and tomorrow on the shore

they'd look where horizons should be
losing touch, moving on
into the sky and the sea.


Found Blackpool

3am argue blackpool blackpool's cash chair class come cost council day deckchair deckchairs emro end forward gazette go golden happen id including just mile modern move need new other place police process prom pub resort say seaside seem shame sight spent stock talk time town visitor vital working year


Thoughts For Christmas

Is poetry always religious?
Is religion always influenced by the politics of the day?
Therefore, is Christmas poetry always political?
Do you need to understand religion before you can understand most poetry, from Beowulf to the Canterbury Tales to Eliot?
Do you need to know the nativity story to understand Coleridge, Rossetti and Wordsworth?
How much Christmas themed poetry have you seen in the shops recently?
Are poets making Christmas commercial?
Is there extra exposure for poetry at this time of year?
Does it help poetry?
Are Christmas carols poetry?
Are some more Catholic than Protestant (and vice versa)?
Do they all have the same message?
Is Christmas relevant any more? Is Christmas poetry important?
Is it as saccharine as Christmas card verses?
Are these big questions?
Happy Christmas.


Customs Man

The child's wrapped to her
curves reserved for him now,
maybe husband too.

She does the dance of motherhood
soothes the boy
refuses to entangle eyes with me

but I know her secret name
and the one she shares
since she's been goodwife to him.

I add them
to Anyons, Bambers, Silcocks, Hulls
clerk them out of England

a last rite,
pull them up by the roots
throw them out to sea.

I look at the child's red fist
declining to go so easily
catching his mother's impatient hair.

I murmur small pleasantries
close my book
wish them God speed

watch them walk the plank.
I wave. No one turns back,
she doesn't look.


RIP David Riley, 1955-2018



Saturday 2 November 2024

Ghosting

Who doesn't love a gerund?  And we all loved Baxter. His working life was spent  ghosting  books for famous people who couldn't write to save theirs, who had the nerve but not the talent or the time to set things down in words. I'm not going to bore you with a list of his (often uncredited) successes. They meant little more to him than they'd mean to you and I've never read a single one, but Baxter was fun.

We were saddened and shocked when he suddenly went to join the host of ghost writers in the sky, but were not surprised that he had left behind his own epitaph:

                 Per vitam inspiravit, in morte vivit. (He ghosted through life, he lives on in death.) 

With Halloween spookily receding and firework night fast approaching, this week-end felt like an appropriate occasion to remember Baxter's spirit again. 

for ghost writers in the sky
I do so in my latest poem below, a simple, seasonal piece fired in the imagination but based mostly on real events:

Fireworks for Baxter
We taped three huge rockets together
with conspiratorial smiles and gaffer
(for all men are boys under the skin)
and headed for the nearest open space,

a park nestled in a curve of  the river,
the perfect amphitheatre. A lucky find,
one hollow bollard in which to point
our tribute skyward at November stars.

We lit three touch-papers and waited
an agonising age before that monster
roared up and away, drowning out
our manic shouts of 'For you Baxter!'

The river sparkled, air crackled, dogs
howled, car alarms wailed in unison.
We legged it as police sirens closed in
to find who’d blown a hole in heaven.

                 

Because today's blog is almost criminally short, a shadow of my usual forays, I thought I should throw in a musical bonus for good measure. I leave you with Dennis Linde (who wrote hits for the likes of Elvis Presley) with this rendition of Ghost Riders In The Sky from his 1978 LP 'Under The Eye'.

Happy trails and thanks as ever for reading my stuff, S ;-)

Wednesday 30 October 2024

Ghosting

If I knew last week that I couldn’t write this article but had already promised to write it then who could/would I have hired to Ghostwrite it for me? By definition the best of them are names I don’t know.

There’s a lovely story told by Liam Pieper, a professional ghost writer:
‘My therapist suggested... that I should try to live in the moment more. They mentioned a book I should read, a very good book full of kindness and wisdom which has inspired many people to live more hopeful, generous lives. I wrote it a few years back.’

Ghostwriting
Ghostwriting (or ghosting) as a term originated in the 1920s with the US agent Christy Walsh, who had a stable of 36 writers to pair with sports celebrities. There are companies in the UK today who operate in a similar way, pairing clients with professional writers. Story Terrace have 600 writers on their books and are looking for more; Book of My Life have 80. Book of My Life founder Alison Vina what she looks for in a writer. ‘All our writers are published authors or journalists. Just as important as their writing experience is their personality. It’s essential that that they are kind, patient and empathic interviewers.’

Ghost authorship also applies to the visual arts and music but I’m going to stick with the writing side of things.

Ghostwriters are hired for numerous reasons. In many cases, celebrities or public figures do not have the time, discipline, or writing skills to write and research a several hundred-page autobiography or "how-to" book. Even if a celebrity or public figure has the writing skills to pen a short article, they may not know how to structure and edit a several hundred-page book so that it is captivating and well-paced. In other cases, publishers use ghostwriters to increase the number of books that can be published each year under the name of well-known, highly marketable authors, or to quickly release a topical book that ties in with a recent or upcoming newsworthy event (or in the case of  Book of My Life’s the most unusual request was for someone write the story of their dog).

James Fox (left) working on Keith Richards' (right) "Life"
Ghostwriters will often spend from several months to a full year researching, writing, and editing non-fiction and fiction works for a client, and they are paid based on a price per hour, per word, or per page, with a flat fee, a percentage of the royalties of the sales, or some combination thereof.

What will you earn? As a respected ghost writer in the world of big publishing you can expect to be paid top rate for a celebrity memoir. But as a pen for hire for an ordinary memoir, the rates are similar to those for copywriters at around £40 per hour.

As a rough guide, you might expect to spend at least 50 hours on a 20,000-word book over three or four months, from first interview to final draft. If you’re working with a package company, they will agree a project fee with you at the outset, which is a percentage of what the client pays them. If you are working with a literary agent and a big name, you may be able to negotiate a share of royalties too.

For instance in 2001, The New York Times stated that the fee that the ghostwriter for Hillary Clinton's memoirs would receive was probably about $500,000 of her book's $8 million advance. Surprisingly (well, to me) the average salary for a ghostwriter in the UK is £31,771 per year.

ghostwritten by Hunter Davies
Going back to my original query. What would I have to pay to someone else to write this blog? Woodbridge Publishers reckon: Blogging Ghostwriting get £0.05 - £0.30 per word. So I reckon about £60. Is this worth £60. Don’t answer.

Some information for this blog was from Jools Abrams in Mslexia.

I can’t find any serious ghost written poems. I haven’t written any for someone else. How about this one: 

Ghost-writing the Climber

That weekend there was an accident.
But this is not about where you were,
the merry-go-rope and sky crack of walnut
boulders, the sheep wool sliding in the rain –

but who washed the blood and grit from your arms,
who listened to the oh-oh story first, and heard

the cows on the far slope roll black and white, black and
white, releasing their full vocabulary of ‘no’.

                                                                       Kristina Close

(originally published in Poetry News Spring 2010, The Poetry Society)

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Saturday 26 October 2024

Poppies

Flowers. It was William Blake who wrote:
"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour. "

I let my back garden run a bit wild this year. The much heralded revamp is on hold. It was heaven for the insects (bees in particular) to have a range of wild flowers to enjoy, even if it all looked a bit scruffy and haphazard. 

I love wild flowers and the illustration below is a glass panel I had made for me a few years ago to hang in the conservatory, because unlike paintings or posters the colours don't get bleached by the sunshine. Stephanie Bowen is a local Lancashire glass artist with a studio, Morpheus Glass, in Wigan. 

Meadow Flowers - glass panel art by Stephanie Bowen, 2019 
Given that we are close to Armistice Day, I thought I'd focus this flower blog on poppies in particular, since the red poppy (papaver rhoeas ), or red-flowered corn poppy to give its full title, has become the symbol of remembrance for those fallen in battle, in no small part  because of the way it colonised the disturbed soil of the First World War battlefields in the wake of all that bloodshed - although there are deeper connotations as described further on.

But poppies come in a variety of species and colours (yellow, orange, purple, blue, white, pink). As with many cultural practices, the first recorded instance of poppies being cultivated and used for culinary, medicinal, recreational and religious purposes dates back to the Sumerians (in what is now southern Iraq) some time in the fifth millennium BC. They were the first to grow opium poppies (papaver somniferum ), a practice that continues to this day across the region of the Middle East and Asia, providing the world with a precariously regulated source of opium and analgesic opiates (including codeine, heroin and morphine).

From Sumeria, poppy cultivation and poppy folklore spread west around the Mediterranean and east along the silk road to China. Juglets containing opium have been found in Ancient Egyptian tombs and poppies feature in their jewellery and paintings of the second millennium BC. In Crete, Minoan culture of the same period celebrated the Poppy Goddess and later, both Greek and Roman cultures regarded the poppy as a symbol of sleep and dreams (narcolepsy - the Morpheus connection) and of death (repose in everlasting sleep). Poppies featured in funeral rites and as tokens of remembrance even three thousand years ago. There is also some evidence that other pagan religions came to regard the poppy as a symbol of resurrection.

Of course to most of us poppies are appreciated for their vibrant colour, whether growing as wild flowers in the countryside or as ornamental plants in our gardens, and the bees love them. There will be poppies as well as geraniums in my garden after the revamp.

They also retain their culinary and cosmetic uses. Poppy seeds (the non-opioid varieties) are rich in oil, calcium and protein. The oil can be used in salads and in cooking, and many bread products are baked with poppy seeds mixed in the dough or sprinkled on top. Poppy extracts feature in beauty products and are used in the manufacture of some paints and varnishes.

The poppy is the national flower of both Albania, North Macedonia and Poland and is the state flower of California. Poppy has also regained currency in the 21st century as a girl's name and several rock bands have featured it, including (with incisive Scouse humour) Liverpool's Dead Poppies.      

Girl in a Field with Red Poppies - by Frank Buchser, 1878
To conclude, here's a poem I've just written in that eternity of an hour the clocks have given back to us tonight. Its title is from a quote by Dr. Joel Warsh, an American paediatrician. In full, the quotation reads:
"Let’s raise children who can name plants and animals, not celebrities and brands. In a world full of screens and pop culture, let’s encourage our kids to connect with nature and appreciate the beauty around them. Teaching them about the natural world helps foster curiosity, responsibility, and a deeper understanding of our planet. "

Let's Raise Children Who Can Name Plants And Animals
Belcher's Factory tea room,
Monday mid-morning break
women in pink nylon overalls
sit drinking tea 
at tables with plastic flowers,
scrolling on their phones 
or chatting
about weekend dates or TV
when one exclaims 'there's a bird'.

A rare sight indeed.

They crowd to the dusty window
and gaze at the tiny thing
bobbing and dipping
in the gutter of the factory opposite.

'That's a pied wagtail' says the youngest
who's never seen one before
but has the book at home.
'It's probably searching for water
or insects.'

They watch its jerky little movements
with fascination until with a last flick
of its black and white tail it sails off
leaving them to stare wistfully after
without knowing why.

Come on girls! Mugs away!
That sinking feeling,
back to the production of wealth.






And so to bed, as Zebedee said...or was it Samuel Pepys? (Don't answer, I know it was the latter.)
Thanks for reading, S ;-)


Friday 25 October 2024

Wayside Blossoms

He’d said he would be back in the spring with the curlew. But it was June and there was still no sign of him. 

Before Jim left, he’d given Sara a gift, a book called Wayside and Woodland Blossoms. It contained all the varieties of British wildflowers you could possibly imagine, complete with illustrated colour plates and a detailed description of each flower and the family it belonged to.


‘I expect you to have learnt the names of all the flowers in this book by the time I get back,’ he joked. 
‘I’m not interested in wildflowers,’ she said. ‘I just wish you weren’t going.’ 
‘We’ve been over this a million times,’ he said. ‘I can’t stay here twiddling my thumbs. I need to earn a living and there’s nothing for me here. We’re in the middle of a depression, remember. At least you have a job. And they’re always going to need teachers.' 
‘But why do you have to go so far away?’ she said. ‘And what makes you think it will be better anywhere else?’
‘Well, I have to try,’ he said. ‘There are always plenty of jobs down South, fruit-picking. It’s not as if I’m leaving the country.’

With that he packed his bags and was gone. A letter arrived soon afterwards. He’d found a job for the harvest season in Kent. He’d be home for Christmas. But Christmas came and went. Next thing she knew he’d gone and signed up to work on a ship. It was an opportunity he couldn’t refuse, he said. He was sailing the next day. He’d be home in the spring.

The book lay on the bedside table all winter. What was the point in looking at pictures of wildflowers during the winter? It had been raining non-stop and the ground was soddened, so she couldn’t even get out for a walk. But when spring came and the weather bucked up, she was determined to make the most of it. She’d try to identify as many wildflowers as she could on her walks.

Soon the first primroses were pushing up their pale, yellow petals along shady banks, followed by delicate white wood anemones. There were carpets of celandines and bluebells amidst wild garlic, violets, and wild strawberry flowers. The boggy areas were awash with marsh marigolds.

His letters were becoming less and less frequent. Maybe he was too busy, too caught up in his everyday life to find time to write. Or maybe the letters just weren't getting through. When a letter finally did arrive, it contained some lines from a poem called the Seafarer.

     ‘Sometimes I heard the song of the swan
     seized gladness in the cry of the gannet
     and the sound of the curlew, instead of
     the laughter of men: in the screaming gull,
     instead of the clanking mead-cups.’


What was that supposed to mean? The poem, it turned  out was written by an anonymous poet in Old English. Some said it was a sailor’s lament. Others said that it was an account of a religious hermit in search for God. Would Jim ever be coming back?

Curlews came inland in March for the breeding season, preferring to live most of the year on riverbanks by the sea. Come July, they would be going back there. You had to be careful with nesting birds. They would come at you, screeching in alarm if you got too close to the nest. Whenever she heard their calls reverberating across the valley, she thought of Jim. They became her constant companions.


Whenever she spotted an unfamiliar variety of wildflowers, she looked it up in Wayside and Woodland
Blossoms
. There were far more of them than she’d ever imagined. She’d always thought Jack-by-the-Hedge was a weed. 
It had tiny white flowers and was everywhere. Silver weed, on the other hand, was striking with its feathery leaves which were silver on the underside, but its flowers could easily be mistaken for buttercups. Bistort, an unusual name, she thought, had flowers which looked like pale pink spikes. Bugle reflected the shape of the musical instrument with the same name but unlike the orchid, which it was often taken for, had leaves coming off the stem. It was hard to tell the difference between all the clusters of small white flowers she encountered on Queen Anne’s lace, Earthnut and Ground Elder.

May blossom was everywhere, lighting up the hedgerows. May or hawthorn blossom gave off a delicate, fruity smell, a smell of spring. She remembered the old saying ‘Cast ne’er a clout, till May be out.’ The book said that in pagan times the hawthorn was regarded as a fertility symbol. Hence the ritual of dancing around the Maypole. And in medieval times, people thought hawthorn smelt of the plague and that if you took the blossoms into your house, you would be scourged by illness or death. Thank Goodness the days of magic and superstition were over, she reflected. As a biology teacher she knew that there was often a logical explanation for such beliefs. Dead wood gave off a chemical, called trimethylamine which smelt like decaying animal tissue.

In June, the weather turned windy. The forecast had predicted gusts of up to fifty miles an hour. When she looked out of her bedroom window, the branches of the rowan and elderberry bushes, top-heavy with leaves and blossom, were being blown this way and that. Her fiancĂ© was adrift at sea, being tossed about by the elements. As the branches swayed rhythmically in their hypnotic dance, they seemed to be beckoning her to join them.

Someone had said there were fairy foxgloves growing in the old quarry down by the disused lead mine. According to Wayside Blossoms, they weren’t real foxgloves. They weren’t even native to this country, having been introduced from Alpine regions hundreds of years ago, but they were growing wild in isolated spots. Now was as good a time as any to go and investigate.

She nearly got blown off her feet as she walked along the ridge to the limestone quarry. Once inside the dell, the wind dropped, thankfully. Halfway up the rockface, growing out of cracks in the rock, she spied a clump of tiny, purple flowers. They must be the fairy foxgloves she’d heard of. She needed to take a closer look. She recalled a picture she’d once seen of a long-skirted, Victorian lady, clambering up a rockface in pursuit of some rare variety of fern.

Just as she was nearing the ledge, a curlew came screeching overhead. She must be close to its nest. She put her hand out to protect herself from the encroaching bird. Thoughts of Jim flashed through her mind, as she lost her grip and fell.

Jenny Palmer 
First published in Creative Mind No 5, Preeta Press.

Editor's Note:
This short story is just one piece among thirty in Jenny Palmer's latest book, 'Butterflies and other stories'. It's out now, published by Bridge House.  It is available from Amazon, linked here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Butterflies-Jenny-Palmer/dp/1914199685 and naturally it comes with the highest Dead Good recommendation.

Wednesday 23 October 2024

Tulips

The question I have to ask myself is whether I would sell my house for the bulb of a flower in the hope that in a few week’s time I could sell the bulb to buy a mansion. I’ll think about it.

In the meantime let’s have a look back to Holland in the early 1600s. The introduction of tulips to Holland in the latter part of the sixteenth century coincided with the fashion for the newly emergent middle and upper classes to keep gardens. Their gardens either adjoined town houses, or were in separate plots outside the city walls. This was a form of conspicuous consumption, a way in which the newly rich could display their wealth. Tulips were an exotic item from the East, newly imported at a time when global trade was just beginning to have an impact, of which the Dutch were leaders. In time other plants would be all the rage, but in the 1630s it was tulips.


The Dutch East India Company earned huge profits and their shares increased greatly in value. The demand for tulips soared, and in response the number of tulips available for sale rose accordingly; by the mid-1630s there were more than 500 varieties. Some perspective is given to the Dutch craze by the fact that France had already experienced its own tulip mania, where prices reached similarly unfeasible heights.

England did not experience a craze for tulips, but there are parallels with other fashionable plants in England, not least the orchid, for which there were weekly auctions in London in the Edwardian period. The author Rider Haggard tells of a Mr. Tracy, who was offered and refused seventeen hundred guineas for an Odontoglossum Crispum “Think of it! He refused the value of a good sized farm for that one frail and perishable plant!”

Tulip Mania - Jan Brueghel the Younger, 1640
The phenomenon later described as Tulipomania arose in the autumn and winter of 1636-37 when, according to the best evidence, very small offsets increased in price between four and ten times in the last three months of 1636 and large bulbs increased in price five fold. The demand for the tulip trade was so large by the end of that year that regular marts for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam in Rotterdam, Haarlem, and other towns.

It was at this time that professional traders got in on the action and everyone appeared to be making money simply by possessing some of these rare bulbs. It seemed at the time that the price could only go up, that the passion for tulips would last forever. People had purchased bulbs on credit, hoping to repay their loans when they sold their bulbs for a profit.


However, the bubble had burst by the end of 1637. Buyers announced that they couldn't pay the high prices previously agreed upon for bulbs and the market fell apart. It wasn't a devastating occurrence for the nation’s economy but it did undermine social expectations. The event destroyed relationships built on trust and people’s willingness and ability to pay.

It should be said that there were no discernible bankruptcies amongst the participants and little or no effect on the wider economy. Remarkably, also, considering the scope for fraud, there seems to have been little or no criminal activity.

The Tulipomania story became notorious upon the publication in 1846 of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, which has never been out of print. His source was a series of three propaganda leaflets published anonymously in the aftermath of the events, in particular one entitled Dialogue between True-mouth and Greedy-goods. As the title suggests, it is a satire, and as it is in the very nature of satire to exaggerate to make a point, it would be unwise to rely on it as being necessarily true.


Much of the information above comes from articles by Jonathan Denby, Faculty of History, University of Oxford, Tulipmania: About the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market Bubble by Adam Hayes (Investopedia) and Doug Ashburn (Britannica Money).

No, I wouldn’t sell my house as I like my house and the area I live in. Anyway, if I had a mansion just think of all the cleaning.

I couldn’t resist this poem by Dylan Thomas:

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.









Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Tuesday 22 October 2024

Flowers - Bloomin' Lovely

The garden is looking sorry for itself. Chopped down for winter, the three intertwined buddleia are naked sticks protruding from the soil, shorter than the fence. They look dead, but I’m sure I haven’t killed them. I can’t say the same for the annoying bindweed that was wrapped tightly around more branches than I realised. It has disappeared for now. Springtime will see it re-emerge, ready to attack, and once again I’ll be fighting the losing battle of trying to keep it away. I’m considering training it on to some trellis somewhere at the side. It is an attractive plant, just damages other things. We’ll see. The buddleia didn’t flower very well and I didn’t see a single butterfly, though I was away for most of the summer.

I'm not a good gardener, home or away, but I make an effort and do my best. Bulbs are planted for spring. I look forward to daffodils, tulips, irises, grape hyacinths and something I’ve never heard of that looked very pretty on the box. I do this every autumn, full of enthusiasm, expecting to grow the best spring garden ever and the wonderful flowers will compensate for every ache and pain. Something is always lacking – green fingers – so, in all seasons I try to plant things that will flower nicely and look after themselves. A favourite is the Totally Tangerine geum. They come back stronger each year. There are two, in different flower beds. In bloom, one is more stunning than the other. The slightly weaker one was bought when I was feeling cross about someone connected to football and I think it shows, but it doesn’t matter now.

I love to have flowers in the house. Last week I was overwhelmed and delighted to be given beautiful roses including yellow ones for friendship from a lovely friend of many years. She didn’t know this, but things have been tough for me lately. The flowers, with their special significance, really helped to cheer me up.

I always have daffodils in remembrance of my father. When he passed away, his garden path was lines with an abundance of shades of yellow, cream and orange created by an amazing display of various daffodils. It’s nice to see them appear in my garden.

I hope I have success with poppies next year. They always look lovely, but can be so delicate that they don’t last very long.

I’ve chosen two poems,

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth 1770-1850


In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae 1872-1918

Thanks for reading, Pam x