Lancashire Dead Good Poets' November Open Mic Night

Why not join us for our November open mic night on Zoom? You're welcome to read or just listen to two hours of sparkling poetry. To book your place, please email the address on the poster:

There is no set theme for the night, and there are 20 x 5 minute slots on offer, so bring us your latest and best. PS. You don't even have to be from Lancashire.

 

Steve ;-)

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Spontaneity

T and I were walking her dog (Billy) in the park today and I happened to mention that this week’s blog was to be on ‘Spontaneity’. She looked at me with a slight look of incredulity and exclaimed “Spontaneity. You are writing about Spontaneity?!”

I was more than slightly aggrieved and that was before I noticed that even Billy was guffawing.

I told her, after explaining calmly that spontaneity was a part of my routine, that I was thinking about doing something on haiku but wasn’t keen and when she had recovered she reminded me of a story I’d told her a few years ago. This is it.

the Gaiety Coffee Bar, Butlin's, Pwllheli, 1970

In the summer of 1970 I had worked as a Plain Clothes Security Officer at Butlins in Pwllheli. During that time I had met my first proper girlfriend, Millie (Irmeli), a Finnish girl who was spending her summer working as chamber maid to get some money and better her English. It was an emotional parting and we kept writing to each other over the following months and looking forward to seeing each other again. She was going to work at Butlins again but didn’t know when or where and I was going to take the summer off by signing on the dole, as I was then at college, and travel to wherever she was posted.

So, it was in June 1971 and end of exams at Wolverhampton Poly so we had decided to have a party to celebrate. Our house was near the college so plenty turned up and it wasn’t until about 7 am that we kicked the last ones out. At which point the post arrived with a card from Millie. It said:

‘In Ayr. Where are you?'

At this point it should be noted that faded tie-dye jeans were in. Desert boots were in. Long hair and beard was in. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I can’t remember the rest or what bag I took. I do remember the jolt of electricity I got when I read the card and chucked whatever was around in it and headed off for Scotland immediately.

Hitching was so normal then that I must have got up to around Gretna without anything noticeable happening because it was there that to my surprise a Rolls Royce stopped and offered me a lift. 

It turned out the driver was the head of a major international company and it was the first time he had been back to his home territory since he was a boy. It was quite moving as he pointed out hills and lochs where he had played as a boy. He was kind enough to drop me at the Ayr Butlins camp. But by this time the place was closed and I was lucky enough to find its stables and managed to get some intermittent sleep.

Ayr Butlin's stables

In the morning I went to the main gate and asked for Millie. Minutes later we had an emotional reunion. Even more emotional when she told me that she and the other Finnish students were being moved to Pwllheli right then.

She turned back into the camp and the next thing was that I was waving to her as she passed in a coach. She had got a window seat and tears were flowing. I kept on waving until the coach disappeared and then sat down on the side of the road as I realised that I was going to have to follow.

But that was fine. It was wonderful. Young and in love.

I could have written another article on the journey to North Wales that I seem to remember involving sleeping under the Menai Bridge and a milk lorry getting me the last few miles to the gates of the Butlins camp where I knew all the holes in the fences due to the previous year.

map of Butlin's, Pwllheli

I was looking for a particular poem to end this and as I couldn’t find a suitable one in my main files I looked in my paper based ‘Useless’ one and gave a gasp of surprise at finding the one below written when it says it was but I don’t remember writing it. Lesson: Never chuck stuff.

Dole Q (Summer 1971)

Sitting in the dole queue
I’m waiting for my name
Staring at the dark brown floor
Seeing through the same.
A cigarette sub sails
Under a spit wet sea
Rising to an occasion
Which is more than
Can be said for me,
Feet seem to walk this water
Well, it’s a point of view,
Stepping on stony glances
Or merely another shoe.
Somewhere in the distance
Lies a promised hand
So I’ll be off tomorrow
Towards another land.
A number is called
A number are bald
But many more are younger.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Spontaneity

 

Spontaneity is not my strong point. I’m more Ms Stayput and keep cautious. I leave impulsiveness to those with the confidence to either know what they’re doing, or not care about the outcome because we only live once. That’s fine. I’m a happy soul with my plans noted on my calendar, allowing for plenty of rest time between events. By events, I really mean appointments and regular weekly or monthly meetings. I have a visit to the dentist coming up and as the surgery is in town, it might be tempting to pop to M & S or the Hound’s Hill for a bit of Christmas shopping. That could be classed as spontaneity for me, I suppose.

 The weekend before last, we had a few days away in our caravan, planned, of course. We met up with family for some relaxing time together, which it was. Disappointingly, the pub within walking distance no longer serves food, so we all managed with our own supplies and looked for somewhere further afield for the next day. A lovely hotel in nearby Lockerbie provided the answer, with its fabulous restaurant open to non-residents. This was probably the last time we’ll get out in the caravan this year. The chilly autumn nights and dark tea-times have no appeal to me, regardless of how beautiful the view across a loch might be from the caravan window. Never say never, though, someone might have an impulse to squeeze one more trip in. It won’t be me. We’ll be cosy in our favourite lodge in Dumfries & Galloway soon and I am happy to wait for that.

 During this week, there was a moment when a decision was made that could, from my point of view, be a spontaneous thing. Christmas Day has always been at home and over the years the family has expanded, which is wonderful. The family is my world, but Christmas can be hard work for me, so, giving everyone plenty of notice, we told everyone that we’re not hosting Christmas Day this year, but we will arrange a family buffet between Christmas and New Year. We hadn’t made plans for ourselves until The Corner Flag popped up on Blackpool FC Hotel festivities. Spontaneity stepped in. Sorted.

 I found this poem by Bryan Wallace on Poem Hunter and thought it apt for me, 

Diary with a little pencil stuck in spine-
Each day planned with metronomic precision.
Nothing left to chance at all - can't take the risk.
Plan each day and leave nothing at all to chance.
Run our lives like a well-oiled machine.
Think to the future - pension plans and
Rainy day saving funds - we best be prepared.
Each think carefully planned - no nasty surprises -
It is the best way - we are told.

But what if we leave life to chance, to allow
Room for at least a little bit of spontaneity?
To allow space to have a little fun
When un-expected opportunity should arise?
To enjoy the chance encounters with the people
That we meet as we travel along life's highway.
To take the opportunity to kick the stray football
Back tot he kids playing in the park.
To enjoy the random things which happen -
When we allow ourselves to live in the moment
And not at some point in the future -
Planning for some disaster that most probably
Will never happen!

 Bryan Wallace 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Restaurants

I have a few favourite restaurants. I like them variously for their ambience, their food and their location. I've been lucky enough to travel quite widely both on business and on holiday to some interesting places with appetising cuisine and I'll drop you my top ten favourite restaurants later.

First though, a bit of a potted history. As a child on holidays in the UK it was always seaside eateries - fish and chip cafes, formica topped tables, sausage, egg and chips, bottles of coca cola, jam sponge and custard (I always insisted on putting salt on the latter). And that was fine. It filled us up and I don't think there was much other choice in the 1960s for a family on a budget.

Then in my teens I had a part-time job at Cambridge Arts Theatre and the backstage crew used to eat before shows at  a Greek restaurant called the Eros. It was basic and cheap but very good, my introduction to Greek food and the beginning of  a lifelong love of that country's cuisine. The city also had a more up-market Greek restaurant, the Varsity, extremely popular with students and dons alike, to which I used to take my girlfriend on special occasions (birthdays, end of exams). Sadly it is no longer there.

My first exposure to native Greek tavernas came in Crete in the early 1970s when tourism was still a primitive affair. There were no menus, nothing in English, and if your Greek wasn't up to speed (which mine wasn't then) you'd get ushered into the taverna's kitchen to look at whatever country fare was cooking and you'd make your selection, go sit at a table and wait for whatever to arrive, to be washed down with retsina (another abiding love). It was there that I first tasted artichokes and  aubergines, gigantes (like baked beans only bigger and better...I had them for my tea tonight), avgolemono (egg/lemon soup), weed pies, goat stew, sardines grilled in vine-leaves, fresh figs, sheep's cheese, galaktoboureko (custard tart in filo pastry) and so much more.

By the time I went off to university in the Midlands, a bit of a desert as far as Greek restaurants were concerned, Coventry's curry houses became the main port of call for a good meal out, and Indian food joined Greek in my flavour hierarchy. I love a good curry. And curiously enough, the best curry I've ever eaten was at an Indian restaurant in Skiathos town in Greece, providing authentic Bangla dishes cooked by chefs from the sub-continent, with dining outdoors in a beautifully lighted garden.  

As I mentioned at the outset, I've worked quite a bit abroad and that has provided an opportunity to go to some really quite good restaurants in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA on expenses. (The workers must be fed!) French, Italian and Georgian cuisines have joined Greek and Indian in my list of culinary favourites.

Vincent Van Gogh's rendition of a French restaurant, 1887

What I hope to find in a restaurant is good food cooked simply, some decent wines, a relaxed atmosphere and a welcoming experience. It's important not to feel hurried. It's meant to be restorative. I don't like pretentious or faddy establishments, nor places that are so noisy it's impossible to have a civilised conversation or so quiet that everyone can eavesdrop on what you're saying.

When my children were young we used to holiday in France, Greece or Italy where there was always plenty of choice and the food was invariably good. When they were a bit older we had some fun holidays in the USA but eating out could be a bit of a let down, mostly fast food joints, pizza parlours and burger bars, okay occasionally but not all the time.

That top ten then (in purely alphabetical order), are mostly rather special but all are well worth a visit  (if they are still in business, post-Covid):

Åtta Glas - Gothenburg for traditional Swedish cooking
Bombay Garden - Skiathos, Greece served the best curry I ever had

La Coupole - Paris for excellent French cuisine and art deco surroundings

Iberia - London for excellent Georgian food without having to get on a plane

Les Armures - Geneva if you like a really good fondue

Masa - London does the best Afghani food I've ever tasted

Pizza Express - London, the one in Coptic Street to be precise, the best pizzas outside Naples 

Tamam - Xania, Greece for perfect Cretan dishes and local wines

Trippa - Milan for great Tuscan cooking

U. Pirosmani - Moscow for absolutely wonderful Georgian recipes and wines

And what about the jewel of the north? you may enquire if you don't live in these parts. Well Blackpool has a couple of quite passable Greek restaurants, a few good curry houses and an award-winning pizza restaurant (though not a Pizza Express anymore, sadly it didn't survive lockdown), plus some really rather good fish and chip restaurants with not a formica topped table in sight.

And there's always Greece every summer. I've just renewed my passport for another ten years!

Alex's Restaurant, Aghios Georgios, Corfu, 2024

I don't have a poem on theme, sad to report. However, I did write something while in Corfu recently, and that was about mosquitos, who decided to make a meal of me, despite all attempts to deter the little bastards. I've never had a problem with mosquitos in Greece before. Maybe Corfu, being so far north (relatively speaking) is cooler and wetter than the islands I've been to in the past. It was my first visit to Corfu and though it was pleasant enough and a much needed break, I won't be returning there.

Anyway, here's my poem. The title is a nod towards the famous RAF wartime 633 Squadron, made up of De Havilland Mosquitos, whose heroics are subject of a feature film called '633 Squadron ' unsurprisingly. 

666 Squadron - Corfu Holiday Offensive 2024

Dear God, sometimes I wish I was less attractive

to mosquitos.  They've been the absolute bane of

my bedroom hours.  As soon as lights are out, so

are they, scrambling in persistent hordes winging

with insidious whine and bloody intent guided by 

some scent, or maybe carbon dioxide plumes but 

I can't not breathe! 

When all the usual patent oils and sprays failed to

prevent wave upon sodding wave of little bastards 

set on gorging themselves on my finest A positive 

until bloated like tiny currants what could I do but

suffer in silence? I'm told with an occasional snore.

They are truly one of your most devilish creations.

What is the point?

And it was scant redress by dawn light, raids over,

to be able to strike back, squash them like berries,

a splatted mess dotted across white bedroom walls

as warning. Of course it won't teach them. At night

they're back for more. Dear God, sometimes I wish 

I was thicker-skinned or at least had a tail to swish. 

So how about it?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Restaurant

My idea of hell is eating out at a restaurant so I am probably amongst the least qualified people to talk about this subject in the UK. Give me a jam sandwich and a cup of tea at about 6 o’clock and I’m happy.

I wasn’t thinking about this when I was listening to my latest Freeman Wills Croft audio book set in the 1920s (I’m addicted to the Golden Age of crime fiction). Two of the characters were arranging to meet and they settled on a Gentleman’s Club. It was then that I thought why don’t they meet in a restaurant. Why not indeed? So that is where I started to have a look as to why not.

Actually, in one way or another, people have always been able to eat out (i.e. away from their normal residence or the home of another person), and the ancient wayside inns and market town taverns bear testimony to the needs of travellers and traders over the centuries. Even in the early 1900s office workers, often commuting from the suburbs, had been recognised by ABC restaurants and, more famously, by J. Lyons & Co. with their teashops and, from 1909, their Corner House restaurants. People all over the country knew of Lyons Corner Houses even when there were none locally.

a typical Lyons Corner House

However, World War 1 had been a social and political watershed. The peace of the 1920s remained contested with rich and poor experiencing changed social and economic circumstances. Not only had so many families been devastated by loss of life and injuries, in post-war Britain the established values were more frequently questioned.

Voices of authority were less convincing to those who had survived military service, or escaped domestic service for the munitions factories. Those who had hoped for a more equitable social landscape in the aftermath of war were being disappointed. The war had drawn men from the labour market for military service and provided opportunities for young women, in large numbers, to engage with employment in offices and factories rather than domestic service.

domestic servants, a disappearing breed

There was a desire among middle and upper class households to re-establish patterns of domestic service. Although this servant problem had existed at the turn of the century (and still does in my experience) this was a turning point. The servants had learned that there was life outside of Downton Abbey.

It seems that there were a few more reasons for the changes in social attitudes. Through these years, and into the 1930s, the UK was beset by the paradox of economic decline and change, old industries faltered dramatically but new ones emerged offering hope. In general terms, there was increased leisure time from shorter working weeks and the establishment of paid holiday entitlement; increased real wages and, in response, increased public and private sector leisure provision. The rapid expansion of cinema and radio opened peoples’ ears and eyes to such different expectations.

In the early 1920s, wealthy young people who ostentatiously dined and danced had been seen as outrageous. But as their exploits became seen or heard folk began to think why not me. The convergence of music, dancing and dining was evident in programming for radio stations.

dining and dancing in a Piccadilly restaurant 

In evidence to the Royal Commission on Licensing on behalf of the Hotels and Restaurants Association in 1930, George Reeves-Smith was to say that … ‘owing to social changes, to the entirely different views now held in regard to taking meals in public restaurants and to the domestic servant difficulty, a large proportion of the public of every class in London and on the road now took their meals in hotels and restaurants’.

Most of the above was taken from an article in the Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, Dining Out: Restaurants and British Society in the 1930s by Phil Lyon.

There was zero chance of me not having this poem below by Billy Collins as the themed poem.

Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant

I am glad I resisted the temptation,
if it was a temptation when I was young,
to write a poem about an old man
eating alone at a corner table in a Chinese restaurant.

I would have gotten it all wrong
thinking: the poor bastard, not a friend in the world
and with only a book for a companion.
He'll probably pay the bill out of a change purse.

So glad I waited all these decades
to record how hot and sour the hot and sour
soup is here at Chang's this afternoon
and how cold the Chinese beer in a frosted glass.

And my book—José Saramago's Blindness
as it turns out—is so absorbing that I look up
from its escalating horrors only
when I am stunned by one of his gleaming sentences.

And I should mention the light
that falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches—
the plates and teapots, the immaculate tablecloths,

as well as the soft brown hair of the waitress
in the white blouse and short black skirt,
the one who is smiling now as she bears a cup of rice
and shredded beef with garlic to my favorite table in the corner.

                    

Thanks for reading. Feel free to post a comment. 

Terry Q.

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Footsteps In The Fog

Given that for most people, sight is the predominant sense, it's perhaps not surprising that this week's theme of   footsteps  has evoked primarily a visual response, with the metaphorical a close second. But I'm much more intrigued by the audible possibilities inherent in the idea, especially as we are now entering the season of mists and mellow spookiness, and my local supermarket is already well stocked with pumpkins and pumpkin-carving kits, ghoul masks, festoons of spiders-web and tubs of trick-or-treat sweets. (Oh, capitalism! Don't we love you.) 

Isn't the sound of footsteps way more intriguing as a stimulus to the imagination than the mere sight of them? 

Close your eyes. What do you hear? Whose footsteps could they be? What are they like? Where are they coming from? Where are they going to? Why have they stopped? And what do they want with you? 

With the scene suitably set, it's straight to the poem after this busy Saturday (and Blackpool were absolutely rubbish away at Mansfield by the way). Are you sitting uncomfortably? I don't know what this is about., a distempered sort of piece, definitely league three stuff. I may revise it absolutely or scrap it entirely, but for now...

Beneath My Window

Outside my dingy Soho window, winter fog

curls and slides like a stealthy brindled fox, 

pauses, peering in, whiskering at that gap

I always leave no matter what. I lie awake 

past one in muffled dark uncurtained, just

feeling its cool play over my face, listening.

Old Eliot surely would have understood,

even older Dickens too, who liked to pad

along our narrow alleyways following

at distance the hobble of clogs on cobbles,

keenly observing London's nocturnal lowlife

in its habitat, but never in such a peasouper.

I hear stilettos stab unsteadily up the street,

they pause beneath my window. D'you wonder

if  I'm lying lonely up here, holding a torch

for you, hoping you'll ring the bell? To hell

with you, dipsy Demoiselle. Stumble on

if you will. Go piss in someone else's porch.

...and did I say that Blackpool were rubbish today? (That's not part of the poem, just a gripe,.) Onwards.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Footsteps

T and I were in the café thinking about how to approach the topic of footsteps. She wondered where the phrase ‘don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes’ came from and I said I’d check it later as a possible start. She then mentioned that one of her favourite memories of footsteps was walking along the sands of a beach when she was younger.

9,000 year old Formby Beach Footprint

I was trying to decide between ‘shoes’ and ‘sand’ when my own memories of running on beaches came to the fore. Whenever I think about that I see the opening scenes of Chariots of Fire in my mind and I have to gulp a bit. Of all the possible similar experiences there is one that I’m always reminded of and that was when I lived in Great Yarmouth. I’d run as far as Caister up and down the huge sand dunes. When I got to a certain point I had to turn round and follow my footsteps back. It was a hot day and when I came to a halt I was so exhausted that I was sick all over the last dune. A wonderful few hours.

That was following in my footsteps but whose footsteps would I follow if given the chance?

Buzz Aldrin's Footprint

Well, top of the list and by 238,850 miles would be Buzz Aldrin. The first person on the moon could have stepped off the landing craft and sunk down into the Moon’s surface. You can’t be too careful.

If I had been taking the footsteps myself then I would have been in Trevor Francis’s boots as I stepped out onto the St Andrews pitch in September 1970 for my home debut at the age of sixteen. I would have scored as well as he did and not been in the Cattell Road end watching.

Trevor Francis

I think one of the great pleasures is walking the streets of a city at night. I probably would have been spotted but I would loved to have followed Charles Dickens as he roamed London. It was said that he loved the glorious, mysterious, sometimes dangerous life of cities at night, which he characterised as scenes from a magic lantern; but he also felt at home among the homeless. It was their experience of the city that, because it spoke to him of some crisis both of self and society, he most wanted to voice.

As for poetry and walking I’d like to be a bit more up to date and I would definitely follow in the footsteps of Alice Oswald as she prepared for her wonderful book ‘Dart’. In it she followed the river from its source to the sea. She threads conversations with a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers, canoeists and more with short comments at the side to create a work that rushes and slows as the river itself. 

Here’s the first lines:

Who’s this moving alive over the moors?/An old man seeking and finding a difficulty./Has he remembered his compass his spare socks/does he fully intend going in over his knees off the/ military track from Okehampton?/Keeping his course through the swamp spaces/and pulling the distance round his shoulders.

I suppose as I’ve covered past and present footsteps I should look forward to who or what I could be stepping out to. And what comes to mind is going back thousands of years. Many thousands. I would like to see the 9,000 year old human footprints at Formby which are located along a 4km stretch of the coast between Lifeboat Road and Gypsy Wood. Not as old as the ones found in 2013 in Happisburgh in Norfolk, they were 900,000 years old but have been washed away, although they were completely recorded by scientists before that.

By the way I did look up the origins of the ‘walked a mile in his shoes’ and it comes from a poem by Mary T Lathrap entitled ‘Judge Softly’. And the line was ‘Walk a Mile in His Moccasins’.

Here is a poem about some other footsteps:

She sends me Photos of Milestones

To Todmorden 7 – To Halifax 4 ¾
Shifnal 4 – Salop 3m 6f
Thirsk 6 – Helmsley 8

In the measured tones of
James Alexander Gordon
bringing back memories
of late Saturdays
anxious about the scores
from the pocket radio
and the distance left
as light fades
on a country road

Six miles to Thirsk
with a knapsack on my back
striding a verge of years
not counting the footsteps
thoughts straying to evenings
and a decent pub
able to ignore
furlongs and fractions
as nothing more
than quaint signs pointing
to a past of contradictions
that now measures every month
as a perfect number.

First published in South, April 2015

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Footsteps to Footprints

The oldest human footprints to date were discovered in 2021 in White Sands National Park, New Mexico. They are thought to be between 21,000 and 23,000 years old.

For approximately five million years our species have been walking upright. Our ancestors traded in the ability to climb trees with ease for a ground-based existence. In evolution, being bipedal has helped us in cooling our bodies’, to travel great distances, see over tall grasses and free our hands to carry tools and infants.

Approximately 3535350 steps from White Sands was where I took my own first steps. It became apparent as I grew that I walked like my father with the same spindly legs, knobbly knees and a brisk purposeful step. I have no idea what my mother’s natural gait would have been like. She had polio as a young woman leaving one leg paralyzed. Growing up I observed her daily struggles with mobility and therefore will never take for granted the ability to move about unrestricted.

Feet indeed are miraculous. How they support our bodies is mind boggling. Mine have served me well and have taken me on many incredible adventures including creative ones. 

Speaking of which, in mulling over what to do for this blog post, I stepped into the studio thinking it would be interesting to explore my feet through an artist’s lens. Firstly, I began photographing my subjects. The whole foot as an image was not nearly as interesting as concentrating on sections, although some might beg to differ. The images to me became other worldly and landscape-like.

right foot sole (i)

I have never looked at my feet so closely. The soles are thick, the thickest skin on the human body. They are glabrous (free from hair) and covered in friction ridge skin that helps to keep me from slipping when in my bare feet. This became highlighted in the magnified images. 

right foot sole (ii)

Also in the spotlight is how the skin has lost its elasticity with age. One can cry or celebrate this. I choose the latter. How fortunate I am to have walked the many miles I have thanks to these two remarkable complex appendages that have supported and balanced my body throughout my life’s journey.

left ankle

Leaving the camera behind, I picked up my number 05 Micron pen and had a go at drawing in my Moleskine sketchbook.

foot sketch

Finally, I did some foot printing and thought I would share the process in case someone might like to give it a go.

Materials: Floor Covering, Paper, Water-based Paint (Acrylic or Poster Paint), Paint Pot and/or Palette, Brush, Water Pot, Kitchen Roll or Wet Wipes.

printing on paper: step 1 mix, step 2 paint, step 3 print

I discovered the first print was too thick. The second and third printings were more successful.

And now for something completely different…

Right or Left?

Is this a giant god or myth
with head of horns, or golden crown
standing upright or upside down
on naked soles - such length, such width

stripped bare to one’s immortal skin
the Sculptor’s chiselled steps there in
for mortals uplift or descent
shapeshifting cast within cement
for hearts be still who dare repent
and pay with life in death well spent
or fall into a fiery pit
filled with Satan’s blood and spit.

Decide to step, which foot of steps
one stairwell each, two giant feet
right and left, the two shall meet
at Heaven’s gates or in Hell’s depths.

Thank you for reading.

Kate J

White Sands Footprints image credit: National Park Service
(https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/nature/fossilized-footprints.htm)

All other photographs credit and copyright KEW

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Sheilagh Dyson: a retrospective

The third in this series of Sunday retrospectives celebrates the poetry of Sheilagh Dyson. She was the regular Tuesday blogger in the early days of the Dead Good Blog (2012-2015) and a stalwart of our open mic nights. She was a lovely warm and sociable lady and we miss her. Though her blogs tended to feature poems on theme by other poets than herself, I've selected three of her own to share with you today. Enjoy. 

Sheilagh Dyson in full GB Olympics mode, 2012

Balanced Baking (a triolet)

Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour
For a perfect Victoria sponge.
All must weigh the same, same power.
Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour
Whisk and fold and blend and now you
Mix with love to a sloppy gunge.
Weigh the eggs, butter, sugar and flour
For a perfect Victoria sponge.


One Thousand (a found poem)

Something to a few,
a woman whose life was a mess
before the bitterness
do I starve this year?

Come hold me now
come see the sun
come stand with me
lay down the tracks

From a wild sky painted furious
crumpled metal objects
the brass blasts of the Salvation band
hear the horses coming closer, see the gallons of blood
twisting grey
tunnels, stale urine light and a voice
like dandelion seeds
that warns of gaps

This is the light to live in

Thinking
I could bring him to life with nothing more than hope
and the power of my own mind
religion and fecking psychics
they weren’t my first choice
not my intention

You will be left wearing pants
being trodden underfoot

Rabbit holes lead to burrows
and gardens aren’t a secret

The place we lay when no more days to give
it won’t be sad.


A Blackpool Fantasy

Winter.
Wind whistling, litter rat-tat-tat-ing,
no-one around, just me,
no-one looking, just me.
I climb into the zip-wire harness
on the roof of the Winter Gardens
and start the slow descent across St. John’s Square.
The softly glittering jewels of light through the church windows
rise up to meet me
and I glide effortlessly to greet the silent stone tiles.

You can link to all Sheilagh's Dead Good Blogs here: Sheilagh Dyson

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Gooseberry

One evening earlier this week, while we dined at a beachside taverna watching the sun sink into the sea off Corfu, I was regaling Adele with tales of madness from my now not so recent marriage. I was ten years in that relationship and am happily ten years out of it, if that makes sense, though some of what went on still perplexes me.

You probably realise that I'm quite a private individual and don't often share insights of a personal nature in these blogs, but I'm going to make an exception today for the given theme of gooseberry, the relevance of which will eventually become apparent.

I'm reproducing below a letter I wrote to my then wife at the end of February 2012, after a most turbulent month in our relationship. Why a letter? Because for weeks she had been refusing to talk about what happened or what lay at the root of what happened at the beginning of that month. Read it and draw your own conclusions. I have anonymised individual names and I've added some brief explanations in square parentheses [thus ]: 

                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                            February 29th 2012

Dear A__,

I've tried to start several conversations regarding the events leading up to and including the fiasco that was my birthday week-end, but given all the hurt those events have engendered - and as we still don’t have any resolution to the bad feeling that has now lasted for a month - I thought setting the facts down in black and white might be a step in the right direction.

You and I agreed in discussion in mid-January that we would meet up with K and L [my daughters ] in London on the afternoon of Saturday 4th February for lunch and a movie, as we had done the previous year. K would need to be at the British Museum by 5pm as she was working, but you and I would do something in town in the evening, like go to a gig.

I emailed all three of you on 24th January with suggestions for movies – My Week With Marilyn being the favourite.

On Sunday 29th January you got a text from your sister informing that C [niece ] had come home early from France and you said it might be an idea to invite her as well. I said that would be fine, just let me know because it would impact how many cinema tickets I needed to book and would probably determine whether you and I went to a gig in the evening or not. You phoned her later that day and then told me that C wouldn’t be coming with us. Consequently, that evening I booked two tickets for us to see Thea Gilmore's band in Camden on Saturday night.

Then on the evening of Monday 30th you asked me if I wouldn’t rather meet up with my daughters on my own and I said categorically not. Later that evening you told me that you didn’t want to spend the whole day in London, or couldn’t afford the time, (I don’t remember the exact words you used) but would happily join me for  the gig, as it was booked. Naturally I was surprised and disappointed that you wouldn’t be there for lunch and cinema, but I respected your wishes and was pleased we would at least have a nice evening out together.

On Tuesday 31st, just before I drove up to Blackpool for the night game, I managed to find a cinema in Islington that was showing My Week With Marilyn at a time that suited, so I booked tickets for K, L and myself.

On Wednesday 1st February, I let my daughters know the time of the cinema on Saturday and fixed a place to meet for lunch beforehand. That same evening (the first time we'd spoken since Monday) you asked me what time I was going into London on Saturday and when I told you what I’d arranged, you became really angry and started shouting and swearing at me. Your stated grounds for being so upset?

- Firstly that I’d told K and L of the cinema arrangements before I mentioned them to you. The thing is, you had told me just two days earlier that you wouldn’t be coming, so the arrangements didn’t really concern you.

- Secondly that I hadn’t re-checked with you before buying the cinema tickets, in case you’d had a change of mind. Well, sorry, but you were quite definite on the subject on the Monday night, so I took that as your final answer.

- Thirdly that you hadn’t known what film I proposed booking for. That’s just not true. I had told you on Sunday, a propos of inviting your niece, that I would book for My Week With Marilyn if possible.

- Fourthly that I hadn’t extended the lunch and cinema invitation to R and S [my stepsons ]. I explained that I knew that R would be working all day Saturday and Sunday (he’d already had the previous week-end off, when he, you, K and I had been to see War Horse in London), and he wouldn’t be able to get two free Saturdays in a row; I also knew that S was on call on Saturday and wouldn’t be able to go into London. And I'd discussed with R and S that the four of us (your boys, you and I) could go out for a birthday meal on Sunday evening.

- Fifthly that I should have invited K and L out to Hemel Hempstead at the week-end so we could all do something together. Again, I pointed out that R was working on both days, S was on call, that K had to be at the BM from 5pm Saturday until 1pm Sunday and that having my daughters come out from London on Sunday night for a couple of hours didn’t seem like the best plan given that everybody (yourself in particular) likes to spend part of Sunday night getting ready for the week ahead…and I reminded you that we had discussed and agreed a week before that we would go into London on my birthday, the Saturday.

Your response to the points I made was to launch into another foul and abusive tirade followed by a succession of most unpleasant text messages. 

I told you several times over the next few days, in fact right up to the morning of my birthday, that I would love you to come to the lunch and cinema, and I was sure it would be possible to get another ticket, (as indeed it would have been, for the seat next to me was free and the cinema was two-thirds empty). You told me there was no way you were going into London at all  and certainly not as an afterthought “or a gooseberry!”

In the end, I had the unhappiest of birthdays. You refused to go the gig (and no, I didn't take somebody else instead); you decided not to give me the presents you had bought me; and you told people I had chosen to spend my birthday with my daughters rather than with you! You only grudgingly came to the meal on Sunday evening because (as you were at pains to point out) R had asked you to…and you told me that you want me to have nothing to do with your own birthday next month, when you will arrange something and I won’t be invited.

In conclusion, I feel totally beaten up over something which you precipitated. Why did any of it have to be like that? And why won't you talk to me about it? I am still mystified and miserable about the whole thing.

Steve x

Just as background, we had been together for eight years at the time. Her two sons and my two daughters had been the witnesses at our wedding, and we had socialised collectively on many occasions. Although she was given to green jealousies (she was very cool towards my female work colleagues, got very uptight when I had perfectly innocent conversations with other women at parties or gigs), I don't know why she threw what I can only characterise now as a massive wobbler over those birthday arrangements. She never did explain and never apologised for all the bad stuff she said, which included the following (I kept the text messages): 

“I wish you’d stop living.”
“I hate you and I hate your family.”
“You don’t love me enough.”
“I wish your precious daughters would die.”
“Go and live with your fucking daughters." [who didn't live together, by the way ].

 "When I said I loved you I must have been lying. Fuck off out of my life."

By the time her birthday did come around in March, normal relations had been resumed and she acted as if none of the events and exchanges related above had ever happened. It was all quite extraordinary, the idea that she should be jealous of my relationship with my daughters or consider herself to be "a gooseberry" in any of this.

I don't have a poem on theme this week, though I have a concept of a plan (as Donald Trump might put it) and a title - Did I Roll My Eyes Out Loud?  - so something gooseberry-related will gell eventually. I was planning on sharing Simon Armitage's excellent 'Gooseberry Season' with you, but I note that both the other dead good blogs this week have quoted it. So I will go with something by the wonderful Ruth Padel instead, not the whole of her poem 'Writing To Onegin' (for it is very long), but the stanza that mentions the fruit...and reminds us that not all gooseberries are green.

(from) Writing To Onegin

So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl

Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!") 

Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars: 

The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all 

 Her life, where mother commands the serfs to sing 

While picking, so they can't hurl 

The odd gog into their mouths.
No one could spy 

Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time.
Her cheeks 

Are simmering fire...

                                                         Ruth Padel, 1999

 

  

  

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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