Fruit Tree - An Apple Tree on St Kilda

It was one of those rare mornings where I didn’t need to be up early. A grandson had stayed with us recently, which meant early starts and walks to school in all weathers. Since he’s been home, I’ve been fighting some sort of flu virus which has given me a dreadful cough and some aches and pains. I’m not blaming him, of course not. I’ve got run down and not rested enough. Anyway, it was nice to stay in bed a bit longer, just dozing, listening to the wind whistling round the windows and imagining that I’m in my fantasy cottage in St Kilda, warm, cosy, everything I need, as a wild blizzard dominates the bleak surroundings. Somewhere in this blissful existence, I wanted a fruit tree. In reality, there are no trees of any sort on St Kilda. High winds and constant salt spray prevent tree growth and the peat, acidic soil is completely unsuitable. In my imagination, I have had sustainable soil shipped over to help maintain my vegetable plot. An apple tree would be lovely. Eventually, I had to get up from my gorgeous bed and live in the real world. My fruit tree blog had to be in there, somewhere.

Close to where I live, there was an abundance of damsons. The tree was over-hanging the garden wall on the property and the fruit spilled on to the pavement making a sticky, purple mess. One of my neighbours, with permission, collected some damsons and made jam. Much better than wasted fruit making a mess.

Nearby, there is a small, confused cherry tree. I say confused because it comes into bloom with fabulous blossom at various times of the year. Never any cherries, though.

At a young age, I learnt the hard way just how bad a tummy ache can be after eating crab apples picked from the tree. Home was always a pub, on a street in a town, so nowhere to play out except the carpark. That was fine for my bike or scooter, but no mates to play with. All changed when we moved to a pub in the village of Padfield near Glossop. I soon made friends from our school down the road and we were never in. We fished for tadpoles, got in trouble for playing in the local farmer’s silage pit until we were filthy and stinky and one day, decided to feast from an apple tree. Crab apples. They were bitter tasting, probably not ripe, and I imagine it was quantity that made me unwell. A lesson learnt.

My Haiku poem,

In my wildest dreams
I’m in comfort perfection,
St Kilda cottage.

Sweet, rosy apples,
So juicy and fresh each day,
Clustered on branches.

A rare, sunny day
And a cloudless sky in this
Archipelago.

Strong winds just bring snow
Icy, northern blasts make a
Harsh environment.

I wish I could grow
A fruit tree on St Kilda,
Weather protected.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Vinyl(s)

In the beginning was the vinyl. 

Well, not quite at the dawn of recorded music. Originally, from the 1880s onwards, there were perforated paper rolls for pianolas, wax cylinders for phonographs, flat and brittle shellac discs for gramophones and even magnetic reel-to-reel for tape-recorders. In fact vinyl records, made from polyvinyl chloride (or PVC), didn't make their appearance on the scene until the 1940s, sixty years into the process.

The durable two-sided discs contained analogue recordings in a continuous groove and were played on the turntable of a device with a valve amplifier and one of more speakers. The records came in two varieties: 7-inch "singles" playing at 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) and 12-inch "long players" (aka LPs) spinning at 33rpm. They were nicknamed variously discs, frisbees, hot biscuits, hot wax, liquorice pizzas, platters, slabs, and spinners. 

Then since the golden age of vinyl records (1950s to 1980s) look what else has come along. First of all cassette tapes, CDs, minidiscs and  i-Pods and then the recording angels went truly ethereal with the arrival of digital streaming services such as Napster and Spotify.

Some of you whippersnappers won't even have possessed a record-player or a vinyl disc, maybe not even CDs. I had my hand luggage searched at Manchester airport last summer and the security lady took great delight in holding up my Sony Walkman CD player and asking her youthful colleagues "Does anybody know what this is?" Few did, much indulgent amusement at my expense.

Nowadays music has blue teeth and Alexa as DJ. But those of us of an age regret selling our record collections back in the 1990s, or boxing them up in the loft for want of anything to play them on anymore. I bought my first vinyl in the early 1960s (starting with The Beatles) and then sold hundreds of LPs thirty years later because CDs were more compact and versatile. 

I only hung on to a few LP records that I thought would never get reissued on CD, and then over the last decade I've been buying some of my old favourites on vinyl again as the format has been making a (somewhat expensive) comeback. I now have my favourite fifty albums of all time, many in pristine 180g vinyl, because you really can't beat the organic sound quality of a record played on a good hi-fi system.

However, for a few decades sales of vinyl records plummeted from their millions per annum to a few hundred thousand, mostly on specialist labels and for club DJs who kept the vinyl culture going into the new millennium with their twin decks and their 12" grooves. So it's DJing I'm going to focus on today.

state of the art DJ twin-deck rig

The first documented use of the term disc jockey (DJ) is from 1941, no great surprise that it was coincident with the arrival of vinyl records. From the Second World War onwards, through the birth of rock & roll as a phenomenon, radio presenters who played records over the air started to become celebrities in their own right, building their fan base, commenting on the music they liked, having the pulling power to make songs 'hits'.

In America, the likes of Alan Freed, Bill Randle, Dick Clark, Murray the K and Wolfman Jack became cult figures. Randle brought Elvis Presley to the attention of the nation in the 1950s, and Murray the K did the same for The Beatles a decade later.

In the UK we had Brian Matthews and Alan Freeman on the BBC, Kid Jensen, Jimmy Saville and Johnny Walker on Radio Luxembourg and then a raft of DJs who would eventually become household names as pirate radio stations proliferated in the 1960s with Dave Cash, Dave Lee Travis, Emperor Rosko, John Peel, Keith Skues, Kenny Everett, Simon Dee, Tony Blackburn  and many more. (By the way, if you haven't seen the brilliant Richard Curtis movie 'The Boat That Rocked', remedy that soonest please, you won't be disappointed.) 

Radio Caroline DJ about to play the latest 'hot biscuit'

As well as radio DJs (whether terrestrial or piratical), the 1960s also gave rise to an enduring breed of vinyl spinning disk jockeys at clubs, dancehalls and discotheques up and down the country, They were often more than comperes and spinners of vinyl. Many were influencers and trend-setters, creating or promoting a dance craze here, a whole scene there... in no particular order or chronology, mod, goth, Motown, hip-hop, bluebeat, psychedelia, northern soul, grime, acid house, hi-NRG, electronica, reggae, new romantic, techno, ambient, jungle, ska, Eurobeat, whatever people wanted dance the night away to.

I can name-check a few movers and shakers if you like. Jeff Dexter in London basically turned the country onto the twist, before becoming the regular DJ at Middle Earth in the mid-sixties. Ian Levine and Rob Winstanley curated Northern Soul at places like the Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino in the 1970s. Dave Haslam was the top DJ at Manchester's Haçienda during that city's Madchester era of the 1980s. Eddie Richards, godfather of 'house' music, was the main man at Camden Palace from the 1980s onwards. Annie Mac was a favourite spinner at Creamfields in more recent years. 

Then there are high profile DJs you've probably heard of by cultural osmosis, like Big Youth, Calvin Harris, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong, and beyond them a plethora you've certainly never heard of who go by funny aliases like Bro Safari, Deadmau5, Eiffel 65, Green Velvet, Jack Beats, Jillionaire, Lisa Lashes, NERVO, Sharkey, Totempole and Weird Genius.

I was once tempted by an offer to host a music show on local radio here in the jewel of the north. I thought about it for a while, the opportunity to turn people on to the range of music I like. I'd got as far as choosing an alias, Stanley Park, and a name for the show which would go out on Friday nights as Stanley Park's Midnight Works. But then I figured I'd be permanently tired with everything else I try to do - and anyway it turned out that the radio station doesn't have turntables and vinyl anymore, it's all digital now, WAV and FLAC and MP3 files plucked from the ether. So I got off that particular cloud.

While researching for this piece, I came across the song 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', a cheesy disco dance hit in the early 1980s for New York group Indeep. Rolling Stone magazine declared it to be "one of the greatest songs ever written about being a girl, listening to the radio, or any combination of the two" (lol) and Billboard reckons it's in the top fifty best dance tunes ever. I watched the video. It's two girls singing and a DJ playing the backing track on vinyl on a deck. The protagonists sing "if it wasn't for the music, I don't know what I'd do, yeah" and the DJ's response is "There's not a problem that I can't fix, 'Cause I can do it in the mix." What a hero.

I also stumbled upon the fact that a playful tweak of the title has given rise to a T-shirt very popular with clubbers (as pictured below) and I was momentarily diverted by the thought of perhaps writing a short story that would do justice to the title 'Last Night A DJ Shaved My Wife', something along the lines of a feisty midwife whose husband has walked out on her and three young children, so she becomes a sought-after DJ in a local nightclub at week-ends while delivering babies by day. How does that work as a treatment?

de rigeur saucy clubbing T-shirt "LAST NIGHT A DJ SHAVED MY WIFE"

I didn't go there in the end (not enough hours in the Saturday), but I did want to write a poem about the power of DJing, that shamanistic leading of the musical tribe into revel and rave. It's not the first time I've written on the topic. Check out this blog from six Januarys ago, which includes a poem featuring DJ Sky High (aka the Detonator) in Radio Big Bang.

As background (though one should never explain a poem), in 1927 psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who never visited Liverpool, claimed to have had a dream about the city saying “I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss—say half a dozen. I walked through the dark streets... we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. I had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the “pool of life.” The “liver,” according to an old view, is the seat of life, that which makes to live.”. A local poet in the 1970s reckoned that Jung and his dream friends had arrived at the Cavern in Matthew Street.

The poem is truly a work-in-progress, to be continued obviously (at some point) but never mind that. So move the furniture out of the way, put on your black vinyl shoes and dance to the groove of...

Scouse House

A dream of a darkened cavern - the sound, the lights,

lights and sound of happy humanity bouncing round

bobbing and spinning at the bidding of  DJ Jungman.

Girls in short PVC dresses, lads all in black vinyl macs

sway as one to the rhythm of the shaman, undulating

in a primordial soup of collective euphoria,  gyrating

and hydrating, spinning and bobbing in trancelike joy

hydrating, gyrating to the rhythms of 12 inch grooves,

this musical amoeba in the grip of the power of DJing.*

To be continued...

(*pronounced "jing" with a silent d, not "deejaying", and evocative of magic as in Djinn or Genie.)

Thanks for reading, pop pickers! S ;-)

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Vinyl

When I was decorating my front room a few years ago I made the momentous decision to chuck all my vinyl LPs and singles. Taking them to the tip was hard both physically, they weighed a ton, and emotionally. Most, actually all, of them were scratched or the covers were covered with coffee or beer stains. But they were memories and two or three I know I won’t be able to replace. Maybe I should have kept the very first single I’d bought ‘Black is Black’ by Los Bravos or my first LP ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter' by The Incredible String Band.

But if I’d tried to sell the records instead what might I have gained financially. Well, nothing I suppose as for a start its condition needs to be Mint or Near Mint. But there are apparently several other factors that determine a record’s value.

Rarity: Limited pressings, promos, and early releases are gold.

Pressing Details: Matrix numbers, unique labels (like the black/gold Beatles). First pressings are made from the initial batch of lacquers (or master discs) and cut from the original master recordings. Therefore, first pressings are significantly more valuable than subsequent pressings

The Label: Look for specific colours or text (e.g., Beatles black/gold).

Check the Matrix/Runout: The etched numbers/letters in the dead wax (runout groove).

Look for Inserts: Posters, lyric sheets, or unique artwork.

Age: Records from popular eras are usually more in-demand than others. You can identify your record’s age by reading the liner notes—the text printed on the sleeve.

Uniqueness: There are several factors that make a vinyl record unique, including autographs, test pressings and more.

Sealed: A sealed vinyl record is still in its original shrink wrap. These records are almost always in mint condition and have never been played.

Promo Copies: If you find a promo copy, there’s a chance you’ll see a slight increase in value.

Coloured Vinyl: Record companies began releasing coloured vinyl records to grab the attention of radio DJs in the ‘60s. Coloured pressings, like the translucent blue copy of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, are very valuable.

Vinyl records from the ‘50s and ‘60s are very collectible. These records are from the ‘golden era’ of the vinyl record timeline.

So what sort of records are we talking about? Here's a few examples of what to look for in the UK in 2026:

The Beatles: Please Please Me (early mono with black/gold label), White Album (numbered first pressings).

Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen (A&M 7" single with picture sleeve).

Led Zeppelin: Early albums like Led Zeppelin (first pressings).

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (original UK pressings with extras).

The Who: The Who Sell Out (early stereo/mono)

And how about prices in 2026?

BOB DYLAN Freewheelin' Outtakes (2017 UK/EU limited edition 17-track LP pressed on 180-gram HQ Virgin Vinyl. A collection of rare studio recordings from Bob Dylan's 1962 sessions for his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Gatefold picture sleeve with hype sticker, factory sealed). £19.99

PINK FLOYD Wish You Were Here (50th Anniversary) - 3-LP Edition + Rarities 1 & 2 - Sealed UK 3-LP vinyl set. £69.99

FRANK SINATRA Trilogy : Past, Present & Future (Rare 1980 Japanese 26-track sample vinyl triple LP. £167.

ROLLING STONES Aftermath - 3rd - EX (Rare 1966 UK third label variant 14-track Mono LP on the red Decca label with 'ffrr' logo and the band members names printed below the title in small bold capitals, front laminated picture sleeve LK4786. £328

SEX PISTOLS Anarchy In The U.K (4.01 longer version)/No Fun
(EMI 401, 7”, Abbey Road 2-sided acetate, only 3 known to exist, 1976). It should have the blue and gold ‘psychedelic swirl’ Abbey Road logo on the factory labels. Artist and titles are handwritten. £7,000

THE BEATLES The Beatles (aka The White Album)
(Apple PMC/ PCS 7067/8, 2LP, first pressing, mono or stereo, numbered below 0000010, gatefold w/die-cut black inners, poster, four colour prints, 1968). A mono copy of 0000005 sold for over £19,000 in 2008. The ‘White Album’ seems to have become the most sought after LP for Fab collectors, so a mint copy of one of these early numbers, complete with the all-important white paper photo spacer, would easily top this figure. £25,000?

And then there is this:

QUARRY MEN That’ll Be The Day/In Spite Of All The Danger. The Quarry Men’s 1958 recording was lathe-cut directly to vinyl acetate by Percy Phillips at his home studio in Kensington, Liverpool for the princely sum of just under 18 shillings (90p) plus the cost of the record itself. It featured a very raw sounding version of the Buddy Holly classic with John Lennon on lead vocals and the McCartney/Harrison composition In Spite of All The Danger – a mid-tempo country-tinged rocker – that evokes early Sun Studios material. It featured three future Beatles: John Lennon (guitar/lead vocals), Paul McCartney and George Harrison (both on guitar and backing vocals), plus Colin Hanton on drums, with pianist John Duff Lowe. This is inarguably the rarest record in the world and certainly one of the most culturally significant. If Paul McCartney decided to sell his one and only copy. Well, who knows what the price would be?

You can check by using sites like RareVinyl.com and Atlas Records to compare details and values of rare records.

An Apology

I was going
to go on
and on
but my mind
is going round
and round
so I’ve stopped

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Friends

Friends. Some come "with benefits", as in the euphemistically titled 2011 romantic comedy about casual relationships. They imply good times. Others are "on benefits", sometimes called unemployment benefit, job-seeker's allowance, universal credit or formerly "the dole" They imply hard times. In the UK right now, over 700,000 university graduates are out of work and claiming benefits - that's 46% more than was the case pre-Covid. Unemployment nationally is now more than 5% of the adult population. That's a worrying statistic, but it's nothing like the 25% unemployment rate that crippled the working people of the country in the 1930s. 

Walter Greenwood wrote his first novel 'Love on the Dole' in 1932. It was about life in Hanky Park in Salford, an area and a life he knew intimately, for he was born and grew up there. Greenwood's parents belonged to the radical working classes. His mother came from a family with a strong tradition of socialism and union membership, and she inherited her father’s book-case complete with its socialist book collection. 

His father died when he was nine years old, and his mother provided for him by working as a waitress. This was pre-welfare state, pre-NHS, pre-workers' rights, pre-contraceptive pill, pre-WWII Britain. Hanky Park was a grimy slum and its inhabitants were the exploited workers and their families of Manchester's industrial heart, the cotton mills and foundries.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

Greenwood was educated at the local council school and left at the age of 13 after taking the Board of Education Labour Exam, which was only "open to fatherless boys" so that they could go to work to help support their family. His first job was as a pawnbroker's clerk. A succession of low paid jobs followed, while he continued to educate himself at Salford Public Library. During periods of unemployment Greenwood worked for the local Labour Party, after no longer qualifying for the dole, having exhausted his entitlement under the rules of the time. 

After being owed three months wages from his last job as a typist, he took home the office typewriter in lieu of his back pay, and began to write about the people of Hanky Park, to earn a living. 'Love on the Dole', was about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town, written while he was jobless. After several rejections, it was published in 1933. It was a critical and commercial success, and a great influence on the British public's opinion about the issue of unemployment. The novel even prompted parliament to investigate, resulting eventually in some welfare reforms.

In 1935, Greenwood collaborated with Ronald Gow on a stage adaptation of the novel. The critic of The Times wrote:
"Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience in January 1935 ... it has the supreme virtue in a piece of this kind of saying what it has to say in plain narrative, stripped of oration."

The play had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, which meant that Greenwood would not have to worry about unemployment again.

programme from a1939 stage production

A film adaptation was proposed in 1936, but the British Board of Film Censors made strong objections to the possibility of a film about industrial unrest, which might prove socially divisive. In 1940, however, when unemployment could be presented as "a thing of the past" because of the war effort, a film adaptation was permitted. I watched it earlier this evening (it's on YouTube if you care to find it.)

The story centres around the Hardcastle family, mother and father, daughter Sally and son Harry. The son began working as a pawnbroker's clerk (as Greenwood himself  had done) before joining a local factory as an apprentice engineer. He dated a local girl, Helen Harkin. Harry won a sizeable amount of money on an accumulator, gave some to his parents and sister and took Helen on holiday to the seaside with the rest (Blackpool in the film, but not in the novel). Sally was pursued by half the men in Hanky Park, including Sam Grundy the prosperous bookie, but she favoured Larry Meath, an engineer and Labour Party aide (again, as Greenwood had been).

Life in Hanky Park was difficult and hand-to-mouth (except for the bookies, the factory owners and the pawnbrokers). The General Strike was a recent memory and the economy was sluggish. Inevitably, Helen became pregnant and she and Harry planned to marry but when his apprenticeship ended he was made redundant as the economy nosedived. The dole was there as a safety-net for some but it was means tested on a household basis. Harry didn't qualify as his father and sister were still in employment. With no jobs to be had and a baby on the way the future looked very bleak.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

As economic conditions worsened and more men were placed on short time or laid off all together, the Labour Party's attempts to educate and work for change through the ballot box were overtaken locally by angry men wanting change. Protest became violent and Sally Hardcastle's friend Larry Meath was fatally injured in a police baton charge. With her future husband dead and her father and brother unemployed, Sally eventually abandoned her principles and capitulated to the advances of Sam Grundy on the promise that he would find work for her brother and father on the local buses, which he did. Social realism and tough love. 

It's a powerful but chilling tale of grinding poverty, squalid lives, painful compromises and hope thwarted and it pulls no punches. I first taught it as a set text in the 1970s, only forty-five years on from its inception. Now in 2026 we're only a few years short of its centenary and its relevance seems undiminished. It's still well worth reading today, up there with the likes of 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist'.

Here's a poem of sorts inspired by the text and the role of money or capital at the time. (The latter hasn't changed so much, has it?)

Hanky Park Blues

"It isn't where you live, it's who you live with. Isn't it?"

It came, it swore, it conquered.

"You can see the sea if you stand on the chair."

It mocked, it rocked, it unseated.

"If only everybody would lend a hand..."

It snorted, it derided, it divided.

"They can take away our jobs, but they can't take away our love.

Can they?"

It lured, it whored, it corrupted.

"It's not what it is, but how it's used, capital"

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Friends

Back in 1865 a pharmacist by the name of James Lofthouse in Fleetwood was talking to three deep-sea fishermen but was having difficulty listening to what they were saying due to the fact that they were unable to speak properly because of the extreme weather conditions at sea affecting their throats and lungs.

He set about developing a liquid which might help the fishermen and came up with a very strong liquid in a bottle, that contained menthol and eucalyptus oil. It worked and the fishermen began referring to them as 'friends'. Lofthouse later made the liquid into small lozenges, which were easier to transport and use.

We’re talking about Fisherman’s Friends now famous around the world but not known outside the immediate locale of Fleetwood for a hundred years after Lofthouse’s concoction. It started to expand when Doreen Lofthouse, who had married into the business, was selling the lozenges from a kiosk on the Fleetwood Promenade and was getting letters from holiday makers asking why they couldn’t get the product in their home towns.

Doreen and her husband Tony then spent many years working 100-hour weeks, travelling by van to sell the product. She recalled that sometimes, lacking money for fuel, she was unable to leave a town until a sale had been made. A particular success came when Lofthouse persuaded Boots the Chemists to stock the product in all of their branches.

At the request of a friendly importer, a large box of Fisherman‘s Friend was exported to Norway for the first time. This was met with enthusiastic demand. Boxes quickly turned into containers, and from then on the orders never ceased. In 1977 Aniseed arrived. It was the first of the flavoured Fisherman’s Friend. The new lozenge was modelled on a button from one of Doreen Lofthouse’s dresses.

Fisherman's Friend lozenges in different flavours

Since then other flavours have been introduced and some are more popular in one country than another. It’s reported that Fisherman’s Friend markets its current total of 15 different flavours to 100 countries around the globe. 96 percent of the total production of around 5 billion lozenges are exported every year. Germany is the largest market, favouring flavours such as cherry and mint. Customers in Thailand, on the other hand, who represent the second largest market, prefer the combination of honey and lemon.

Yes, that did say 5 billion.

I do like the following from the Stuart Alexander distributor in Australia:
‘Embark on a comforting journey with Fisherman's Friend, where each product is a testament to the brand's dedication to crafting invigorating lozenges and mints. In our diverse collection, discover the perfect blend of soothing relief and delightful flavours...

Indulge in the timeless strength of Fisherman's Friend Original Strong Lozenges, ensuring you have a robust and classic companion in every box...

For a breath of freshness, dive into the invigorating Fisherman's Friend Spearmint and Peppermint Sugar Free Mints...Aniseed Lozenges, ensuring you have a distinctive lozenge ready whenever you seek a moment of calm...Order now and let the comforting orchestration of lozenges and mints bring relief to your senses!’

Once your voice is smooth and strong again after that orchestration you may want to sing along with another form of Fisherman’s Friends. The sea shanty singing folk from Cornwall. This well known but anonymous song, from at least as far back as the 1830s, is on one their albums (Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends (Special Edition) 2011) and is one of those earworms that won’t let go for the rest of the day.

Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

The Drunken Sailor

What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Put him in the scuppers with the lee rail under
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in the brig until he's sober
Put him in the brig until he's sober
Put him in the brig until he's sober
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Put him in a whaler, make him pull her
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Put him in a bunk with the captain's daughter
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Have you seen the captain's daughter?
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Keel-haul him, keel-haul him
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Hoo-ray and up she rises
Ear'ly in the mornin'

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Friends A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed

 

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves. We become connected by common interests or something happens to throw us together. I’m lucky to have long-lasting and some life-long friends. I value very highly the times we share together. We laugh, we reminisce and collectively, we can remind each other of any bits we forget, especially now we are ‘grown ups.’

Last week, I enjoyed lunch out with three friends. We met at work in 1974. We joined at different times that year, as teenagers, and we’ve been together ever since. Life and work took us in different directions and away from each other, but we’ve always stayed connected. It’s great to get together and catch up. Three of us hit seventy last year, and the other one not too far behind, so knees, hips and general health come into the conversation. We laughed at a joke that we’d all collapsed over circa 1975, when a colleague had to escape the office before the punchline – she was laughing so much and a superior staff member was there – we didn’t want to get into trouble. We were the mostly well-behaved generation doing as we were told by seniors. I can’t remember exactly how long we worked together, but it was many fantastic years. One day, we each wrote down where we thought we’d be in ten years’ time. I think it was a small note book that got passed round. Our individual paragraphs will have been hilarious, and I don’t know what happened to the evidence, but ten years passed and we were still there. All good things come to an end and one by one we spread our wings but remain forever friends. And eventually, our lunch came to an end, after food, drinks and more drinks. An hour became two, then suddenly it was half past four and the sun was sliding down behind the trees. Farewell, until next time.

“This, too, will pass.” I’ve been the needy one for a while due to some tough times. Every day, I’ve been thankful for messages from friends checking in on me with good wishes, advice and offers of help. They keep me smiling and working towards better times. Reliable, trustworthy, caring people. These are my friends, small in number, but top quality. I know I’m privileged. I also know that it is important to be a good friend in return. My gang can rely on me to be there for them.

I found this poem,

Friends for Life 

We are friends
I got your back
You got mine,
I’ll help you out
Anytime!
To see you hurt
To see you cry
Makes me weep
And wanna die
And if you agree
To never fight
It wouldn’t matter

Who’s wrong or right
If a broken heart
Needs a mend
I’ll be right there
Till the end
If your cheeks are wet
From drops of tears
Don’t worry
Let go of your fears
Hand in hand
Love is sent,
We’ll be friends
Till the end!!!

Angelica N. Brissett (b.1991)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Humdinger

I'd never heard the word before this week, let alone knew what it meant, but I figured if something is going to be worthy of being called a humdinger, then at a minimum it should both hum and ding - and that train of thought led me into the wonderful world of vintage American circus carriages, or wagons as they call them in the USA.

American circus wagon i - a Calliope

This specimen above is what is known as a Calliope and I'm assured it would have hummed and dinged with a vengeance. It was a steam-powered mechanical musical box on wheels, pumping out the tunes that lent excitement to the circus experience for millions of enthused American families from the mid-1850s onwards. 

a recording of classic circus calliope sounds

Some of the circus wagons were so ostentatiously ornate they could have rivalled royal carriages (except their gilt was fake). They looked real humdingers though, the sort of thing (see below) that Liberace might ride in. Or maybe Donald Trump in his pomp, laden with his medals and insignia, happily waving those little hands at a brain-dead adoring public. (Presidency as circus - pass the sick bag.)

American circus wagon ii - fit for a felonious president

If you're really captivated by them, then maybe the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin is for you. (It's not for me. I won't be visiting Trumpland.) The museum claims to have the largest collection of circus wagons and is a major participant in the annual Great Circus Parade held since 1963, a sort of humdingery overdrive-past. 

In case you're wondering why the musical circus wagons were called Calliopes (and I hope you were), I shall tell you. They were named after the Greek goddess Kalliope (Καλλιόπη), literally "beautiful voiced". She was the eldest of Zeus and Mnemosyne's daughters, the famed nine muses of Greek mythology. (The word museum derives from muses, incidentally.) Anyway, young Calliope was the one specifically revered as the inspiration of poets and singers. She was also the mother of underworldly Orpheus.

Calliope (Greek goddess of poetry and song)

As well as being famed for the ecstatic harmony of that voice and the eloquence with which she spoke, Calliope was often depicted in art holding a writing tablet and was recognised as the goddess of epic poetry, muse to Homer and the Ancient Greek poets. Given all that, I thought I'd feature her in today's poem. It's fresh from the Imaginarium, though not quite an epic, and comes with the usual caveat that I might revise it on reflection.

Calliope As Humdinger

It's speed dating night on Mount Helikon

whose singles bar is brightly holding out

against the enfolding purple twilight and 

inside ouzo, retsina and nervous laughter

flow. Eligible young gods and goddesses

and a few honorary mortals glow in robes

and finery, all golden smiles and flashing

thighs. Aphrodite's hosting for Hellas TV,

their media van in the car-park alongside

the sports cars and SUVs that Olympians

must be seen driving these days. Hermes

flew in by helicopter, caused a bit of a stir

and Hephaestus, a life lived on accelerants,

stumps irrepressible into the throng, orders

a Metaxa, downs it in one. He's got the hots

for the talent with decorous downcast eyes.

Naiads and salty Nereids too long alone in

their lakes, rivers and seas, seeking a catch

face competition from three Graces and all

nine muses, the talented daughters of  Zeus

and Mnemosyne. They're each an equal for

any Greek man, can speak in their allotted

minutes about astronomy, history, comedy

poetry, politics, folklore, dance and more -

just check their socials, each muse not only 

beautiful, but also a credit to the matriarchy.

Seems our lucky boys are spoiled for choice. 

But Calliope is the event's real humdinger,

destined to snag gorgeous Prince Oeagrus 

the wild sorb apple, just the perfect match.

She could perhaps have written this script,

given her way with words. Maybe she did.

In her mind, Parnassus Productions presents...

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lancashire Dead Good Poets' February Open Mic Night

Love actually - or not - the theme is not compulsory. There are 20 x 5-minute slots on offer at our February open mic night on Zoom.

Sign up to read or just to listen in by emailing: deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk and we'll see you on 5th February.

Love poems 💙 🩷

Steve :-)

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Humdinger

I cannot imagine any circumstance under which I would use the term Humdinger. The Oxford English says that it means ‘a remarkable or outstanding person or thing of its kind’ and that it originates in the early 20th century in America. (Although I did find reference to it in the Daily Enterprise of June 4, 1883, in Livingston, Montana). It just doesn’t sound like a word related to something remarkable or outstanding.

Luckily I came across the following from The Institute of Australian Culture:

The Price of Meat
The price of meat can only be reduced by the sale of inferior cattle. — News item.

The bull-stag leaned against the post,
Too poor was he to walk,
And as the butcher sharp’d his knife
The beast began to talk.

“Misguided man,” the bull-stag said,
“Don’t perpetrate this crime;
You’ll sell me to your customers,
And kid them that I’m prime......

It goes on for another 9 depressing stanzas. The editor of the article in the Institute notes that:
‘This poem, by “Humdinger”, was published in Smith’s Weekly (Sydney, NSW), 21 February 1920. The poem is also known as “The Old Bull Stag”. Smith's Weekly was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. It was an independent weekly published in Sydney, but read all over Australia.’ I can’t find who ‘Humdinger’ was.

I don’t think anything has changed and that’s another reason for not eating meat.

Perhaps a more pleasurable use of the word is the following from the Joseph Holt Brewery based in Manchester founded in 1849 with a brewery from 1860. They describe Humdinger as a multi-award winning speciality ale.

‘Pouring a deep, golden colour with wafts of sweet honey. The enticing scent comes from the Mexican aroma honey which comes through in subtle undertones and balances impeccably with the traditional bitter notes and malt. Humdinger first came to life after winning a top brewing competition in 2004.

Full of character and flavour, the use of fine English malt and citrus whole hops lead to a well-rounded, lightly hopped and satisfyingly refreshing ale. It’s lightly carbonated, smooth and brewed at 4.1%, making it an ideal choice for a laid-back evening or day session.’

It sounds delicious and I’d only make one comment which is one I’d use for many beers and wines. At 4.1% I’d only need drink a couple to end an evening fairly quickly and as for a day session I’d be asleep within an hour. Why not brew something about the 2% level. That would keep me coasting at a pleasant level.

With a pleasant symmetry I also came across a company called Humdinger, originally from Hull, that as they say ‘focuses primarily on the nuts, seeds and dried fruit markets and are proud to support a community of farmers and growers from all over the world. This is a mutually beneficial partnership which ensures the quality, integrity and sustainability of every product we make.’ A combination to match perfectly with the beer.

This is a Crackerjack and as it’s near enough to Burns Night:

O Gude Ale Comes and Gude Ale Goes

O gude ale comes and gude ale goes,
Gude ale gars me sell my hose,
Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon,
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon.

I had sax owsen in a pleugh,
They drew a' weel eneugh,
I sald them a', ane by ane,
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon.

Gude ale hauds me bare and busy,
Gars me moop wi' the servant hizzie,
Stand i' the stool when I hae done,
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon.

O gude ale comes and gude ale goes,
Gude ale gars me sell my hose,
Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon,
Gude ale keeps my heart aboon.

                                              by Robert Burns, 1795

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Procrastination

A wise man once said "Don't put off until tomorrow something which can easily be pushed off into next week or even the one after." Ha ha ha. Well guess what I did earlier this week. I went for a dental appointment a day early by mistake, bucking the procrastination trend. It was the knock-on effect of disorienting betwixtmas days.

a procrastinator's dream

Seriously though, folks, isn't it human nature to try and defer doing things that one really doesn't want to do, tasks that might be anything from mundane, through boring, difficult, to perhaps downright unpleasant? 

Of course, if they don't absolutely need doing, especially if no one else is inconvenienced, then it's a different matter. But if they will have to be done at some point, procrastination usually only serves to raise stress levels, unless thinking time is genuinely required. That's why we have deadlines. It's 9.45pm on Saturday night as I type this, and I need to complete and post my blog before I go to sleep.

A former work colleague rarely read or responded to emails. I was shocked to discover he had over a thousand unopened messages in his inbox. His rationale was that if something was important enough, someone would come and talk to him. In the end, it was and they did. He was let go..

When I mentored people in project management techniques, I used to recommend they read 'Eat That Frog', by Brian Tracy. It propounds the theory that one should always start the working day by doing the most difficult thing first (rather than a whole load of less-challenging items). It not only gets that tough task out of the way while one is most energised, it also removes the need to worry about it. Everything that comes afterwards is easy by comparison. And if there are two frogs, always tackle the biggest and ugliest first. It's an empowering approach.

I sometimes wonder if D.J. Trump read 'Eat That Frog' as part of his less-than-illustrious B.Sc. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He's certainly not given to procrastination, except when it comes to releasing the Epstein Files.

If the Democratic Party hadn't procrastinated about replacing Joe Biden as party leader, and if the liberal left and centre in the USA hadn't been slow to grasp the implications of a possible second coming of Donald Trump (particularly in those key swing states) then maybe a different future for the world might have opened up than the dystopian times we have now.

Could it be that Trump and his backers know that his own days are numbered, on health grounds?  For he seems to be in a rush to grab as much as he can as soon as possible, and to aggrandise himself as speedily and as far as the world will allow him. Maybe he should be building a mausoleum and not a ballroom!

The unprecedented events of this last week mean that I had no option really except to write a poem about the enfant terrible himself. His FIFA Pacifier didn't work for long, did it?. He's back in full tantrum mode, it's shocking to see, and those shockwaves are reverberating around the globe.

(artist unknown - all credit, though)

The USA has always been a bit of a swaggering bully of a nation, but version 47 possesses none of the mitigating features of previous regimes and makes no attempt to disguise its nakedly acquisitive and self-serving agenda.

Dr. Spock was an American paediatrician who wrote one of the best-selling books of the 20th century in 'The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care'. Fred and Mary Trump clearly never read it, even though by all accounts their son was a difficult child. Trump senior just threw money at the problem. Donald was already an indulged, entitled millionaire (in inflation-adjusted dollars) by the age of eight.   

Anyway, here's the poem (with the usual caveat that I might revise it if improvements occur to me). The important thing was to get it said and out there, without procrastination.

Bully In A Diaper

You all find it hard to fathom
how somebody with such tiny hands
could rip up the rule book.

He should have been hooked
years ago when he was ‘merely’
a loathsome pussy-grabber.

For history shows that a monster unchecked
will grow insatiable in his narcissistic greed.

Now he’s set on snatching whole lands
for all their worth, black gold and rare earth.

Indulge him and there’s surely worse to come.

Every redneck Christian with a racist heart
and love of a gun has got his bible and back.

Those fossil-fuelled barons at his shoulder
will happily see the world burn for dollars!

In the ballroom of his vanity
the man-child is on the rampage
for a prize he never got

and he’s fouling all America
with his nursery crimes and shit.

This has got to stop.

Happy New Year? Let's hope so. Thanks for reading. Steve ;-)

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