Sex, Pies and Gaffer Tape

Mercy, children. Who's that a-knocking so early at our door? What does this hideous portend?

'Tis the blogger at the Gates of Dawn. O pity him, awakened by the all-night party just winding down in his neighbours' house.

Don't let him in! He has an ashen mien and his eyes are dull.

Tush. Let not yourselves be so easily afrighted. He is a simple poet with a duty to perform.

It sometimes follows that these fellows do bewitch us with their words. Let him remain unheard, I say. Send him away.

Nonsense. This is the Eve of All Hallows and he has prepared to serve a specially-themed rant on the appointed topic of 'Ties' as befits this spooky Saturday. Poet proceed...

Thank you kindly for your indulgence. I'm picking up on an angle that one of my fellow poets wrote about a couple of weeks ago - game-playing in high places. I'm roping together a bundle of associations into this piece. Old school ties (and the self-promoting network that lies behind them) and ties of  sexual deviance were only too happy to shackle up; there must be a natural proclivity there. They are whipped into shape by the presence of a dominatrix in suitably soul-destroying mode.

What we're talking about here is some of the two-faced leaders of our land and their seeming compunction to quietly get their kicks on the seedy side of the street while espousing family values to the watching world. The safer the seat, the sweeter the risks. Their worst crime? - getting caught!

Mae West is alleged to have said: "A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up" - an aphorism as layered in meaning and innuendo as the best moussaka.

What is it with these men that they crave being tied up by whip-cracking, leather-clad femmes fatale, enjoy being force-fed steak and kidney pudding by 'nursie', love wearing red bras and stockings and having their bottoms spanked? This perverse lads' club of the privileged - who keeps voting them into power?

The poem is still a work in progress (fittingly WIP), so what you read below may not be its final form...

Hollowe'en
The Queen of Tarts
is dining out tonight
on weak men's hearts.

Make no mistake,
despite those artless pumpkins
and the too black hair,
all her treats are tricks!
She plays it mean,
but watch them lap it up,
the Old School Ties,
roughing it on the rutting floor
with their Mayfair Whore.

The Ties have spent a hard day
ruining the country,
so feel the need
to leave lax morals at the door,
down ten hail bloody marys
and seek release from affairs of state
in heavy sessions
of sex, pies and gaffer tape...

She binds them tight,
delights to hear their cries.
Sighs rise from senior ministers.
She sees devotion in their eyes.
They love her for the suffering
she inflicts and so
she sucks these honourable members dry,
souls and all
till they are howling husks
in her avenging hands,
these rulers of our land.

But wait,
a fat front-bencher flat-lines!
This was never meant to be -
the game become reality
on Hallowe'en.

Don't panic, cue the cover-up.
It's a well-worked routine.
The Party's over everything
so nothing is revealed.
The Queen of Tarts
gets double pay,
her lips are sealed.
The truth will not escape.
They bind, those Whips,
and obfuscate the deviant sex
with practised lies and good red tape.

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)

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Ties

Who remembers Kipper ties ?

I was a dedicated follower of fashion in the mid 60's and 70's. Making my own clothes to keep up with the latest trends. In the late 60's I liked to wear trouser suits with the trousers having 24" bottoms ! As part of the image I made Kipper ties. Well I met a rather sophisticated young man ( well I thought he was rather, as he had his own 'pad' ....one room actually....in someone else's house ). He took me out to the pictures a couple of times and then asked me to make him a shirt and a Kipper tie. I still recall the shirt. I chose a brushed cotton Paisley pattern fabric...the shirt collar being a dog- eared design with a vibrant peach coloured tie. WOW ! It took me a few weeks to make it and I presented it to him for Christmas. Well....you can guess the rest . He promptly ' finished ' with me ! It was very hurtful of him. Anyway he wasn't really much of a boyfriend and as I grew older I came to the conclusion that he was homosexual and that I had been used as a ' front ' in order to keep up appearances with his friends. I'd also been used to provide him with a lovely brightly coloured shirt and tie!

In keeping with the 1960's I am submitting a piece written by me in August 1968.

                   Thoughts at the Palace Ballroom in Aberdeen.

Silhouetted figures on the background of blue moved to and fro with the rhythm from the group.
I felt myself slipping slowly into a trancelike state and everything moved with a frenzy of feelings and emotions.
Then I finally joined the swirl of writhing bodies, music pulsating in my brain.

Gardens where flowers bloomed were all around me.
I plucked a rose from a tender bough and breathed in its sweet perfume.
Then I took a daisy from among the deep green grass and pulling its petals I cried....
            "He loves me...he loves me not,
             He loves me ....he loves me not,
             He loves me....he loves me !
             HE LOVES ME !!! "


Kath Curtiss

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Games People Play

When I heard the announcement that Joe South had passed away, I felt personally bereaved. I remember the disbelief as I hurried to the radio at the end of my kitchen as if being in closer proximity to the source of information would change anything. It didn’t.

Joe South was an American songwriter and performer. His style has been described as country / soul. He wrote Lynn Anderson’s hit, ‘(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden)’ but the song I hold him dear for is ‘Games People Play’. I couldn’t get enough of that guitar intro, so rich and deep, then repeating through the song. I wasn’t listening properly to the words, just singing along without paying attention. It was 1969 and I was waking up to the music of the time and developing my life-long love of the blues and progressive rock. ‘Games People Play’ I thought was very bluesy. It was the best thing on the juke-box in our public bar.

I was brought up in an assortment of pubs. My parents, grandparents and other family members were licensees. There was always music on, somewhere. I spent my childhood to mid- teens being drip-fed the ‘Hit Parade’ from juke-boxes, the wireless, as it was known, and my mother’s record collection. It’s a legacy I feel thankful and privileged for.  1969 was a year of significant changes for my family. Those memories are wrapped in the music, including ‘Games People Play’.

Fast-forward a few years. Living in a house instead of a pub felt weird, too quiet and too small. I was working in my first proper job, which didn’t involve washing glasses or filling shelves with Britvic or Schweppes bottles. Sunday afternoons were for lazing around, listening to the Dave Lee Travis request show on Radio 1. He played good stuff. I decided to join in, so using a Parker fountain pen filled with turquoise ink and bright orange paper and envelope, (this is the early ‘70s), I wrote a letter to DLT requesting ‘Games People Play’ and was thrilled when he gave me a mention and played the record. My name on the radio! It was like being famous. My favourite DJ played one of my favourite songs for me. What a shame there was only me to hear it and no ‘listen again’ facility in those days. It was a memorable, special moment, none the less.

That guitar riff still stops me in my tracks and takes me straight back to those happy days. I’ve learnt to understand the poetry of the lyrics and when news of his death came through in September, 2012, I cried.
 

With thanks to Joe South, for what his song means to me.

Games People Play

Oh the games people play now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean

While they wile away the hours

In their ivory towers

Till they’re covered up with flowers

In the back of a black limousine

Chorus

La da da da da da da

La da da da da da de

Talking ‘bout you and me

And the games people play

Oh we make one another cry

Break a heart then we say goodbye

Cross our hearts and we hope to die

That the other was to blame

But neither one ever will give in

So we gaze at an eight by ten

Thinking ‘bout the things that might have been

And it’s a dirty rotten shame

Chorus

People walking up to you

Singing glory hallelujah

And they try to sock it to you

In the name of the Lord

They’re gonna teach you how to meditate

Read your horoscope, cheat your fate

And further more to hell with hate

Come on and get on board

Chorus

Look around tell me what you see

What’s happening to you and me

God grant me the serenity

To remember who I am

‘Cos you’ve given up your sanity

For your pride and your vanity

Turned your back on humanity

And you don’t give a da da da da da

Chorus

Joe South, 1940 - 2012

Thanks for reading - Pamela Winning

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Mind Games People Play

In a week of rushing and deadlines, I've not had a lot of time to think nor prepare for this blog (on the theme of Games People Play) so please excuse a brief excursion into the realms of Transactional Analysis and the resurrection (or should that be resuscitation?) of something that's the best part of forty years old, written when I was both an English teacher, an occasional smoker and a fledgling poet.

'Games People Play: the Psychology of Human Relationships' was a best-selling treatise (5 million copies sold) written in 1964 by Eric Berne, a Canadian-born psychiatrist and the man credited with formulating Transactional Analysis and coining the concept of mind games. TA is one of the most popular threads of modern psychological theory. T-groups were very fashionable in the '70s as we all earnestly searched after knowing ourselves; (I can't believe I just wrote that, but it was true). Eric Berne postulated that there are 3 ego-states: Parent, Child, Adult - and we are each a combination of the 3 in varying degrees.

Parent is the 'taught' mode: angry or impatient body-language, finger-pointing, patronising, critical, judgmental and posturing
Child is the 'felt' mode: emotionally expressive, impulsive, teasing, given to extremes, deferential, approval-seeking

Adult is the 'thought' mode: attentive, interested, non-threatened and non-threatening, comparative and reasoned

I am told (and like to believe) that I am largely Adult with a healthy streak of Child. I don't like playing mind games. You may beg to differ.

In analysing interpersonal transactions, Berne believed that only 7% of the import is in the actual words used; 38% is paralingual - in the way the words are said; 55% is visual (facial and bodily expressions). Please bear those percentages in mind when you read my poem....

let's get some sleep now - a poem for joni
post-coital pall malls
glow
in the night
from your face
in the cigarettes' light
i interpret loneliness
you say
"we're so near and yet so far"
and how i react to that
knowing it for a fact
is to hold you close
more eloquent than words
you say
"i've lived too many fakes
to lay pretence on you"
i smile
for i know this to be true
not touching souls
we stub symbolic in the dark
and kiss entwined
in a fumbling happiness

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)

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Games people play - how high are the stakes?

They play a lot of games in politics.  No where in the world are more games played than in the corridors of power. 

They play games with us - the electorate.  They write a comprehensive manifesto - so compelling that we believe in what they promise and we tootle off to the Polling Station at the crack of dawn, on our way to work, to put our cross beside their name. Then when they are elected, they completely ignore reasons for their election, they change the boundaries, to make sure they are re-elected and start jetting off around the world, to promote our wonderful country and our interests, while spending our hard-earned money on luxury hotles, room service and extra-marital affairs.  We used to give them security of tenure for three years and then at least we could kick them out for lying - oops sorry, playing games with us - but the clever buggers changed the law, so now they are in for another five years. 

Meanwhile, our children run up £30k plus student debt trying better themselves; the elderly , who were promised that they could keep more of the savings that they have worked for all their lives are still forced to sell their homes and die virtually penniless in sub-standard, care homes and disabled people are committing suicide  because they are being forced to look for work in a dog- eat-dog world, where the legal requirement to make 'Reasonable Adjustments' is a myth and the reality is that employers will always chose a healthy, young worker over someone with a neck injury who needs an expensive chair, a different mouse and two days a year to rest after spinal injections. Politics is the mother of 'Games People Play.'

They play games with the opposition. We hear them, braying like donkeys across the floor of the house. They don't actually debate the crucial issues affecting our economy, the state of our welfare services, the education and future of our children.  No they mud-sling at each other like kids in the playground, wasting the time we pay them for, on nonsense. 

They play games with other members of their own party too.  It is alleged that these games often take place during 'Conference.'   My poem (slightly changed from the original) was commission by The Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, where many Conservative and Labour Party members have stayed during conference weeks. When I use the inclusive pronoun 'ours' - I speak for the hotel. 

Currie, Egg and Chips
Edwina Currie, friend of Thatcher,
cracked British egg manufacture,

crowing, “ Salmonella’s running rife,”

falling foul of every farmer and his wife.
 

As the Minister for Health,

she caused a plummet in their wealth,
when she was overheard to quip,
'Northerners die of ignorance and chips.'

When winter struck the weak and old,
she said, “Long Johns keep out the cold.”
Soon mass public consternation
forced her into resignation.

A woman scorned is fury’s hell.
Edwina wrote her 'kiss and tell',
revealing shifty shades of Grey:
a no holds barred sex expose.

Affair with married Major John,

Edwina with suspenders on

swept through corridors of power

and may have even crept through ours.

A wily bird, she caught the worm,
she made her former colleagues squirm.
Egg on their face, she licked her lips.
Edwina Currie had her chips!

Now she’s always in the news,
voicing her outspoken views,
She made her game show debut
on 'Have I Got News for You'.

Then she kicked up Strictly heels,
tried sweating over Ramsey's meals. 
Last year she jetted off to be 
a 'Get Me Out of Here’ celebrity.

Edwina just won't go away,
It's just the game she loves to play. 

 

Thanks for reading.  Adele
 

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Games People Play

Firstly this week's topic kept me singing this -- Oh, the games people play yeh
                                                                       Every night and every day yeh
                                                                       Never meaning what they say yeh
                                                                       Never saying what they mean....etc
It was driving me bonkers last night and keeping my brain active when it ought to have been sleeping ! However, it did me a favour , for in my semi wakeful state I began to think..........
This week would have been my late husband's 80th birthday, and what fun we would have had !
   You see Terry regarded life as a game to be played to the fullest. Where there was laughter he'd be the cause of it. He made adventures. He adored children and their company...joining in their games. Work mates were roped in and they would be just as mischievous as he. Also he caught them out every Friday at their card game with his 'marked' cards !
     I'll give a few examples. He was long term chairman of Oxford Ice Skating Club....there was a club before there was a rink ! He'd drive a bus loaded with mainly children and take them to rinks in the south of England. When we had outdoor fund raising events he'd be running, leapfrogging, footballing...whatever it took to keep everyone amused. My son confessed ( at Terry's funeral ) that he would 'bunk off ' games on a Wednesday afternoon and Terry would take him fishing or foraging in the woods...my son said that suddenly he had a life like Huckleberry Finn ! I came home from work one day and they were sliding a surfboard down the stairs. With the cushions off the suite protecting the glass door at the bottom ! Moving to Scotland Terry befriended a local 'toe rag ' . I caught them using a garden implement like a trident and aiming it at the shed door pretending to be Romans.( that implement is bent to this day ! ) On another occasion they were firing a water rifle at the front windows and when I looked out they both ran away down the street !
   Terry's life was not complete without ' Rock and Roll '... the music, the clothes, the dancing, the motorbikes, the atmosphere of his youth. Saturday nights were for jiving ....and despite two heart attacks he continued...following the groups, attending 50's events. He enjoyed life to the full and was referred to as a Peter Pan figure. That's exactly what he was- he never grew old. The afternoon of his fatal aortic aneurysm he was dancing . My everlasting memory of that afternoon is of him dancing with myself and Val to a rather risque rumba ...making up provocative moves and laughing at ourselves . He never grew old...he had his wish ...
     So what have Snakes and Ladders got to do with anything ? Well we had a motorhome and I bought a compendium of games to take with us and he only ever played Snakes and Ladders...he loved it ! He also loved to play cards....but I always insisted that we use my set !
     Today's poem was written very close to his death...and the words reflect that. You'll be pleased to know that I've found my niche in life and a very sedate dancing partner. But OH DEAR I miss jiving !!

The Light Went Out

We danced the afternoon away and our smiles lit up our faces.

We laughed the afternoon away and our laughter lit the room  .

The evening we spent in fond remembrance and promises       

Then the light went out.    

Since then I've danced in the afternoon and smiled without the light.

I've laughed, but failed to light the room.                                       

My evenings are spent in sad remembrance and sorrow .               

Because the light went out.

Will I ever dance and smile that brightness ?                                

Ever laugh a carefree and light laugh ?                                       

Always spend lonely evenings without you                                

Because the light went out ?

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A Crumpled Rainbow

Mortality: on the library-shelf of our lives, after education, adventure, war, romance, childcare, politics, hobbies, maybe a bit of noir, it stands immovable as book-end to our final volume.

I can still remember the stark terror I felt as a six or seven year old upon first realising that one day I wouldn't be here anymore - and that the world would go on for a very long time without me!

It was a curious and deeply unsettling sensation, one that I would have struggled to put into words at that age - fright? despair? a sense of being cheated? -  and it affected me for weeks. Behind it lay an indomitable will to live (forever, if only that were possible). I characterised it later as a mixture of existential angst, premature regret and not a little righteous anger. I guess I'd stared into the dark abyss of my own inevitable not-being. Of course I came to terms with it, as most people do, and figured it wasn't something I needed to worry about for a few decades at least. Life was there to be lived.

Apparently there are individuals who don't make that adjustment. Unfortunately for them, they are permanently oppressed by a sense of their own mortality. There is, of course, a Greek word for it: thanatophobia.

Then there are those who seek to somehow take the sting out of their eventual demise by attaining lasting fame or by bequeathing a legacy of value to the world; Achilles, Attila the Hun, Agatha Christie, Apollinaire and Albert Einstein spring to mind - I'll leave you to categorise them.

For the rest of us, it's enough to keep on keeping on. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.

Today's poem, not written by me for a change - though I'd be delighted if it had been - seems to encapsulate so many wise, witty and compassionate observations on the theme of mortality and the human condition that I just had to share it with you. It is among my all-time favourite pieces - and has been ever since I discovered the poetry of Adrian Mitchell in my teens. I hope you'll be as moved by it as I am still, every time I read it.

The Clown is Dead
Children must learn that fairy tales are lies,
Faces are masks, and peace is out of reach.
I stare into the clown's unwinking eyes
Discovering the child they could not teach.

Though he rode out of childhood cheerfully
He left that forest for the open lands
In fear of other men. He could not see
If they held knives or flowers in their hands.

Seeing the animals, he learnt to speak
Solemnly to them, and at length remove
Their simple terrors; for if he was weak
In anything, it was not in his love.

Death came to him when he was young
And he stuck out his scarlet tongue.
He went to death when he was old:
'Take me,' he said, 'it's turning cold.'

The bearded lady and the tattooed man
Played cards inside his caravan.
We sat around his tousled bed,
Shivered with him till he was dead.

That was a quiet way, to fade,
For him, who loved to sit astride
The high giraffe in the parade,
With blare and bang of brass and hide.

It was a quiet way to fall.
Into the ring he used to come
With a high tragic caterwaul -
And he always fell upon his bum.

What was the colour of his mind?
It was a prism, casting lights,
Changing, revolving in the wind
Of roaring days and storming nights.

Our elephants of laughter strode
Across his earthy doubletalk.
He goaded them to a stampede
And shot them with a popping cork.

He met tired walkers every day,
They were ill with travelling.
His songs enchanted them to stay:
They learned to sing.

What's left? A clown of empty cloth,
A crumpled rainbow on the floor
Of a black cupboard. The destroying moth
Nests in the shapeless hat he wore.

What remains with any man?
There is no answer.
In this circus no one can
Dance, but he was a dancer.

He had no children, but I would
Stand as his son, to keep his name
And watch his footsteps take the road
Of prancing beyond praise or blame.

The gentle unicorn has gone away.
The dodo, poker-faced and knockabout
Saw that its tail was turning grey,
Ate up the door and waddled out.

In his good time he followed these
Moonstruck and happy monsters. All
His laughter has gone with him, and like these
He is extinct or mythical.

And he is fabulously still;
The greasepaint grin wiped off his face
By lightly sliding hands, until
The naked lips grin in its place.

In his hands put an apple from a tree,
Bury him deep so no one can see,
For a dead man's smile tears the whole heart down.
The clown is dead. Long live the clown.

                                                         Adrian Mitchell (Poems, 1964)

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S;-)

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Mortality - it is nothing to worry about.

A wise man once told me that there are only two certainties in life; one is death and the second is that flat roofs will leak.  Well he was a roofer.  I have to admire his pragmatic approach.  Acceptance of the inevitability of death is fundamental to life.  Being aware that we all die is fundamental to how we live our lives.  The English language is littered with idiomatic phrases about life and death. We don’t hang about pondering death, we live life to the full, because after all, you only live once, unless you are James Bond. Life’s a bitch and then you die.  

I was working(and partying hard) in Tenerife when I first heard that expression. A young Spaniard man raised his shoulders to me and said it.  One word was lost in translation.  I actually heard, “Life’s a beach and then you die.” I enjoy my interpretation far better. It suits my philosophical viewpoint that life is what you make of it.  From my earliest recollections, my wonderful father imbued in me the ability to pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.  He taught us to, keep our sunny side up and that when there’s a shine on your shoes there’s a melody in your heart.  

After he died, The Rev. Wren came to discuss his funeral arrangements, so me, Mum and my older siblings sat around thinking about him. He was 83, born in 1914, just after hostilities began in Europe. He spent the entire Second World War in India, returning to England six months after VE Day, when people here had already celebrated the end of the war. He joined The Burma Star Association in his later years, helping to raise money for Veterans of the 'Forgotten Army'. He always insisted that death was just a part of life and that we should just leave him on top.  
 

We all had amusing things to recall. My youngest brother said, “I envied him. His golf balls had birthdays. He could reach into the bag and tell you where he got a ball, who gave it to him.” For my brother getting home without losing a ball in the rough or the lake was a minor miracle.  Dad, like the song says, always played his tee shot, Straight down the middle. I told the vicar that my father lit up a room just by walking in.  That although he wasn’t a church-goer, he was as wise as Solomon, he could always resolve life’s difficulties in a fair way.  He was a publican and yet he practised and preached moderation in all things, that he was generous to all in the community and that he loved his family, his friends and life. 

He seemed immune to the idea of his own mortality. Perhaps living through the war did that.  He was rocked to the core by the death of his younger brother from cancer and he seemed to lose interest in life for a while after his best buddy died a few years before he did.  Dad’s mother and her two husbands, (she married again after being widowed), are all in one plot in Layton Cemetery.  Apparently there is a free space but there was no way Dad was ever going in the ground. He was laid in state at St Paul’s overnight, his coffin draped with The Union Jack.  His Burma Star Association pals, bugled him through the curtain at the crematorium to ‘The Last Post’ and Mum sprinkled his remains on the rose garden.  

His special gifts for gardening, hospitality, spontaneous acts of generosity, humour, kindness, forgiveness and the ability to love have truly passed to each of his children, to their children and to theirs. Oh and my youngest brother's son James Robinson plays professional golf on the Europro Tour. When Dad died, my children were with me at the hospital. My daughter Katie, who was six at the time, said that Grandad wasn’t in his body anymore: He was up in sky with the stars.

 

  

 

 

Cemetery for the Living 

Where bright sunlight casts dark, tablet squares

on soft, green carpet, mighty pieces congregate

in stalemate game of chess.

The white queen stands on limestone steps,

draped with carved wild rose,

lily of the valley at her feet

worn skeletal by a century of windblown sand.

Opposing knights, hewn angular, in granite armour,

blazed with gilt by mason’s hand,

tower over prostrate pawns,

face down, grown over by the land.

Sandstone rooks with weather beaten-faces,

rendered smooth by season sun and winter freeze,

are nameless, as those buried in some corner of a foreign field.

Players jog along arterial pathways,

baseline beating in their veins through ipod ears.

A walker tugs the lead,

to intercept a disrespectful cocking leg, disturbing one ‘at rest.’

The young rush by, their gazes fixed on living deadlines, 
far beyond the ornate gate,
as they interlace the veil between the mourning and the dead.

Within these crumbling, biscuit walls,

silent voices swirl in sycamore and chestnut bows,

whispering undying epitaphs,

of journeys through the realms of space.
of a millions joys to us as yet unknown.
Alpha and Omega.
We are stardust set in stone.
 

Written in celebration of the Centenary of Layton Cemetery, Blackpool for the 'Walls have Voices' project commissioned by Blackpool Council. 

Thanks for reading.  Adele 

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Mortality

Well better late than never ! This week' s title hasn't really been far from my mind....At the weekend I got an urgent message from a friend, asking if I could look after her cat. You see her boyfriend had been rushed to hospital in Manchester with a brain haemorrhage and was in intensive care....he's still in ITU and not out of danger. She came to visit me this afternoon to keep me updated , hence the reason for my lapse of memory..I was preoccupied making a meal and baking some cakes for us, and for her to take home , as she obviously has other things to think of. So when I looked and realised the topic for this week ...well it fell into place . Mortality. Gosh we take it for granted. Yet it can be snatched from us, even at a young age. Yes, we don't know what is around the corner and really it's just as well. How would we react if we knew in advance ? Many people do get advance warning and face it bravely, and we often hear of these. But what of those people who fall to pieces, what if they are alone? Why, earlier this week I heard from another friend that he'd  inadvertently dialled a wrong number, however the person who answered was clearly in distress and so he stayed on the line. It turned out to be an elderly lady, all alone on the world who had just been told she had cancer. So he listened and offered what support he could. I salute him for his actions.

I don't have a piece to offer this week, but I ask you to think deeply about ..mortality.....

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Moon

Many thought that when I was asked to write a piece about the moon that I would write a poem about bare bums. The fact is I really like the moon and she features quite often in my work. I use her as a reference to colour and light. She has a subversive beauty, a calling.

“Oh the children of the night”

MOON

I howl for you

I move with the tide

You control my mind

You see my dark side

I bow and worship

I gawp in awe

You take colours from me

You soak my shore

I give blood to you

I dance in your shadow

You hide the Sun's fire

You sonata on a piano

I watch you rise

I admire your slender crescents

You cold hearted orb

You control with your presence

I wax of your waning

I would be lost without you

You ever present satellite

You are older when you are new.


Colin Davies

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Barking At The Moon

Hot on the heels of last week's cat blog, this week's dog blog. Prompted by listening to Mark Grist recite a poem about his happy hound on Blackpool Promenade the other night (as part of National Poetry Day), I thought I'd give a canine spin to this moon theme. I've done a bit of research into the story of the first dog in space and I've crafted today's poem on the back of that.

Blackpool (along with many other towns, I'm sure) has been awash with posters, stickers, buttons and events this week celebrating National Poetry Day - "dream like a poet", "love like a poet", "speak like a poet", "think like a poet" etc; (I didn't spot any that read "starve like a poet").  As T.S. Eliot once remarked in his essay about the Metaphysical Poets, we artists/authors/poets have the pleasant duty to both entertain and educate - and we do it for love. I hope these Dead Good Blogs go some way to living up to that duty. Barking at the moon, then...

Laika (apparently her name means Barking in Russian) achieved a dubious but lasting fame as the first animal to go into earth orbit, when Sputnik 2 blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1957. President Kruschev was eager to prove to the world that the Soviet Union led the way in the space race. Laika, part husky, part Samoyed terrier, had been picked up as a stray wandering the Moscow streets. (I was there a few times in 2010 and 2011 and packs of stray dogs still roam the city.) The Soviet scientists of the Sputnik programme chose strays because they reasoned such animals had demonstrated great endurance to survive the extreme cold and deprivation of Moscow winters.

 

Laika was one of three rounded-up hounds trained for the Sputnik launch; (the others were Albina and Mushka). To prepare them for their journey into space, the dogs were transferred to progressively smaller cages over a three-week period to get them used to extreme confinement; they were also regularly spun in centrifuge machines and exposed to high volume recordings of jet engines, both of which simulated the acceleration and thunderous noise of a rocket launch. Finally they had to be trained to eat the special high-nutrition gel that would be their food in space. Laika was chosen to be the flight dog as she was the least excitable of the three. Days before the launch, one of the scientists took her home to play with his children: "I wanted to do something nice for Laika. She had so little time left to live."

 

Just prior to lift-off on November 3rd 1957, Laika's fur was sponged with a weak alcohol solution and carefully groomed. She was harnessed and painted with iodine on those areas where sensors were to be attached. She was then wired up, secured in her capsule, a container in which she could stand or sit but couldn't turn round. The technicians kissed her nose and wished her luck before closing and securing the hatch.

Telemetry from Sputnik 2 suggested that Laika's respiratory rate quadrupled during the stress of lift-off and her heart rate increased from 100 to 240 beats per minute. Once in orbit and weightless, after about 3 hours these functions had gradually returned to normal levels. However, the thermal insulation on the spacecraft had malfunctioned shortly after lift-off and the capsule temperature rapidly soared to over 40C, so that the first dog in space expired just six hours into her voyage from overheating. Five months later, in April 1958 after 2,570 orbits of the Earth Sputnik 2, including Laika's remains, disintegrated during re-entry to the atmosphere.

Laika

Moon
I've been observing you carefully for quite some while.
You brighten the sky
but don't burn like the sun.
Did you ever see me with your great silver eye?
Did you hear me barking to you
when you rose majestic over the city at night?

Life is hard enough here
and though I'll never complain
I have dreams of you, moon.
As I watched the Moscow river
slowly freeze over again
I did think how fine it would be
to scamper on your surface,
kick up moondust with abandon,
leap ten feet into the air
with every joyful stride,
chase my tail for happiness,
running free,
maybe find a moondog for a friend,
bury bones for all eternity.

Could it be
that dreams come true?
Plucked from the streets,
it seems I am the chosen one,
trained now and readied
to rocket to the skies.

I do not howl from fear
as other dogs do.
I am through with barking.
Instead, I'm waiting on a great adventure,
tense in this darkest hour before the dawn,
quivering with anticipation,
tingling to my tail
from a kindly kiss upon the nose.

Stars guide me home.
Beyond your sparkling curtain
is the promise of a better tomorrow.
5-4-3-2-1...

Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)

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Moon and Supermoon

I have always been fascinated by the moon.  I live by the sea and have known since childhood that the lunar cycle controls the high and low tides. Pink Floyd's, Dark Side of the Moon blared out from my older brothers' bedroom during my formative years and of course, I saw Neil Armstrong set his feet safely on the surface in 1969, hoisting the star-spangled banner.  Of this stuff dreams are made.  I was not destined to become an astro-physicist but take a keen interest in the teachings of Professor Brian Cox, (who reminds a little of Simon Armitage), and I love to watch the Sky at Night. One day I may buy a telescope but not yet.  At the moment, I only seem to be in one place long enough to write my contribution to this blog once a week. 

This September, our earth became a viewing platform for an unusual astronomical event: A supermoon combined with a lunar eclipse that produced what is known as a blood moon.  Many people sat up into the early hours to watch the climatic eclipse and many incredible photographs were taken and posted online from vantage points all over the world.

Supermoon is not an official astronomical term.  It was first coined by astronomer Richard Nolle in 1979 and his definition of the supermoon is ‘a new or a full Moon that occurs when the Moon is at or near (within 90% of) its closest approach to Earth in its orbit’. The technical term for a supermoon is perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system.  On average the moon is 238,000 miles away from earth but the moon’s orbit around the earth is in an elliptical orbit. This means that the moon’s proximity to the earth varies from 225,000 miles at its closest (perigee) and 251,000 miles at its furthest distance (apogee). 

 

Of course this means that our moon passes through a perigee and apogee stage at least once every calendar month, the time it takes to travel from perigee to perigee. The transition between these  points is not synchronized,  sometimes the closest point is when the full moon is visible and this is what Nolle called a supermoon.  When it occurs as on Monday 28 September 2015 we on earth see the moon 12 – 14% bigger.  Up to 30% bigger than at apogee when it is called a mini or micro moon.  

A supermoon can also happen when the moon is ‘new ‘. In November 1997, I was with my family at The Epcot Centre in Florida. It was a beautiful clear evening.  I was standing at a food stall, (there was a world cuisine event taking place), when I looked up at the sky and saw a huge thin smile of light in the sky. It took me by surprise having always lived at a latitude where the moon phases change vertically. It looked like the grin of Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat.  I asked the young American lady at the counter lady, “Is that your new moon?”  She looked at me for a while with a puzzled expression and then confidently declared, “Mam, we only have one moon.”  It was a truly unforgettable moment.

What made this September’s super moon so spectacular was that it occurred during syzygy. In astronomy, the term syzygy refers to the straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies: in this case earth, moon and sun all aligned. When the Moon is close to the lunar nodes of its path during syzygy, it causes a total solar or a total lunar eclipse. We were able to witness a vivid red, ‘blood moon’ very close to the earth, a reasonably rare event in the possibly, never-ending,  astronomical calendar. 

Okay but what about a blue moon?  “It only happens once every blue moon,” is a very well know English expression. Songs have been written to the blue moon but does it ever happen? Well technically it does.  The astronomical calendar is divided into four three monthly seasons; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.  A lunar cycle is 28 days, (the time it takes for the moon to orbit the earth), so sometimes there will be two full moons during one calendar month and therefore, four full moons in one astronomcal season.  When this happens, the third full moon is called a ‘blue moon’ but it doesn’t look blue in colour.

A blue coloured moon is a bad sign. It only happens when the atmosphere is filled with dust particles of larger than 0.7 microns, after a major catastrophic event on earth such as a major volcanic eruption or a bush fire.  The dust particles refract the light making the moon appear blue in the sky. The moon is reported as appearing blue in colour after the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia in 1883, Mount St Helen’s, Washington State,  USA in 1980, El Chichon, Mexico 1982 and Mount Pinatubo, Luzon, Philippines 1991. So if you see a blue coloured moon, then you see trouble on the way. 

Blue Moon Blues

"Hey there big Moma," said Stegosaurus Junior,
"that shiny disc in the sky
 is lookin' kinda blue."
"Yeh Baby," Moma told him,
I can see the moon is changing,
let's ask your Papasaurus, 
he'll know what to do." 
Big ole Papasaurus, sat his son down on the plain, 
he though it might be somethin'
but he didn't get much brain, 
"It may be a bad moon rising son,
Ii could be trouble on the way,
but I'm no astro-physicist,
that's just my point of view.
Maybe we should tell someone 
but I'm hungry anyway,
let's just keep our heads down son,
maybe it'll fade away." 


The rest, Dead Good readers, is Jurassic history. 
Thanks for reading  - Adele

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