The Plague

Immediately I saw the topic for this week’s blog my thoughts were taken to the novel by Albert Camus. I had read it years ago and darted over to my bookshelves and was relieved to find I had still had my dog-eared copy as well as all his other novels, I must have been going through a Camus phase.

Before I come to the book let’s have a quick look at the background to the author. Camus was born to a French family in Algeria, which was then a colony of France. He was raised in poverty, and suffered from tuberculosis while at the University of Algiers. He joined the Communist Party for several years, then wrote for an anti-colonialist Algerian newspaper, joined an anarchist group, and then wrote and fought for the French Resistance against the Nazi occupiers in WWII. He was married to Simone Hié and later Francine Faure, and had two children. He consistently supported human rights, and vigorously opposed war and capital punishment. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He was killed in a car accident at the age of 46.

The following is the best synopsis of the book I could find and was written by Scott Anderson in 2017: 

'The Plague ' is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny, and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.

The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large percentage of Oran's population in 1849, following French colonization, but the novel is placed in the 1940s. 'The Plague ' is considered an existentialist classic, despite Camus' objection to the label.

Camus included a dim-witted character misreading Kafka’s 'The Trial ' as a mystery novel, as an oblique homage. The novel has been read as a metaphorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. Additionally, he further illustrates the human reaction towards the absurd. 'The Plague ' represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the absurd, a theory that Camus himself helped to define.

The novel became a bestseller during Covid to the point that its British publisher Penguin Classics reported struggling to keep up with demand. Camus' daughter Catherine said that the message of the novel had newfound relevance in that "we are not responsible for coronavirus but we can be responsible in the way we respond.”

Here are a few excerpts to give a flavour of his writing.

Part One Chapter 1: ‘In any case the narrator (whose name will be made known in due course) would have little claim to competence for a task like this, had chance not put him in the way of gathering much information....but perhaps the time has come to drop preliminaries and cautionary remarks, and to launch into the narrative proper. The account of the first days needs giving in some detail.’

Chapter 2: ‘When leaving his surgery on the morning of 16 April, Dr Bernard Rieux felt something soft under his foot. It was a dead rat lying in the middle of the landing.’

Part Two Chapter 4 ‘What I want doctor is this. On the day when the manuscript reaches the publisher, I want him to stand up and say to his staff “Gentlemen, hats off.” 

Rieux was dumbfounded...though he knew little of the literary world, Rieux had a suspicion that things didn’t happen it quite so picturesquely – that, for instance, publishers do not keep their hats on in their offices.’

Chapter 8: ‘The evil that is in world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.’

I hope the above shows the mixtures of tone in his writing. Reporting, philosophy and humour.

The other reason that I wanted to mention Camus is for something which he said in 1957:

His actual words were: “After many years in which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I know most surely in the long run about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”

Thanks for reading, Terry Q

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Plague - Bubonic, Covid?

I haven’t been to Eyam, but I believe it to be beautiful and interesting. It is on my bucket list of places to visit. Eyam is a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District which worked hard to be self-contained during an outbreak of a highly infectious disease.

Taken from ‘The Plague in Eyam ’ by George May,

“The plague which was a highly infectious and very unpleasant disease widely known in Britain and Europe, came to Eyam in the summer of 1665, possibly in a bale of cloth brought up from London. The people in the house where it came to, caught the disease and died in a short space of time. Before long, others had caught the disease and also died, after a short and very painful illness. It spread rapidly. The local rector, The Rev. William Mompesson and his predecessor, led a campaign to prevent the disease spreading outside the village to the surrounding area. This involved the people of the village remaining in the village and being supplied with necessary provisions by people outside.

the boundary stone

                                                            
"There is still on the outskirts of the village a location called the Boundary stone, where traditionally money was placed in small holes for the provisions which those from the local area brought for the villagers. As a result of this action, the disease did not spread, but almost a third of the villagers died. Interestingly some of the villagers who were in contact with those who caught the plague, did not catch it. This was because they had a chromosome which gave them protection. This same chromosome has been shown to still exist in those who are direct descendants of those who survived the plague, and who are still living in the village at the present time. The action of the villagers in staying in the village is almost unique and makes the village the place of significance that it is.”

The nursery rhyme Ring-a-ring-of-roses is thought to have come from this event.

We had to apply a similar process during the Covid lockdown, by relying on grocery deliveries and isolating ourselves as much as possible. I will forever, keep to social distancing when possible and be mindful of handwashing and disinfecting.

Here's poet laureate, Simon Armitage,

Lockdown

And I couldn’t escape the waking dream
of infected fleas

in the warp and weft of soggy cloth
by the tailor’s hearth

in ye old Eyam.
Then couldn’t un-see

the Boundary Stone,
that cock-eyed dice with its six dark holes,

thimbles brimming with vinegar wine
purging the plagued coins.

Which brought to mind the sorry story
of Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre,

star-crossed lovers on either side
of the quarantine line

whose wordless courtship spanned the river
till she came no longer.

But slept again,
and dreamt this time

of the exiled yaksha sending word
to his lost wife on a passing cloud,

a cloud that followed an earthly map
of camel trails and cattle tracks,

streams like necklaces,
fan-tailed peacocks, painted elephants,

embroidered bedspreads
of meadows and hedges,

bamboo forests and snow-hatted peaks,
waterfalls, creeks,

the hieroglyphs of wide-winged cranes
and the glistening lotus flower after rain,

the air
hypnotically see-through, rare,

the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow
but necessarily so.

                            Simon Armitage, 2020

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Pills

Everybody in Wonderland takes pills, don't they? Best estimates of the total spend on pharmaceuticals worldwide last year was a staggering 1.5 trillion US dollars, the majority of which spend was on pills; tablets not just to make us smaller or larger (like Alice), but healthier, happier - or at least less depressed, sleepier or perkier, upper or downer, more peaceful, less pained, not pregnant and on and on.

barbiturate pills

Pills by definition are solid, so include not only tablets but any medicine in pellet, powder or liquid form encased in a solid capsule to be taken orally. Cue the possibly apocryphal story of women on the contraceptive pill who've ended up pregnant because they inserted  the tablet daily in an orifice other than their mouths.

Recreational pills aside, I suppose we tend to have to take more of them the older we get. I have essential hypertension (high blood pressure) which is genetic and was diagnosed about twenty years ago. I take a low dose of the drug ramipril daily to keep my blood pressure at a normal, healthy level. Eight years ago I suffered a minor brush with fate. I thought it was a migraine as I'd never experienced one before. It turned out to be a mini-stroke. I even wrote a blog about it, which you can read here: To Be Continued The upshot was another drug clopidogrel (an anti blood-clotting agent) got added to the daily pill regime. Bless you science and the NHS. 

But enough about my chemical correctives. I've recently finished reading a long (740 pages) and very detailed biography of the Australian writer Charmian Clift and I mention it here because she committed suicide aged just forty-five by swallowing a whole bottle of her husband's phenobarbital tablets.

Charmian Clift in Greece

Charmian was born almost exactly a hundred years ago (August 30th 1923) into a working-class family in a little coastal town in New South Wales and always aspired to be a writer, an ambition which she duly managed to a considerable degree, though never quite to her satisfaction. Nonetheless she deserves to be recognised for the life she lived and the books that live on after her - which are in the process of being rescued from undeserved obscurity, and I am happy to champion her on her centenary.

Her first paid assignment was as a journalist on the women's supplement of the Melbourne Argus, Victoria's most popular daily newspaper, though she was writing short stories and had a novel in progress in the background. It was at the Argus that she met and fell in love with George Johnston, Australia's leading war correspondent and a published author. They had an affair which scandalised the publishing world in late 1940s Australia and ultimately led to George leaving his wife and both George and Charmian leaving the Argus. George was soon snapped up by Associated Newspapers in Sydney, they started a family and he and Charmian co-wrote a prize-winning novel 'High Valley ', as well as play scripts for ABC radio. By the end of the decade, the couple by now with young children in tow also opted to leave stuffy, provincial Australia and move to London where George's reputation secured him a posting as Associated Newspapers' European correspondent and head of their London office.

Charmian, as a proto-feminist, had high hopes of moving to England in the early 1950s but even this society she soon found was boring and prescriptive, and London was so grey and cold. Husband and wife literary partnerships are notoriously tricky ones, as we know, and with George as main breadwinner, she was always regarded by the world at large as the junior partner, Her role as wife and mother put a physical limit on her scope for creativity, she fell into the role of sounding-board for her husband's own literary endeavours, and despite the opportunities that London offered (like taking tea with T.S. Eliot for instance), she longed for a different, freer and more bohemian life for herself and her family. She was to find it in Greece, where she and George and the children moved in 1954 (first to the island of Kalymnos and later to Hydra). 

It was a brave decision the couple took to step away from the safety-net of a regular journalist's salary and try and support themselves by their own writing. At least the living would be cheap and the weather decent. They planned to co-write a novel about the sponge-divers of Kalymnos and lived off the publisher's advance while working on the book. At the same time, Charmian wrote an autobiographical account of their life on the island (see further down for details). The novel about the sponge-divers was a moderate success (and was even made into a film) but life on Kalymnos was extremely basic and the family chose after a year to relocate to Hydra, where they bought a house and lived for the next decade at the centre of what became quite a famous expatriate bohemian community (comprising Leonard Cohen, Marianne Ihlen, Axel Jensen, Sidney Nolan among others).

Charmian and eldest son on Hydra

Charmian and George wrote assiduously every morning, socialised over flagons of retsina with friends in the evening and then sometimes wrote on again into the night after the children were in bed, often fuelled by barbiturates if deadlines were looming, but their life although idyllic in one sense (they were in charge of their own destiny, Hydra was an enchanting place) was extremely taxing. Their literary works didn't do well commercially, partly due to their being unable to promote them in person in the key markets of  Australia, England or the USA. George even took to knocking out 'potboiler' crime fiction under an assumed name to keep some money coming in.

Then there were personal issues. Charmian was jealous of the fact that George's writing took precedence over hers because he was the more well-established of the two and more prolific, with a string of previous books to his name. George was jealous of Charmian because he felt she was actually the better writer and because she was vibrantly attractive to men. He constantly suspected her of  being unfaithful to him even though she wasn't (most of the time). He also contracted tuberculosis in 1959 while living on Hydra and suffered progressively from the condition. The task of caring for him fell of course to Charmian. 

And it was George who eventually decided to move back to Australia in 1964. Charmian was devastated, for she loved Greece, loved their house on Hydra and didn't want to leave. Neither did the three children who had grown up on the island almost as native Greeks. There was a suggestion that George was prepared to sell the house, abandon his wife and go back to Australia on his own. In the end they all went, the family stayed together, but Charmian still didn't much like the country of her birth once she was back in Sydney, for it was still stuck in its boring and prescriptive rut. She also worried that she was losing her looks, that her husband had begun to hate her, and alcohol became an increasing problem. Although she wrote a well-received weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald , Charmian was in a depressed rut of her own, and in those five years between her return to Australia and her suicide, she never completed another novel. She felt a sense of failure, like Icarus descending, and I'm reminded of those plangent lines of Joni Mitchell's (herself no stranger to a Greek sojourn): "all romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring..."   

The books which garnered her the most critical appreciation back in the late 1950s were her two beautifully written accounts of their lives first on Kalymnos ('Mermaid Singing ', its title deriving from Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ') and then on Hydra ('Peel Me A Lotus ', named in reference presumably to Tennyson's 'Lotos-Eaters '). The good news is that they have both recently been republished. If you love Greece or just like the idea of it, these two volumes paint a brilliant picture of what island life was like in the 1950s before the advent of the international tourist. Unsurprisingly they are what connected me to Charmain Clift in the first place.

Her novels from the 1960s, 'Walk to the Paradise Gardens ' and 'Honour's Mimic '(a prize if anyone can say where that title derives from) have been stubbornly out of print however for decades, though a third, 'The End of the Morning ' still incomplete and unpublished at the time of her suicide, is finally going to appear in print next year.

Towards the end of her days, Charmian summed up her predicament succinctly as follows: "I miss the life, and it has occurred to me in the last three years that I am infinitely more isolated and more completely marooned in an Australian suburb than I ever was on a poor and primitive Greek island. Materially I am much better off, but spiritually I sometimes feel impoverished of the gaiety and social ease of Mediterranean living. " 

In her poignant suicide note she stated: "I will cease upon the midnight and no pain - isn't that something? I would quite like some flowers. " She downed with a glass of wine all of her husband's phenobarbital tablets (which he kept against the day his own degenerative tuberculosis became too much to bear) and went to sleep lying on her right side with her hands together beside her head on the pillow.

This latest poem from the imaginarium may have something of the spirit of Keats' 'Ode To A Grecian Urn ' about it but there the similarity ends.

I Zoe/ Η ζωή (The Life)

How we marvelled in the presence of so much

beautiful pottery in one quiet Athenian museum.

Amphora, Attic cups, volute Craters and Hydria,

Oenochoe, Pelike and Pyxis, stunning  Stamnos

and my favourite the squat black Lekythos, each 

displayed with hand-written legend in a language

from millennia which we could as yet barely read

let alone speak - and Keats wasn't even in mind...

...though later we sought him out for such insight

as he had to share. Fifteen years into the future, I

Zoe in despair reflect on being blinded by Aegean

sun. There is no shadow there, our faults baked in

the clay for anyone to see, our feathers all unstuck,

romantic illusions buried by a cold midnight moon

and yet I miss the place, evenings at Douskos with

retsina flowing imbuing a happy weightlessness to

our fragile dreams. Sadly I fill my replica Lekythos

with Australian wine, moved again by the beauty of

its decorative design, musing that the truth we seek

seems always to be just round the curve of the vase.   

  

George Johnston and Charmian Clift in happier times

How could I possibly write  blog on the subject of pills and not include as a musical bonus Jefferson Airplane's masterful 'White Rabbit '? Grace Slick wrote the lyrics and music, drawing on her love of 'Alice In Wonderland ' for imagery and on her love of Spanish music, 'Bolero ' in particular, for the tune. The result was stunning in 1967 and remains a tour de force today. To listen via YouTube, just click on the song title here: White Rabbit.

Keep taking the good tablets and thanks for reading, Steve :-)

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Pills

Some time ago, I went to collect a prescription for someone and while I was waiting, I looked around the chemist and happened to notice the vast array of medication, especially all the different tablets and pills. There were all kinds of pills for headaches, painkillers of various sorts, pills to keep you awake, to make you sleep, pills for hay fever, asthma and medications for all different kinds of goodness knows what. Indeed, it struck me that people, not just in Britain but globally, seem to take pills for anything and everything in order to get through the day and the night. In such an age it is hardly surprising that washing machines and dishwashers also need tablets to function on a daily basis.

I began to wonder when pills were invented as they seem to be in every aspect of human life. According to the Los Angeles Times, pills have been around since 1500BC and were first found in Ancient Egypt. Prior to this, medications were mostly crushed seeds, plant resins and leaves which were then dissolved in beer. The Romans used to coat their pills in gold or silver which meant these pills went through the human digestive system without releasing any of their medicinal goodness. A bit like a Salt Bea Steak perhaps and maybe just as expensive.

The Roman scholar Pliny (23-79 AD) wrote about pilule which is where the word pill is derived from. Pills in the modern sense were only really created in 1843 by the British inventor William Brockedon, who patented a machine which was capable of compressing powder in to the pill form which we see and use today. As technology improved the pill making machines became more complex and are now able to make tablets of any shape, size or colour by the million. Pills also need to be strong enough to survive the process of pill making and soft enough for the stomach to digest, which is no easy feat.

pills - a selection

The top ten most common used or prescribed pills in Britain today include paracetamol, statins, aspirin, propranolol and codeine. Pills are being prescribed and used by increasing numbers of people in Britain not including the NHS spending, leading to £9.1 billion on prescription pills and over a billion prescriptions being issued in 2018. These figures are likely to be even higher as humanity stumbles through the post Covid era.

It would seem that, to paraphrase Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame, taking pills is as normal as having a cup of tea and this looks like it will not change any time soon. Indeed, pills play a part in popular culture in films such as 'The Matrix ' starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburn. In essence, 'The Matrix ' is a film about a dystopian simulated reality where humans are unknowingly imprisoned and their bodies used as a bioelectric energy source by and for intelligent machines. 'The Matrix ' has a scene where a freed human, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburn) offers the hero Neo (Keanu Reeves) a choice between taking a red pill or a blue pill. If Neo takes the blue pill, he ends up back in the Matrix and living his unknowing life as a bioelectric power source. If he takes the red pill, he stays in the “Wonderland ” of reality and Morpheus will show him how “deep the rabbit hole goes. ”

red pill or blue pill - still from The Matrix, 1999

The concept of taking a red pill or a blue pill has now spilled over into the “culture wars” of America where “taking the red pill” or being “red pilled” meant people could see the political biases in society including the mainstream media thereby becoming independent in thought. Conversely, “taking the blue pill” or being “blue pilled” means accepting without argument the current unreal biased situation.

It just so happens that in America the colour of the Republican party is red and the colour of the Democrat party is blue. There are no points for guessing how being “red pilled” or “blue pilled” plays out at election time and in the culture wars there.

Perhaps one day there will be a pill that allows or enables people to see “the truth” and everyone can live in peace and harmony. Or would this be a gold cage rather than a steel cage and humanity would still be imprisoned? Maybe it depends on who makes the pills and what their motives are. Or maybe we should just open our eyes and seek the “truth” for ourselves.

Pills

Red or blue, it’s up to you,
which one to take, which one
is fake, will shake you awake
or will keep you from looking
around, hold you wrapped in
the cold clutch of dystopian
dread, where all is fine, having
a good time, unknowing,
uncaring, no idea how to be
daring, to seek new vistas, what
new life you can have, can
achieve rather than be deceived,
wallowing in ignorance, dissonance,
just listening to the same old,
same old, blissfully unaware
of what’s really out there.
Red or blue, it’s up to you.

                                        DM, 2023

Thanks for reading, Dermot

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Pills and Others

When I was six or seven I was given a bottle of little torpedo shaped medication and told to swallow two with water, the bottle was stuffed with them and I had no idea these were to save my life and would be a lifetimes dedication. Make sure you take the full course was the mantra instilled and back then that seemed an enormous number to take at a time particularly when you are so young. They were antibiotics of course, I think the first in my case were Streptomycin. I remember being interested in the names as I progressed to other variations but the link was to the earlier discovery of penicillin. 

I will be forever grateful to both Alexander Fleming and Selman Waksman, who it was said was the sole discoverer of Streptomyces in the 1940’s and who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1952.In fact the antibiotic synthesised by the soil organism Streptomyces griseus was discovered by American biochemists Albert Schatz and Elizabeth Bugie in 1943. The drug acts by interfering with the ability of a microorganism to synthesise several proteins. Streptomycin is used to treat bacterial infections, particularly TB.

 

I was probably a bit of a Guinea pig and given far more per infection than I would be today. The courses are streamlined now and come in pill form. Then, my mother worried about my ingesting masses of plastic, decided to cut the capsules in two, empty powder onto a teaspoon and expect me to swallow. I can remember that clagging dry mass in my throat now and I was “happy” when allowed to swallow the plastic again. 

My mother’s story was the tragic one. She had various ailments and took all kinds of pills and medicines, the GP visiting the house produced a syringe and after injecting her with Adrenalin, I think, left it on the mantelpiece, to give me a permanent fear of needles. I was woken one glorious May Sunday by my Vice Principal while I was at College to be told she had died. She was only fifty two, I was poleaxed as stupidly this hadn’t crossed my mind. Whether the drugs gave her longer life or shortened it will never be known, but it has given me a horror of casual and unnecessary pill taking and I avoid it when I can. 

Some 

sort of 

inheritance 

You have left your pot 

drugs that kept you going,

 

in the reaches of my mind.

 

I drag it out, strip off the lid

 

witness again the chemists’ 

dreamscape of colours 

it takes to carry a life 

yours and mine. 

Thanks for reading ,Cynthia

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Pills (A Brief History)

Oh those pills! Those small round or oblong solid masses of medicine that come in an array of colours. These are indeed medical miracles that are meant to be swallowed. They have the ability to ease pain, control diseases and cure many ailments. Such little wonders that have developed over millennia.

modern mass-produced pills

Evidence suggests the first pills were created around 1,500 BC in Egypt. At that time, ingredients would have been mixed, then formed into little balls with nimble fingers using excipients such as clay, bread, honey, grease and/or tree resins to bind everything together.

A thousand years later, some pills began to be indented with trademarks as exemplified by Terra Sigillata (Sealed Earth) that originated from the Greek Island of Lemnos. At that time, once each year small governmental and religious dignitaries bore witness to a particular clay being dug and removed from a pit on a Lemnian hillside. This clay was then rolled into small pastilles, impressed with a seal by a priestess, sun-dried and finally distributed on a commercial basis to the wider community. This practice has evolved into the unique imprinted codes on pills today that identify the type of medication, its ingredients and also the manufacturer.

The innovative Romans had pill-making equipment as evidenced by an object at the British Museum, a stone with long flat grooves. The pill-maker would press the medicinal mixture into the grooves, make long wormy snake-like strings, then evenly cut them to make the pills.

At the beginning of the Industrial Age (1700s) the first pill-making machine was developed and soon became a must have for any chemist in the 18th, 19th and into the early 20th centuries. This machine would allow the chemist to make it possible to produce a higher quantity of pills quickly.

top half of a Victorian pill making machine
Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum (photo: Peter Dyer)

At the time pill making was a laboursome process even with the machine. Instructed by the doctor, the chemist would have to weigh out and grind up the ingredients with a mortar and pestle, then add a binder which in the Victorian times was typically soap, milk powder or glucose syrup.

mortar and pestle
Lancaster Medical Heritage Museum (photo: Peter Dyer)

In 1843, Englishman William Brockedon invented and was granted a patent for a device that would become the first tablet press leading to the modern day press and mass production that one would see in the twentieth century. Much experimenting was going on during this time. In the later part of the 1800s Silas Burroughs explored disintegration properties between conventionally manufactured, partly coated pills and compressed powders.

Nowadays, according to Thomas Processing, ‘the most common tablet manufacturing process techniques are wet granulation, dry granulation, and direct compression” requiring granulators, mixing equipment, drying machinery, and coating systems to achieve production of tablets.

How far the world has come from hand mixing and rolling a tiny medicinal sphere between the fingers.

With ‘pills’ being food for thought, I was inspired to have another go at some blackout poetry. I really enjoy the challenge.

This first one is extracted from Antique Medical Instruments by E. Bennion.

Pill Box

rare one
in time art
unique

hold many
a globular shape

made by
eighteenth century
pharmacists

expired makers

This piece came from an article by Elsevier published in International Journal of Pharmaceutics Volume 581.

act

process

develop
act

mix
connect
integrate

interact
evaluate
process

blend
experiment
analyze

the eccentric
raw drug
us

And finally, here’s one using the beginning of Gaikwad and Kshirsagar’s Review on Tablet in Tablet techniques.

feel       taste
art and literature
focus on form
review techniques

release

Thank you for reading.
Kate J

Sources:

* Elsevier, B.V., 2020. End to end continuous manufacturing of conventional compressed tablets: From flow synthesis to tableting through integrated crystallization and filtration. International Journal of Pharmeceutics Volume 581. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378517320302817 (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Gaikwadd S.S. and Kshirsagar S.J., 2020. Review on Tablet in Tablet techniques, Beni-Suef University Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences 9, Article Number 1. https://bjbas.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43088-019-0027-7 (Accessed 1 August 2023).
*Gallway City Museum, 2023. Collections Spotlight – Victorian Pill Making Machine. https://galwaycitymuseum.ie/blog/collections-spotlight-victorian-pill-making-machine/?locale=en (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*LeDoux, M., 2016. The history of compounds, extraction and tablet compression. https://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/contract-manufacturing/history-compounds-extraction-and-tablet-compression (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Mestel, R., 2002. The Colorful History of Pills Can Fill Many a Tablet. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-25-he-booster25-story.html (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Museum of Healthcare at Kingston, 2023. From the Collection Pill Machine. https://artefact.museumofhealthcare.ca/?p=380 (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Thomas Processing, 2022. How Tablets Are Manufactured. https://thomasprocessing.com/how-tablets-are-manufactured/ (Accessed 30 July 2023).
*Thom, R. 2014. Terra Sigillata, An Early “Trademarked” Drug. https://hannemanarchive.com/2014/12/12/history-of-pharmacy/ (Accessed 30 July 2023).

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Common Lodgings

The accommodation known as common lodgings (or common-lodging houses) was a Victorian institution whereby people who weren't related and couldn't afford to buy or rent their own home could share premises with others of the same sex on a daily (or strictly speaking a nightly) basis for the few pence which entitled them to a bed to sleep in. These establishments were also known as dosshouses in English slang and flophouses in America. The modern equivalent, though much smarter and better regulated, would be a hostel. 

The facilities of common lodgings were very basic, usually just a bed (often in a dormitory) and access to toilet and washing facilities. They were only one step up from sleeping rough, or the Poor House. Most common lodgings insisted that 'residents' vacate the premises between 10am and 4pm even if they were staying for more than one night. The transitory clientele mostly consisted of older people who were down on their luck or young people without family support who were supposedly starting to try and make their way in the world - like the hero of today's strange little poem.

The fact that these lodging houses were usually single-sex (essentially to counter prostitution rackets) was hard on poor couples who had to go to separate abodes at night; they were common in one sense but not in another.

'Good Beds 4d Per Night'

This latest poem then is a bit of playful wordsmithery, albeit with a message about the horrors of a post-moral Dickensian back-to-the-future thingy. It was knocked up between the end of a woeful football match and the lasagne being ready to eat. Also, despite the title, it's not really a ballad at all, but I thought if Carson McCullers can name a novella 'The Ballad of the Sad Café ', then I can do similar in a narrative poem.

The Sad Ballad Of Bonnie Clyde And Mistress Meatpie

Bonnie Clyde bestrides the antic  saddle of Feathers his faithful iron steed 

for it is Horseday and hooray no ordinal one at that.  Helmeted and trailing

a whiff of meths  our man rides off to a secret spot down by that dissonant 

foreshore to rendezvous, get paddlesome with his heart's delight and more

as breathlessly becoming  she waits among sandies young Mistress Meatpie

and shortly pell-mell it's all leather and heather and hell with this weather,

rainy spatterings,  a salt wind whipping hair and baleful gulls in whirling air

for here is the only bed where Clyde and his  lady fair may lie down together.

The Beak makes the rules but it's a clown of a law that dictates just because

a man and his wife are so poor, they must separate each night to rest apart.

Still, Meatpie believes in her Clyde. He's no one's fool, goes to a night school

and one day he'll invent the future and be the boast of the whole lousy town.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lodgings - Impromptu Days Out

Some years ago, I’d guess about forty, I was on my own in Lancaster where a work commitment had gone awry. Instead of packing up and heading home, I decided to spend time looking around, enjoying the sunshine. Lancaster is the first place I properly remember from my childhood with memories I hold close to my heart including the birth of my sister. Our family, at this point just my parents and a three year old me, moved from our Manchester pub to one in Lancaster. I went to nursery then infant school there. At some point, my maternal grandparents left their pub in Sale to move in with my aunt and uncle, also running a pub in Lancaster. Pure nostalgia, but I had hours to please myself.

Leaving the workplace, I headed towards the city centre. Aimlessly wandering, but comfortable amongst the old stone buildings that felt familiar to me, I realised I was on Church Street and started to look out for The Nag’s Head, a special place of my extended family. It remained unchanged so much that I could almost hear the sounds of the Saturday morning street market which always woke me up early when I’d stayed overnight. Someone was handing out leaflets promoting historical walks and places of interest. The Judges’ Lodgings was open to the public and close by. I went to look round.

From Lancashire County Council,

“Nestled below Lancaster Castle, the Judges' Lodgings dates back nearly 400 years on a site that has been at the centre of Lancaster's history for nearly 2000 years. The current house was built around 1625 by Thomas Covell, Keeper of the Castle and famous for locking up the Pendle Witches during the infamous Lancashire Witch Trials. From 1826 the house became a lodgings for the travelling 'Red Judges' of the Assizes Courts. Dressed in their scarlet robes, the Judges decided the fate of murderers, forgers and highwaymen at Lancaster Castle. Today the house is home to beautiful Georgian furniture by Gillows of Lancaster, elegant period rooms and the popular Museum of Childhood.”

It was more fascinating than I expected. Travelling judges were treated like royalty, the lodgings were like a mini palace.

Still nostalgic, I ate my bought lunch in Williamson Park where I used to play after school and on Sunday afternoon family gatherings. I already knew that the pub which had been my home, The County Hotel, was demolished and some soulless building had taken its place near the railway station.

My unexpected Lancaster trail concluded with a visit to Auntie Vi. Not a real Auntie but a family friend from the old days we’d always kept in touch with – she used to look after me a lot when I was little. We drank tea and reminisced in her cosy back living room, where I used to play. Time flies.

Time passed to when I was working at our local infant school. I was attached to Year One. We were having a school trip to The Judges’ Lodgings in Lancaster. I didn’t need asking twice. It was a fabulous visit. The children learnt a lot about bygone times and the ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ lifestyle of the people who used to live or stay in the building. They dressed up as staff or gentry and had lots of fun trying to spin tops and work other old-fashioned toys. I loved every minute.

Apologies for no poem, I had a few lines in my head but nothing came to fruition. Everything has been hectic since I returned from my extended travels yesterday. And tonight I had to go to a football match.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Magnolia

Welcome to the Saturday Blog, so much better than watching paint dry! 😉

When it comes to interior decor, and in particular painted walls, I'm told that fifty shades of grey are 'in' at the moment. Trade names like "elephant's breath", "polished pebble", "stonington", "goose down", "rock salt" and "cloudburst" are leading the way to greyness. I don't have any painted walls, they're all papered, but if I did I wouldn't choose grey! It seems to be achieving the ubiquity that was once the preserve of the mighty magnolia.

Ah, magnolia. From its introduction as a paint colour in the 1950s, its inoffensively pleasing neutral tone of cream with a hint of pink has proved the surprising long-stayer. It really came into its own in the 1980s and 1990s almost as a reaction to the sensory overload of the previous decade and a half (all those purple and reds, oranges and chocolate browns, electric blues and lime greens - I know I was guilty). Millions of gallons of it have been brushed or rollered onto the walls and ceilings of new-build houses and flats, for-sale conversions, offices, student halls, social housing projects and dingy bedsits as a kind of default setting, a blank canvas against which any sort of furnishings would not look out of place. 

For twenty years it seemed magnolia was everywhere. It reigned supreme. (There was even a movie, not to mention a raft of songs.) Its success was partly to blame for the contempt in which it came to be held by many in the interior design world in the 21st century and yet it hangs on in there, on the paint charts and the shelves of DIY stores in defiance of the fad for grey. A few cowardly paint companies have retained the colour but renamed it 'pampas' or 'buttermilk' so as not to offend, while the likes of Crown and Dulux hold firm, and one fairly recent arrival, specialising in 'eco paints' is fuelling the resurgence with its bold "retro 50s magnolia" offering.

Wikipedia is interesting on the subject of magnolia - the plant for which the paint is named - after warning that it is not to be confused with Mongolia (a possibility that hadn't occurred to me). So called after the French botanist Pierre Magnol, it is an ancient genus of flowering trees dating back at least 95 million years, before the emergence of bees, when it would have been pollinated by beetles, hence its extremely tough carpels. It is indigenous to South-East Asia and North America, what we would term a disjunct distribution, but possibly an indication that the two continents were a single land mass in the distant past. Or course nowadays magnolias - and there are over 300 different varieties - are found all over the world. I have a fine specimen growing in my front garden, though its flowers are purple and not cream with a hint of pink. The first flowers appear in April before the leaves open, and if I'm lucky, the tree will flower twice more during the year. I love the shade it affords and the scent.

'Magnolia Tree' by Paula Cox

Many girls have been named Magnolia, not that I've ever met any, though I imagine the figure sitting quietly reading in the illustration above could be one such. And the wonderful J J Cale penned a song to another, as you can hear by clicking on the this link: Magnolia

I leave you at the end of a noisy afternoon in the jewel of the north (it has been day one of the annual Blackpool air show) with this latest poem from the imaginarium.

The Night Messenger

Subtle fragrance 

of moonlit magnolia

not as sweet as jasmine 

nor sour as earth

penetrates this midnight hour

and the birth of dreams.

Orchestrating Hermes 

often liveliest of Olympians

stands shadowy now

at the doorpost to sleep

deftly conducting 

we drowsy mortals

through the portal to lands

rich in our imaginings.

A scented breeze flutters

between bedroom shutters

cools a sleeping face

stirs thoughts of a smile

bits of twig in your hair

grass stains on your dress

cream with a hint of pink.

I read your eyes.

It always begins like this.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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The Third Rhyme

Your man Dante (1265 - 1321) invented the rhyme scheme of terza rima (the third rhyme) and employed it to marvellous effect in his most famous poem, the one we all know as 'The Divine Comedy ', epic in length, painstakingly composed over thirteen years, and completed only months before the poet's death. 

In the wake of interesting blogs about terza rima by Pam and Terry, let me throw in a couple of tantalising reveals before we knuckle down to business: Firstly, Dante Alighieri's poem, as originally written, was simply titled 'Comedia ' (Comedy) and that's how it was known (in manuscript form obviously as this was before printing-presses) and then in the first printed editions from the 1470s onwards. It wasn't retitled 'La Divina Comedia ' until 1555, over two hundred years after the author's death. Secondly, Dante Alighieri wasn't strictly speaking even Dante, for he was christened Durante di Alighiero. Crazy, no?

Durante's 'Comedia ' then...😉

Not only was 'Comedia ' written in tercets (three-line stanzas) with a rhyme scheme of aba bcb cdc ded  et cetera (where the third line shares an end rhyme with the first and the ending of the middle line provides the end rhyme for the first and third lines of the following stanza), but its 14,000+ lines were equally divided between three cantiche (parts or volumes), sub-titled 'Inferno ' (hell), 'Purgatorio ' (purgatory) and 'Paradiso ' (paradise), with each cantiche consisting in turn of 33 cantos, so 99 in total (plus a preface to the entire poem, making 100 cantos in all). Furthermore, every single line was hendecasyllabic (consisting of eleven syllables or beats), so each tercet or stanza contained 33 syllables. Given his fascination with threes and multiples thereof, some might even consider this spectral Durante to be the Third Man... (cue famous tune).

Dante foresees being translated into English by a crime-writer

I first read 'The Divine Comedy ' when at university in the 1970s. We read it both in English (the Penguin Classics edition, translation by Dorothy L. Sayers, more famed for her crime novels) and in the original (for which we took Italian lessons in parallel with our English studies). I say first read, but in truth I've not opened a copy in fifty years. Now that I'm more than "halfway through the journey of our life..." and given the pile of unread books awaiting my reading pleasure, I'm fairly certain I shall never venture into its yellowed pages again. 

If you've been following my blogs and poetry for a while, you've probably realised that I'm not a huge fan of constraining rhyme schemes, but I'm prepared to give anything at least a try-out, terza rima no exception. However, I'm invoking Dead Good privilege on this one, so while I will respect the rule of the third rhyme (aba bcb cdc etc) there will be no kow-towing to the idea that all the lines have to be of equal length (whether Dante's hendecasyllabic eleven beats or the more common decasyllabic ten beats of  iambic pentameters). My beats will be irregular. Think of it as terzarrhythmia.

heart monitor

I was diagnosed at a recent health check with an erratic pulse. A couple of quick ECG traces proved inconclusive. I have no obvious symptoms (no dizziness, shortness of breath, physical pain et cetera) and I consider myself to be reasonably fit and healthy. I've taken to measuring my blood pressure and heart rate (beats per minute) when at rest several times a day. Blood pressure is usually around 115/65 (the median of three readings) but my pulse, although generally in the range of 60-70 bpm often seems to skip a beat, sometimes two in a row. It is thought I may have some kind of arrhythmia, and so one day earlier this week I was fitted with a 24 hour heart monitor to try and get a better understanding of what might be going on, to see if there is any obvious pattern or evidence of malfunction. I was told to do exactly what I would ordinarily do in my day and to keep a log of timings of activities (eating, walking, driving, writing poetry, watching tv, sleeping etc) - although as I was told not to get the apparatus wet, I did have to forgo my usual hour at the gym followed by a shower. I wore the device from 11.00am one day to 11.00am the next and I wait now for the analysis.

I wrote the majority of this latest poem on that wired-up day...I might revise/improve it in due course:

Rainy Day 24-Hour Heart Monitor Blues

Dear heart! The thought that you might flaw

pulls me up a moment to reflect

on mechanics and mortality. This downpour

is relentless, England's summer. Why ever expect

burnished beach days of sandy-toed fun?

I sit torso bared waiting for a nurse to connect

the spider to my chest. You're a tricky one hun

she says, and shaves small clearings in the fur

the better to affix five sticky patches. All done

she declares, as she plugs me in, a brief whirr

from the tiny recording angel at my waist

indicating my 24 hours have begun. I thank her,

walk through the storm to the car in haste

mindful not to get the apparatus wet.

Just act normal  she'd said. I wonder is this a taste

of purgatory? Either way I don't need to let

imagination run away but there's a limit

to what one can do when the weather is set

to be so thundery foul for the duration. I sit

with wipers flipping and slip Lightnin' Hopkins

into the player - Rainy Day Blues - a bit of a hit

from an age away. Fire up the engine. Who dares wins

as they say. Get into gear and pull out into the flow.

What have I done for my sins?

It's what I can't see or feel that worries me so,

the depressing possibility something's awry,

a wave of fear sweeps for what I don't know...

Woah Lordy, these clouds won't pass away.

Woah Lordy, these clouds won't pass away.

Thanks for reading 💗 S ;-)

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Terza Rima - Don't Panic!

Terza rima is a rhyming verse form, in which the poem, or each poem-section, consists of tercets (three line stanzas) with an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme: The last word of the second line in one tercet provides the rhyme for the first and third lines in the tercet that follows (aba bcb cdc ). The poem or poem-section may have any number of lines, but it ends with either a single line or a couplet, which repeats the rhyme of the middle line of the previous tercet (yzy z or yzy zz ).

I don’t know about you but my eyes glazed over half way through that paragraph. It makes sense with an example such as Robert Frost’s:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.                    a
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.                    b
I have outwalked the furthest city light.                            a

I have looked down the saddest city lane.                       b
I have passed by the watchman on his beat                    c
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.                   b

(etc)             

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right         e
I have been one acquainted with the night.                     e

The first use of terza rima is in Dante's "The Divine Comedy ", completed in 1320. In creating the form, Dante may have been influenced by the sirventes, a lyric poetry form used by the Provençal troubadours. He set his poem using hendecasyllabic (so well known that I’ll not bother explaining) lines which are suitable for the Italian language. Whereas in English, poets tend to use iambic pentameter which is a line of writing that consists of ten syllables in a specific pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

Now I knew what to look for here’s an example from "The Divine Comedy ":

Tant’ è amara che poco è più morte;
ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai,
dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte.

Io non so ben ridir com’ i’ v’intrai,
tant’ era pien di sonno a quel punto
che la verace via abbandonai.

Ma poi ch’i’ fui al piè d’un colle giunto,
là dove terminava quella valle
che m’avea di paura il cor compunto...

It doesn’t matter what it means and anyway a friend tells me that English translations don’t do the words justice.

The first occurrence of Dante’s terza rima rhyme scheme in English is found in parts II and III of Geoffrey Chaucer's poem "Complaint to His Lady ". Here’s a few lines:

Hir name is Bountee, set in womanhede,
Sadnesse in youthe, and Beautee prydelees
And Plesaunce, under governaunce and drede;

Hir surname is eek Faire Rewthelees,
The Wyse, yknit unto Good Aventure,
That, for I love hir, she sleeth me giltelees.

I just about get the gist of that and the form gained popularity as it also allowed poets to connect stanzas to one another, creating a smooth transition from topic to topic or from image to image.

As ever with forms that are transposed from one language to another e.g. haiku, they can be modified. Frost’s poem keeps to the rules but then Derek Walcott in his book length poem entitled "Omerus " (which is brilliant) takes more than a few liberties with the Terza Rima form.

All the above begs the question of whether you view rhyming verse of any sort as a help or a straightjacket.

To be fair to Robert Frost, here is the complete poem:

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Terza Rima - JCC and The Machars

Terza Rima is an Italian poetic form which I believe to be invented by Dante Alighieri and used for his poem, the Divine Comedy. The poem is three line stanzas in iambic pentameter with a rhyming structure aba, bcb, cdc, and so on. It can have many stanzas. The poem ends with a single line or a couplet which repeats the rhyme of the middle line of the last tercet.

I'm offering two of my own, this one for one of my favourite modern poets.

Terza Rima for John Cooper Clarke

Those of the time embraced every word,
Listening in wonder to John Cooper Clarke,
The Bard of Salford who had to be heard.

Rapid from the mouth and skinny and dark.
'Evidently Chickentown', effing good.
He's magic with words, bright as any spark.

His wholesome description meant that we could
Smell the inhabitants of 'Beasley Street',
Rich mixture of urban decay and blood.

Life, humour and truth, a picture complete
And painted with colourful language that
Reaches all listeners not just the elite.

So thanks, JCC, I know where I'm at,
Laughing out loud at the poem called 'Twat'.

PMW 2012

Andrew Brown's statue, Port William, The Machars

We're currently away, touring favourite places in Dumfries & Galloway in our caravan and spending a few days in The Machars, exploring the peninsula.

The Machars

Garlieston, oh Garlieston, oh so quaint,
Swans on the water, snow-white in sunshine,
Gathered by the harbourside's weak restraint.

Isle of Whithorn while the weather is fine,
Blustery but sunny on the headlands.
St Ninian's Chapel, follow the sign.

Port William, gazing out to sea he stands
There in all weather's, leaning on the fence,
Andrew Brown's statue, the front he commands.

To Wigtown and let some browsing commence,
From bookshop to bookshop in this book town,
A bookshop-cum-cafe for lunch, makes sense.

Exploring The Machars, up hill and down.

PMW 2023

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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