Perfect Pitch

One of the delights of playing football for me was sliding across a few yards of a muddy pitch and timing it just right so that the ball and the tricky winger got booted over the touchline at the same instant. What joy. And how about Ronnie Radford’s goal for Hereford against Newcastle United in 1972. All those Match of the Days in black and white with players ankle deep in mud.

Ronnie Radford's famous FA Cup goal for Hereford

I suppose it had to change to try and get the perfect pitch and change it did starting with AstroTurf which was patented in America in 1965. I think it was more suited to the American form of football but be that as it may Queen’s Park Rangers converted its Loftus Road ground pitch to Omniturf in 1981. This was a second generation form of artificial turf and it caused some controversy when the club laid it ready for the match against Luton Town (which they lost). The main problems being the unpredictable bounce of the ball and the hardness of the surface.

That didn’t stop Luton Town (1985–1991), Oldham Athletic (1986–1991), and Preston North End (1986–1994) following suit. And from what I hear from Prestonians who used that pitch during the week e.g. from their schools, it was a treat to be able to play where their heroes played on a Saturday.

I did play on those type of pitches but never felt comfortable, partly because of that bounce but mainly due to it damn well hurt when you went over. Mind you, it never seemed to bother the group of hospital workers when we use to play on a local artificial pitch and the most bonkers of all was an Orthopaedic Consultant who would happily slide along the artificial turf.

Preston North End playing on an artificial pitch

3G pitches came next and rubber pellets help to keep the synthetic blades of grass upright and make the surface less abrasive and likely to burn or scratch players. Despite their approval by FIFA and UEFA, some professional football managers have voiced concerns over the risk of player injury compared to games played on traditional real grass surfaces. However, scientific studies have concluded that 3G pitches may actually reduce the incidence of injuries.

4G football pitches are made from synthetic turf laid onto a dense, shock-absorbing base-layer and are said to replicate the look and feel of a real grass pitch more closely than 3G. A major issue with 4G pitches is that they have not been officially recognised or defined by Football’s governing bodies.

Hybrid football pitches are 95% natural grass, this type of football pitch is used at Wembley and is said to make the grass significantly more robust – meaning no bare or muddy patches, even when the pitch is used frequently.

composite layers of a modern hybrid pitch

I would say that all professional and semi-professional pitches are now well drained and looked after to be near enough perfect. Even local amateur teams with their own pitches have those pitches at a standard that is a million times better than in the 70s.

Which leaves the pitches at our Recreation Grounds and Parks which are in a terrible state. Matches are called off regularly. I don’t blame the Councils as they have had to cut Park Keepers and Ground Staff. And the Changing Rooms are just as bad. I’ve just had a quick look round the country and the number of people playing on a Sunday morning has plummeted over the last 20 years and the above reasons surely are part of the problem.

So, I suppose the question is would I prefer to watch Ronnie’s efforts on a mud bath or Messi playing an impossible, but successful, pass along a near perfect pitch? I’d take Messi.

perfect pitch

But to balance it out here’s a poem by Paul Cookson who is the Poet in Residence at The National Football Museum in Manchester (which they pinched from Preston).

Ronnie Radford

Synonymous with the F. A. Cup
And all that it stands for
The patron saint of underdogs

Your name resonates hope and belief
That on any given Saturday it can be eleven vee eleven
And dreams do come true

It wasn’t even the winning goal
But it was the one we all remember in the mud and the rain
All Woodstock hair and rock and roll sideburns

The goal we’d all love to score
The shot from outside the area that flies and flies
Into the corner sending fans and commentators crazy

Ronnie Radford, Hereford Town, nineteen seventy two
We remember you, we salute you
We thank you and celebrate your moment

That moment when the man in the street became legend
Saint Ronnie Radford
Patron saint of underdogs

For those of us of a certain age ….

                                                            Paul Cookson

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Fern Fever

Great crazes from history? No contest for me. It's got to be the mid-Victorian madness known as Fern Fever, or pteridomania to give it's official name. Fern Fever was a peculiarly British eccentricity that is thought to have originated in the 1830s at a time when amateur and professional botanists began taking a serious interest in the countryside of the United Kingdom in increasing numbers, sleuthing for new discoveries.

Why ferns in particular? Partly because as a group they had been less researched and written about than our native flowering plants, and partly because they could be found in greater variety and abundance in the wetter, wilder parts of the north and west, regions that had just begun to become more accessible with the rise of railways and decent roads.

By the 1850s, pteridomania (a phrase conjured up by Charles Kingsley) had become something of a national obsession, regardless of class. A hobby for some, a scientific pursuit for others, a commercial undertaking for horticulturalists and publishers, fern fever gripped doctors, labourers, merchants, miners, school teachers, solicitors, men of leisure, shopgirls and society wives alike.

As Kingsley wrote in his 1855 book 'Glaucus': 

"Your daughters, perhaps, have been seized with the prevailing 'Pteridomania' ...and wrangling over unpronounceable names of species (which seem different in each new Fern-book that they buy) ...and yet you cannot deny that they find enjoyment in it, and are more active, more cheerful, more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over novels and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool."

Fern collecting became commercialised and respectable with the provision of literature and merchandise to support the craze. 

A recent invention, the Wardarian Case (fore-runner of the modern terrarium), was a popular purchase and could be found in many stylish drawing-rooms. This protected the ferns from pollution, a growing hazard in metropolitan areas. Fern houses, adjuncts equivalent to modern conservatories, and much grander outdoor ferneries served a similar purpose.

In fact Ward's invention paved the way for botanist George Loddiges to build the world’s largest hothouse in East London (illustrated above), which included a fern nursery. Even though the fern was already associated with magic and nature folklore, Loddiges knew that he needed to further enhance its reputation in order to attract visitors to his hothouse. So he encouraged a belief that fern collecting showed intelligence and improved both virility and mental health. Soon, his neighbour, the famed botanist Edward Newman, published 'A History of British Ferns', a very well-received book which supported Loddiges’ claims and fuelled fern fever.

A devoted pteridomaniac, armed with Newman's book or a copy of Thomas Moore's 'The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland' could set off like an intrepid adventurer on a wild fern hunt for the seventy or so native species. And some fern collectors didn't just restrict themselves to the British Isles. They would tour Europe or even further abroad into Asia in search of obscure samples for their ferneries. Or without going to such lengths themselves, they would purchase interesting specimens from a growing number of Fern Dealers.

At the height of fern fever, possibly on the back of Loddiges' claims about the efficacy of fern collecting, fern hunting parties became popular social occasions. The appeal may also have had something to do with the fact that these parties afforded romantic opportunities for young couples to meet in an informal setting. 

Soon. even the truly discerning Victorian hostesses abandoned tea parties in favour of organized outings, daylong woodland expeditions complete with picnic baskets and competitions for who would find the rarest specimen of fern. Botany was, after all, one of the few avenues open to women who wanted to experience adventure for themselves. It was popular and widespread enough to be deemed an acceptable outdoor activity for the ladies who could even engage in fern hunting unchaperoned, since it was considered an entirely wholesome, healthy, and moral activity. Even very young girls (as noted by Kingsley above) would collect samples of ferns, dry and press them, and display them in albums.

Out of this upswell of fern fever came a response firstly from the world of decorative arts and then from homeware manufacturers. By the time of the 1862 International Exhibition, the fern motif was ubiquitous, on everything from glassware, pottery, metal, wood, wallpaper, and printed fabrics to jewellery, cutlery, gravestones and memorials. Even the contemporary custard cream biscuit features a baroque fern design if you look closely. 

On a slightly more salacious note, apparently it was understood that a woman wearing a sprig of fern or fern motif in the form of an accessory (brooch or scarf maybe), was sending a coded message that she was up for a bit of adventure. I tried to access the British Pteridological Society website to verify, but the site is currently unavailable.

As fern fever proliferated, some botanists began to express concerns that the rarer populations of British ferns might be in jeopardy from zealous collectors. As early as 1865, Nona Bellairs in her botanical guidebook 'Hardy Ferns' was calling for legislation:

"We must have 'Fern laws', and preserve them like game."

It is true that some of the rare species were nearly decimated and have never quite recovered, They hang on in isolated pockets. But by the 1890s, and for no obvious reason, fern fever had practically run its course. Fern nurseries fell into neglect and fern houses and ferneries collapsed into ruin. Wild populations of ferns were left in peace and by and large recovered unmolested and unnoticed after their half-century brush with fame.

This latest poem is decidedly a work-in-progress, and I shall probably take it to the next meeting of our Blackpool & Fylde Stanza group for their considered input. 

The Fern Collectors

Up with the snark in their thoughts

and quaintly mannered as Wesleyans

on a Sunday School trip, they fit

tight with excitement, all smiles

and smelling of bay rum and lilies,

into a third-class coach on a train

from Liverpool Street bound for

Epping and forest and ferns.

Clutching their maps of Essex, 

their copies of Newman or Moore 

and talking in turns about

that visit to the Hackney hothouse

the week before and where they might

explore today, their eyes burn with

fern fever, their presses await.

A whistle blows and the fun begins.

"Will you go hunt, my Lord?" quips one

and they fall to discussing specimens

they could happen upon. Broad Buckler

is common in those parts, likewise

Hartstongue fern, less so Adderstongue.

They do not use their Latin names,

too stilted and serious for the air

of flirtatious badinage arising

in the carriage, as the young men 

wax lyrical about the Lady fern,

its delicate and lacy qualities,

and the maidens blush demurely

at talk of how Male and Hard ferns 

stand proud from the undergrowth.

They've not even passed Leyton yet

but they cannot arrive too soon. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lancashire Dead Live Poets...

Lancashire Dead Good Poets began some fifteen years ago (approximately) and used to host regular monthly live open mis poetry nights in an around Blackpool and St Annes right up until COVID sent us all into isolation and the ether. 

We went online (via Zoom) for our monthly open mic nights on the first Thursday of each month and those sessions continue to attract between 15 and 20 performers/readers each month.

We did relaunch the live open mic nights in the autumn of 2022 but numbers were low and it never really took off again as a live event. 

However, we do get asked quite often when we are going to host live events once more because online is fine, but there's nothing beats the energy and intimacy of poetry shared live in a room of people. Two regular Blackpool liv events have stuttered to a halt in recent months, so we are biting the proverbial bullet and putting our toes back in the water (if you can get your heads around that strange mixed metaphor) with our first live open mic night in several years, really to see how it goes.

It will be held on Friday 20th June at  Urban Arts Studio in St Annes from 7pm. Urban Arts Studio can be found at 11 Back St Annes Road West, FY8 1RD. There are no headliners and there is no set theme. Sign up on the evening for a slot (approx 5 minutes per poet) or just come on down to listen and support live poetry. If the event goes well, we will look at making it a regular feature in addition to our monthly zoom nights

 

Steve ;-)

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Crazes: Guilty As Charged

I am the Queen of Crazes, or the Crazy Queen, whichever you prefer.

After 73 years I finally have the answer to my crazes craze. I’m currently awaiting a diagnosis of ADHD, although I know in my head this is what I’ve been dealing with all my life. In some ways, it’s reassuring to think there’s a reason for my constant frantic activity.

However, I digress. Let’s start at the beginning. Young children often have crazes, changing like the seasons as somebody suddenly starts a new one, and everybody follows. I was no different, pleading for a hula hoop, which had to be ordered at the local toy shop, and seemed to take weeks to arrive. No Amazon deliveries in those days. 

The days following the arrival of the hoop were spent in frenzied practice in the garden (and once - only once - indoors, when I knocked an ornament off the sideboard and was told in no uncertain terms that if the hoop was found indoors again it would be snapped in two and instantly disposed of - I didn’t dare ask where). I got to be quite an expert hula hooper, shimmying it up and down my body, round my neck, arms and legs. Just recently, I found a hula hoop at a play centre and thought I’d have a go. I was shocked to discover that all skill had left me, as the hoop rapidly spun to the floor, despite my energetic gyrating, and lay there looking up at me as if to say, ‘that was nearly seventy years ago, woman, get a grip.’

Then there were marbles - excitedly played on drain covers in the street, and jacks and five stones. These all reached a peak before being replaced by the next unpredictable craze. My favourite craze around this time was, with hindsight, rather a strange one. It involved collecting small items and swapping them with friends at school. This probably sounds mundane and boring these days when eight year olds are busy applying makeup, taking selfies and snapchatting, but let me assure you this was one of the most exciting things in my life at that time.

The routine was this: the participant secured a toffee tin (usually from a Christmas stocking) before scouring the house for any small item that would (a) fit in the tin and (b) possibly be of interest to another participating child. I can remember my tin so well that I can smell the pieces of scented paper cut from one of my mum’s birthday cards. The smell was of roses, like the picture, as was popular in the 1950s. Why any child would be willing to swap some treasured item for a piece of birthday card I’ve no idea, but I do remember them being very popular. Apart from the cards there were ‘charms,’ tiny little cats and dogs and bells, worth nothing in monetary terms, but worth a fortune in terms of swap-ability; pieces of broken jewellery, little brooches, thimbles and the odd dolls’ house item. My younger brother, swept along in the excitement of this absorbing new game did cause a bit of trouble by swapping our tortoise for a German helmet, but that was swiftly remedied by mum marching down the road with the aforementioned headwear and returning home (minus helmet) to plonk the bewildered tortoise back by the hollyhocks in our garden.

But back to the original game. Day after day, we would race out at playtime with our tins rattling, bypassing the bars - where girls (dresses tucked into knickers) would be swinging and giggling - and straight to the only bit of shelter, the porch by the boys’ entrance. Like drug pushers we’d prise open our tins and allow each other to peer in. So many happy playtimes were spent in that porch, bargaining and swapping - and swapping again. My lifelong hoarding means that, after nearly seventy years, I still have two of the brooches I acquired, a tiny ‘ivory’ elephant and a cheap twisted metal bow. I only have to look at them to be back in that porch with my toffee tin.

Crazes during my teenage years revolved mainly around fashion, hair and make up. Mini skirts, hot pants, skinny ribs, all tried and tested (not very successfully - I didn’t have the legs or the neat little bust for any of these, but they were the latest craze, so who was I to argue?)

All my life I’ve had obsessional crazes. I hadn’t considered them until the last few years when I began to realise that I probably have ADHD. In no particular order these are the crazes - I like to call them hobbies - that have obsessed me over the years…

Novelty cakes (this was a business for thirteen years, but also a wild craze); appliqué; novelty cushions; craft fairs; baking for cake shops; knitting; sewing; patchwork, quilting; cross stitch; crochet; roller blading*; fimo; pottery, lino printing, walking daily; photography (between a business and a craze).

Finally, the non crazes or perhaps the life long crazes that I can’t ever see ending: I’ve loved reading, writing and drawing since the day I first opened a book and deciphered a word, then copied it onto a sheet of paper and drew a picture to illustrate it. I have diaries going back to the age of six, although the more interesting ones came later. However, the obligatory stationery to accompany these activities is another story, and cannot possibly be condensed into a few words.

I feel another blog post coming on….

Crazy by Jill Reidy

The time has come
Suspect denies all knowledge
Of any crazes
Since moving to that house
‘Not me officer, I just read,’
They don’t believe her, she looks shifty
Rules are established for those investigating
Five minutes to find evidence

Hercules Poirot, allocated the attic
Takes the steps two at a time
Crashes headfirst into huge tottering piles
Frames, all sizes, all colours
Photographic prints in wallets,
Scattered across the floorboards
Cameras, batteries, lights
photography magazines, memory cards
He battles through
Gives the half finished dolls’ house a cursory glance
Grinds underfoot the tiny figures
Waiting for prosthetics
Skids on the curtains, never hung
He turns, notes the carrier bags
Stacked high under the eaves
Peers in, sees the folded fabrics
Paper patterns, tailors chalk, cutting board
Patchwork pieces, cushion covers needing zips

Poirot sighs, calls down, descends the steps
To the landing
where Inspector Clouseau stands,
Hands gloved, plunged deep into a sack
‘More,’ he says, ‘more fabric’
Rolls his eyes
withdraws a length of cool white linen
Points to the open cupboard
Bulging with colourful ribbons and zips
‘And these,’ he sighs
More bags, patterns, knitting abandoned,
wool unravelling, needles, every size
Clouseau holds up a small frame
Catches Poirot’s eye
Any idea? Tapestry? Weaving?
Cross-stitch says Poirot with a shake of his head
And these?
Rag rugs, quilting, crochet, appliqué
Poirot rattles off dismissively

Miss Marple, ground floor, out of her depth
opens the door to the understairs cupboard
peers in
Why all the tools?
duplicates of every one
Drills, glue guns, hammers
screwdrivers, sets of spanners,
A pack of unused, now unusable, fimo Brooch pins, earring studs awaiting decoration
Reaches in
What’s this?
Knee pads, elbow pads, helmet
Miss Marple frowns
suspect is nearly as old as she is
Roller blades?!
A six, just the suspect’s size

Sherlock Holmes, alone in the gloomy garage
Spots a box
Opens it tentatively
Hardened clay
Five misshapen pots,
Small cutters and scrapers and prodders
A sheep by a wall, stones meticulously fashioned out of clay
He digs down deeper
Pulls out a square of lino
More tools, a roller, dried ink in a tub
‘Pottery and printing,’
He mutters to himself

They meet in the kitchen
Poirot, Marple, Clouseau and Holmes
Enough evidence? Asks Poirot
More than enough agrees Holmes
Get her in says Clouseau wearily

The suspect eyes the scattered bags
She has no defence
‘I didn’t realise….’ she trails off
Then in a whisper,
‘Guilty as Charged.’

Thanks for reading……Jill Reidy

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Crazes

When I asked T whether she had crazes, she thought for moment and replied that she didn’t have crazes, she had enthusiasms. Which I think is a fair point and one that suits me as well. Before I look up the differences I’ll have a think about what in my past would count as either a Craze or Enthusiasm.

For instance I used to be a trainspotter (and what happened to my Ian Allen Book of Trains?), I used to look at the stars (not Blues players) when I worked nights, I’ve tried caving (briefly), scuba diving (that was great) and loads of other stuff but I just can’t think of anything I’ve taken up as part of a craze.

So what is the difference? Let’s see what my brand new Oxford English Dictionary says:
‘A widespread but short lived enthusiasm for something’.
And from that we can see that the crucial difference is that a craze is widespread.

The first thing that springs to mind is a blog I wrote back in October 2024 about a Dutch craze for Tulips. That was actually more than an enthusiasm as far as I can see so maybe the OED is a bit mild in this respect.

So, given Tulips as the basis for a craze what else would qualify? I’m guessing here but I would imagine that sheer distance would have prevented crazes developing in the pre-print days so I’m going to start with the Macaroni Craze. What?

It seems that 1760s and 1770s aristocratic young men returning from their ‘Grand Tour’ to Italy and France began to appear in London dressed in a distinctive, extravagant style that derived from French court dress. Their predilection for foreign food as well as fashion earned them the nickname of ‘macaronis’. The macaroni ‘uniform’ included a slim, tight-fitting jacket with waistcoat and knee-length breeches, all made of silk or velvet in bright colours, and heavily embellished with delicate embroidery and lace. Patterned stockings and shoes with large diamond or paste buckles and high red heels were de rigeur. I’m thinking I might wear this at the next poetry meeting.

Next would be the Gin Craze. The original gin drank Britain came from Holland, and this ‘jenever’ was a weaker spirit at 30%. The gin of London was a throat-searing, eye-reddening cheap escape from daily life. By 1743, the average gin consumption per person each year was 10 litres. Organised philanthropic campaigns emerged. Henry Fielding’s report in 1751 blamed gin consumption for crime and poor health.

From the 1800s on there were so many fads or crazes that I lost count so I’m going to have a quick look at just the one and that was ‘Lisztomania’ in the 1830s. 

This superstar (and extremely handsome) virtuoso pianist and composer had such a powerful effect on the public that the term was invented to describe the behaviour of his fans who were so obsessed that they wore his portrait on brooches. Women would fight over locks of his hair, and whenever he broke a piano string, admirers would desperately attempt to obtain it to make a bracelet. Some would even carry glass vials to pour his coffee dregs into and rush to collect stubs from one of his cigars.

I don’t think there was anything quite as widespread and manic until ‘Beatlemania’ arrived in the 1960s. And I don’t think I need to explain that phenomenon. However, I should warn people that something similar may be happening over the next few months as the Blackpool & Fylde Stanza Group has just released their Anthology entitled ‘The Salt Margin’. We are prepared.

I’m including this poem as there is a minor craze around the world for this very subject:

The Tree of Lost Soles
(for Maggie)

Out of the ordinary
even for Warrington
so the next time
she went to Celia’s
she took a camera
and an offering

but time travels as fast
as the gardener
with a new chain saw
and a mess
of odd shoes tangled
with notes and prayers
hanging on an old oak
by the side of the A59

so all she could do
was photograph the card
planted by outraged residents
RIP written on it
then take her addidas home
to pin on a stump in her garden.

First published in Dawntreader. May, 2016

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Pathways

It's the summer of 1981. I'm in a long-term relationship with Ms X (a divorcee who might have left her husband to be with me) and we've bought a house together near Bethnal Green in East London. We both have good jobs which we enjoy, a wide circle of friends, a metropolitan social life, and we talk of having kids one day when the time is right. Life seems good and to all intents and purposes, we're set (as they say).

But within weeks, a new young woman has joined the company I work for, as part of the team I'm in. Before too long, (you've guessed it), Ms Y and I fall in love. I used to wonder why stuff like this happens to people who seem perfectly happy. Now I know. Everything has suddenly changed. It's all about love's mysterious pathways to the heart. I write a poem about how this metamorphosis feels and give it a planetary spin:

Metamorphosis

At a still small point
between ignorance and bliss,
something changed…
atoms re-arranged,
a cosmic combination clicking into place
to unlock such graceful possibilities
as tilt a world
into orbits new and strange.

To invert Joni Mitchell's "You don't know what you've got till it's gone", this feels more like "You don't know what you haven't got till it's there." Written in the stars? That's just a metaphor, right? 

Conflicted by a loyalty I feel to Miss X which is at odds with the fact that I desperately want to be with Miss Y, and not wanting to carry on an illicit affair, I choose to embrace the new pathway and break up the long-term relationship. It is messy.

There is guilt, of course, but there is also such happiness, even if this is the road to perdition. The fallout is considerable. My parents and some friends think I'm a bad person. (In fact my mother refuses to talk to me for months.) I thank goodness Ms X and I have no children that need to be taken into account in this reckoning.

Eventually the dust settles, and as for the road to perdition, Miss Y and I go on to marry, have two beautiful daughters and spend the next twenty-two years together. 

Pathways to the Heart

For those of you who think it is also merely metaphor to talk of the heart (rather than the brain) as the seat of love, you might be interested in this piece from an article about neural pathways and 'heart memory':

 
"Science just proved your heart holds memory - measured,  peer-reviewed, biological fact. The human heart contains an intrinsic neural network, emits a structured, coherent electromagnetic field, and demonstrates synaptic, biochemical, and geometric mechanisms for encoding information - comparable to memory centres in the brain.

Neuroscience researchers have documented over 40,000 neurons embedded within the heart wall. These form ganglia, display synaptic plasticity, and operate with a degree of autonomy once thought exclusive to the brain. This changes everything we thought we knew about where memory lives.

The Intrinsic Cardiac Nervous System (ICNS) is capable of sensory processing, short-term memory encoding, and bidirectional brain communication. Cardiac neurons express acetylcholine, norepinephrine, and dopamine - the same neurotransmitters used in hippocampal memory. They learn, adapt, and remember.

Peer-reviewed studies show heart neurons are organized in ganglia, supported by glial scaffolding, contain microtubules (linked to quantum coherence), and encode memory via phase-locked vibrational patterns - mirroring brain-based spatiotemporal memory mechanisms.

The heart emits a magnetic field up to 5,000x stronger than the brain’s, extending up to 2 meters, measurable via magnetocardiography (MCG), and modulated by emotional state. This field is structured, not random—and communicates coherent signals via afferent pathways to the brain. Its waveform encodes not just rhythm, but affective state.

What is more, peer-review case studies reveal memory transfer in heart transplant cases, with recipients inheriting donor-specific traits: food cravings, emotional tendencies, even handwriting. One 8-year-old began dreaming of being murdered - details matched the donor’s cause of death. Another woman developed cravings for chicken nuggets and beer - never consumed them before, but her donor had loved both. These cases defy standard neuroscience but align with cardiac memory field models.

Memory = geometry + coherence + frequency. The heart acts as a morphogenetic field archive. Heart neurons store identity through phase-locked resonance. Healing is signal restoration. This model merges neurocardiology, biophotonics, fractal neuroscience, and field dynamics. Your heart doesn’t just beat. It remembers."

Mulling over the possible implications of all of the heart stuff above on my train journey back from Liverpool to Blackpool this evening, I devised the following darkly comic poem (subject to modification in the days to come).

Change Of Heart

Caroline was one delighted wife

to have her husband back

after a massive cardiac arrest

nearly stole his life. He had

a rotten heart, but luckily

a donor organ enabled 

Frank to enjoy a fresh start. 

They met the grieving widow,

Jane, to thank her for Tom's gift

and to commiserate. For all three,

affairs would never be the same

again. But soon, apart from new 

vigour, Frank developed 

an appetite for things he'd never

been partial to before:

oysters, whisky, marmalade, 

football (Port Vale -Tom's team),

bird-watching, showers not baths

and making love doggy-fashion.

A rift began to show, his wife

not so delighted anymore, And

Frank, behind her back, sought

out the lonely widow on his own.

They developed such a passion 

for each other that he realised

he no longer loved poor Caroline,

her fussy ways, her timid nature.

He was bound to leave her. But

how to explain what he felt, that

his heart really belonged to Jane.

As for the phrase about pathways to the heart, let me take you back to 1981 again, to one of my favourite LPs of that year by the Scottish band Josef K. This is from their album 'The Only Fun In Town'. Just click on the song title: Heart Of Song  Enjoy!

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Paths

The dictionary definition is of a way or track laid down for walking or made by continual treading. It is the course or direction in which something moves.

There are so many routes to this topic, (pardon the pun) and so many literal types of path, never mind the metaphorical kind.

pathway (author's photo)

I love paths, wandering along letting the mind free itself into the ether or countryside or rain, not really caring about destinations and definitely not counting steps is my idea of life enhancing. Of course there are the popular walks where there will be people in passing but if I can find one that is “off the beaten track”, where I may have to contend with brambles and unexpected obstacles and being surprised by where I’ve ended up and feeling at an advanced age that I CAN STILL DO IT!! pure joy.

Many have disappeared, that short cut through the field or byway gone to car park or other concrete sites and farmers hate us chancers, marauding on paths they have thought were grown over long ago, and disturbing their cows and sheep.

illustration for The Salt Path (artist Angela Harding)

Cliff paths are really exciting, being conscious of the dangers but so worth it for the views and the interesting flora, fauna and bird life. I have been recently reading “ The Salt Path”, by Raynor Winn, a novel she wrote after walking the South West Coastal Path with her husband Moth ,who had been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s Disease and at the same time they were made homeless and destitute. They had nothing to lose so set off with only a tent for shelter and somehow managed to walk 630 miles, they coped well enough to continue walking and covering more mileage on more walks. The interesting result was Moth improved under duress! Now it is a film.

I have to mention Robert Macfarlane’s slim but quite beautiful book “Holloway”, which is “ an impressionist piece of landscape writing”. Hol weg, Holwy ,Holway,Holeway Holewaye, Hollowy, Holloway, is a sunken path,” a deep and shady lane, a route that has been harrowed into the land by centuries of footfall, hoof hit, wheel roll rain run” and existing only where the stone is soft e.g. chalk. In places they are 16 or 18 ft below the level of the fields. He states these ways are the result of repeated human actions that relate to other old paths and tracks, ways that still connect place to place, person to person. He also feels they are places in which you can “ slip back out of this world” or within which ghosts may quietly be - citing Edward Thomas and Eric Ravilious having mystical experiences.

illustration for Holloway (artist Stanley Donwood)

Looking at the artwork in this book, these places seem magical and spooky places where someone could hide away for days undetected ( think priests).The oldest Holloways date back to the Iron Age, none less than 300 years and began as sites of pilgrimage, ways to the sea or markets. Now they are too narrow for use and overgrown but seem to hold an otherworldly message for us in our everyday preoccupations.

The Distance Forward

The afternoon rolls out
it’s carpet of seduction
limestone outcrops, balsam
somewhere a river.

Bees dark and brimming
from unexpected hives.
A farmer in the background
nurtures his field.

At one with sensation
from a quicksilver spine,
I’m lost but content.

I’m lost and a follower
of overgrown lanes, the couple
with their dog who tell
in North Country vowels

that lull me to my past;
the distance forward is the same
as the long walk back.

Cynthia Kitchen

First published in “That Untravelled World” 2015.

Thanks for reading.

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Paths

At the end of my road, about fifty metres away, I’d be standing on the Preston Guild Wheel which is a 21 mile circular route around the city. It is also part of the Ribble Way, a 72 mile walk from the east coast to Ribblehead. If I turn left or right there are footpaths away from traffic scattered all over the place within a 5 minute walk. Which is part of the reason I have lived here for the past 30 years.

Preston Guild Wheel

According to Jack Cornish, head of Paths at the Ramblers Association, there are in England and Wales over 140,000 miles of footpaths, bridleways and byways which make up our public rights of way network. He says they are described by the poet Geoffrey Grigson as humankind’s “oldest inscriptions upon the landscape”, these paths are as much part of our shared heritage as grand cathedrals, castles and ancient hill forts.

He then gives an introduction into the history of public rights of way:
‘People have always had to travel to survive, moving from one place to another is part of the natural rhythms of life. Many paths and roads we use today date back hundreds or thousands of years. Before trains and cars just about all journeys were on foot as most ordinary people could not afford a horse, let alone a carriage. People got around on foot easily enough.

'Until relatively modern times, no laws were passed to create public rights of way. Instead, the routes became accepted under the common law as having been public since time immemorial. The legal theory was that the landowner “dedicated” the ways as public: the public use being evidence of this. So, over centuries, a network of tracks developed naturally from the routes that the public used to get from A to B. Walkers preferred short and direct footpaths. Sometimes these paths crossed rough or steep terrain where walking was the only option. And so different routes were developed which could be used by horse and cart. These were wider and easier to travel, but often less direct.

example of an Inclosure Map

'In the 18th and 19th centuries major changes to the pattern of paths were caused by enclosure. People took ownership of land that had previously been open fields and common land. 4,000 local Acts were passed giving Inclosure Commissioners powers to divert existing paths and roads and to create new public paths and roads. With the advent of motor cars and buses using the cart routes, these paths eventually turned into the country lanes and main roads we recognise today. Footpaths became less popular as a method of everyday travel.’

But their importance was recognised by the rambling movements who represented groups of people who enjoyed walking in the countryside. Lobbying by the Ramblers led to the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which created, together with national parks, the “definitive map”. This is the legal record of public rights of way required to be kept and updated by each local highway authority.

However, local authorities had struggled under the burden of recording missing historic rights of way, which are estimated to stretch over 40,000 miles so the last government had given a date of 2031 for recording those rights of way. However, on Boxing Day, 2024, the current government announced that it will repeal the 2031 cut-off date which means these paths will no longer be lost to the public.

I should declare an interest as I am a member of the Ramblers Association and have been for years. Not so much for the actual walking as the local groups tend to think everyone has a car and so the starting points for their walks are usually miles away from public transport. My membership is for the great work at national level.

Mind you, I suppose the local group might well ask why don’t I organise walks joined up to public transport. A good question.

The following poem was written as a result of walking the coastal path in Yorkshire.

to Redcar

down Teesdale Way
single path
on a map
losing its way

where wks could be works
or walks through works
or wrecks

of a plain white shift

stitched and stitched again
holding it together

keeping it apart
from grass littering
cracked asphalt
wide as walking sticks
hedged by wire
and moss ridden walls

eyes constantly drawn
across railway tracks
to the last heights
shimmering in black steel
rising from lines
flooding to Teesmouth

waiting for the next bloom
to burst
scrawl down coke screes

a valley that the map insists
is not there
that aren’t arteries
that pulse contours
of the path to Whitby.

First published in The Interpreters’ House, Dec 2017

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Paths - One Road

Throughout our adult lives we follow paths based on our choices. We reach cross-roads and face directional dilemmas. There can be consequences for a bad decision. A learning curve. We cross paths with others and share paths with many. My late dad and I shared a saying for these experiences, “Another stitch in life’s rich tapestry”. The saying often related to a conclusion or something that we considered to be “Sod’s Law”. I still say it. We travelled many paths together. I was always Daddy’s Girl and spent my childhood living in his shadow. He showed me the way to find the right path then, with the patience of a saint, helped me to stay on it after I’d veered right off.

One Road, a song by Love Affair

I don't have your nagging doubts
I know what you're going through
So if it helps you to decide One road leads to sadness
One road leads to pain
One road shows you life is a game One road leads to darkness
One road leads to light
One road leads you life to love I don't want you to be confused
Or demoralized or abused
I just want you free to choose
Who you want to have or loose
So if it helps you to decide One road leads to darkness
One road leads to light
And one road leads you life to love You know one road leads to sadness
One road leads to pain
And one road shows you life is a game, yeah Oh, one road leads to darkness
And one road leads to light
And one road leads you life to love.

Written by Philip Goodhand-Tait

This song was a popular choice on our pub juke-box at the time, and a personal favourite.

I’ve tried to be a good guiding light to my children and grandchildren, but I lack my dad’s level of tolerance.

In a more literal sense, my husband and I are currently travelling unfamiliar paths in the Channel Islands. We’re having an adventure while we can just about do it, physically. Using a wheely walker on cobbled, hilly paths has some challenges and driving narrow roads with no clue to the destination brings surprises. Already familiar with Jersey, we’re staying in Guernsey and looking forward to visiting Sark and Herm.

This poem must be included in this week’s theme,

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost 1874 - 1963

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Journals

Journal: It appears there are several definitions. The first and most commonly used defines a  newspaper, (true to the French root word jour - day - and its offspring noun journaliste) or magazine. The second denotes a diary or private record of daily events, observations and thoughts. There is a third, more obscure definition, relating to that part of an axle or shaft that rests on bearings. If you're interested in mechanics, feel free to look it up, but here we're sticking with newspapers and diaries.

Not counting a number of what are called 'freesheets', the UK's national daily news publications currently number eleven. The oldest established is The Times (1785) and the most widely read is The Sun (1.2 million copies daily). Some even have the word daily in their names (Express, Mail, Mirror, Star and Telegraph). For the sake of completeness, the other national dailies are the Financial Times, Guardian, I and Morning Star. Then there is a host of daily newspapers at a regional or local level, like the Blackpool Gazette (for which I write a monthly football column during the season). 

Of course, not all news journals are daily. The titles listed above actually only appear on week days, but most of them also have a weekly companion, featuring the word Sunday in their names. The exception is the Observer, which also happens to be the longest established (1791).

Beyond newspapers, there are also hundreds of journals, more usually called magazines or periodicals, that are published sometimes weekly but usually monthly, devoted to specific areas of general interest. such as aviation, cars, cookery, fashion, gardening, geography, history, knitting, music, photography, politics, sailing, science, and various sports too numerous to mention.

Finally under the first definition come the rather more high-brow journals devoted to specialist rather than general interests, where university academics publish research papers, unveil discoveries, debate theories, intellectualise in refined ways about arcane or leading-edge knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, linguistics, literature, medical science, physics or whatever floats their cranial boats.

journal entry

However, what I really want to write about is journal as in diary, or as the French would call it, journal intime as opposed to agenda or engagement calendar. I have kept one at various times in my life. I've destroyed them all, just as Ted Hughes burned Sylvia Plath's last diary shortly after she committed suicide.

Many famous people  have had their journals made public (often after their death). Among the earliest was the  English diarist Samuel Pepys, who kept a dairy of his daily life from 1660 for ten years (it runs to over a million words). Then there was Daniel Defoe, whose 'Journal Of The Plague Year' recounts the awful events of 1665/1666. The latter is not a true journal, given that Daniel was only five years old at the time of the Great Plague, but it is based on the contemporary diaries of his uncle Henry Foe.

Over the last few hundred years, the journals of many famous artists, authors, politicians, scientists and society figures have been published, and not always posthumously, from Dorothy Wordsworth and Charles Darwin to Captain Scott, Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Edwina Currie. They differ from autobiographies and offer interesting insights into the authors and their milieu. if one has the inclination and the luxury of time to read them.

I mentioned the poet Sylvia Plath just now, and it was Cynthia Kitchen's blog about a favourite poet (or two) that made me home in on Plath - and by extension Ted Hughes. Sylvia Plath wrote a diary from January 1st 1944 (aged eleven) until her death in February 1963 (aged just thirty). The early volumes of diaries remain unpublished and are currently housed at Indiana University in Bloomington, for research purposes. Her adult diaries, commencing in 1950 when she became a student at Smith College and covering the next dozen years, were first published in abridged form in 1982 as 'The Journals of Sylvia Plath'. They were edited by Frances McCullough, with Ted Hughes as consulting editor. Hughes withheld two diaries from that publication, in addition to the final diary that he claimed to have destroyed because it contained passages he didn't want her children to have to read. Eventually, the two withheld diaries were yielded up and in 2000, the publication of 'The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath', containing 50% previously unpublished material, was hailed as a true literary event, giving as it did a fascinating insight into the woman, the writer and her ultimately tragic life.

posthumously published diaries

For anyone unfamiliar with the tangled web that was the relationship between Plath and Hughes, here's a quick overview. Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, USA in 1932. She was a bright and precocious young lady (IQ of 160) who started writing poetry aged eight. At eighteen, she went to college to study Literature, developed a habit of self-harming and made her first attempt at committing suicide. She won a scholarship to come to the UK and study at Newnham College, Cambridge. She met Ted Hughes at a party in February 1956. They admired each other's poetry. Hughes was a couple of years older than her, had studied English at Pembroke College, Cambridge and had just had his first work published. They were married four months after they met. As Plath put it:

"We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on."

They moved to America for a couple of years and Plath taught briefly at her alma mater, while Hughes taught at the University of Massachusetts, but returned to the UK in 1959 and bought a flat in London. 1960 had all the hallmarks of a propitious year. Hughes published 'Lupercal' a prize-winning poetry collection, their first child was born, and Plath published 'The Colossus', her first poetry collection. 

By 1961, Sylvia was confiding that she was in an abusive relationship, and that Ted's physical violence towards her. caused her to miscarry her second pregnancy. That summer they bought a house in rural Devon, where their second child was born at the beginning of 1962. They had let their London flat to a couple of writers, David and Assia Wevill and soon Hughes was embroiled in an affair with Assia (with whom he was also to have a child). Plath's reaction was to try and commit suicide again by deliberately crashing her car. Ted and Sylvia separated in the autumn of 1962 and she moved back to London with her two small children to rent a flat in Primrose Hill, in a house that W.B. Yeats had formerly occupied.

The winter of 1962–1963 was one of the coldest on record in the UK. It was dubbed The Big Freeze. In her tiny flat Sylvia went into a burst of creativity, completing a novel and most of the poems that would comprise the posthumous collection 'Ariel', but the flat was a miserable place, the pipes froze, the children—now two years old and nine months—were often sick, and the house had no telephone. She sank into a deep depression. Her novel, 'The Bell Jar', was published in January 1963 and was met with critical indifference. She wrote to Hughes in early February saying she was planning to return to the USA with her children. Maybe she was hoping that would bring him back. He did visit her, but clearly it didn't go well. By then he was already in a relationship with another woman in addition to Assia. In fact he was with this third amour on the night Sylvia decided to take her own life.

On the morning of Monday 11th February, with her children still sleeping soundly, she sealed herself in her kitchen, with towels and tape to stop the fumes from spreading to the rest of the flat, turned on the gas oven and put her head deep inside it. 

cancelled passport

As Plath lay dying in her freezing Fitzroy Road flat on that Monday morning, barely a mile away on the other side of a snow-covered Primrose Hill, the Beatles commenced  recording their debut LP 'Please Please Me' at Abbey Road studio 2. They laid down the whole album in a single long day, fuelled by milk to keep their voices functioning, and finished late in the evening. A leading Beatles chronicler (whose first wife, I was told, also committed suicide) later wrote: "There can scarcely have been 585 more productive minutes in the history of recorded music" 

Ever since I've known that two such culturally significant events - a bright beginning, a sad ending - happened so very close together in space and time, I've been fascinated by the fact. I've been mulling over the possibility of writing a poem that imaginatively ties the two events of that singular day together, and now I've realised the opportunity, with the slightest sprinkling of poetic licence.  I hope I've succeeded. You'll be the judges of that.

A Singular Day (11th February 1963)

Milk bottles stand frozen sentinels

on a doorstep at 10 am as the Beatles plug in,

first take of the day: There's A Place.

Some dark tragedy begins when pipes,

passion, hopes freeze. 23 Fitzroy Road also

home to WB Yeats, a blue plaque attests.

Does she, too, cast a cold eye, Medea like,

then decide to spare her babies her fate, even as

icy talons grip her wearied heart?

Do You Want To Know A Secret?

What horrors that final journal could spill,

a truth too awful to tell. Misery.

She seals the room with deliberation,

turns on that slow, monoxide hiss and lays

head deep within the stove as peace

comes dropping slow, a woozy whirling

blackness into the run-out groove of eternity,

earthbound, no more play.

Over the hill, barely a snowy mile away,

the Beatles tear into A Taste Of Honey, and how

Sylvia had loved her bees,

those messengers between Gods

and men, symbolic of a rustic idyll that proved

illusory, happiness beyond reach.

All afternoon, shocked friends come

and go, woeful chorus to this dreadful drama,

some wracked by tears, some with guilt

while in Abbey Road the Beatles

power on though Chains, Anna  and Hold Me Tight.

They're shredded, getting very near the end.

A bottle of milk hastily downed,

one last Twist And Shout belted out

at full throttle. Job done

...except for reverberations in the ether of 

Love, Love me do. The Beatles board their train

to Lime Street. A hearse cruises the night.

Sylvia Plath and child 

As a footnote, Ted Hughes didn't write another poem for three years after Sylvia's death, but as her widower, he became the executor of his wife's personal and literary estates. Assia Wevill also committed suicide by gassing herself and her child some six years later. Ted Hughes eventually remarried and  became Poet Laureate.

Thanks for reading, S :-(

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