Imprint - It's only words

When I was considering what to include in this blog on the theme of imprint, several things crossed my mind.

The scars left on my face by falling off my bicycle head first and skidding onto a tarmac carpark as it tore into my skin. (After 60 years I still have one scar beneath my right nostril and a piece of stone in my lower lip.)

No, not gruesome memories like that one. Words often leave a more profound impact. 

While I was recovering in hospital with concussion following the afore-mentioned accident, my dance partner (then a girl called Lynn Jones) came to visit with her parents. Without any sympathy for my situation, my scabby face and broken teeth, she pointed at me and declared "That's what you get for telling lies!"

I was terribly upset by this and when I told my dad he reassured me that I need never see her again. He arranged for a visit to Blackpool Tower during the British Junior Dance Festival. There we met a friend of his, former Ballroom World Champion Eric Lashbrook. He took me twice around the floor and told my dad he would be in touch. 

A few weeks later he arranged a 'try out' for me with a boy partner and within months we were successfully admitted to the British Juvenile Team for a trip to compete in Switzerland. But for Lynn's dreadful words, none of my dancing success would ever have happened.

In my teens, my elderly Auntie Effie (short for Ethel) took herself off on a solo trip to Paris, very brave for a woman of 70-plus. She had a career as head corsetter in a local department store and had married late in life. Her husband had recently died. 

She once told me that people place on you half the value you place on yourself. That left an imprint too. Never undervalue your own worth.

My poem today is based on factual personal experience and the lasting imprint of the power of words. My motto is: Always think before you speak.

Imprint

That was the day
the day I decided I’d had enough
the day I chose to leave

I put the children in the car
he took them out again
pushed them back into the house

I tried to get them back
he blocked me
he slammed the door on my arm

He grabbed me
he lifted me up
he threw me at the copper beech

The neighbour was concerned
he called the police
an officer drove me to hospital

He said “think about it overnight
a man’s reputation
is at stake”

The bruise shaped like the door lock
would fade in time
I would be fine

But those misogynistic words
will always remain
a permanent imprint in my mind

Adele V Robinson

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Music was my first love …

I could start here and write forever about music.  Music was once the whole purpose of my life.  I was born in Blackpool.  My elder sister, by almost ten years … no scratch that, by just over nine years, (I have to be kind) danced beautifully and my Mum would take me to all the rehearsals for the Children’s pantomime and The Tower Ballet. The lines from the Abba song,  “… I was a dancer before I could walk, … I could sing long before I could talk,” fitted me perfectly.  Elsie Bradley, the ballet mistress told my parents that she wanted me as soon as I was five.  Unfortunately, my family moved away from Blackpool for seven years and the pathway to musical theatre and dance was lost to me. Even so, I sang at every opportunity and by the time I was ten,  I was ballroom dancing my way around Britain and Europe under the tutelage of a former World Champion. 

 

My paternal Grandfather trained as a bandmaster at Neller Hall and played sax with Jack Hylton until he settled down in Blackpool.  He played with all the resident Tower and Winter Gardens bands between the wars, even transposed music for Tommy Dorsey when he visited. My maternal Grandmother was an accomplished pianist, teaching dance, pianoforte and elocution to young ladies.  I guess music was in my soul. Some things are just part of who you are. I lived for music.

 

 A friend recently told me of a current theory that to be accomplished, a virtuoso, at the top of your profession takes 10,000 hours of dedication. I believe this is true. My father paid for two hours of private dance tuition every week. In return he insisted that I put in five hours practice for each one. It was a huge commitment from a nine year old but it paid off.  Most weeks, I practiced fifteen hours, either at Belle Vue Manchester or Reece’s Ballroom in Liverpool.  I knew all the big band tunes, learned all the words too. It became part of me. It shaped my style of dress, my attitude to life, my expectations of courtesy and respect from men.  You see ballroom dancing has a code of politeness that was going rapidly out of fashion in most other places but my world was untouched by change.  Boys who danced wore tails, white tie, dinner suits and cumber bunds.  They linked your arm, led you back to your seat at the end of a dance and more important than that, they could dance. Unlike most young men in the 1970’s and 80’s, they didn’t stand at the bar while the girls danced round their handbags.

I sing a little now.  Five years ago I joined Musica Lirica Opera chorus. I love singing, although I am never going to be a great operatic singer, I am enjoying learning a new craft.  Being part of a chorus is great fun.  We work hard but we also laugh and support each other.  This season we staged a production of Franz Lehar’s, The Merry Widow, that was a resounding success at The Grand Theatre, Blackpool, Bingley Festival and Lancaster Grand.   I fulfilled a lifetime wish, to sing on a real theatre stage but I also managed to dance a little again, helping my chorus colleagues to learn to Viennese Waltz.  It has always been my favourite dance. This is the latest edition to my Dance poetry series...oh and in the photo, my Grandfather, Fred Robinson is third from the left. 

A Viennese Affair

 

I’m lost, lost, in a Viennese Waltz,

I can’t find my rhythm or rhyme,

my writing is blocked

but my feathers are cocked

but I’m having a wonderful time.
  

My partner is dashing,

my cleavage is flashing,

while out in the wings sits his wife,
I know it will only last 32 bars,
but this little affair,
has put curls in my hair,
and I’m having the thrill of my life.
 

I’m lost, lost, in a Viennese Waltz,
I can’t pen a quatrain or two,
I'm not going to cry,
when my ink has run dry,
I’m enjoying my bit of a do.
   

When we are rehearsing,

he keeps on reversing,
and bumping his bustle to mine,
a brush will his tails,
sends me right off my rails,
his pivots are simply divine.
 
I’m lost, lost, in a Viennese Waltz,
I can’t script a stanza at all,
my prose is  appalling,
I’m rising and falling,
but I'm certainly having a ball.
 
We dance to impress,
with his beard on my chest,
I look like I’m covered with hair.
His hand on my back
concertina’s my corsets,
my skirt’s lifting up in the air.

I’m lost, lost, in a Viennese Waltz,
I’m missing a deadline or two,
The whirling and swirling,
has sent my toes curling,
I know that it’s wrong,
but it may not last long,
poetry can wait,
I’ve a short ‘use by ’date,
I’m having one more dance with Hugh,

If you had the chance, wouldn’t you?



So I challenge you all to get dancing and singing 

Thanks for reading ... Adele

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