Definitely Not About T.R.A.M.S

OK, I lied. (See postscript for explanation.) Blackpool is rightly famous for its trams, ancient and modern. They run the length of the promenade from Starr Gate, south of the pleasure beach, and continue right up to Fleetwood Ferry eleven miles to the north. The end-to-end journey time is just over an hour. Last year (2023) the Blackpool Tram System carried 4.7 million passengers.

In fact the jewel of the north has the second oldest tram system in the UK. (Only Brighton preceded it.) Blackpool's line opened officially in September 1885, a mere six years after Siemens had first demonstrated electric traction. It was originally operated by the Blackpool Electric Tramway Company and latterly by Blackpool Corporation. 

Because of the challenges of running a tram line along the coast (with frequent inundations of seawater and sand), the original design of a ground level electric conduit was soon abandoned in favour of overhead wiring.

Blackpool Tram (in service, 1970s)

Over the last hundred and forty years, a succession of classic trams have plied their trade along our seafront, single-deckers, double-deckers, open-top double-deckers, many of them manufactured in nearby Preston by United Electric, or English Electric Company, or Dick Kerr & Co.

Nowadays the 'A' fleet comprises eighteen smart 'Flexity 2' trams built by Bombardier in Germany, but Blackpool Tramway also has a 'B' fleet of nine pre-WW2 'Balloon' trams which operate as part of the heritage tram attraction, plus a 'C' fleet comprising all sorts of weird and wonderful relics from the town's tram yesteryears, some dating back to 1904 and all maintained in working order for special outings on heritage tram days, the annual Tram Festival and during the Blackpool Illuminations.

The Tram Festival (known locally as Tram Sunday) is held every July. It has become the largest free vintage transport event in the country, featuring not just Blackpool's historic trams but vintage cars, vans, motorcycles and allied arts events celebrating the long history of transportation along the Fylde coast. 

A few years ago, Lancashire Dead Good Poets were invited to take part in the annual Tram Sunday as one of the arts events. The plan was for us to ride on the heritage trams and perform tram and transport related poetry to the passengers as the vehicles travelled up and down the line. We had microphones and portable PA for the purpose, so we could be heard above the noise. 

However, it didn't quite work out like that because most of the paying passengers were hardened tram enthusiasts who had come to Blackpool especially to ride these old trams. They didn't want to listen to a bunch of poets reciting away. They wanted absolute silence so they could hear the sounds of the trams themselves. They wanted to savour every last rumble, squeak, whir, clang and vibration of the ride, getting carried back into some golden age of tram travel in the process. So we shut up and listened too.

Blackpool Tram (retired, now)

That was the inspiration for today's new poem...

Song Of The Vintage Tram

Shut up and listen, the old chap said, 

so we did on a perfect summer's day

to the bump and grind of wheels on

rails, the creak of wood and steel as

we trundled along the prom, clanging

at intervals, serenaded by the circling

gulls. But he, with eyes closed in rapt

concentration, saw nothing of crowds

of  bronzed holiday-makers enjoying 

fun in the Blackpool sun. Neither did

we see the pale girl sitting beside him

as he, lost in a symphony of machines

battling the whip of the wind, the lash

of the rain, chorus of passengers long

since gone, revelled in the song of the

tram, music to ancient ears.  The only

thing missing, a warm fug of tobacco

smoke (outlawed by the nanny state)

hardly diminished  his pleasure in the

ride or in the ghost of a girl at his side.

Postscript: If you were wondering about the strange title I've given today's blog - seeing as it patently is about trams - that's because we Dead Good Bloggers have had a bit of an issue with Facebook this week. They have seen fit to remove two posts from our Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society Facebook page that contained links to the earlier blogs from Pam and Terry about trams, claiming that such posts have  contravened some mysterious Facebook community standard!

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Feathers

Our favourite place for a nature walk in Blackpool is the town's award-winning* Stanley Park, over 300 acres of deciduous woodland with paths, a large lake, greensward, ornamental gardens and an art deco café. We go primarily for the bird-watching, also for the fresh air and exercise, and occasionally for lunch. It's just a shame that today is shaping up windy and wet, not the best for bird-watching, not feather weather.

Over the last couple of years of visiting the park, I've noticed a significant increase in the number of coots, delightful water birds with their black plumage, that distinctive white 'shield' on their foreheads (giving rise to the saying "as bald as a coot") and their white bills. Sometimes there are as many as sixty or seventy of them out on the lake, where they seem to co-exist peacefully with each other and with other water fowl except at the height of the breeding season when they can get a tad territorial, beating the water with their feathers.

coot feathering

I don't recall precisely when my love for our feathered friends began but it was probably when I was about nine years old. Several things conspired. At that time (early 1960s), Chivers jellies were sold in cardboard packets with pictures of birds on the back, something like twelve in the series, collect all twelve and then send off for a large print of your favourite one. I hated jelly (still do) but my Mum used to buy it for my Dad, so I pestered her to buy specific packets, and when eventually I'd got all twelve, I sent them off for a hand-tinted print of a chaffinch. 

I'd also recently been bought my first camera, a Kodak Brownie 127. Before I'd acquired the full set of Chivers birds, I used to position the cut-outs in the privet hedge in our garden and photograph them with that Brownie camera. Weird, I know, fake bird pictures!

And then there was Arthur Ransome's 'Coot Club ', which I read at about the same time, and which made it feel cool to look out for the welfare of birds. 'Coot Club ' is a story about a group pf children living on the Norfolk Broads who have formed a vigilante gang to protect the nesting sites of coots from the townies who descend at week-ends and in the Easter holidays and who race about the waterways in motorboats with scant regard for the nesting coots or who think it acceptable to collect birds' eggs. Its pro-conservation message wrapped in an exciting adventure story was relatively ground-breaking for the time.

feet like anchovies

The coot then, readily identifiable from its white blaze, is the largest member of the Rallidae family (which also comprises moorhens, crakes and water rails), and is much bigger when seen out of the water than one might suppose, more the size of a chicken. The French indeed call it informally la poule d'eau  (water chicken), though its formal name is the foulque, derived from the Latin name fulica. There are ten species of coot worldwide and the commonest is our chap, fulica atra , the Eurasian coot. There are also various North American and South American varieties, one of which even sports a yellow shield. There was an eleventh, the Mascarene coot from Mauritius, but this followed its fellow islander the Dodo into extinction towards the end of the 17th century.

Although they are mostly black, certainly as far as plumage is concerned, they do have red eyes and strong yellow legs which end in pale blue feet with long lobed toes, resembling anchovies. They are powerful swimmers and can also run well across water and on dry land, but their short, rounded wings mean they are not the best fliers, certainly not on a par with ducks or geese.

They are omnivorous feeders, cropping on surface algae or diving for weeds, fish and water insects, but they also graze on land for seeds, fruit and small live prey. They build large, bulky nests with a neat bowl. These can be anchored to vegetation in shallow waters (logs, reeds or similar) or they can be free-floating. The female will lay between six and ten eggs at the rate of one per day over a week or so and both male and female coots take turns to incubate the eggs which hatch about three weeks after being laid. The fuzzy chicks with their smoky plumage and red heads more resemble moorhens than coots, enough so to confuse W. B. Yeats who wrote about "feathered balls of soot" in 'Meditations in Time of Civil War'. Vigilance is required, as the terrapins in Stanley Park lake are quite partial to coot and moorhen eggs, and predatory birds and pike will happily carry off a stray cootlet.

There was a time in this country when adult coots were hunted for food. I quote: "young moorhen are very good eating but I would infinitely rather have a coot." There were traditional coot shoots at several large British wetlands right up until the 1950s, and somewhere the killing goes on, for it turns out there is a trade in dead coot feathers, supplying fly-fishing anglers who like to make their own flies. I quote again: "The feathers on the front of the coot's wings can be used as hackles on a range of traditional soft-hackled wet flies such as the ever-popular 'Waterhen Bloa '" and they cost £15 from stockists of fishing supplies. No wonder coots are occasionally capable of quarrelsome and aggressive behaviour if they feel so threatened!

coot flotilla

I've often thought, when looking at the coots placidly floating on Stanley Park lake, that they are reminiscent of warships riding at anchor or sailing in formation, and I knew I'd like to write a poem exploring such an association one day. That day has come, and so here it is (potentially subject to the usual revisions). 

Coot Fleet

General synopsis Admiral Coot: mainly fair,

wind westerly, veering northwest for a time,

force two, speed approx. at four to six knots

so small wavelets, crests glassy, no breaking.

Irish Sea for you.  Cup of tea for me, maybe

with a shot of rum or piece of chocolate cake

to keep spirits up, bins trained eyes straining

to survey our fleet riding easy upon the lake

like warships in battle order, uniformly dark

drab grey all with strange white radar domes

and prows pointing into the flow, like Scapa

or Souda Bay, red-eyes alert, most definitely

not Pearl Harbour. Wild Coots at Poole  your

admirable misquote about our pleasing array

of waiting rails, no hint they'll up and away

though this brisk glorious mid-day. Strength

in numbers of course, deterrent force against

all-comers,  and my turn to be witty. Nobody

fucks with the baldies, I side-mouth, crumbs

of cake tumbling to the ground for sparrows 

to pounce on. And the wind does swing some

forty-five degrees as foretold,  whereon nine

and fifty synchronised sooty shapes re-orient

their white bills, resolute in their potent vigil.

* Stanley Park has been voted the UK's favourite park on three separate occasions, the last time being in 2022. 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Blackpool Carnival

Notting Hill carnival might be the biggest street party in Europe, Rio carnival may be the biggest there is, La Tomatina in Spain is perhaps the messiest, Mardi Gras in New Orleans possibly the fattest, Kukeri in Bulgaria certainly the oldest established, and Greek dionysiac revels the original of them all, but I'm eschewing the lot in favour of writing about our own Blackpool carnival. It's not even in world's top hundred, so there's loyalty for you - but it is celebrating a centenary of sorts next year.

Thanks to the Blackpool Museum Project*, here's a bit of background: In 1923 Blackpool began what it thought would be a new tradition, holding an annual Grand Carnival in June. It was the town's way of bringing back some of the progressive and pioneering events it had held before WW1, like the artificial sunshine show and the air show. It was also a way of filling a lull in the resort's calendar between the busy Easter and summer peaks. The 1923 carnival was a great success. It ran from 9th to 16th June and attracted two million visitors, many brought in on a fleet of extra trains and coaches.. Never had so many people travelled to Blackpool specifically for an event.

Blackpool's inaugural  carnival procession

As well as processions and pageants along the promenade (featuring giants wearing grotesque papier-mache heads made in the municipal tram-sheds by French craftsmen specially imported from Nice carnival), Blackpool's Grand Carnival also featured dog shows, motor races, 'battles of flowers', brass bands and many other diversions. Archive footage of that first carnival has survived. It's on YouTube and you can view it via this link: King Carnival

putting the car in carnival

The 1923 event was such a great success that the organisers immediately made plans for an even bigger and better one the following summer. The 1924 carnival ran from June 11th to 24th and once again in excess of two million people flocked to the town to enjoy the events. Unfortunately, this time there were several days with no scheduled activities, so many of the visitors spent the time drinking to excess. Drunkenness and violence were rife and marred the occasion to the extent that there was no appetite on behalf of the Corporation to host another such event. Instead the town concentrated from 1925 on holding a Festival of Lights which in turn became the world famous Blackpool Illuminations. Although Blackpool continued to put on occasional Gala Days with processions, marching bands and the like, Blackpool Carnival proper was only resurrected in 2017.

The 'centenary' Blackpool Carnival will run from July 1st to 9th 2023 and promises "a nine day extravaganza of  glorious colour, music, fun and laughter" all along the promenade from north to south pier and across several stages. There will be parades, performances, food stalls. There may even be poets! Talking of poems, this week's latest from the imaginarium has only a tenuous connection to any of the foregoing. 

If carnival is all ministerial privilege, excess, misrule and vulgarity on the one pudgy hand and a 'farewell to meat' (the literal meaning of carnival) for the working poor on the other skinny hand, this strange little poem might just resonate in an era where cold beans on bread and butter serve us as survival rations.

The Gaudy

An evermore ravenous darkness circles

this poor palpitating pool of light; 

a cold-eyed, coal-winged world vulture

sets sights on pecking out the heart

once hope gives up on its pitiable future.

Except that the gaudy shows fight.

Its neon battledress hardly haute-couture

and its baubles implausibly slight,

it vows never to be extinguished as easily

as its tormentor anticipates. In part

emboldened by tracts of previous sutures,

nerved by its sense of what's right,

it withstands such relentless intimidation

as causes dark to query its might.

And even as intimations of black eternity 

seek to extinguish its brave spirit, 

sheer willpower not to relinquish rapture

allows the gaudy to remain bright.

*Showtown, the new 'museum of fun and entertainment' in Blackpool is scheduled to open in 2023.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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A Decade Of Dead Good Blogs

As birthday celebrations go, the poor old DGB's has been a bit muted this week, even something of an anti-climax, with just one blog (this one) and a quick post on the Dead Good Poets' Facebook page in commemoration. 

I personally thought it was appropriate to mark the occasion. After all, ten years of Dead Good Blogging (and views in excess of a million) is a decent achievement for any online platform, let alone one based in Blackpool and dedicated to poetry and creative writing. I figured it was only right to recognise the initiative that got it all going a decade ago and the bloggers (both regulars and guests) who have kept it rolling - but that appears to be a minority view, which makes me feel a little sad. 😞

Of course the personnel and driving forces have changed over time as is only to be expected. It got off to a rattling start in 2011, based around students and their tutors engaged in English/Creative Writing BAs and MAs at Blackpool College under the auspices of Lancaster University. It was seen as a written word extension to Blackpool's Dead Good Poets' monthly open mic nights, with a team of regular bloggers posting six days a week on a given weekly theme in a variety of styles, exploring topics of interest, examining the creative process, pouring out great posts and some amazing poetry, all with the possibility of it reaching a wide audience because of the immediacy of the internet. Within three years it had racked up 1,000 posts and had won itself an award. Thank you Ashley, Lara, Lindsay, Shaun and Vicky for giving it life and substance.

before online

The DGB hit its first serious bump in the road in 2013/4 over the issue of fracking and the fact that Blackpool college benefitted from fracking company monies. There were fallings out and resignations (all of this before I was part of the collective, so I don't know all the ins and outs but it was a divisive issue). New regular bloggers stepped up as some ex-bloggers even asked to have all their posts deleted, a request that was duly complied with. 

 

In fact none of the founding core members has contributed since 2015. I did invite them to guest blog this week for old time's sake, but there was no great enthusiasm to re-visit an old chapter of their lives. A couple of them were even surprised to learn that the DGB is still a going concern. No matter. As one of them stated back in 2014 at the time of resigning: "I hope the DGP can go from strength to strength now. I'm fairly sure the blog will continue to excel with the excellent writers who currently contribute - and the wonderful ones you'll be able to get in future." And so it has proved.

Over the decade there has been a rolling cast of of eighteen regular bloggers, who for as long as they could manage it (more often than not), have committed to writing on their given day to the weekly theme. For thirteen of the 'retired' regular blogger, their posts can be found under their names in the 'Previous Bloggers' section of the website. All the posts of the still active regular bloggers can be found under their names in the 'Current Bloggers' section, along with blogs written by a very long list of  guest bloggers and all their posts are still accessible on the website. Poignantly, two of those guest poets, Christo Heyworth and David Riley, are no longer of this earth.   

In addition to the DGB, Blackpool Dead Good Poets who morphed into Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society (not to be confused with Liverpool's excellent Dead Good Poets' Society) have continued to hold monthly open mic nights (for the last year and a half via zoom) and have published a number of themed pamphlets of writers' work (including A Poets' Guide To Blackpool, Pelts To Petticoats, Walking On Wyre and The Big One), though the Dead Good Blog remains by far both the most extensive and impressive collection of prose and poetry and it has been my pleasure to curate and promote it for the last six years, in addition to writing the Saturday Blog.

Despite the proscriptive changes and restrictive algorithms that have been introduced by both Facebook and Google in the last few years, the analytics show that the Dead Good Blog is still on the rise, with around 15,000 'views' per month over the last five years and the million views milestone passed at the end of 2020 - which continues to make it a worthwhile forum and a platform for local writers to air their workings on.

the rise of the Dead Good Blog

My only regret is that more readers of the blogs don't find the inclination or time to leave comments or feedback (less than 1% in fact).

Well okay, that's the last ten years acknowledged, appraised and celebrated. Now it's time to look forward to the next however many and whatever may come. There are currently three (more or less) regular bloggers aiming to post on their appointed day to the allocated theme each week. There are spaces for at least three more. If you think you'd like to give it a go - and believe me, it is a great catalyst/prompt to creative writing - please get in touch and ask for details. If you fancy the idea of writing just an occasional blog to see how it goes, do likewise. The list of weekly topics is available for six months in advance, which gives plenty for thinking/research time. You don't need to do anything except submit your blog in plain text or MS word format and the admin team takes care of the rest. It would be great to have some new creatives and fresh voices adding to the next phase in the DGB's life. If  you are interested, please email: deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk

future proofing

I've no new poem to post this week, and the hour is getting late. If you're desperate to read something, here's a link to the most read Dead Good Blog of all: That Greek Cottage and if that doesn't satisfy you, go to the homepage of the website at www.deadgoodpoets.blogspot.com where you'll find 2,000 Dead Good blogs awaiting you.

 

Thanks for reading. Until next week, S ;-)

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The Sea - My Bit of Blackpool

 When my parent's wish for a pub on Blackpool promenade was granted, I had the joy of having a front bedroom facing the sea. I was fascinated by the view. The summer season was just starting, people were strolling past and each day seemed busier than the last one. Trams rumbled by, horses clopped along pulling landaus, bells rang out from the donkeys taking their place on the beach and squeals of delight or screams of fear came from the nearby Pleasure Beach. These new sounds were exciting but nothing compared to the noises of the sea. On a still and quiet day, with hardly a ripple on the incoming tide, there might by a gentle splash as the last wave met the sand. On a breezy day, the sea was louder and the tide came in with lively, white waves. One of my first memories of that room is of a sunny morning, the curtains half open and the nets billowing into the room on the fresh, salty breeze. In those early days, I shared the room with my little sister who was still in a cot and I would wake up properly to hear her calling my name and holding her arms up to be lifted out. I think she was two years old, which would put me at nine, nearly ten. I don’t know when she moved into a room of her own, though at some point she did.

My grandparents were regular visitors, leaving their pub to oversee ours – it was a family joke. Grandad would go and take an interest in the cellar lay-out and everything behind the bars. Nanna planted herself in the bay window of our private lounge and watched the world go by, tutting at some of the sights and loving the view of the sea. She would smoke her Park Drive and drink tea. Her knitting would remain untouched as the outside goings on captivated her.  I expected to be part of those goings on when I was old enough. I wasn’t, well, not quite.

We spent hours watching the illuminated trams when Blackpool Lights shone. We could see for miles up and down the promenade. My sister and I would be taken out by Dad in the car to enjoy a proper look and see the fabulous tableaux towards Bispham. Many years later, a story and a poem of mine featured along there, amongst others. Who could have known?

When the Illuminations end, Blackpool hibernates. The view from my window is dominated by the sea with no distractions. Trams, less frequent, thunder along but the horses and donkeys have gone. Gale force winds and high tides send waves crashing over the sea wall on to the tram tracks, into the road and often into our cellar. It wasn’t flooded completely, but Dad would need his wellingtons on. I watched the sea with my mum, from the comfort of our lounge. The noise of the sea would frighten me, roaring, pounding and fierce, rising at its most scary like some great water monster. It still scares me. I like to watch without being too close.

I loved that bedroom. Our family changed after my mother passed away and my bedroom was promised to another. I moved to a back room. I should have refused. That’s life.

During the full lockdown, I wished I lived close enough to the promenade to have a walk and a look at the sea. Suddenly, I missed it, everything, the sounds and the taste of salt on my lips. There was one very hot, sticky day during the summer when there was only one way to cool off. After tea, my husband and I drove to Anchorsholme and found a quiet spot. We had a short walk then stood by the railings, looking at the sea that was right out on the horizon. A gentle breeze was pleasantly cooling, swirling my summer skirt and loose-fitting top. We stood for an hour enjoying the fresh air, watching seagulls and the people in the distance. The Blackpool I like is the vast coast-line and the changing of the sea.

My chosen poem, a favourite from John Cooper Clarke, with a nod to John Masefield. It brings to mind the Golden Mile, 

i mustn't go down to the sea again

Sunken yachtsmen
Sinking yards
Drunken Scotsmen
Drinking hard
Every lunatic and his friend
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The ocean drags
Its drowning men
Emotions flag
Me down again
Tell tracy babs and gwen
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The rain whips
The promenade
It drips on chips
They turn to lard
I’d send a card if I had a pen
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

A string of pearls
From the bingo bar
For a girl
Who looks like Ringo Starr
She’s mad about married men
I mustn’t go down to the sea again

The clumsy kiss
That ends in tears
How I wish
I wasn’t here
Tell tony mike and len
I mustn’t go down to the sea again.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep well, Pam x

Photo from Blackpool Gazette

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Let The Die Be Cast

The fateful phrase "the die has been cast" (alea iacta est in Latin) is attributed to Julius Caesar as he prepared to cross the Rubicon and advance into Italy with his invading army in 49 BC, set on civil war against Pompey. Being a learned man and an admirer of Greek literature, what he actually said in Greek (which he spoke fluently) was   "Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος" (anerriphtho kybos), meaning "let the die be cast" - which would have had a colloquial meaning in Greek of let the game begin and which actually derived from a play by the Greek playwright Menander (341-290 BC) of whose works Caesar was particularly fond.

The difference is a subtle one, perhaps, the Greek phrase suggesting gamely that everything is to play for, whereas the cast of the Latin version is more fatalistic with a hint of predestination.

All stem anyway from the ancient game of dicing, a metaphor itself for the role of chance or randomness in our lives and destinies, where the tumbling roll of the dice (plural, die in the singular) is used to determine an outcome, a winner, a loser, one chance in however many sides of the die or dice there are: 6, 12, 18. 24, 30 et cetera.

Anyway, you know all that and I'm not going to burden you with a long blog on this rather wet and miserable August Saturday night. Instead we'll cut right to the poem, which I think fits the theme because it commemorates a somewhat fateful and random event. It's another in my occasional series of poems about Blackpool. This one is part history, the other part possibly being urban myth.

There was a strong and widespread rumour that Adolf Hitler had a soft spot for Blackpool and intended to make it a rest-and-relaxation resort for the Nazi top brass once Germany had won the war. Consequently (as the legend goes) he ordered that Blackpool should be spared in the blitzkrieg he planned for British towns and cities in 1940.

Nevertheless, some incendiary bombs and a few high explosives were dropped in the Blackpool and Fylde area, resulting in 11 people being killed and 13 houses destroyed, statistics which pale into insignificance when compared to the devastation meted out to Manchester and Liverpool in the north, to Birmingham and Coventry in the midlands and of course to London,

The most deadly event, and one of only three direct hits on the town of Blackpool itself, came on the night of 11th September 1940. Walter Dutton, lift man at Blackpool tower, witnessed a single German aircraft breaking ranks and swooping to drop a 500lb high-explosive bomb onto Seed Street, near Blackpool North station. Eight of the eleven people killed and all but one of the houses destroyed in the statistics I quoted above were accounted for by that lone rogue strike. Here is the poem as it emerged dusty from the imaginarium.

The Seed Street Bombing
Don't hit Blackpool! Thus spake The Fuhrer
to his air commandant, an emphatic injunction
from the man with a plan in the summer of 1940.

In his vision, our golden sands were destined to be
a favoured playground for German High Command,
with swastikas fluttering in the bracing sea breeze.

I was only a lad then, when Jerries' death hornets
came winging in deadly waves, night on night,
to soften us up quickly for invasion or surrender

by bombing holy shit out of cities like Liverpool.
I had a compunction to sneak out and watch
the Dorniers and Heinkels overfly in formation,

unrelenting hundreds, high up by the moon.
They used our tower to help point the way.
Their bombs turned the sky red over the Mersey

till you could hear dull thunder on the wind.
Everyone on Seed Street said Fuck Hitler,
we're a proud nation, we'll never bloody give in.

Of course I was worried. I didn't know about
the Luftwaffe's orders to pass Blackpool by,
to leave us unscathed in the push for victory.

I was only a lad. Don't hit Blackpool! I prayed,
and yet some bastard did just that! One rogue pilot,
one 500-pounder and my home and family were gone

in the instant of that single destructive act of war;
yet we who lived to mourn the eight who died
on the night of the Seed Street bombing can find

no comfort in the cock-up theory of history that says
it was all a mistake. Those who remember now are few.
There's no plaque, there's not even a Seed Street anymore.*

*For those of you who are interested, the town centre Sainsbury's supermarket stands on the site where Seed Street used to be. The only reminder that's left is the small car-park between Sainsbury's and the Ramsden Arms, which is still called Seed Street car-park. 

Since I first posted this blog, David Wall has kindly sent photographic evidence of the aftermath of the Seed Street bombing, which I have added below.

If anyone has further anecdotal reports of this incident or the bombs which landed in Leopold Grove or Lindale Gardens, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Thanks for reading. Keep on rolling, S ;-)

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Small Birds

Since we moved to Blackpool about two and a half years ago, we have been trying to encourage some small, attractive birds into our garden.

We have everything such a bird could possibly require. A sheltered, quiet area with small trees, plants and flowers. There is an appropriate ‘bath’ of water in which any bird can have a wash, splash about or a paddle. We also have two bird feeders in the small trees full of tasty treats and a larger feeder which is full of bird food.

What is the result of this attempt to seduce small, attractive birds into our garden?

All we have seen are several pigeons and a few seagulls.

I guess we must put it down to the urban/seaside environment in which we live. When we go walking or cycling through Stanley Park and on into the Fylde countryside, then we do see a variety of small birds.

However, if there are any ways that you know to encourage small birds into your garden, please do pass them on.

Blackpool, however, is not without its attractive different birds, as the starlings show us when they appear in formation over the piers. My poem for this blog is on that theme:

 

 

 

 

The Starlings

Come with me down to the beach

to hobble over the pebbles,

and stand in our old age

under a dusky canopy of fading light

watching the starlings
make a fearless rise heavenwards,
twisting, curling and diving
into the descending darkness –

hovering for a moment above the pier
then stretching across the whole sky

and recoiling

to form a tight beating heart.

 

Unlike the starlings, whose instincts are seen,
darting, halting, dipping, gliding

in the solace of each moment;

our dreams have been hidden,

yet can be seen in our love,
how you plucked me out and kept me,

how often you helped me fly

in the fifty years of formation;

hold me now, old lady,
our lives will soon be forgotten

like the shell of the crumbling pier,

where starlings roost after dark.

 

David Wilkinson

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Down Among The Flowerpots

Flowerpots! Not the most prepossessing of topics, I'll grant you, but let's see where we can go with this one. I've always preferred proper terracotta (literally baked earth) pots to the shiny plastic variety, even before the war on plastics was declared. Anybody with a garden almost certainly has a stack of earthenware flowerpots somewhere, either in a potting shed (if the garden stretches to such a luxury) or stowed neatly in a secluded corner waiting to be recycled into action.

I once knew a robin to build its nest in one such flowerpot. Said pot was lying on its side over-wintering with a collection of pots of varying sizes in a sheltered spot at the bottom of my garden. In deference to the robin and its nest, all those pots remained undisturbed well into early summer.

Fearless Friend

That robin was seemingly fearless. I hesitate to use the word tame (as garden birds are wild creatures), but he often searched me out while I was gardening, would happily sit on the handle of my spade while it was stuck in the ground and I teased out small earthworms  for him. I somehow persuaded the cat (who would usually accompany me on these gardening jaunts) to just lie quietly and watch the robin unmolested. To her credit, she never showed any sign of wanting to attack him and he always appeared unfazed by her presence, as though some unspoken truce had been sealed between us all. On occasions when he felt particularly bold (or maybe just exceedingly hungry) he would perch lightly on my outstretched hand to take whatever disinterred grub lay wriggling there. I felt extraordinarily privileged.

Of course for a child of the Sixties, no blog about flowerpots would be complete without giving an honourable mention to Bill and Ben - the flowerpot men - and little weed. They were a staple of BBC TV's Watch With Mother on weekday afternoons.


Flowerpot Men & Blissful Weed

Although I didn't have one - TV that is, I must have watched occasionally at a cousin's house - I was as captivated watching creatures made out of flowerpots and who lived in flowerpots boldly pottering where no one had pottered before as any pre-school tot of the last two decades has been by the doings of the teletubbies. (Who remembers Slowcoach the tortoise?)

My predilection for the antics of Bill and Ben and little Weed was resumed briefly in my later teenage years when we watched with dilated pupils and a knowing sense of irony. That's a whole other story (and one you're not going to get here) but it provides a tenuous connection to this week's poem (which, if I'd finished it in time, might have ended up gracing a music-themed blog.)

Blackpool hosts the Rebellion Festival over a long week-end every summer, usually at the beginning of August. It's been going since 1996 and has become the world's premier punkfest, filling the town (and the Winter Gardens) with thousands of punks from all over the world. I've never been to any of the gigs - though Flipper are over from the States this year and that's very tempting - but the influx of so many aficionados is a wonderful and energising spectacle.

My friend the illustrious Dr Higgins has some involvement in helping to make Rebellion happen, as well as being a musician of no mean punkiness himself. His latest album 'Dream Consumer Dream!' credited to Higgins And The Magic Of The Marketplace consists of eleven spiky musical polemics, some aimed sharply at the fat, complacent midriff of Tory Anglia, others casting a nostalgic eye back over times gone by, all of them fair comment on the Human Condition vintage 2018. The LP (pressed on 180g translucent yellow vinyl) comes with an A2 poster/lyric sheet and while the words sure ain't poetry, that's not what is important here. The sentiment and the sound are key and both of those are mighty fine, launching 'Dream Consumer Dream!' into my top ten albums of the year alongside the likes of The Coral, Decemberists, Sarah Gillespie, Alfa 9 and White Denim (illustrious company, to be sure). Andy Higgins plays all guitars (lead, rhythm, bass) and sings while Andy Flynn drums and Joanna Byrne provides backing vocals. It's powerful, it's punchy and it rocks with attitude. My favourite cuts are 'Emily Goes To Public School', 'Remember Me' and 'Celebrity Is Dead'. All in all, an excellent recording deserving of an audience - get to hear it if you can.

It's a while since I myself picked up a guitar in anger. Poetry is more my bag nowadays. This, then, is an affectionate poetical reflection on the Blackpool Rebellion extravaganza from one who was there in London when punk was all kicking off over forty years ago. The Clash were my favourites, I saw them the most often. The Damned were pretty good too, as were The Ruts. The Sex Pistols may have become the most newsworthy but they were more manufactured than most in my opinion. As for the US scene, I've always had a soft spot for the afore-mentioned Flipper and the Dead Kennedys. By the way, the poem owes its title in part to San Francisco rockers The Tubes. 1-2-3-4...

White Punks On Weed
There's a rebel yell
rolling down the tramline,
a rainbow pageant of defiance
taking the town by storm;
not gay pride this week-end
but Blackpool's annual punk fest,
non-conformance the norm,
a convention of the unconventional.

There's a sweet smell of weed
on the sea breeze
ensuring more beatitude than attitude
as the last of the mohicans
in proud defiance of the years
pogo with collective verve
to three-chord wonders in performance
at the Winter Gardens, ornate home
of the original holiday in the sun.

They're a curious breed,
these doctors, lawyers, postal workers,
draughtsmen, civil servants, teachers,
milkmaids, truckers and lay preachers
all geared up in safety pins and bondage trousers,
sprayed DMs, slashed vests and dayglo Ts,
for three days of anarchy
in the UK's premier seaside resort
but you've got to hand it to them.

There's a sense of 'no future'
debunked by the enduring spirit of punk
an all's well that ends swell -
for witness the damned generation now,
this once ripped and torn
Radio Blank bin-bag nation
who had no particular place to go,
happily reborn in tribal glory
gravitating in their thousands
to Blackpool's golden mile.
That's Rebellion week-end for you,
an annual pilgrimage for many
and one hell of a story to tell.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Unleafing Stanley Park

In a properly ordered universe I would have been at St. James' Park (home of Exeter City) this afternoon supporting Blackpool in the FA Cup, but this is not a properly ordered universe, not while the Oyston family is still in control at Bloomfield Road. The supporter boycott continues.

As an alternative, I took a walk in the park with Adele - that's Blackpool's award-winning Stanley Park (created in 1928). It was an overcast day, not untypical of the north-west in November, but at least the rain held off. I thought I'd look for inspiration for a poem, maybe even write it al fresco. Well, that last part didn't happen, but it was a relaxing hour's walk and sufficiently inspiring, I think.

We were pursued for quite some while by a tribe of tufty grey squirrels who are so tame they expect to be hand-fed; alas we'd gone without provisions, so eventually they scampered off in disgust shaking their tails at us. There wasn't much interesting bird life in evidence; a few maggies (one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a pie...), some rather sorry-looking cormorants and a couple of sweet green parakeets - plus the usual suspects (gulls and pigeons aplenty). Of course there isn't anything in flower at this time of year, not in the ornamental beds nor the rose garden - so the stars of the park were the trees, rapidly unleafing, having gone a spectacular array of reds, yellows and browns.

The walk to Cocker Tower in Stanley Park

There were various commemorative artefacts to see as well - a newly unveiled remembrance bench and displays of  artificial poppies. As we walked the woodland paths I was thinking about November 1918 on this 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War, of fallen men and falling leaves and the sheer magnitude of big numbers, like the ten million soldiers who lost their lives in that conflict.

Have you ever wondered how many leaves there are on a mature tree? I looked it up on the internet when I got home, for inevitably someone has calculated this. Depending on the type and  size of tree, naturally, the number is anywhere between 20,000 and 80,000. Taking an average of 50,000, that would mean in an avenue comprised of a hundred pairs of trees, each falling leaf would represent the loss of one small but infinitely precious life during that war-to-end-all-wars, ten million hopes scattered to the winds -staggering to contemplate.

At the going down of the sun, the park's Cocker Tower (below) was illuminated with a series of images of remembrance, a moving tribute from the town to those who served and died in order that we could live free.

I've not written a new poem for this week's blog, but you're welcome to revisit the Winter Ghost blog I wrote a year ago about the Christmas 1914 football game in No Man's Land, linked here: http://deadgoodpoets.blogspot.com/2017/12/winter-ghost.html

Thanks for reading. Until next week, S :-)

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The Best Decade - My 1960s

I like to write historical fiction. I get a lot of enjoyment from researching specific eras. There is so much to learn and I never tire of it. I’ve spent a long time, in fits and starts, on a project that begins in the early 1960s and I’d love to see it completed, though it may have to stay on the back burner until I am able to dedicate more of myself to it. I expected to be retired by now, me like many others, and I planned to treat my project like a full-time job and see if it went anywhere. Let’s wait and see if I’ve still got a functioning brain by the time I get my pension.

I’m choosing the 1960s as the best decade that I have known and I’ve chosen through personal experience and not my research. I was born in the mid-fifties into a wonderful, close family of strong minded women and hard working men. I appreciate how fortunate I am to have had the love, security and grounding of a decent up-bringing. I’ve always been mindful that not everyone is so lucky.

In the mid-sixties we moved to Blackpool. Life got even more exciting. My parents had their dream pub on the promenade and clearly loved it. South Shore beach became my playground, with my younger sister, buckets and spades and either our mother or our adored housekeeper, Auntie Kathy to look after us. We watched the whole world from our upstairs windows, holiday makers dashing off the beach as a storm came over the sea, silly hats, illuminated trams and gangs of what my dad called Beatniks. As soon as the illuminations ended, that was it, Blackpool prom died. The winter view was one of an empty, bleak wilderness, but it was fascinating watching the waves come over the sea wall and crash on to the tram lines during a fierce gale. If only I could see it all again, but thinking as an adult now, I would be worried about the rattling sash windows blowing in. The summer of 1968 is still my favourite, even though my mother embarrassed me by telling singer/songwriter/busker Don Partridge how much I adored him, as we were being introduced. He didn’t seem to mind but I certainly did. He was in the Central Pier show for the summer season and we, that is me and my mum, were front of house guests and back stage guests on separate occasions. I was enthralled to hear him sing ‘Rosie’ and ‘Blue Eyes’ live on stage and I still love those songs. We had a summer of shows and meeting people including Engelbert Humperdinck. He was headlining at the ABC theatre. I was speechless.

My poem is an old one of mine, written with love for those bygone days. It reminds me now of a late friend, Christo Heyworth. When he read the poem, he told me that the ‘grumpy deck chair man’ could have been him, though, as I said at the time, I couldn’t imagine Christo being grumpy.

 

This Was My Blackpool In ’68.

Taking a tram from North Pier to Starr Gate.

A summer of fun and staying up late.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Anne, Auntie Kath and me, all holding hands

Crossing the Prom to get on to the sands

Where the grumpy deck-chair man always stands.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

We were young ladies with panache and style,

Playing the penny arcades for a while,

Frittering our spends on the Golden Mile.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Spinning the Waltzers three times in a row.

Make it go faster, we don’t like it slow,

And then the man said, “That’s it, off you go!”

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Out to a summer show, straight after tea.

Engelbert tonight at the ABC,

A back-stage delight for my mum and me.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

Got to get ready, there’s no time to lose!

My trendiest outfit is what I will choose…

A pink mini dress with bright orange shoes.

This was my Blackpool in ’68. 

A time of peace, love and Flower Power,

Charlie Cairoli and Blackpool Tower,

Seaside and sunshine for hour after hour.

This was my Blackpool in ’68.

Pamela Winning,   2013

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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