Re Collections

I've reached a difficult decision this week - not to go to Greece for a summer holiday (the first miss in years). It's been a tough call, because the temptation to go is huge.

It's not that Greece isn't a safe place. Compared to the UK's 304,000 cases and 46,000 deaths (both conservative figures as we know), Greece had only just over 4,000 cases and 206 deaths - yes, that few, you didn't read it wrong.

More people have died of coronavirus in Blackpool & the Fylde than in the whole of Greece, so I'd feel perfectly safe if I were on some sun-drenched Aegean island right now. The issues are more to do with travelling, the unpredictability of airlines and flights, doubts over the validity of holiday insurance. On balance, it seems wisest to stay in the jewel of the north this summer, to stock up on retsina, work my way through some Greek recipe books and hope we get a decent run of weather this August and September.

You may wonder what all of that has to do with collections and it's simply this, I've been 'collecting' Greek destinations for over forty years. It's the country I've visited more widely and more often than any other. I nearly retired to live there; it's almost a spiritual home. From each place I've visited I've brought back not only the happiest of memories and abundant photographs but also local pottery, just one of the things I collect.

Pottery from Crete and Paros and Rhodes

Strangely enough, I've also got a collection of hand-blown Finnish glassware, though I've never been to Finland. Less unusual, if you know my musical tastes, is my collection of West Coast concert posters from the psychedelic sixties, but then I have been to San Francisco on several occasion in reality, and many more times in my mind.

Where did it all start, this collecting lark? With stamps probably, as a boy; and those picture card series of birds and flowers and footballers that one could collect in packets of PG and Ty-phoo tea... all gone many decades since.

Of course, as you'd expect, I have other, more mainstream collections, of books and records, CDs and DVDs, football programmes and music magazines. I've even got an anorak.

I've made one other decision this week. From time to time readers of the blog have commented asking if I've published a book of poetry. No I haven't, not even a pamphlet, just occasional pieces in anthologies. So instead of a Greek holiday this year I'm going to fund publication of a selection of my poems, my first collection if you like - though there won't necessarily be a second one! There, I've said it, a declaration of intent, so I've got to do it.

I've not written a poem for this blog, but I'm working on a Rhapsody, ῥαψῳδός  (rhapsodos) in Greek, meaning the stitching of a lyric together - based on lines and ideas I've been collecting in my notebooks for a while. Instead, I'll sign off today with this photograph. Missing you!

Temple ruins on beautiful Kos

Thanks very much for reading. Have a good week and if you're a collector, happy collecting. S ;-)

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Seashore

These are strange days indeed. I was planning to serve you up a sandy Saturday Blog - and will endeavour to do so still - but the progress of Coronavirus (alias Covid-19) is starting to make its presence felt now in dramatic fashion. What apparently emerged as a strange new strain of a respiratory illness in Wuhan, China, late last year is now sweeping - with all the attributes of a pandemic - right around the world.

As I type this blog, and to try and give some sense of perspective, there are more people living on Central Drive in Blackpool than there are confirmed Covid-19 cases in the whole of the UK at the moment (798 was the most recent official figure for the latter); and for the majority of people who contract this new strain of Coronavirus, the effects will be no worse, allegedly, than a mild bout of flu. Those citizens who are most at risk are the very old and anyone with an underlying respiratory issue. I fear a little bit for my uncle, in his nineties and living in a residential care home in Blackpool. I worry for my daughters who both live and work in London (one in the fashion industry and one at London Zoo) and that concern is as much for the economic impact this is going to have as anything. For myself, as supporters' liaison officer for Blackpool Football Club, I shall be kicking my heels for a few weeks, given the EFL's decision to pend all league football until April at the earliest.

I suppose what people fear most is the unknown: exactly how high the exponential rise in confirmed cases  is going to go and over what time period; whether/when parts of this country will have to be put into lockdown as appears to be happening in various European locales (Europe now being the epicentre of the pandemic, we're told); what the economic impact is going to be on those hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on human footfall for their viability (and the staff they employ and the families they support). Thank you, China! (an ungracious thought, but one has to wonder exactly how all this started).

Once I've posted this blog, if the sun stays shining as it is currently doing, I shall take a long and bracing walk along the seafront in the jewel of the north, with its six miles of golden sand. If the tide is out (I haven't checked the tide tables, I'll just turn up and see) I might go down onto the seashore and let the sunshine, the rush of ozone and the open vista blow these viral blues away.

The first seashore I was taken to was a sandy beach near Lagos, Nigeria, as a small boy. I've seen photographs of me on the shore looking at the Atlantic rollers coming in but I don't remember much apart from the big blue blobs of stranded jellyfish melting in hot African sun. Then it was Southsea beach near Portsmouth, where my maternal grandparents lived - but that was all pebbly! Living in the east of England upon returning to the UK (Peterborough and Cambridge), our jaunts as kids to the seashore were typically to Norfolk, where Hunstanton with its wide expanse of sand was a favourite, although summer holidays to the Devon coast were also happy times.

Given my affinity with coast and sea (which I put down to my Viking lineage), it was strange that I should find myself residing and working in Hertfordshire (about as far from any seashore as it's possible to be in this country) for most of my adult life. Week-ends and holidays were always an opportunity to head to the margins of the land (be it in this country or abroad), to walk on the sand, to enjoy the sea and that special light that one finds where beach and ocean meet. Now that I live just minutes from one of the finest seashores in the British Isles, it can be a daily pleasure and I consider myself a very fortunate Seasider indeed.

Right, I've gone a bit Celtic fringe with this week's poem, something I shared as a work-in-progress with my friends of the Blackpool & Fylde Stanza group the other evening. They told me it was too long - so I've cut it into two separate poems and here's the first of them. (The other will appear at some later date, I'm sure). My thanks to my fellow poeticals for their helpful feedback, which I've taken into consideration in completing this piece.

I'll say no more in terms of a preamble except that Mwnt beach is in Ceredigion, South Wales, it's a worthwhile challenge to get to (my wife and I first visited it with our one-year old daughter in 1987 when it was in the middle of MoD land, though I believe the National Trust has now acquired it), plus it's a good place to see dolphins and sunsets and was cited recently as one of Europe's top ten loveliest hidden beaches (though don't all rush there, please). Oh, and the poem mentions splendid isolation, so it's also spookily topical. How about that? I hope you enjoy it.

Climbing Down To Mwnt
Under steep Foel y Mwnt it lay,
the hidden beach,
enticing and unpeopled,
a perfect sandy half-moon bay
hemmed by its silver tangle tideline.

The way to shore proved difficult,
downwards at forty-five degrees
with no obvious path,
exacting for its being so sheer
through coarse damp grass
and jagged yellow gorse
snagged with the fleece of sheep
perched unperturbed on such a slant.

They cropped at salty verdure
in mid- morning sun
in seeming defiance of gravity.
I marvelled that they didn't all
just roll down woolly to the shore,
as we navigated slowly past,
side-footing each steep step
by careful step, you leading,
laden with rugs and picnic basket, I
with our year-old daughter in my arms,
for we were young and strong
and all things were possible.

Glancing briefly up behind us
from the flatness of the strand,
that slope looked more imposing yet,
those dotted sheep the more improbable.
Apart from it not being on any map,
it's no wonder so few ventured
down to where we spread out rugs
in splendid isolation and set
our sand-child free to play.
We saw never another soul
all that perfect summer's day.

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy and have a good week, S :-)

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