Superstition - Good Afternoon, Mr Magpie

It was here again the other day. I heard it before I saw it, that horrible noise, like a distorted football rattle, then it swooped down from next door’s tree to strut around my garden like it owns the place. The magpie. Hopefully, there’s another one coming along. Not that I’m superstitious. After a muttering of “Good afternoon, Mr Magpie, pass my best wishes to your good lady wife” I forget all about him and carry on wiping down the kitchen. I notice him fly away with a companion, “One for sorrow, two for joy”, that’s good.

It is just as well that I’m not bothered by cracks in the footpath. I can’t avoid them when I’m pegging out washing and so far, I haven’t come to any harm. They give the courtyard character and somewhere to brush away the shattered shell of the snail I didn’t mean to tread on.

I’m not worried by the number thirteen, but I wouldn’t want to have thirteen people round a dinner table or gathering. That’s the one thing I share with the queen. Actually, I don’t think I know twelve people who would join me for dinner. Well, after lockdown, maybe.

There are superstitious rules concerning cutlery which have existed from my childhood and probably made up by my grandmothers and other ladies of their generation in my family to encourage good table manners. Dropped cutlery meant unexpected visitors and if it was a knife, the visitor would be a man. I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed this. I wonder what we’d get if I dropped a handful of teaspoons? No, I’m not experimenting. Anyway, it’s got to be accidental. There is a correct way to leave cutlery on a finished plate. Deviate from the acceptable and we’re inviting the devil, apparently. The devil doesn’t like salt. Spilling salt causes bad luck. Quickly remedy the situation by throwing a pinch over your left shoulder into the eyes of the waiting devil. To spill salt was considered to be wasting money, dating back to ‘salary’ times.

I once broke the mirror on a handbag compact. I still use it, very carefully because it has a sharp bit and I’ve had the odd nick. I should really buy a new one. I’m not aware of any bad luck as a result, certainly not seven years’ worth. When it comes to personal care, no nail trimming on Sundays, but I’ve no idea why not.

Is it just me with pillowcases? The open ends must always face the same way, usually towards a window and I won’t change bed linen on a Friday. Superstition or not?

Here is my haiku for that pesky bird,

Strutting so aloof

As if it owns my garden.

Arrogant magpie.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and well. Back soon, fingers crossed. Pam x

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An Almighty Crack

Diary of Lt. Arnold Scrote; Thursday the 13^th of May 1897.
I have travelled to the many corners of this globe of ours. I have discovered and oppressed many a new species of tribal savages, come face to face with the terrifying Nabnab Shrew of Peru, and slept under the stars with only a short nosed Startled Snark for company.

 

But the most loathsome, disgusting, and dare I say evil creature I have ever encountered happened earlier today as I explored a part of this great country of ours. I was sand sifting up on the Fylde Coast when I happened upon an almighty crack found down the front of her Majesty's Promenade.

 

Having been once described by the Rev. Dan Brown as “the world famous explorer”, I wasted no time in enslaving a party of the local savages and headed down deep into this moist opening. The smell of dead sea creatures hung in the air like a think sponge cake made by my house keeper, Mrs Crotching.

 

Armed only with torches and guns, we soldiered on for the love of England. It was deep within the bowels of this crevice that I first laid eyes upon the odious beast. Its large slimy body heaved with every breath. Two disc like eyes, dead of humanity, pieced my soul as it turned its attention to my exploring party.

 

Madness took hold of the savages. In fear they fled back towards the surface. I too had a moment where I almost forgot I was a Gentleman and had to dig deep within my Englishness to stop myself fleeing.

 

The beast, resembling a monstrous mollusc with grey slimy skin and a lipless mouth from which it would produce a huge tongue that excreted more ooze that dripped down over its body; this monstrous oyster, this meglodon mollusc, this ‘Oyston’, putrid in appearance and hideous in its existence.

 

              [Image removed as it might cause revulsion and terror in all who look upon it.]

 

I could no longer take being in the company of such arrogance and made my way back to the surface. As I looked back at the cavern I could only hope the creature did not have intelligence enough to follow me. I fear that should the ‘Oyston’ make it to the surface it would only bring suffering to many a loyal subject.

 

Tomorrow I shall return to the crack and use explosives to seal it. I cannot see how such a thing would have already escaped. So as of tomorrow, ‘Victoria’s Crevice’ will be renamed as the ‘Boom Field’. May God have mercy on its soul.

 

Colin Davies

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The Crack-Up

I'm picking up on and extending a topic that Louise blogged about a few weeks ago...

I count myself extremely fortunate to have only ever cracked up with laughter in my life. I like to think of myself as well-balanced, (maybe I'm just shallow), and I've never been subject to those depths of depression, self-doubt or mental illness that can be so utterly debilitating.

A friend from my school days, the most handsome and gregarious of us all, committed himself to a mental institution in his twenties and harboured there for some time until one day he walked out and threw himself under a train. My paternal uncle has suffered several 'break-downs' in his life and has bounced back. My aunt was not the bouncing kind.

It has pained me to watch the impact on friends and relatives who have suffered in some way with depression or a degree of mental breakdown. For my part, I can only try and empathise. I don't know what their respective hells were really like and I hope never to experience such trauma at first hand. That is where great art (and for me, literature in particular) is so invaluable in extending our emotional understanding of psyches and states beyond our immediate apprehension.

I've just re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Crack-Up', an autobiographical story he wrote in his late thirties (he died young at 44), in which he likens himself to "a cracked plate, the kind that one wonders whether it is worth preserving." It's a brilliant piece of writing; frank, self-deprecating and witty but deeply humane. I first read it when I was in my teens and harbouring pretensions to be the next F. Scott Fitzgerald (like so many others) and have returned to it several times down the decades. Sadly, my aspiration to write a Penguin Twentieth-Century Classic failed to meet the deadline - but maybe that was for the best.

Today's poem (which I have performed at a couple of open mic nights recently) is in memory of Jane Rowland (1929-1979). The title is deliberately ambiguous. Jane's "crack-up" (as it was referred to at the time) was never actually spoken of in any detail nor ever explained, so the inferences are mine alone. Nowadays, or course, one cannot open the doors while the train is in motion...

In Reading Between The Lines
Nondescript Jane leaves her routine job
at the end of a typical day
and rides in the crush of the rush-hour tube
to catch the express from Paddington,
just one of thousands of nondescripts
at the start of her homeward way.

Tired, she reclines in a carriage seat,
glad of the rest for her weary feet
and flicks through a paper she's bought.
Awaiting departure patiently,
she looks, perhaps, a little fraught
but nondescriptly neat.

Once underway, on the six-eighteen,
she reviews (again) her dull routine;
at the end of the line, a loveless home
with the husband she'd hoped would compensate
for the emptiness she's grown to hate;
(but illusions reveal themselves too late).
At the carriage window, opaque with fog,
she communes in silent dialogue
with her bland, reflected self.
Pain makes her pale. (There's little else.)

Then, with a subtle, mirrored assent
she moves in a dream of nerved intent,
no longer thinking of wrong or right,
she's suffered too long to repent.
So she walks unnoticed towards the door,
for no-one interprets the nondescript signs
when she grips the handle, shuts her eyes tight;
and her scream, as keen as shining steel,
curves away on the night.


Thanks for reading. Have a good week, Steve ;-)

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When The Cracks Begin To Appear

So you had it all.  The meeting, the engagement, the wedding - and it was all perfect.  You settle down, perhaps buy a house, have a couple of kids and then … just when you thought you were going to have the happily ever after  you notice a little dust has appeared on the floor of your fairy tale castle.

You glance around, can’t see the cause, so you sweep it away. Until the next time it appears.

This time there is a long crack in the plasterwork and you think about speaking to someone but decide just to repaint it and carry on. Mistake! The foundations are slipping and this is the first outward sign that something serious is happening - but you are happy. Too happy to stop and examine the root cause of the problem.

In case I have lost you with the analogy, I am not really talking about the state of the house but the little cracks that go unnoticed in a relationship that, if left unattended, can eventually bring about the demise of what to those on the outside may seem perfect.

My earliest poetry, in fact my first serious attempt at poetry, was far more therapeutic than it set out to be. I wrote about my wall, a euphemism for the barriers to social interaction and relationships that I had built up in eight years of flying solo after my own marriage ended. I had put all my efforts into my two children and work, keeping my emotions firmly walled up. I was encouraged to start writing by an Australian friend and the first few poems were a revelation, especially to me. This one was written long after the dust-cloud had cleared.

Five Facets of Woman

 

She’s a goddess in the kitchen,

an angel delight in a pinny

and he wonders,

by what magic she conjures a banquet

while keeping her shape svelte and skinny?

 

She’s a children’s entertainer,

Enthralling them indoors and out

and he wonders,

how does she sweetly cajole them,

when he is inclined to shout?

 

She’s Miss Nightingale when they are poorly,

soothing and fussing just right

and he wonders,

why does the strength never leave her,

though she has been watching all night?

 

She’s a whizz with the household accounting,

her bargaining skills are sublime,

and he wonders,

why all that he wants and whatever he needs

is always there, all of the time?

 

She’s a kitten in the bedroom,

her skin is so silky and smooth,

and he wonders,

how she can always delight him,

mirror his every move?

 

She’s a finely faced diamond

of exquisite quality,

a treasure that cannot be measured,

a creature of fantasy

and he wonders,

what if she loses her sparkle,

escapes from his platinum band?

Then his eyes glint with emerald tinges

as he tightens his grip on her hand.

 

He is looking for imperfection,

for infinitesimal flaw.

Each hint of insecurity,

loosens a once firm claw

and she wonders

why is her vibrance fading,

her lustre growing dim,

when she was his precious diamond

and all that she was shone for him?

 

Thanks for reading. Adele. 

 

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