Moustaches

 

“A kiss without a moustache is like an egg without salt.”

This saying dates back to Victorian times. The origin is unknown but has been cited to various authors, Rudyard Kipling, Rose Wilder Lane and Jean-Paul Sartre, who is thought to have added “and it is like Good without Evil”.

I remember my dad saying it a lot, when he grew a moustache in his later years. It was just ordinary, nothing stylish. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. He had new glasses at the same time and his whole appearance changed from the happy looking man with a kind face I adored, into someone I felt like I needed to be very wary of. He looked like a cross between the horrid piano teacher I used to have and the equally horrid landlord of a flat I used to rent. Fortunately, my father didn’t stink of stale cigars and his moustache wasn’t stained dirty yellow with nicotine like my piano teacher. Dad disliked the landlord as much as I did and I would tease him about being a copycat. It was a relief when that moustache was shaved off, though the glasses remained.

Each to their own, of course, but isn’t a high maintenance styled moustache over the top and time consuming? Personally, I like a beard attached, but I’m only seeing the results, not looking after it.

The music I favoured in the ‘60s and ‘70s, was progressive rock and symphonic rock. Band members with long hair and often moustaches and beards. I found this poem that took me back to those young, impressionable times. And the music is the same and always there, with a few new bands collected along the way. The poem is by American poet, Gershon Wolf.

Freaky and Weird

We grew our hair down to our shoulders
Hirsute, we were, moustaches and beards,
Turned up our noses at those who were older
‘Cos we were so hip, so freaky, so weird.

Revved up our stereos, going stone-deaf,
Dropped pill after pill, of common sense bereft,
Wore psychedelic threads to match our psychedelic brains.
We thought ourselves ‘free’, but we were really in chains.

Don’t ask me if the Sixties were ‘wonderful years!’
- Just leave me alone with my cigars and my beer.

                                                                    Gershon Wolf

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Enslavement - History

When I was young and starting out in my working life, I was amused by a cartoon poster on the staff room wall depicting a group of disgruntled workers, with one of them shouting, “They can’t sack us, slaves have to be sold!” It was harmless and was meant in good humour at the time, but it wouldn’t be acceptable now.
 

Recently, a statue of merchant Edward Colston was toppled and pushed into Bristol Harbour during the George Floyd protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement. Colston was a figure of controversy for a number of years, concerning his involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. He is one of many British merchant / slave traders and there are things to learn about all of them, good and bad. Colston’s statue was removed from the harbour and will take a place in a Bristol museum with his full details. Perhaps that would be the way forward with other controversial figures.  Every city and town in the United Kingdom has area names and street names that can be traced back to a potential slave trade origin. It would be wrong to rename them. Morally, history cannot be changed, rewritten or hidden, as in Orwell’s ‘1984’. We learn from history and move on.

Across Morecambe Bay, on Sunderland Point, lies Sambo’s Grave, a place I have visited many times.
Sunderland Point was an 18^th century port serving Lancaster and surrounding areas with cotton, sugar and slave ships from the Caribbean. Sambo is thought to be a young slave belonging to a ship’s captain.  He took ill and died at Sunderland Point, and as a non-Christian, was buried in unconsecrated ground.
 

From Wikipedia – ‘Some sixty years after the death, a retired head master from Lancaster Boys’ Grammar School, Mr James Watson, heard the story and raised money from summer visitors to the area for a memorial to be placed on the unmarked grave. Watson, who was the brother of prominent Lancaster slave trader, William Watson, also wrote the epitaph that now marks the grave,

 Slavery is still out there, hard to spot, but it exists in different forms, some of it close to home. County line drug runners, under-age prostitution, sweat shop factory workers. Vulnerable people from here and abroad promised a better life. Modern slavery.

Sonnet to William Wilberforce

 Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,

     Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call'd

     Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th' enthrall'd

     From exile, public sale, and slav'ry's chain.

     Friend of the poor, the wrong'd, the fetter-gall'd,

     Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain!

     Thou hast achiev'd a part; hast gain'd the ear

     Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause;

     Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho' cold caution pause

     And weave delay, the better hour is near,

     That shall remunerate thy toils severe

     By peace for Afric, fenc'd with British laws.

     Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love

     From all the just on earth, and all the blest above!

                                                  By William Cowper

   Thanks for reading, Pam x

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A very lost Blackpool

With the demolition of many of the town's architectural gems from years gone by, in the name of "Progress" (which is laughably also the town's motto), there is much of Blackpool that its ever transient population know little, if anything about.

I have posted in the past, a poem written about Blackpool in its heyday, when the Wakes Weeks would turn out the whole population of mill towns for their yearly holiday break. Thousands upon thousands of people would descend on our seaside resort, to let their hair down, fill their boots and relax as best they could. In that poem, I compared then with now, and what this place has become.

I wanted to go back further though and write something which told of the origins of our "Black pull". In the following poem, there is equal measure of fact and fable (or artistic license as some might say), and I would like for YOU to discover where those lines are drawn. Blackpool's history is fascinating! I urge you ... go and find out more for yourself!


Origin:

I want to take you on a journey to Centuries past,
Picture it in your mind!
Close your eyes and come with me
As time begins to unwind ...

A coastal moor so very bleak,
windswept with bog and dune grass.
No inhabitants except for local wildlife,
birds wheeling and screeching en-mass.

The odd twisted tree bent from the Gale,
stands like an old man hunched with age.
Isolated, with its branches reaching out,
pointing the way like an ancient Sage.

Further inland, a line of deepest green
marked the start of a Forest so dark,
providing shelter of sorts from the elements,
away from the mire and landscape so stark.

There were settlements scattered here and there
throughout this densely wooded land ...
Gypsy encampments, this was their home,
Earth and Human living hand in hand.

Hunting and fishing just to survive,
it was a quiet and peaceful life.
Disturbed by none, they flourished here,
even through harshest winters and through strife.

Legally, the land belonged to the King,
to do with just as he chose.
But though the folk who lived here did no harm,
they soon found of it he wanted to dispose.

We come forward through time, just a little bit,
to find a Lord has been awarded this land.
Along he came and built a Lodge,
Vaux (Fox) Hall, his place to hunt and relax by the sand.

It became a popular place for his friends,
to come and enjoy the air by the sea.
Then he started driving out the local Gypsy’s
by burning the Forest, forcing them to flee.

It was the start of development along this coastline.
One by one, more houses appeared.
Mostly Fishermen just earning their keep,
on the land of the Lord they so feared.

As the Forest receded and disappeared,
a town slowly grew over the sand and peat.
With a reputation for curing all that ails,
To come to the “Black Pull” was a real treat!

But spare a thought for those Gypsy’s ...
They lost their home without real reason or rhyme.
This is a story of the origin of our town,
I hope you enjoyed our journey through time.

Thanks for reading! ;-) x

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