Cumulus

It has not been an easy week, and I'm not really focused on clouds or blogs right now. 

On the plus side, America demonstrated an upswelling of common sense and decency as Trump and his musky pals got their come-uppance in the mid-term elections, the Republicans losing control of both houses - though I fear the world will still be subjected to more fuckery from the orange man-child over the next two years. 

Then on the minus side, Adele lost her very dear older sister to an unexpected and catastrophic stroke. We were only lunching with her last week and she seemed so happy and full of life, heading off to over-winter in Spain. That sudden sad event has really overshadowed everything else in recent days.

cumulus

I've written a brief poetic 'requiem' as an immediate response, which you can read here:

Cumulation

At five on the fifth, her death.

She is one with the clouds rising,

rose gold and intangible as breath.

And I'm working on a longer poem, 'Lesley's Last Day On Earth', that will appear at some future date.

However, I didn't want to short-change you, so I'm also sharing another poem about death, as it fits the mood. Here is Ruth Padel, one of my favourite contemporary poets, reflecting movingly on the passing of loved ones. It's from her latest collection, 'Girl ' (Chatto & Windus, 2024).

Last Breath

Another angel     now foretelling death

like maybe all angels do. Last time it was just

her and the angel in a corner

but this dying is O so public

her son's friends in brace position

covering their heads    knuckles in their eyes

each one more private than she is

her body flung back on the bed in a coarse red dress

her halo a demi-lune thread you hardly see

everything ungainly    lolling head

swollen stomach dangling feet. No tights

no cover up of old lady legs.

Looking at her picture online

I remember my mother's hands still wearing the ring

he gave her    a little translucent beige topaz

I always wished it had more colour but she loved it

and the wedding ring behind    thinned and resized

through the decades. Hands so age-spotted

there seemed more freckle than skin

flesh sunk to nothing between the bones

raised veins where the warfarin-blended cells

have finally given up    hands that cooked for us all

so many years    wiped up    cleared up    gave us the world

now folded over her stomach in that purple fleecy top of hers.

We were all round her like the sorrowing apostles.

It was the mountainous breathing. It was the heart.

I went out into the February evening

under a moon capsized like a canoe

picked a spike of myrtle    a few snowdrops

nodding their fresh white and green

and put them into her hands

with a blackbird fluting away into the dark.

                                                                   Ruth Padel

I hope that normal service will be restored next weekend.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Heroic Cutlets

To my certain Norwich, not since school daze have I composted a pome in heroic cutlets. Hand to hart, pen to paper, it's just not my stylo. Those neat rose of foot soldiers, ranks of the iambic pent amateurs... te tum te tum te tum te tum te tum. Good lord, te deum!

Only once have I, even Steven, ventured 'remotely close' - now there's a poxymoron - to writing a comic pome in rhyming pears and that was tenures ago. You can find it here:  Death By Chocolate, defiantly not heroic!

Nerveless, just for today, I'm going full heroic cutlets. Think of this new pome as a spiritual prequel to the one linked above. Read my home groan tail and weep. Chop chop!

A Savoy Savory

There was a village in the south of France

much troubled by the native boars' advance.

Down from the Alps the tusky porcines swarmed,

searching out troubadours where they performed

in squares and halls, for boars hated music,

roused them to a spiteful pitch of physic

and an urge to purge all such antic sounds.

Even when the minstrels had gone to ground

the hyped up beasts laid waste to all around,

and this one village in Savoy they found

so much to their liking, they chose to stay!

The frightened folk hid in their church to pray

for deliverance from this massacre.

The pigs meanwhile munched all the brassica,

a staple of the region's cabbage soup.

While the citizens huddled in a group

came riding by a Knight of the Long Knives

accompanied by his two lovely wives.

They saw at once what needed to be done

and laid about them till the final one

of the squealing, charging, mad-eyed tuskers

crusading against the tribe of buskers

was flung atop the bloody pile! Starving

villagers rejoiced, joined in the carving

by their Hero and his couplet of dames

(though history does not record their names)

then built a massive fire with orange flames

and while the chops were grilling they played games

of 'blind man's buff' and other lively sports -

'squeak, piggy, squeak', 'defender of the forts' -

until such time as everything was prepped.

Then to their seats the grateful peasants stepped.

They tucked into the butchers' prime cutlets

(for vegans the wives provided nutlets :-)

and most said roast boar chops with rosemary

were quite the thing, though a few were chary,

but everyone agreed they feasted well.

Here ends my tale, there is no more to tell.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Cracked

An alarmingly topical take tonight as Storm Boelo blasts across the jewel of the north, furious on the heels of slightly more dainty Storm Austen.

It blustered all through an afternoon of torrential rain at the football stadium, where not so mighty Blackpool slumped to a dispiriting 1-4 defeat (and it could have been more) after a bright opening. Tactics and fortunes changed at half time, and as thousands of soaked supporters streamed out early in the downpour leaving the home stands virtually empty well before the final whistle, it feels as though something has cracked in the collective spirit of the club and its fanbase.

cracked

And Boelo hasn't let up this evening. A screaming wind is whining across as I write this, tugging at rooftops and chimney pots, bending trees, mashing fences to the accompaniment of battering squalls of rain. This evening's events - the annual Lightpool festival and a firework display - have been cancelled and anyone with any sense is hunkered down and hoping for the best as 80mph gusts tear in from the Irish Sea. If I still drank whisky, I would be doing so now, with headphones clamped on and a bit of Wagner blasting out. 

wild and windy way

An amber alert has been advised for the north-west and this storm is going to rage all night...for an extra hour as well, because the clocks go back. It's a wild one, Boelo (meaning brave or strong apparently) and here's a strange new poem to suit the mood. It comes with the caveat that it may get modified down the road.

Boelo

How was it for you? he asked, basking in the aftermath 

like some spent, self-satisfied lover seeking affirmation.

Rewind a few hours...

He came in sweeping off the western sea, blindly lusting

in his passion, ripped and roaring, set on forcing himself

on whatever lay in his whoring way. It was her bad luck, 

poor, gap-toothed Funtown, to fall prey to his attentions,

who was minding her business, trying to enjoy a Saturday

night with mates. She'd been warned about his sort before

but you've got to live, don't you. He ripped apart defences

and battered and pounded, on and on. No more, she cried,

no more, make it stop, but he was deaf to entreaty. Where

he got the strength from she didn't know,  and he came on

this senseless Boelo, mad for it, a force of nature, passion

without pause,  his agonising onslaught lasting until dawn.

It was then, assuaged, that he asked so how was it for you? 

Terrifying, she whimpered, shivering still. A violation.

                         

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Running Numbers

A staple of US crime novels and gangster movies, running  numbers  is part of the mechanism of illegal betting rackets, a favourite enterprise of the American mafia back in the day. Although legal state lotteries had been in place in some states ever since the Louisiana State Lottery Company obtained a 25-year charter for its state lottery system in 1868, the Mob couldn't resist the hugely lucrative financial rewards of the numbers racket, and they did a pretty good job of organising their unlicensed lottery in the major cities. 

The interesting thing about it is that, since bettors were suspicious of criminal gambling syndicates, instead of having the racketeer organise the draw himself (since then, he could cheat, and choose numbers no-one had bet on), the winning numbers would be something out in the public domain,  printed in a reputable newspaper, numbers clearly not under the bookie's control.

picking a winner

For many years, the 'number' was the last three digits of the 'handle', the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers (much like attendance figures at football games). Other numbers, like the last digits of a stock price, or the exact balance of the US Treasury, were sometimes used. Punters would place bets with a bookie at a tavern, bar, barber shop, social club, or any other semi-private place acting as an illegal betting parlour. Runners would carry the money and betting slips between the betting parlours and the local syndicate headquarters, called a 'numbers bank'.

I planned and co-hosted a poetry writing workshop recently based on numbers and objects. One of the numbers I chose was pi. Others included the fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio.

There is a growing body of poems whose form references the mathematical constant known as π (or pi), the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. As a number, it is written as 3.1415926535897932384626433 (etc to as many decimal places as you care). As a poem - or rather a piem - regardless of content, its form is based in some fashion on the sequence of digits in the constant.

This could be for instance letters or syllables per word (or line), words per line, lines per stanza or some other cleverly devious representation of 3.1415926535897932384626433 (etc), or a rounding of it to so many decimal places - you choose. Let me give you some examples that I shared at the workshop.

Here’s a straightforward piem from Sir James Hopward Jeans based on the number of letters in each word:

How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

Here’s a piem by Dmitri Borgman that uses the number of letters per word approach, only he’s taken it to the thirtieth digit of pi and he’s choses an ABAB rhyming structure:

Now, a moon, a lover refulgent in flight,
Sails the black silence's loneliest ellipse.
Computers use pi, the constant, when polite,
Or gentle data for sad tracking aid at eclipse.

Here’s a piem variation based on lines in a stanza. Jacques Bens has structured it on the first five digits of pi, and because they happen to add up to fourteen, he’s called the form an irrational sonnet:

Melancholy

So I’ll once more find my old horizons,
cherished scent of winds and habitations.
Fear not if it seems I’m quitting the place.

I leave Paris just to love it better.

One tends to hurry a banal embrace.
But what’s this pride worth that’s past all seasons?
Try to unite the heart with its reasons.
The city, while smiling, leaves a rough trace.

I leave Paris just to love you better.

To love you better, I couldn’t picture—
Now I see the present whisks us away.
To see you, I have to step back a bit.
I lock up my regrets, as will be fit,
Slipping my key under your entryway.

At the workshop in Kate Eggleston-Wirtz's art studio, I worked (among other pieces) on a piem of my own, based on an object in her studio, this quaint rocking-horse. I suppose I chose it because I had in mind to write this blog about betting, horses and running numbers. That, and it was stood right in front of me.

the rocking-horse winner

I've used  π (or pi) to determine the form of the poem, in this case the number of lines in each stanza. I didn't stop at fourteen lines, but raced on to nine decimal places (3.141592653) before running out of puff.

Horse Pi(e)

Triangle on a quadrilateral

with parallel legs and a rocking base,

some child's delight, a nursery toy.

Stop!

D.H. Lawrence wrote a ghost story

about a boy, The Rocking Horse Winner,

who rode a frantic dash to death

proclaiming "I've got it - Malabar."

Or some such.

I've not read it in, oh, fifty years

but I'm pretty sure he guessed

the winners in advance of big races

by going into a rocking trance

until the name came to him.

He told the family's gardener,

good working man, who placed his bets

and managed the money that came in,

sometimes used a tip on his own behalf

but nothing compared to the thousands

the boy was building up in secret,

planning to give the funds to his mother

who always complained of not having

enough for the family to get by.

When she told him he was getting too old

for rocking horses, he planned one last run.

That's what killed him, number one son,

eighty thousand to the good. I wonder

what happened to the little horse

after the tragedy. His story wasn't told.

Did he become horse pi(e)?

Put down to firewood perhaps?

Did grief, that constant

reminder of the ratio between

the circumference of their loss

and the diameter of their gain 

prove endlessly recurring

on haunted nights? 

The soft rhythmic thrumming of a

riderless runner across the nursery floor?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Before And After Street Lamps

I've spent a couple of weeks reading and researching about streetlamps. It's a huge and illuminating topic: from flaming tar torches on Greek and Roman buildings, through the invention of glass-enclosed candlelight lamps in 16th century cities like Amsterdam and London, to the invention of the 'lamppost' and street lamps on every corner in 17th century Paris, which led the way in urban lighting, and whose thousands of réverbère oil-fuelled street lamps earned that city its abiding nickname La Ville-Lumière (The City of Light). As an aside, during the French Revolution (1789–1799), the revolutionaries found that the city's lampposts were a convenient place to hang aristocrats and other opponents.

The history of street lamps can be roughly divided into two eras, BC (before coal) and AI (after industrialisation). 

What I've outlined above is all BC. With the arrival of coal (and hence gas) during the industrial revolution, civic investment in gasworks and underground pipe networks from the mid 19th century onwards enabled many towns and cities to have their main thoroughfares lit by gas streetlamps. It was confusing for birds and annoying for burglars and stargazers, but great for the convenience and safety of ordinary citizens, particularly women. It also created jobs for a legion of lamplighters who would go round armed with ladders and matches to prime and light the streetlamps each evening and then go round and turn them off again every morning. The only other 20th century refinements of note have been a conversion from gas to electricity and the fitting of automated time switches which rendered lamplighters redundant.

We've taken it for granted for so long that our evening and night time streets are bathed in pools of soft orange sodium vapour light or the brighter white mercury vapour variety shining down from 10m lampposts spaced every 30m to 40m apart. Nowadays everyone is happy and safe at night - apart from the councillors who have to worry about the cost of keeping everything running as utility prices climb and government funding shrinks.

But for a themed poem this week, I want to retrace steps to a time in any post-industrial metropolis before streetlamps had achieved ubiquity. These cities from London to Glasgow to New York and Chicago were bustling and polluted hives of humanity. Air quality was poor in the earliest AI urban centres, as smoke and fumes poured perpetually from thousands of chimneys. 

As one diarist on a night out in the capital recalled: 'We went to the Opera on a foggy night, only to discover that the haze had crept indoors, rendering the stage virtually impossible to see. Although there was nothing in the opera to move one, we in the audience seemed to be perpetually in tears in reaction to of the fog’s chemical sting.'

London's 'pea-soupers' were infamous for nearly three centuries, peaking in the 'killer smog' of 1952, where 4,000 respiratory-related deaths were reported in just a couple of days. leading to the Clean Air Act of 1956. And while London was in the grip of foggy nights through which early and sporadically placed versions of candle-powered or even gas streetlamp shone ineffectually, there grew up an army of mobile streetlamps known as link-boys. 

These enterprising youths carried torches made from burning pitch and tow and their name derives from 'link', a term for the cotton tow that formed the wick of the torch. Link-boys would light the way of pedestrians to the nearest sedan-chair or carriage rank, or even to their doorsteps through near impenetrable fog for the fee of a farthing. Many central London houses still have a link extinguisher on the exterior, shaped like outsized candle snuffers. Of course, employing a linkboy could be dangerous, as some would lead their clients to dark alleyways, where they could be beset by footpads, but their useful services generally outweighed the risk.

Samuel Pepys regularly mentioned them in his Diary, as on 4 February, 1660: 'So with a linkboy to Scott’s'; and on 22 June that same year: 'and so by link home about 11 o’clock'.

Another, more expansive anecdotal record (purporting to be by James Vila Blake, an American evangelist on a visit to England) referenced link-boys abroad on a 'typical' London night: 'The fog lay thick and dense around us; the link-boys were out in all their glory, dashing wildly about among the bewildered crowds, with their “Have a torch, sir?” “Light you home, sir?” “Better take me, sir!” Then darting frantically into the blackness they were lost, only to reappear again, thrusting their blazing fire-brands so near your clothing that it really seemed frightful. Drivers were offered enormous sums by terrified people to take them home—offers refused with frightful oaths; helpless women clung to railings for safety; now and then a solitary omnibus came along, each horse led, by a link-boy with his flaming torch; men knocked against each other, and we clung tightly to each other’s arms and strove to keep each other in sight.'

Of necessity, this new poem is a work in progress because I've been busy co-hosting a poetry-writing event today. So revisit the blog in a week or three and it might read completely differently. By the way, the title references the St. Giles Illuminati, a nickname given to the link-boys who plied their trade in London's theatreland in the mid 18th century. Literature and painting of the time sometimes portrayed the boys as cupids, conveying their fares to liaisons. By the way, the main characters in the poem (Betty Careless and Larry Casey) are real historical figures, if you care to research them.

Link-Boys (St. Giles Illuminati)

Since London started swinging once more

in Carolingian days, its amorous ways

are sometimes plagued by murky chancers.

Into this lawless breach, a scruffy corps

of young farthinguides emerged, and it pays.

True there are some dubious freelancers

but Betty Careless has little to fear

from the stinging yellow of a chemical night

or the dangers that lurk in the swirling fog

as long as her personal cupid appears

from out of the fireflies in the smoke, to light

her safe progress to each evening's moondog.

For of all the glym-jacks in theatreland,

little Larry Casey always sees her right.

This Cheapside scamp of an artful dodge

carries a torch for the comely courtesan,

such fierce, proud devotion a touching sight

as he snuffs out his tow before another's lodge.

As a musical bonus, and I haven't included on of these in a while, here is Van Morrison performing 'Bulbs' from his 1974 LP 'Veedon Fleece ', live at that year's Montreux Jazz Festival. It's an absolute blast. To  fire up the song, just click on the hyperlink here: Bulbs

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

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Abrush With Wisdom

When I was but a toothy youth, I brushed my teeth with Wisdom brushes. Their website proudly proclaims: 

"Few companies can boast a richer history than Wisdom Toothbrushes. The company was established over 240 years ago by its founder William Addis and is globally recognised as the inventor of the modern-day toothbrush."

It's as well they are stressing modernity, because there is ample evidence in the annals that toothbrushes (with handles made of bamboo and brush heads of hog bristles) were in use in China during the Tang dynasty as early as 620 AD, while the rest of us were using rags dipped in salt, or chewing twigs from trees. In fact when European travellers introduced the marvellous Chinese toothbrush to Europe in the 17th century, our fastidious friends in south-east Asia had been using it for a thousand years.

So I looked up the Wiki page about Addis, the man who claimed to have invented it all over again, and what a fascinating story that is. William Addis (rioter and entrepreneur) was in jail in 1770 when he figured there might be a better way of cleaning one's teeth than with a rag dipped in ash (salt being in short supply in prison). He saved a small length of bone from a meal, drilled tiny holes in it and threaded tufts of bristle through. After his release in 1780, he started up in business mass-producing his toothbrushes, and over the next quarter-century he became a very wealthy man by providing the great British public with his must-have personal hygiene offering.

wise woman with toothbrush (and wasp waist)

His son, also William, inherited the firm on the founder's death in 1808 and it continued to be a family-run concern until the 1990s. Its biggest boost came during WWII when it supplied a million toothbrushes to Britain's armed forces, By then, plastics, injection moulding machines and synthetic bristles had innovated toothbrush manufacture and Wisdom was the brand name given to the new line of Addis brushes from 1940 onwards. Nowadays, the company manufactures some 70 million toothbrushes a year. 

It is received wisdom that everyone should brush their teeth twice a day to maintain good oral hygiene, though the science suggests that at least once every 48 hours is good enough to prevent plaque build up. 

How one brushes is more important than how often. It is beneficial when using a straight bristled brush not to scrub horizontally over the necks of teeth, not to press the brush too hard against the teeth, to choose a toothpaste that is not too abrasive, and to wait at least 30 minutes after meals before brushing. It is also vitally important to manage maximum coverage of teeth and gums. 

Although tooth brushing is the most common preventive healthcare activity, levels of tooth and gum disease remain high, since people clean at most 40% of their tooth margins at the gum line. The main reason most dentists recommend patients to brush twice a day is in the hope that frequent brushing will clean more areas of the mouth. OK, lesson over... rinse and spit. It's poem time.

A poem doesn't have to be 'on theme' does it? I'm not sure about the wisdom of this latest - not even sure it's better than no poem at all - but its inspiration came earlier in the week when I got stuck behind a lorry with two yellow 'registration' plates on the back. One was a standard plate (e.g. SN67 SGV) and the other just read TEZ, which I took to be the nickname of its driver. 

a Derry lorry as driven by Terry 

That got me idly wondering, as we queued, why names that end in 'rry' like Barry or Perry or Terry ever got changed to Bazzer, Pezzer and Tezzer, or their diminutives, Baz, Pez and Tez. If you know, please do enlighten me. Also, while we're at it, why was Charles John Huffam Dickens ever called Boz?

Then I clocked that Terry (Tezzer/Tez) was driving a lorry for a company called Derry and the unfortunate idea for this comic poem was born. It's a shame that Derry doesn't distribute toothbrushes. That would have been the perfect coincidence, "delivering oral products to the furthest reaches of the British mouth." It's actually a refrigerated goods transporter.  Never mind. 

I was going to title it Tezzer Drives A Lozzer for Dezzer, but as we remark wisely in this poetry game, less is frequently more. Of course it's a bit of nonsense with a circular theme. If you need to decode it, just replace all but one 'z' with 'rry'.

Tez's Orrez

starts out driving a loz for Dez

though never a young man to taz

so he's first to sail out on the fez

gets taken on as an equez

living a life without woz

hardly ever has to say soz

out on the piss to get mez

after the pubs shut, a cuz

meets a young lady from Kez

cut a thrust he couldn't paz

and now he's all set to maz

seems she's a girl in a fluz

to have kids, all that jazz

so he needs a new job in a huz

sails back home on the frez

ends up driving a loz for Dez

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Deal Breaker

One word: Brexit. It's now ten years since the infamous and deeply flawed referendum that not only split the nation in half (52% to 48%) but in many cases divided families, friends and workmates. It was the worst kind of deal breaker, a divorce from a union that had actually benefitted us for over 40 years. 

"What do you mean you voted for Brexit?"

I recognise that no one wants a long-haul analysis of all the whys and wherefores of one of the most crass acts of self-harm we've inflicted on ourselves as a nation, but maybe I can quickly summarise in a few bullets:

- Britain had been in decline and fall as a country since the early 1950s. The swinging sixties only glossed over our underinvestment in manufacturing and technological innovation.

- Joining the EU (or EEC as it was then) in 1973 actually saved Britain from total stagnation. It gave us a bit of a lifeline and an economic boost for a while, but a deep-seated insularity prevented us from making the best of the opportunities on offer. 

- Governments (Conservative for the majority of the time) were not as 'state oriented' as on the continent, so our systemic slowness to modernise, and our deepening infrastructure malaise became stumbling blocks that we have still not overcome. Thatcherism has a lot to answer for.

- Our growing dependence on services and the financial sector to bolster GDP exacerbated a deepening divide between the poorest 30% and the wealthiest 20%, with the rest of us stranded somewhere in the middle.

- Faced with that malaise and its inherent inability to do what was necessary, the Conservative party started to infight, and the Brexit Referendum was Cameron's attempt to try and save the Tories from disintegrating all together. (Just look how that's worked out)

- Those who promised us that "getting our country back" would be in any way better than a dive back into the shrinking insularity and stagnation of the 1950s and 1960s were peddling illusion at best, cynical deception and lies at worst - as I think we've all come to realise after the event. Leaving the EU has been an economic and a social disaster for the UK and Reform/Restore would only lead us deeper into the hole we've dug for ourselves.

Seriously, folks, it's time to start planning to reverse the mistake and rejoin the EU.

"We've all been done."

For my poem, I've written a variant on Martin Niemöller's famous 1946 apology for not speaking out in opposition to the advances of fascism/nazism in 1930s Germany. Several other straightforward pastiches have appeared in recent years, and you can google alternative versions of the 'First they came for...' theme at your leisure.

However, I wanted to flip the narrative and give my rendition a different slant and structure, a more positive and progressive one in the face of the cynical attempt by right-wing billionaires to bankroll the overthrow of our cherished multicultural democratic values, a move that has been gathering pace, as I've intimated above, since the machinations of Brexit.

Specifically it was triggered by remarks by Reform's Zia Yusuf about a Somalian refugee, Sagal Abdi-Wali being put forward as the Labour candidate in the Holborn parliamentary by-election occasioned by the resignation of Sir Kier Starmer. Yusuf warned "The front runner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?"

In point of fact, Ms Abdi-Wali came to the UK in the 1990s as a child refugee. Now in her forties, she is a British citizen, has been a local councillor for a decade and is currently the elected leader of Camden Council. Zia Yusuf is a major Reform donor who has never held political office.

They Came First
They came first to escape war
and I did not freak out,
because I was not a racist.

Then they came for social security
and I did not freak out,
because we are the sixth richest 

country in the world.

They they came for trades and training
and I did not freak out,
because they didn’t “take our jobs”,
often did work we didn’t want to do,
and they paid their taxes.

Then they came up for election
and I did not freak out,
because they had assimilated
into our democratic institutions
and frequently championed

multiculturalism at its best.

Then they came to be demonised

by the lies of wealthy xenophobes
and finally I did freak out,

because we all know

Martin Niemöller's poem

off by heart... 

...and this monstrous tide 

of modern monied fascism 

threatens to tear all that's good 

in our febrile "sceptred isle" apart.

Thanks for reading my stuff, S ;-)

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PRSNL FX

What colour is your aura? I was once told mine is purple... whatever that signifies, if I even have one. And does a person's "effect" on others depend on whether one is trying or not? Being or doing - is that the question? Being natural without ulterior motive versus deliberately working at making an impression and building a following? 

prsnl fx

Some historical figures are renowned for having possessed charisma sufficient to bend or persuade others to their beliefs, cause or purpose: think priests and prophets, military leaders, orators, politicians, confidence tricksters. Others are famed for inspiring less impacting allegiances: actors, musicians, sports people, writers even all have their fan bases. We're used to the rise of "personalities", a pervasive phenomenon that has grown with the arrival of the press, movies, recorded music, radio and tv, the internet.

However, since online social media birthed the "awareness economy" and its monetising plague of influencers, I feel it's all got a lot more competitive and cynical, with any Tom, Dick or Harriet setting themselves up as some sort of influencer or oracle. I think I can ignore most of it and resist pretty much all of the lies and lures, but I sense its corrupting advance all around as we slither collectively towards a less moral, less principled world.

Recently I was reminded of Mahatma Gandhi's reclassification of the Seven Deadly Sins, as quoted by President Carter at Senator Hubert Humphrey's funeral in 1978. Ghandi (a charismatic influencer himself) itemised the modern Seven Deadly Sins as follows:

  - wealth without work

  - pleasure without conscience

  - knowledge without character

  - commerce without morality

  - science without humanity

  - worship without sacrifice

  - politics without principle

and I think that's a pretty damned fine check list by which to identify much of what's wrong with the world today.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

As I typed out the list line by line, names just came straight to mind: Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Peter Hegseth, Nigel Farage, Bezalel Smotrich. I could go on. It's like a carousel ride at the world's end fair. But those are only the most high profile and shocking. Beneath them come the legions happy to embrace the same lack of ethics in their quest to make their own "personal effects" tell on us all. As Bob Dylan said, "Watch your parking meters".

Oh dear! To lighten the mood on this depressing Saturday evening, here's a new comic poem tenuously about personal effect, class conflict and mild thuggery..

Hugh or The Tin Of Tartan Paint
They thought to cut Hugh down to size
that first day, have a laugh
at his expense, son of the owner.

A quaint initiation rite: ‘Go to the stores
and fetch…’ He knew what was coming
and played along, thought he’d be cunning,

had made the label in advance, being good
at art. ‘McGregor’s Finest Tartan Paint.
One coat required. Apply thick. Do not stir.’

All he had to do was stick it round the tin
and walk back in. His workmates’ ready smirks
soon turned to scowls and chips. He was

making them look fools, not mindful of
class sensitivities. Not clever. Big mistake.
After hours, some of the lads lay in wait

and though Hugh bolted hell for leather,
unsure if this was still all in fun,
the pursuing clan soon outran him,

hauled him down, the owner’s son,
administered a broad-brush beating,
black, yellow and blue, a tartan Hugh.

  

Thanks for reading. Stay colourful and wise, S :-)

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Swimming Pools

What on earth to write about Swimming pools? Frankly, the topic's wasted on me as I never learned to swim. However, I know some cats that do, so we're heading off to Türkiye today (not literally). I haven't yet visited that country, but I've long been intrigued by its breed of swimming cats and by the cascading thermal pools of Pamukkale. I once thought they went together.  I was misinformed. No matter. I pair them up here for your delectation and will finish with a new cat poem that's not entirely on theme. 😸

otherworldly Pamukkale

Pamukkale is an UNESCO world heritage site in south-western Türkiye. Its terraces are made of travertine, a spectacularly shimmering white limestone deposited by mineral waters which have been cascading down from hot springs into its layered pools for millennia. The name in Turkish means 'cotton castle' and it is easy to see why.

There are seventeen hot springs and the waters at source vary in temperature from 35C to nearly boiling. By the time they have mingled and flowed down the cliff to the pools below they are pleasantly warm the year round.

Pamukkale's thermal springs and pools have been attracting visitors since antiquity. The ancient Greek city of Hierapolis, founded as a spa resort, stands above the springs on the site of what was once a cult centre of the Phrygian mother goddess Cybele. It was founded in the 3rd century BC and there is abundant evidence, in the ruins of the city and its nearby necropolis, that many came to the pools for their supposedly - though clearly not always successful - curative powers.

Although this otherworldly site is now carefully curated, it is still possible with permission for visitors to bathe and swim in designated pools at Pamukkale today.

I was led to believe, many years ago, that Türkiye's swimming cats regularly enjoyed the waters of Pamukkale, an unfortunate conflation of facts. The snag is a geographical one, for Pamukkale, as stated, is in the south-western region of the country in Denizli province, while the water-loving cats live over a thousand kilometres away in Anatolia, eastern Türkiye, near Lake Van from which they derive their name...and in which they do swim.

They are distinguished by their snow-white fur, except for brown markings on their head and ears and their brown hind-quarters and tails. They also have odd coloured eyes (quite common elsewhere in white cats, apparently). It is believed they have lived around Lake Van as a feral landrace for several thousand years, originally brought there as pest control by early Anatolian settlers. 

swimming Van cat

Nowadays there are only a couple of hundred pure Van cats living wild in their native area, but breeding programmes have spread their numbers around the world in the last thirty or so years. I wonder if this domesticated diaspora will retain its love of swimming. Only time will tell. I'm just thinking that if I were a Van cat, I'd love to swim in the year-round warm pools of Pamukkale.

I was originally going to call this latest poem Mrs Schrödinger's Pussy, in an oblique cultural reference to the 1970s TV series 'Are You Being Served' and its standing joke about Mrs Slocombe's Pussy, but on consideration I thought it deserved more gravitas than that. It's a work-in-progress and I may tinker with it a bit further. We'll see. 

It's based on the lives of Erwin Schrödinger (of Schrödinger's Cat fame) and his wife Annemarie and the essentials are absolutely true. As well as being a brilliant (and Nobel Prize winning) physicist, he was a serial philanderer with a predilection for young girls. He was twice Annemarie's age when they married in 1920. She was a photographer and supported him financially for many years. As a couple they were childless and she did have a cat called Milton (and another called Marvell, as it happens). She also remained loyal to him despite his many transgressions. The twist is my whimsical invention. 

Mrs Schrödinger's Cat

In the dull red glow 

of an ornate Vienna washroom, 

expectant faces stand by the bath. 

Something is developing slowly

between Anny and Erwin.

They don't speak, don't touch.

 

She's teaching him,

who is so cleverly theoretical,

the practical art of the photograph -

learned in her youth

from her father, chief lensman 

by appointment to the Austrian Court.

It ought to vex her

in years to come,

married to a man twice her age,

that they still survive

mostly off her wage

while he tutors young girls

 

and researches particles and waves,

strays away for days and nights

so that sometimes 

when she's half sleeping 

she doesn't know if he's out or in.

But she has her cat,

jet black and blind like the poet

after whom he's named.

So Erwin framed his wife: white-dressed

and clutching furry Milton to her breast 

in affectionate pose...

and now they're waiting the reveal.

Through stop bath, fixer and wash
Anny conjures chemical magic, hangs
the dripping film. Shot after shot shows
her languid figure, her happy smile,

her empty arms. They stare. Both know

the camera never lies and yet

there's no cat in the photographs,

not even a blurry pale shadow 

of Milton's cradled feline form.

Her black dress, her empty arms,

her knowing smile, his reeling brain.

This is some serious sorcery.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lost In Translation

Some (on the right, in the fossil fuel lobbies, among the climate catastrophe deniers and net zero detractors) are advocating heavily for the UK to increase rates of extraction of oil and gas from our offshore North Sea fields, by honouring two licences currently subject to litigation and by approving new licences.

They claim it will (a) bring down the price of fuel to UK consumers, (b) make us less reliant on imports of oil and gas, (c) provide revenue to the exchequer, (d) create jobs and (e) that as everybody else continues to drill anyway, why shouldn't we, "in the national interest".

Leaving aside that such a move would run contrary to both the legally binding Climate Change Act (2008) and the current government's manifesto, there are several compelling reasons for not doing so, but they mostly get conveniently lost in translation, so let me set the record straight.

this leads...

Even giving the go-ahead for the already approved Rosebank oil and gas field near the Shetland Islands and the Jackdaw gas field near Aberdeen won't actually achieve objectives (a), (b) and (c) for the following reasons:

Rosebank contains very little gas: it is 90% heavy crude oil. UK refineries are not equipped to refine it, and as such, it is not suitable for domestic use. It would be loaded onto tankers and sold by the fuel companies on international markets at global market prices to the highest bidder. Extracting more of it would not change the international cost of oil and gas. It would not heat British homes, fuel British industry, or lower British bills. Activating Rosebank would actually increase the UK's CO2 emissions by some 10% per year!

What is more, the primary financial beneficiaries of proceeding with Rosebank would be its owners, not the exchequer or UK taxpayers. Rosebank is owned jointly by Shell and Equinor (80%) and Ithaca Energy (20%). Based on a long-term average oil price of $70 per barrel, the field's owners stand to earn £1.5 billion in profit. UK taxpayers, by contrast, would shoulder over 80% of Rosebank's development costs through tax relief. Shell and Equinor effectively pay no tax in the UK because it is offset by the tax relief they receive, and Equinor pays tax in Norway, to that country's benefit.

Jackdaw has gas, probably enough to supply a mere 2% of UK requirements up to 2036. It would be relatively straightforward to connect that platform to the UK pipeline network. However, the gas beneath Jackdaw is CO2 dense and drilling it could produce 35.8m tonnes of carbon over its 10-year lifetime, the equivalent of 90% of Scotland's emissions for 2023. As for new jobs created, the estimate is 15 permanent positions (yes 15). 

Shell owns Jackdaw, so the financial caveats attached to Rosebank largely apply to Jackdaw as well. The fuel company and its shareholders will be the prime beneficiaries and any potential revenue to the UK exchequer will be offset by the tax relief the government affords Shell (which paid zero tax in the UK last tax year).

Those are the facts which have been roundly ignored in the pronouncements and soundbites of Tory and Reform politicians advocating a "drill, baby, drill" policy in recent months...which should come as no surprise given the perks that come their way courtesy of the fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists.

Actually, the best way to achieve the goals of (a), (b), (c) and (d) is by steadfastly opposing option (e) and by accelerating our endeavours to switch over to renewable energy and achieve net zero as fast as possible. Britain has led the way since 2008. Our best hope is to continue to do so.

The alternative is more of what we have seen this summer.

...to this

I'll preface my latest 'pointing finger' poem with a couple of informing quotes:

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” (King Lear IV:I:37–38)

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” (Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám)

Read it here.

Bad Gods And Greedy Fools

If ever the saga of our hellish end-of- times 

gets uncovered by some intrepid voyagers 

from across the sea of stars, as they

disinter our history from the planet's silent, 

cinderous shell, wondering what catastrophe 

befell so mighty a civilised world, will they 

struggle to believe they've translated aright, 

that we brought destruction on ourselves? 

That bad gods and greedy fools conspired

like wanton boys to wreck the very paradise

they enjoyed without piety or wit?

How could such crass stupidity, such lack 

of care, of empathy play out on a rare sphere

once both beautiful and bountiful, now pocked

with empty drill holes, burnt out cities and

the ruins of data temples dedicated to Artifice?

How easily they gave nature the slip. Why

did nobody try harder to stop such madness? 

It must have been some decadent death wish.

Too late for tears, bad gods and greedy fools

desired like wanton boys to wreck the paradise

they enjoyed, the ecosphere that sustained.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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DNA

I wonder if the name Colin Pitchfork means anything to anyone reading my DNA blog. The possible early release from prison of violent offenders is a hot topic at the moment and although Pitchfork (now aged 66) was originally sentenced to imprisonment for 30 years in 1988, he is still behind bars 38 years after his conviction, and was last denied parole by a review board in 2025.

His crimes? The rape and murder of two schoolgirls, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, in Leicestershire in the 1980s, plus two other counts of sexual assault on young women, and an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

The real significance of his case? It was the first ever conviction secured on the basis of DNA evidence.

Colin Pitchfork

He nearly got away with it, for when the police arranged for 9,000 men in the locality between the ages of 16 and 34 to report in and give blood for DNA sampling, he sent along a friend of his with a fake passport purporting to be Pitchfork, a ruse that was only discovered after an overheard conversation in a pub. When Pitchfork finally provided a sample, his DNA was a match for that found on both murdered schoolgirls. Professor (now Sir) Alex Jeffreys of Leicester University was the scientist who helped the police with that investigation and whose pioneering work on techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling became standard practice worldwide.

I was intrigued by a book review in New Scientist a couple of months ago. That book is 'The Secrets of Our DNA ' by Turi King. (It's currently on order.) One anecdote in particular intrigued me, so I will share it in full with you:

"In 1993, a 62-year-old woman in Idar-Oberstein in Germany was found strangled. DNA on a coffee cup suggested that two people were present besides the victim, and that one of the apparent killers was a woman. In 2001, the suspected female murderer's DNA turned up again in Germany, this time on the body of a 61-year-old man in Freiburg. Then her DNA started appearing at crime scenes in Austria and France as well.

"In 2007, the mysterious woman hit the headlines when two police officers were shot, one fatally, in their car in the German city of Heilbronn, and her DNA was found in the back seat. This sparked a major hunt for the 'Phantom of Heilbronn' as she became known. But the phantom proved elusive, despite being linked to forty-one crimes via her DNA. In some cases, her accomplices were caught, but they denied that any woman was involved. Police started to consider the possibility that the criminal was transgender.

swabbing for human DNA

"It wasn't until 2009 that the 'Phantom of Heilbronn' was finally identified - as a woman who worked in a factory that made swabs for DNA testing! Contamination in the production process had been the problem and the police had wasted years on the trail of a non-existent killer. The 'Phantom of Heilbronn' really was a phantom."

While the majority of convictions based on DNA are sound, the example above and a few notable miscarriages of justice mean that DNA 'evidence' has to be interpreted very carefully, as crime scenes are often complex and the process of collecting materials for DNA profiling can give rise to cross-contamination, the unintentional transference of DNA evidence from one item or location to another.  

DNA is omnipresent in the animal world. There is no living, reproducing organism that doesn't have DNA as the genome. In fact all animals share some DNA with human beings - probably dating back to the origins of animal life on earth in the hot vents of underwater volcanoes in the planet's oceans.

We know there were various versions of human beings (hominins) back along our evolutionary road, maybe as many as thirteen different types over eight million years since we diverged from chimpanzees (whose DNA is 98.4% identical to human DNA). Nowadays only one exists, Homo sapiens. We know about our ancestors mainly thanks to fossil remains and DNA analysis.

There are also only two types of alligators alive today of the ten species that are known to have existed, from fossil remains and DNA analysis, and one of those, the Chinese alligator, is on the critically endangered list. In the wild, it lives only in about a 5km square region of freshwater ponds in the Anhui province of south-western China. Its close cousin, the American alligator is in much better shape, being widespread though the freshwater wetlands of the southern United States. It is thought that alligators originated in North America some 37 million years ago and that the Chinese branch migrated to Asia across the Bering land bridge some 20 million years ago. They are, of course, the template for the Chinese Dragon of myth and legend.

swabbing for alligator DNA

Why did I want to introduce alligators into this blog about DNA? It's not as though they kill people and need tracking down. That's much more in the nature of crocodiles, who are vicious predators. Alligators by contrast are quite shy and peaceable creatures. No, I had a poem about alligators and thought I might as well use it here masquerading as a DNA piece.

Alligators

There are two types of alligators.

They are known as

type 1 alligators and type 2 alligators

and it is perfectly possible 

to catch either but not both of them.

Type 1 alligators can quite often

be caught during pregnancy

or at birth. DNA might suggest 

a pre-disposition for doing so,

and with type 1 alligators

life is fraught  from an early age

which seems particularly unfair.

For type 2 alligators, generally

caught later in life 

most often as a result of being 

somewhat fat and lazy

and having a sweet tooth

despite the warnings,

it ought to be an avoidable fate.

As a result of being caught,

both type 1 and type 2 alligators

are awkward customers

prone to spiky, insulting

and moody  behaviour and need

careful handling to keep them

from becoming a threat to life.

Wait. No. Damned typos!

Not alligators, diabetes.

Type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

Read again like that 

it makes way more sense.

Though it's also true there are

only two types of alligators,

just so you know.) 

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Compulsion

"Patient 'B' is an interesting case study," said my friend the psychiatrist over a pint of the finest and a large white wine at a pub near Lancaster Moor Hospital (formerly the Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum). I'd told her I was researching compulsion and she'd agreed to share some details of three individuals with me, in complete anonymity of course. This was back in the 1990s. Lancaster Moor Hospital closed before the millennium and my psychiatrist friend is no longer with us.

She was right. Of the three, Patient 'B' was by far the most interesting. A long term inmate since their teens, they exhibited multiple personalities, all of them obsessed in some way with the world of popular music, a condition which first manifested itself simply as a compulsion to invent names for rock groups (their school exercise books were covered in such inventions) but which proliferated remarkably within the confines of the institution.

As DJ Half Life they hosted a regular hits show on Radio Therapy, the pirate station founded and owned by another of their personalities, Ronan O'Reality, which broadcast nightly from a ghost ship moored somewhere off the Lancashire coast. DJ Half Life only played tracks by groups signed to SKL Records, the label of another of their personalities, rock impresario Stephen Kirkby Lonsdale, and published by More Than Songs. 

As John Lemon, one half of the famous and successful song-writing partnership Lemon & Lime (they were also Barry Lime), they wrote a constant flow of song lyrics for the SKL roster of groups to perform. The hits kept coming. There was even talk of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In addition, as Stella North they acted as SKL publicist, writing sleeve liner notes, constantly drafting press releases, creating pen portraits of many of the group members in the various bands within the SKL empire, and even writing two full music biographies, one of Joe Cockermouth and the other of the pop combo Brian Blackpool & the Coasters.  

Finally, as Van Ordinaire, they were the visual artist for the constantly evolving and expanding roster of talent on SKL Records. They designed all the groups' LP covers as well as their tour posters and a variety of promotional materials, from badges to t-shirts. 

My psychiatrist friend showed me one sample, the latest LP from SKL's current most popular group.

Remarkably, patient 'B' couldn't sing (except out of tune) nor could they play a musical instrument, but that hadn't stopped them from concocting an alternative music industry reality within the confines of Lancaster Moor, the perpetuation of which imaginative feat took all of their waking hours and mental powers. 

I was impressed. I asked my psychiatrist friend if 'Patient B' understood they were mad (a clumsy question, I know), or if they might have been able to use some of their obvious talents in the music industry out in the real world. She said she didn't think so, on either count.

Here, my hearties, is a swashbuckling new poem (in progress) about compulsion... 

The Midnight Disease

Tossed for some time on a ship of dreams

I wake with a scream echoing in my head

as midnight chimes its dozen doomy bells.

'Pieces of fruit! Pieces of fruit!'  My parrot,

damnable bird, proposes a healthy option

as I walk the plank into insomnia, eyepatch

slipping, limbs shivering with nightmarish

sweat. I rip wide the fridge to plunder a tub

of rum and raisin Cornish ice-cream, salve

for yellow feverish thoughts. Xavier, pirate

cat, scrutinizes with a disdainful expression

as I gulp huge cooling spoonsful. Only then

can I settle to compulsive re-drawing of my

treasure map: the island to which you lured

me, the beach on which I was wrecked, the

shady grove wherein twin hearts lie buried,

marked, from memory, with a bright red X.

Every night the same, every night the same.

Thanks for reading, S ;-}

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