Monsters - Hallowe'en

 

They arrived in small groups or just pairs. We heard the giggles and the shuffling before the knock on the door sent us hurrying into the hall. We were ready. I was, as always once a year, the witchiest witch and this time I had the pale faced Wednesday Addams helping for a little while until it was time for her to join the others outside.  Our first visitors, Harry Potter with his friend, Hermione, had escaped Hogwarts to come scavenging and helped themselves from my cauldron of appealing sweets and chocolate.  Scary monsters and super-creeps (sing) turned up in day-glo and luminescent colours, all looking wonderful – some people have amazing artistic skills and come into their own at Hallowe’en. I always do my best to get into the swing of it. Years ago I worked at our local infant school and all the children and some parents knew me. I didn’t recognise them as ghosts, vampires and spooks, but they knew me well and laughed at my witch alter-ego. Now they bring their own children to knock on my door. I’m obviously older than I thought. Not all of our visitors looked like monsters. A group of very well dressed young men, aged around nine or ten hoped I was having a pleasant evening as they took items from the cauldron. Their grown-ups waited at the end of the drive. The boys were amused at me being dressed up.

“I’m a witch, you should be scared!”

“Nothing scares us, we’re Peaky Blinders.”

Well, that was me told. Fighting to keep my face straight, I returned to my witch duties indoors. They surely weren’t old enough to watch Peaky Blinders? They certainly looked the part, though, and no, they didn’t scare me. I would have turned them into frogs, or something.  The grandchildren came back with their tubs nearly overflowing. I tried to cadge a few bits, but no-one was sharing – poor Nanna. Before they went home I had my usual moan about lollipops being dangerous things - I bin them out of sweets multipacks - and I made my usual speech about brushing teeth properly to keep their mouths healthy and Peggy, the tooth fairy happy. Hallowe’en is done for another year. By eight o’clock my cauldron was empty so the pumpkin fairy lights were switched off and removed from the front window, real pumpkins rescued from the rain and I swapped my witch clothes for comfy pyjamas.

The scariest monsters are the demons that live within us. Actual people who caused trouble, problems or any form of upset that we can’t shake off. The monster isn’t there all the time, perhaps, but lurking in the background ready to pounce when spirits are low, we feel tired, or it’s the middle of the night when our worries are magnified. They might bite now and again, but don’t let them win.

Let’s stay upbeat with  Roger McGough and Dr JCC,

First Day at School

A millionbillionwillion miles from home
Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)
Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform
Lived all their lives in playgrounds
Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.

And the railings.
All around, the railings.
Are they to keep out wolves and monsters?
Things that carry off and eat children?
Things you don't take sweets from?
Perhaps they're to stop us getting out
Running away from the lessins. Lessin.
What does a lessin look like?
Sounds small and slimy.
They keep them in the glassrooms.
Whole rooms made out of glass. Imagine.

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.

Roger McGough


I Married a Monster from Outer Space

The milky way she walks around
All feet firmly off the ground
Two worlds collide, two worlds collide
Here comes the future bride
Gimme a lift to the lunar base
I wanna marry a monster from outer space

I fell in love with an alien being
Whose skin was jelly – whose teeth were green
She had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
Feet like water wings – purple hair
I was over the moon – I asked her back to my place
Then I married the monster – from outer space

The days were numbered – the nights were spent
In a rent free furnished oxygen tent
When a cyborg chef served up moon beams
Done super rapid on a laser beam
I needed nutrition to keep up the pace
When I married the monster from outer space

We walked out – tentacle in hand
You could sense that the earthlings would not understand
They’d go.. nudge nudge …when we got off the bus
Saying it’s extra-terrestial – not like us
And it’s bad enough with another race
But fuck me… a monster …from outer space

In a cybernetic fit of rage
She pissed off to another age
She lives in 1999
With her new boyfriend – a blob of slime
Each time I see her translucent face
I remember the monster from outer space

Dr John Cooper Clarke


Thanks for reading, Pam x

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The Circus

Spy or espionage thrillers, if well-written, make for great and absorbing reading. I've long been a fan of the works of John le Carré, probably the finest exponent, and Eric Ambler, who was an inspiration to both le Carré and Ian Fleming. Most recently I've been reading Len Deighton's novels. (Somehow they passed me by when originally published in the 1960s and 1970s.)  What I love about Deighton and  le Carré in particular is the quality of their writing, proving that genres are no barrier to literary greatness.

The protagonist of Deighton's first four novels (The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water, Funeral In Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain) was never once given a name. Now that's an interesting gambit for a spy thriller. He worked for WOOC(P) - an acronym that even Deighton can't pin down accurately - presumably some secret department of the War Office, based in non-descript offices in Charlotte Street just north of Oxford Street. Deighton himself was a graphic artist turned newspaper columnist and author. He was never a spy but he researched meticulously as any investigative journalist would and wrote quite brilliantly.

John le Carré on the other hand (real name David Cornwell) worked for both MI5 and MI6 until the early 1960s when he, along with several other operatives, had to be retired from active service because their cover was blown by a defecting Briton. Le Carré (he adopted the pen name because the Foreign Office would not allow its employees to publish under their real identities) based his version of the Secret Intelligence Service in headquarters on Shaftesbury Avenue at Cambridge Circus - see the map below - and he always referred to the organisation as 'The Circus'; not only a good codename but one layered with ironic overtones. Interestingly, Stella Rimington, director-general of MI5 in the 1990s, has published a raft of spy novels in her own name since her retirement; presumably the nom-de-plume requirement doesn't apply to those no longer actively spooking.

I-Spy Map of London centred on 'The Circus'

Probably the most famous of le Carré's novels were those featuring intelligence officer George Smiley (Call For The Dead, A Murder of Quality, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley's People), especially as Smiley also transferred successfully to the big and small screens in adaptations starring a roll-call of great actors from Rupert Davies and James Mason via Alec Guinness to Denholm Elliot and Gary Oldman. Le Carré's series of novels about 'The Circus' are intelligent, intense and involving creations, written with the wit and authenticity that suggest fiction is but a thin veneer over lived experience.

Smiley the Ring Master

As with any real-life circus, there is anticipation, excitement, tension, trickery, bravura, skill and suspense to be found within the pages of any of the name-checked novels. If you've never read one, roll up, roll up. I think a splendid time is guaranteed for all. I do sometimes wonder if the subject matter appeals more to boys and men than girls and women, though I see no good reason why it should.

Here to conclude, my latest poem, extracted from the imaginarium using that most dastardly of tortures, the deadline. It appears there is no place for weakness, self or sentiment in the world of spooks. I give you... 

Sanitization (Nancy, 1963)

They say when the west is benighted, 

the east is delighted, certainly the case 

that evening when confusion reigned

in the house of the flattered bee,

a honey-trap sprung. 

There is no glamour in sleeping 

with a pistol under the pillow,

waking in adrenalin sweat with each

unfathomable creaking, the pissing

in fear over unfamiliar u-bends,

life as a cryptic, lonesome cipher.

They also say fear not the soles 

led by a duty to cosmology,

it's the heavier tread of hobnailed ideology

that kills the will to go on dissembling.

That, and what's worse, the paranoia,

led to a terse exchange in Lorraine.

Not even the ubiquitous doves

circled the square on the morning

of  twitching curtains in faceless bays

tracking invisible tails and foggy trails  

as one hot Englishwoman to be traded

in discreet fashion walked slowly

towards the car and a future unnumbed,

the edge of silence portentous

before two bullets ripped her heart

from front and back,

spinning her like a hapless top.

She bled out shot by both sides

beneath the sign of the double cross,

a merciless date with destiny

while from a watching casement 

the ringmaster sighed,

whip cracked, duty done, 

always beyond reach of reproach.

Thanks for reading. Never let the left hand know what the right is doing! S ;-)

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