Calendars

Calendar derives from calends, the Latin name for the first day of the Roman month, signifying the start of a new lunar phase. Logically. given that the lunar cycle is twenty-nine days, one might have expected the Roman year to have had twelve or thirteen months (365.25/29 =12.6). But in fact in pre-Julian times they had only ten of them, beginning in spring with March (mensis Martius)and leaving winter as an unspecified number of days between the end of the tenth month (mensis December) and the beginning of the new year on the next calends of March. Oh, and their year wasn't 365.25 days long either.

If you think that's complicated, in addition they didn't number their days forward from the beginning of the month as we do (April 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th et cetera). They fixed the key dates in each month, calends (new moon), nones (first half moon) and ides (full moon) and then named the other days by counting down (backwards) inclusively e.g. fifth day before the calends, third day before the ides. No wonder Julius Caesar came along in the first century BC and reformed the calendar altogether, as well as inventing the Caesar salad. (OK, I lied about that last bit. The salad was first created by an Italian, Caesar Cartini, at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico in 1924.)  

If after that your head is spinning and you're seeing stars, then you're in about the right frame of mind to enjoy the centrepiece of today's blog, which takes the form of a short piece of fiction that came to me recently in a dream.

There was considerable excitement in the control centre of the National Space Programme on the nones of April 2025 as the rocket carrying the NERO satellite blasted off spectacularly from Piltdown. Hours later, after successful separation of boosters and then the main load module, NERO settled precisely into its designated high earth orbit with all systems functioning AOK. It was a proud moment for Juvenal Roman, project director at the NSP, and his young wife and lead data analyst, Fion. 

At the launch after-party, much mead was quaffed and venison canapes scoffed, (non-alcoholic and vegan alternatives were on offer), and the exhausted but ecstatic scientists chatted enthusiastically about how their project, ten years in the making, was going to open a watching window on the true state of Earth's well-being. And later still, by the light of  a quarter moon shafting gently in through their own bedroom window, Juvenal and Fion in drunken, happy coupling conceived the child who would become Gaia.

There had been much talk for decades about 'global warming', the 'greenhouse effect' and the need to reduce the planet's 'carbon footprint'. Many scientists had warned of the dire consequences of rapid deforestation and a continued reliance on burning fossil fuels. They were continually challenged by the climate change deniers, the powerful businesses and their lobbyists who asserted that the scientific hypotheses were alarmist, miscalculated, and that all would be well, just wait and see.

Now NERO, the National Earth Reconnaissance Orbiter, loaded with the latest cutting-edge technology, would be able to monitor one hundred and seventeen different chemical, electrical and physical markers indicating the true state of the planet's eco-systems. Indeed, it would be able to look into the very soul of planet earth itself, and feed back minutely both diagnosis and prognosis to the watching Piltdown men and women charged with receiving and interpreting its datastream.

For months, all went smoothly. The orbiter sent back data that did indeed seem to support the predictions of the climate scientists, that slow but subtle changes in the planet's eco-systems were under way, in the atmosphere and in the oceans in particular, suggesting that the increase in global air and sea temperatures were systemic and that the increase in ice melt, storms and fires were neither random nor cyclical.

First of all, the major autocracies of China, Russia and the USA, brought all their state media to bear on suggesting the information being streamed back from NERO was either faked or was being erroneously interpreted, at which point Piltdown began sharing it widely with universities and scientific institutes in the free world.

Then attempts were made to jam the signals being beamed down to Earth, but the Piltdown scientists, in conjunction with allied faculties in Europe, Australasia and South America under the auspices of UNOOSA (the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs) found ways to stay one step ahead of the jammers.

Meanwhile, in parallel with the project's progress, Fion's pregnancy also moved smoothly forward. The parents-to-be were delighted with embryonic Gaia's development, as were their work colleagues, who regarded the prospective baby as a good omen. Fion was spared the worst of morning sickness. The most notable thing about an otherwise unnoteworthy pregnancy was her summerlong craving for strawberries. She was able to continue leading the data analysis work at NSP control centre right up until the beginning of December.

It was on Christmas Day morning that things started to go wrong. First of all there was the car accident. Some possibly drunken motorist clipped the Romans' car as they were driving to Mass and it ended up in the ditch. The reckless driver was never found. Fortunately, Juvenal and Fion were not seriously injured, but they were badly shaken and therefore taken to the local hospital for a check over. It was while they were there that the sudden shock caused Fion to go into premature labour.

Then there was the collision with a large piece of space junk that caused some serious damage to NERO as it spun around miles overhead. The satellite went 'offline'. The deputy duty officer at the NSP contacted Juvenal as soon as the serious nature of the event became clear and it took some persuading from Fion that he should go to Piltdown at once  to take charge of the situation. There ought never to have been any foreign bodies in the remote orbit of NERO and conspiracy theories were soon rife as the team in the control centre strove to understand and rectify the situation. The satellite was still in its correct orbit but had seemingly gone mute. It was a baffling scenario. Juvenal returned to the hospital.

Baby Gaia was delivered in an extremely distressed condition after a difficult and protracted labour. She only lived for a few hours. Her little life expired at the dead of night, with her heartbroken parents clinging to the incubator in grief and disbelief.

Curiously, it was at almost exactly that same moment (with just a few minutes' delay, as they tallied the events later) that NERO's comms channels suddenly burst into life again. Only what was being sent back was no longer a 'real time' feed of data and images. Over the next hours and days Piltdown was in receipt of a flow of future-stamped information and pictures, a flood of data and images similar to the time-lapse photography and fast-forwarding calendars that are tricks of the movie trade. 

Somehow NERO was racing through the rest of the 2020s and into the 2030s and 2040s at the rate of a decade a day, streaming data about spiralling temperatures, rising sea levels, extensive droughts, devastating floods, global storms the like of which hadn't been seen before. If the data were alarming, the visual images of a planet in crisis were even more frightening. How was this even possible? There could be no credible scientific explanation for the phenomenon of NERO going into prophetic mode as the team started calling it. Fion and Juvenal were back in the control centre by now, trying to assess what exactly was happening. It helped them to cope with their tragic loss to have something so baffling and portentous to figure out.

NERO was in one-way mode, sending masses of future data, unresponsive to all attempts from Piltdown to reset and return to its real time mission. The scientists at NSP could only monitor in amazement as the satellite streamed information and pictures purporting to be from twenty, thirty, forty years into the future. This bizarre and frightening newsreel came to an end with horrific statistics and images from October 2066. Someone observed that would be a thousand years since the Norman Conquest, though it may not have had any relevance. The last pictures NERO sent before shutting down again (this time for ever) were of planet Earth consumed by firestorms after days of cataclysmic nuclear war.

Baby Gaia was laid to rest on New Year's Day 2026. The NSP was closed for the occasion apart from its security detail, for NERO was silent now. All of the scientific staff attended the little girl's funeral. It was the hottest January day on record.

I've not written a new poem this week. Instead, as a cheering musical bonus, have a listen to the excellent Coral with Calendars and Clocks from their debut album of 2002. (Just click on the song title.)

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

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Scale(s)

One little word, such a variety of meanings: scale gets nearly a whole page to itself in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Already this week my fellow bloggers in some fascinating posts have touched on most of those meanings in their various manifestations. I think "mineral deposit" as in limescale or plaque was the significant omission, but I'm steering well clear of teeth (which makes sense if you've read my recent Love Bites blog).

Instead, a brief - and I hope entertaining - take on musical scales; more precisely, my learning to play the piano and some whimsical riffing thereon.

My mother owned the piano, inherited from a parent, I suppose. It stood in our front room (the one saved for best) and I was allowed to play around on it as a child, initially picking out tunes with one or two fingers. I must have shown some aptitude and a modicum of interest, because from age eight or so I was dispatched on Saturday mornings to take piano lessons from white-haired Miss Holland. She seemed ancient (but was probably younger than I am now), had possibly been a teacher, and she called the instrument by its posh name (pronounced P-R-NO, don't you know). 

We started with scales. I was very good at scales apparently. It also turned out I had perfect pitch, for when on one occasion I told Miss Holland a couple of the keys didn't sound precisely right, she was impressed I'd noticed and said the P-R-NO tuner was coming that afternoon to rectify them.

Musical theory wasn't too difficult, simple playing exercises were a breeze, but once we moved on to 'proper' pieces, my tendency to play-by-ear (i.e. from memorising the pieces) rather than by sight-reading  became a bone of contention. That and my reluctance to practice as diligently as I should. 

I don't know at what point it hit home that I was doing this more to please my parents than to please myself. I think I'd sat and passed my Grade I exam before the real resistance kicked in. By the time I was ten, I was envying my mates who could go and play football at the rec (our nearby park) all day on Saturdays but I only got to join them in the afternoons. Plus there were girls to think about and then the Beatles arrived on the scene and playing a guitar seemed way more exciting a prospect than playing the P-R-NO, except I didn't have a guitar nor the funds to buy one. However, I distinctly remember that on getting my Grade II certificate, I scrumpled it up into a ball and threw it away in an act of defiance.

Those weekly lessons with Miss Holland limped on for a few more half-hearted months as my parents had paid for a term in advance, but even they realised my heart wasn't in the enterprise. When I transitioned to senior school in the summer I turned eleven, the piano lessons never resumed. I don't regret abandoning them. It was the right thing to do. I don't think it was money wasted either because I acquired the rudiments of a musical education that has proved quite useful from time to time. 😎

the piano house

This evening, Adele and I are off to Manchester - a first live gig for me since 2019 - to see The Coral playing at Albert Hall, my favourite Manchester music venue, and a beautiful Grade II listed building as it happens. They arrived on the scene just shy of my 50th year, instantly becoming my new favourite band, and I incorporated a song ("Dreaming Of You") from their debut LP into our DeadBeats' live set. In terms of scale, they have soundtracked the most recent two decades of my life in much the same way as The Beatles (that other Merseyside phenomenon) soundtracked my teenage years. This is The Coral's 20th Anniversary Tour and I'm very much looking forward to it.

 

To play us out, so to speak, a new poem-in-progress (this is the first take, but there's bound to be a re-working as I tinker with getting the execution to better support the idea), plus another musical bonus.

Grade II Listed

Soft as gypsum, rhythmic fingers

stroke a rolling pattern below stairs,

reverberations in the bedrock both

muted and sinister, an underpinning

often overlooked, stocky like suet, 

dependable as clean shoes, perfect 

boiled eggs, spotless hearths, almost

ghostlike in metronomic servitude,

powering this house as yesterday

or tomorrow behind grilled windows,

stately through measured passages,

discreet both in entrance and exit,

playing its base part learned well.

On the other hand, atop this structure

a dextrous and carefree fantasy

extemporises, chiming with brio,

sprinkled with silver top notes and

hints of chintz, ringed with diamonds

and dalliance in the salon. Even in

wintertime the living is easy, light

touches everywhere, Rule Britannia

still hanging in the air like a row 

of rich pearls, beds turned neatly,

baths pulled ready, clustered chords

echoing behind a neo-classical facade

sounding hollow as any cheap pianola.

Here's a link to another standout cut from The Coral's 2002 debut LP: Calendars and Clocks  Enjoy.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Love Among The Scatter Cushions

When I first set eyes on this week's allotted theme, my spirits flagged.  Cushion!  It put me in mind of that popular radio panel game where contestants have to try and talk for Just A Minute without deviation, hesitation or repetition about some unseen and completely random topic. At least I hope I'm not operating under quite such stringent constraints here. Cushion, though..! Cue a string of appropriate three-letter acronyms: omg, wtf, yak, etc - that last one is not an acronym, btw.

Ok, metaphorical fingers on metaphysical buzzers, gentle readers. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin (to steal the opening line from the kids' story time programme Listen With Mother)...

Apart from the fact that  I need to buy some cushions for my new couch and chairs, I honestly cannot think of anything else of interest to say about the cushion (buzz - no, I'm allowed to repeat the subject word), so I'm heading 'off-sofa' - so to speak (buzz, buzz) - and into the realms of poetry (buzz, buzz, buzz) with this preamble:

A number of distinguished works from various areas of the arts have named themselves Love Among The ___ down the years. As far as I'm aware, Robert Browning started the tradition in 1855 with his poem Love Among The Ruins. P.G. Wodehouse followed on with a comic novel, Love Among The Chickens, in 1906 and then D.H. Lawrence wrote a stirring short story entitled Love Among The Haystacks in 1912. Film director Frank Tuttle shot the comedy classic Love Among The Millionaires in 1930 but thereafter came a bit of a hiatus (it appears) until US rock band Starship recorded an LP, Love Among The Cannibals, in 1989 and Jean Ferris penned her satirical novel-for-teenagers Love Among The Walnuts a decade after that. National treasure Alan Bennett almost gave us Love Among The Lentils in his Talking Heads monologue series but opted for Bed Among The Lentils instead, possibly recognising and avoiding a plagiarism too far.

I have no such reservations. I'm shamelessly resolving my blogging conundrum with Love Among The Scatter Cushions, using this painting by Irving Ramsey Wiles as a visual stepping stone to today's newly-written poem.


Love Among The Scatter Cushions
Aftermath, late afternoon shading into insubstantial,
sound-tracked by nothing but the constant drone
of arterial cars rushing to their heartlands
and the leisurely buzzing of incarcerated flies,
a huge quiet after frantic pleasure, almost a peace.

You lie still in tiny death, prostrate, suffused, dishevelled
among the scatter cushions of your chaise
and I wait, now unperturbed, for your Lazarine return.
It wasn't always so. That first time, unforewarned,
induced a panic of concern that I can smile at now.

You said it used to frighten you too. Black hole of ecstasy,
you joked; a strange phrase, but who was I to say,
who'd never experienced the mystery? And here you come,
fading gently back into time, fingers still entwined in mine,
looking like you don't know where you are or where you've been,

a languid mess of hair, disported clothes, bare limbs,
resurfacing to consciousness even as the echoes of our passion
hang like cobwebs in the corners of your living room.
Soon it will  be time to dress, slip back into the flow
or we'll be late for the show, but not yet awhile, not yet...

Finally, because I went to see the wondrous Coral gigging at Blackpool's Winter Gardens Empress Ballroom last week, here's a musical bonus, the closing track from their finest recorded moment. Just click on the hyperlinked title to access it on YouTube: Late Afternoon

As ever, thanks for reading. Have a sunny week, S ;-)

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Mistakes

It seems I'm on lonely lane again this week. Maybe the theme -  mistakes  - was an error in itself? It has signally failed to trigger the enthusiasm of my fellow bloggers. Their keyboards have remained silent, their energies and thoughts elsewhere - I hope they've been out enjoying some sunny days.

It must be my Protestant work ethic, but I can't let the week go by unblogged, so let's see what can be cranked out on topic this evening. It beats watching the horrendous Eurovision Song Contest! But first the disclaimer: I'm not going to dwell on any of my own errors (which are legion, by the way). Instead I'm going to write about fame and the great mistake of ever thinking it is a route worth pursuing...

Fame's Allegorical Highway

Many a soul has come to grief as a victim of the pressures consequent upon being public property. Even if they craved the adulation in the first place, such 'stars' usually arrive at the realisation that fame doesn't guarantee their happiness; on the contrary, the constant demands and the ever-present glare of publicity can endanger mental health and even life itself.

John Lennon, perhaps the most famous member of the most famous group of all time, may have looked forward to being 'toppermost of the poppermost' in pre-Beatlemania days but once success arrived all four Beatles realised they were on a dehumanising road-trip that nearly destroyed them as people. They may have helped set us free and provided us with some of the greatest music of the twentieth century but it came at enormous personal cost and for those on the inside it was anything but a magical mystery tour - and certainly one they would never choose to repeat.

Others weren't so lucky: Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, Peter Green, John Belushi, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse and many more I'm sure you can name.

So how does one achieve the recognition for one's art without the adulation and the madness that the fame-machine brings with it?

I believe a healthy anonymity is the answer. In the realm of great literature, Thomas Pynchon and J.D. Salinger have done pretty well as reclusive authors while in the world of contemporary music, The Coral have proved a point. When their debut album was nominated for the Mercury Music Awards they just refused to turn up! It hasn't done them any harm.

Now near-neighbours from just down the north-west coast on the Wirral, The Coral are by a long way my favourite post-millennial band.  I've rated half a dozen of their albums as 'best of the year' ever since that Mercury-nominated eponymous debut in 2002. (The others, for the record: 'Magic And Medicine' 2003, 'The Invisible Invasion' 2005, 'Roots & Echoes' 2007, 'Butterfly House' 2010 and 'The Distance Inbetween' 2015).

I visited lead-singer James Skelly to interview him for a music magazine a decade ago. He was living in an unassuming red-brick house on an unassuming terraced street in Hoylake and yet he had gold discs hanging on his living-room wall for every album The Coral had made to date (which was four at the time, including a number one record). It was one of my favourite interviews. We talked for a couple of hours about music, films, the industry, books, football and philosophy and he played me an acetate of some new songs the band was working on. Amongst other things he had this to say:

"Anonymity, yeah. There's builders who are more famous round here than we are. Some of the really good plumbers round Hoylake are like Johnny Depp. It's the Hollywood of the building trade!

I love music and I'm looking for new stuff all the time. You're either a geek or you're a lazy twat, it's one or the other. I think I'd rather be a geek - better than ending up in London on a round of coke parties. We've visited London and that's okay, but once you're on that trip, you've lost it.

We've got a permanent practice room up in the industrial estate in Hoylake. We live for the music, you know what I mean? What else is the point of being in a band?"

Exactly.

Okay, one mistake: I had meant to take a book of poems written by Nick Power (The Coral's keyboard player) to the Dead Good Poets' open mic night yesterday, intending to read a few of them. I'd chosen the ones I was going to read and had stuck those little coloured tabs onto the appropriate pages only to leave the book behind on my over-cluttered dining-table. I'll make amends by reproducing two of them here. I am intending to produce something original on topic, Moths To The Fame, but it's a long way from ready, so in the meantime I hope you will find something to like in these two poems by Nick Power, from his 2017 collection 'Caravan'.

The first simply and beautifully observes that moment (which I'm sure we've all experienced) when we're not sure if we've made a mistake or not:

Morning Eyes
Your black eyes
in the morning
marble eyes
ancient granite eyes
doll eyes
of a doll
for three seconds or so
you are not entirely
sure
if it's me
                                        Nick Power, 2017

The second, which seems very much in the spirit of the Merseybeat poets (Henri, McGough and Patten), acts as a potent reminder that love - although it is not all you need - remains the most powerful foil against the darkness:

And No Light Shall Falter
I will make you a pallet-bed
cardboard and eiderdown
for your return
I will allay joint pain with diazepam
scored from a man in a clamping yard
I will lurk about the hospital until
you are released

when you are free
I will run between the gables of every building
illuminating them with fire
part rainclouds with roped
ploughblades
to let the new sun through

I will bring a thousand beams to your dulled eyes
and no light shall falter
and no light shall falter
                                        Nick Power, 2017

Thanks for reading. I wish you all a splendid week, ;-)

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