Retirement - Bring It On!

I looked forward to retiring at sixty, as many of us did, and then, a bolt from the blue took away plans and wishes and sat firmly on our state pension for another six years. I’m there now and I still haven’t received the explanatory letter ‘sent to everyone’ when the changes were made. WASPI (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaigns and protests seem to have been sympathetically listened to in some quarters – Jeremy Corbyn, when Labour leader, said that women were “misled”, the situation “needed to be put right” and “We owe a moral debt to these women.” It was included in the Labour party manifesto. Even if nothing changed, it was going to be looked into. The flicker of hope died with the election result.

Anyway, politics aside, my time has come and I’m trying to decide exactly when to hand in my keys and cross myself off any rotas. I’ve spent lots of time at home during the pandemic, shielding at the beginning, then having to isolate a couple of times when I eventually returned to work.  I like being at home. It’s been good getting a feel for life in retirement and spending more time with my husband who retired early a few years ago.  In normal circumstances we would enjoy the freedom of having lunch out, seeing friends and spending more time with family. These things will come back to us, hopefully before too long. I reduced my hours at work so I’m actually at home more than I’m there, yet I still can’t wait to leave.

I yearn for the freedom to just go where I want, when I want without having to plan in advance and ask permission. Deciding one day that we’re off to Scotland, or anywhere the next day, is the life for me. Spending summer afternoons reading in the garden was bliss last year and I look forward to doing it again. I knit and crochet a lot and love making baby clothes so with a current baby boom going on amongst colleagues at the moment I’ve been  a one woman cottage industry.  My writing has been on a back burner for too long. I was trying to use shielding and isolating time to write a best-selling novel or a brilliant TV series, but they’ve both been done, not by me, by the way, and I’ve been struggling to concentrate lately.  There are lots of things on my retirement list and I certainly won’t get bored. I might get fat(ter) on home-made baking, but never bored. I’ll enjoy finding out who I am, so let’s bring it on.

My poem,

When I can please myself on what I want to do each day
Without the stress and strain of doing my job in the way,
I will take time to rest, to think and to learn who I am,
Apart from a wife, a mother and a nanna called Pam.

My wardrobe’s full of Marks and Spencers matching navy blues,
Formal skirts and cardies and some uniform slim-line trews.
Tunic length NHS blouses, navy with polka dots,
Pockets stuffed with tissues and hair-ties, a tangle of knots.

Let’s get rid of such strict clothing and find a nice, new style,
Dresses, ear-rings, beads and things I haven’t worn in a while.
Skinny jeans, knee-high boots and a home-made Aran sweater,
My family and freedom will soon make me feel better.

I’ll wear long, floaty skirts and lipstick, and I’ll paint my nails,
I’ll join in with other WASPI girls on some campaign trails
And hope some good may come of it, though it’s too late for me
So many ‘50s women need to set their pensions free.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, stay safe, Pam x

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Nonsense - Self-Isolation

I listened, properly. I was perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, hanging on to his every word. It was important that I didn’t miss anything and that I fully understood.  It wasn’t long before I felt frustrated, “Spit it out, man, stop bumbling.” Then annoyed, “For goodness* sake, Boris.” Soon I was angry, mainly with myself for waiting most of the day ‘for enlightenment’ only to find myself wading through a sea of verbal nonsense from someone struggling to string a proper sentence together. Anyway, nothing has changed for me and I will continue to self-isolate.

Lockdown is no problem to me in so far as I love being at home. I am safe here, not stuck here. As well as doing the things I enjoy, I have taken the opportunity to spring-clean and sort out. I kept putting off doing the little room. This is the upstairs box room, which was the nursery for our children. It became the computer room, going back a bit, when monitors and processors were massive. Add a desk, chair and a printer, and one person could comfortably work in there. Later, it became the study. New desk, lap-top, wireless printer and walls lined with book cases which soon got filled. Our eldest grandson calls it our library. He likes to have a bedtime story from my children’s collection when he sleeps over. This little room has also become a dumping ground for things that are in the way but still wanted and not to be confined to the attic or the shed, well, not yet.

I made a space for myself by chucking a few things out that shouldn’t have been in there then got started on sorting out my writing. Exercise books, notepads, scribblings. Unfinished poems, opening paragraphs, some completed stuff. A couple of rejection letters, kept to keep me grounded. Plenty, and I mean a lot, of written nonsense, some made it to the bin, but a few items showing a glimmer of promise, might be worth picking up again. Published work, a thin folder, but one of which I’m proud and has a self-awarded gold star. My work-in-progress novel which hasn’t seen much progress lately. I didn’t dare to start reading that otherwise nothing else would get sorted out. It isn’t nonsense, though, it needs work. I spent two afternoons just on my writting stuff and I discovered that there’s a flicker of hope on some of those hand-written pages. I have rejection letters but I also have lots of positive feed-back and encouragement, enough to tell me to push myself out there while I still can. And with nothing to lose, I must.

So self-isolation continues. The news is scary, the outside world is too scary for me. I don’t support Boris or his party but I have to pay attention, however cross he makes me feel. I won’t return to work to mix with the public before I can see my family, that’s nonsense. I think it is too soon to lift restrictions but I was disappointed at his lack of clarification. I didn’t expect him to be specific, because he isn’t, but I hoped to hear something that I could safely interpret to mean it would be fine to have my grandchildren round and see family members, even briefly. They are worth the wait.

Here’s Spike Milligan,

Scorflufus

By a well-known National Health Victim No. 3908631

There are many diseases,

That strike people’s kneeses,

Scorflufus! Is one by name.

It comes from the East

Packed in bladders of yeast

So the Chinese must take half the blame.

There’s a case in the files

Of Sir Barrington-Pyles,

While hunting a fox one day

Shot up in the air

And remained hanging there!

While the hairs on his socks turned grey!

Aye! Scorflufus had struck!

At man, beast and duck.

And the knees of the world went Bong!

Some knees went Ping!

Other knees turned to string

From Balham to old Hong Kong.

Should you hold your life dear,

Then the remedy’s clear,

If you’re offered some yeast – don’t eat it!

Turn the offer down flat –

Don your travelling hat –

Put an egg in your boot – and beat it!

Spike Milligan  (1918 – 2002)

*Choose your own word here – mine wasn’t ‘goodness’.

Thanks for reading, take care and keep safe, Pam x

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In the Frame

To be “In the frame” is to be in contention. Your still have a chance of being in the picture. You’re very much in the thoughts of those who are looking, as opposed to those who linger outside of the frame, no longer visible and soon to be forgotten.

I like to keep all my ideas in a happy village where they all sing and dance together. Every so often I ask them to line up and group themselves together in loose but definably connected groups. I then move across my “Frame of reference” and see which ideas fit. This way, though some ideas are in the frame, those that aren’t are never forgotten.
 

The Frame

Please look at me

See me here

I want to be your chosen one

Your hero

I know I'm not worth as much

As some of the others

But here I am

Waiting

Now that all the others are gone

Only 6 of us remain

You look at me first

I am in the frame

Then I'm in the pocket

And the other 5 do fall

But I'm happy to have been part

Of your maximum brake

Colin Davies

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Escapism

We all need it in some form or other. Escapism. The ability to remove oneself from reality, if only for a short while, whether to re-charge ones batteries or try to block something out. But it's a sad thing really that anyone has need to do it don't you think?

Personally, I love a good book to immerse myself in, listening to my favourite music, or even better still, create my own little world through writing poetry. I tried story writing, but after one page I lost the thread and didn't know where else to go with it. So however poor I am at poetry, I decided to stick with that instead. These days though, the only poems I write tend to be for this blog or the open mic nights, so I'm not quite as prolific as I once was. Anyway, something is usually better than nothing, so it'll have to do.

My offering this week puzzled me though. As I was composing it, I had a tune rattling around in my head simultaneously, which has resulted in a more lyrical style that I don't normally write in. But hey-ho, I went with the flow. ;-) I am also struggling to think of a title for it, so any suggestions would be welcome in the comments box below.



I dream,
I write,
In vivid colour
or black and white,
reality fading,
knowing no bounds,
melting away.

Each strike 
of a key,
every word
my pen frees,
creates new worlds,
fresh life,
a brand new day.

Imagination
my playground,
a blank canvas,
eager background,
just waiting 
for the beginning,
that first spark.

Bringing joy,
and happiness,
away from real life -
what a mess!
my escape,
my sanctuary,
my light from dark!


Thanks for reading my waffle. ;-) x

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Bloggers let loose

One of the challenges of blogging to a predetermined theme is the imperative to find a link between that theme and one’s own experiences. The link can be clear or tenuous, or loose. It is up to the hapless blogger to conjure up something vaguely relevant. They can then use their writing to provide for the reader something of interest that might happily distract the reader from the inescapable fact that relevance to the theme is - er, nil. Not even loose.

           

 So, blogging can be an exercise in obfuscation. It can also be a test of the writer’s political dexterity. You know how politicians in interviews make a point of answering ad nauseam the question they wish they’d been asked, the question they’re pre-programmed to answer, rather than the awkward one they’ve actually been asked? (cf Paxman v Michael Howard, Newsnight) Thus can the blogger fulminate at length on a preferred theme, draw the reader in and cause them to forget what the theme was supposed to be!

           

 Speaking of displacement, writing this has been a temporary hiatus in an unpleasant and painful activity Dave and I have been engaged in for the last few days. We have had to face up to the reality that our imminent house move necessitates a traumatic culling of our books, for we cannot fit a magnum into a pint pot. The selection process has been rigorous, not always observed and the sight of literally hundreds of our precious books awaiting disposal is deeply distressing and depressing. I am trying to feel relaxed and – um, loose about this – and failing miserably!

On blogging, I will leave the last word to poet and blogger, Rachel McAlpine, on how she approaches blogging. Like most writers she saves up her jottings and musings, just waiting for the right and appropriate moment to release them.

Stuff in a blog

Let’s not pretend
that stuff in a blog
is poetry.

A blog is a diary
upside down, a silo
where notions wait
for processing
or better times.

Crammed tight
they twitch
in the dark.
They long to sprout
and see the light.

Let’s spill them out
and set them free.
At worst the birds
will feast.

Rachel McAlpine

Thank you for reading.

Sheilagh

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My thoughts are the antlers

Sorry it's a late one today.  As the sun sets on another day of salty underarms, burned lawns and panting dogs, here is an exercise (#3 to be precise) from one of my poetry workshops. 

In touch with nature

Stories and poems which include strong visual imagery are more likely to be retained by the reader.  Use visualisation to put yourself in a scene and make it vivid for yourself.  If you can see what you’re describing you’re more likely to be able to make it clear for the readers.

Exercise 3:

Write down an emotion:

 e.g. worry

Think of an animal to represent that emotion:

e.g. sparrow

Think of a scene for that animal to exist in:

e.g. garden path

Think of an action for that animal to carry out:

e.g. watching

Create your example of metaphorical nature-based imagery:

e.g. She paces at the window

       a sparrow on the garden path

       restless

       eyes searching the trees

       for the ill-fitting shadow

        

And here are some examples of superlative nature-based poetry which should inspire you to look at the details around you and capture them for your own nefarious poetic means.  Enjoy!

The moment Echo saw Narcissus

She was in love.  She followed him

Like a starving wolf

Following a stag too strong to be tackled.

And like a cat in winter at a fire

She could not edge close enough

To what singed her, and would burn her.

Ted Hughes, from Tales from Ovid (1997)

You know me as a turbulent ocean

clouded with thunder and drama.

Carolyn Kizer, from In the First Stanza

 

I’ll chatter metaphysics with a chimpanzee, now

                        my thoughts are the antlers of the Irish elk,

                                                the wings of flightless birds, peptides

                                                spelling out the phrase

                                                very like a whale

Brook Emery, from Very like a Whale

No lik the past which lies

Strewn around.  Nor sudden death.

No like a lover we’ll ken

An connect wi forever.

The hem of its goin drags across the sky.

Kathleen Jamie, from Skeins o Geese

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Salvations

When it comes to performing poetry, the space and the venue that you're in certainly makes a difference. At the start of the month, I found myself at Poulton Gala with a poem I'd written just the night before. As it happened, I had been notified that the back up plan was to use the church in case of rain so, I suppose coupled with the Brazilian carnival theme of the Gala I was swayed into my decision over what to write about.
You'll be surprised to hear that I managed to focus on football and religion for my poem and so, when the rain did indeed come down heavy, I ended up reading my piece in a packed St John's- straight after the Gala Queens and Dignitaries had been awarded- no pressure!
In any case, both Joy and Al read superbly well so as part of our little 'representative team' it felt great- I just wonder how much I had been influenced by the knowledge of where I'd be reading the piece during the 'creative' process.
Here it is though, out of carnival day context and up before it's out of date. Hope you enjoy.

Salvations.

On the hunchback Corcovado mountain
Cristo Redentor stands, arms raised.
He watches over each favella,
every high rise, every stage.

Around him, in the evening twilight
lit up with a purple hue
fans of many different nations
gather, taking in the view.

And from this vantage point, he watches-
waiting for the game to start:
Arms half way to celebration
Half way to catch each falling heart.

One whistle cuts straight through the samba.
One ball watched around the world.
Streamers fly around the terrace
as passionate songs are unfurled.

And nearby in the cramped favella
locals swell round one TV,
the gunshots stop for ninety minutes
and passion lifts the great city.

They feast on sweet Bolo de Rolo
sticky, like the evening heat
but it's hard to watch the world cup football
not thinking of bustling streets.

Of Rocky, in his homemade shelter
a one man ambulance of the hill.
He raises sick above his shoulders
to bear his share of Rio's ills.

Of mothers, fearful for the children

growing into the wrong scene-
not quite lucky, not quite out yet
struggling to hold their dreams.

But set in soapstone, towering over
Christ's redeeming pose holds strong.
Four weeks of idol celebration
then the gaze of the world is moving on.



Thanks for reading,
S

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Unintentional spaces

I have lots of spaces. In my notebooks. I buy them, start them and then when I have sullied the first few pages with my scrawls I start a new one. I always have plenty of new ones because I buy so many. I tend not to buy expensive ones, I've done that before and they stay completely empty. I am not one of those people I envy who can calculate what they need to say and then scribe it on to their sheets of paper in perfect handwriting. My handwriting looks like it's been done by two different people, with their feet. I constantly self edit too, so my scratchings are then scribbled out, with lots of little arrows and random word choices to insert teetering above others. I then start the whole paragraph again underneath and try to make it look neat but do the same again.I envy neat people who have lovely notebooks.

 I do like to write on my laptop as this makes it look presentable as I can just delete things. I find I get into a state of flow better with a notebook though,  while I'm pottering about or watching the arguing couples and awkward first dates in Costa. As I have mentioned in previous posts I don't have the longest of attention spans anyway so when I see a new notebook I convince myself that it simply isn't necessary to fill up the others. I justify this by only buying cheap notebooks anyway, so I'm drowning in books full of spaces. But it's ok. This means when I need to write something down quickly I dig up something I wrote two years ago and think to myself, "Did I write that?" it's quite a nice feeling really. I always know it was me that wrote it, there's no way anyone else is that messy. I want neat writing in lovely notebooks, but it's never going to happen.  The disappointment in my own penmanship means there will always be spaces.

Notebooks that I found on my desk space. I didn't dare get the others.

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Space in Time

Ideally in my mind I'd like a little room at the bottom of my garden to write in, a space just for me away from everyday life. Roald Dahl famously had a little shed he sat in with an armchair where he wrote his books by hand, and something like that sounds perfect. I have 3 boys and the noise and bickering and constant requests for nourishment can snap me out of anything quite quickly.I have room in my garden for a little bolt hole and plan to build one whenever I can. But I have realised something recently. I don't actually need a specific place to write in.

My most important writing space is time to do it in. An allocated spot of time when I can actually say to myself, "I can't do anything else right now other than write." Workshops are good for me to do this in, I have an allocated spot of time to come up with a piece, no matter how rough so then I have something to work with. It comes together after that. I keep a notebook handy when other ideas come, as they tend to when I'm doing other things. In the shower, walking home from dropping the kids off at school, or gardening are all times when my subconscious starts to shove out snippets to add to the piece. I've also started to go to café's or coffee shops and just allow myself a set time to just write, which also proves productive. That's what I am there to do so I get on with it. At home there are too many distractions, unfinished housework plays on my mind, jobs that need to be done and the demon internet.  As long as I allow myself a set time to write then that's all the space that I need. At least until my little bolt-hole is built. With a little wood burner and radio.

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Anxiety and Me

At four I push myself to the middle of a privet bush.

At five I stand frozen at the edge of the swimming pool.

At seven I lock the car door at traffic lights, and unlock it when we're moving.

At nine I start biting my fingernails.

At ten I never put my hand up.

At twelve I press my forehead against a radiator and pretend to be ill.

At thirteen I run.

At fourteen I write my mind into a diary.

At fifteen I fracture into a thousand pieces.

At sixteen I fail my English oral exam.

At seventeen I faint.

At eighteen I feel like I'm drowning on dry land.

At nineteen I try a cigarette for the first time.

At twenty-one I sit in the dark.

At twenty-three I start biting my fingernails again.

At twenty-four I f**k up my first year exams and forget how to spell 'literature'.

At twenty-five I listen to Simon and Garfunkel's I Am a Rock on repeat.

At twenty-six I look at an unopened envelope for over three hours.

At twenty-seven I feel like an ant in a wind-tunnel.

At twenty-eight I grind my teeth while I sleep.

At twenty-nine I cut myself off from the world.

At thirty I start smoking again.

Thank you for reading, 

Lara

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The Heeby Jeebies

Like Vicky I suffer from episodes of anxiety, and again usually after the storm has died down after a negative life experience. Unlike Vicky I haven't yet found tools that help me with this. But my pure panic sets in during public speaking and more so during tests such as my driving test. I'm a capable driver but have failed my driving test 7 times, my Scooter test once, and the feeling is always the same. Terror.

I have a similar fear of reading my work out and writing on-line, but it's more manageable. I think the reason for this is because as a teen I wrote to deal with things in my life I couldn't change. Home was very difficult. My mum was an alcoholic and my dad couldn't deal with it in any other way than anger and violence. So every day I went to the library at school before school, during breaks and dinner, and for as long as I could after school. And I wrote. There was no real structure, I wrote whatever my imagination told me to. I claimed to be writing a book but would probably cringe myself inside out if I had to reread it now. It was clichéd, without any real plot-line and had stone circles and mystical elements. It was shite but it was what got me through every day. Which is why I continue to write whenever I can, to regain that elation of being completely lost in what I write. I'm now daunted by plot-lines, structure, and literary writing a little but I'm keen to keep learning and actually finish something that isn't a rambling ream. I write to escape, and it's the only thing I really know that helps when the shit around me gets too much. So I write and will keep writing, even if it is a bit crap.

In other news here's a comic wot I found on t'interwebs.

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Rediscovery

We are told as writers to avoid cliché and overused metaphors. I find a good way of viewing a scene or an object in a new way is to rediscover it. Pick it apart into its most basic elements and piece it together again so it's the same thing but stands out. Children are great for this, they are looking at the world with fresh eyes and can come up with some novel ways of seeing things. I don't necessarily use what they say, but I relearn how to see things with new eyes in the way they do. Everything is new to them, and their point of view is a lovely way of interpreting objects around us.

They are also great for raising questions where an idea can spring from. My middle son Leo recently wondered why earwigs were called so, and envisioned an ear with a wig on. He makes me chuckle but it did make me wonder where the name came from. My eldest also gave me an idea for a children's story once when he asked if sheep get angry when their fleeces are taken from them. This led me to write a children's story about an outraged sheep who goes on a hunt to find his missing fleece.

Rediscovering the world is a way to write the old into the new. A new perspective is always great to write from, and refreshing for the reader. It can take something mundane and pedestrian and refresh it so that it becomes exciting.

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The FEAR

As a nervous person I live in a perpetual state of fear, particularly as a writer. I fear that whatever I write isn't going to be good enough, that it is never good enough. I used to write for my own enjoyment as a teen, nowadays I feel a little paralysed by it. When I get into the right conditions for it though, my enjoyment comes back, and I get that thrill again that I used to. 

Workshops, coursework and actually forcing myself to do it put me in the position of actually enjoying it again. But reading it out in front of people? Erk. I find it terrifying, a little like baring my soul to everyone for it to be picked at. I recently read something quite close to my heart at the last DGP open mic, and scared as I was, it did help me. I received a lot of feedback about my writing, and the majority of it helpful. It also put me in the position to read my work as it would be to a new reader. You know that feeling you get when your house is a tip and you see it through a guest's eyes as soon as they walk through the front door? It's a little like that. It showed me massive gaping areas in my work and helped me make it better. So yes, although I was so afraid I was shaking, it helped my work. As the old cliche says, feel the fear and do it anyway. But don't post it on t'interwebs, those folk are ruthless. 

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Revisiting

Earlier this week I read Kevin Prufer's 'Churches' in the Paris Review - it caused me to become preoccupied. While there was much to absorb and appreciate - the postcard rack is vivid and lasting - it was this stanza which plucked an unfinished poem from the archive of my mind and lay it out on the table:

In 2009, my father lay in a hospital bed 
gesturing sweepingly with his hands. 
                                  “What are you doing?” 
I asked him. “I’m building a church,” he said. 
“You’re making a church?” I said. 
                                  “Can’t you see?” he said. 
He seemed to be patting something 
in the air, sculpting something—a roof?—that floated above him. 
The hospital room was quiet and white. 
“What kind of church is it?” “I’m not finished.” 
“Is it a church you remember?” 
                                                    “Goddamn it,” he said. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Five years ago, back 'home' in the city where I was born, in the same hospital in fact, I met the foundry man. My Grandpop lay in the hospital bed, his hands moving through the air in a similar way to that described in Prufer's poem. He'd thrust his arms forward toward the unseen furnace, pull them back and then pour the invisible steel liquid into moulds lined up along the hospital table. After hours of repeating the same actions he'd suddenly switch to rubbing his palms together, sliding the fingers on his right-hand between those on his left. When he plunged his hands into the dry bed sheets to wash off the soap, my mum said he was back home now. Standing at the kitchen sink - as he did every night after work - washing off the stains.

For five years I've been trying to write the foundry man poem. I've lost count of how many drafts I've written, how many different ways I've tried to write his story. I know the details - still so clear - are those worthy of a poem, but every attempt I have made feels wrong, unfinished. With each failed attempted I file another draft away in the filing cabinet, leave it alone and decide that maybe now isn't the right time for this poem to be written. But eventually something triggers the foundry man to rise vividly back into my thoughts and I'm compelled, almost powerless, to make another attempt.

*          *          *

Conversations with poets over the years have revealed that many have that one stubborn/ difficult poem which seems to take far longer to finish than others. After years of revisiting an idea, writing unsuccessful drafts, something finally clicks and they find their poem - exactly as they hoped it would be. So maybe this time, when I revisit the foundry man, I'll write the poem and it'll be just as I hoped it would be. 

Thank you for reading,

Lara.

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