Build Up - We Wish You a Merry...NOT YET!

 

Christmas is coming. Commercially, the big build up began around September, as always, and started to wind me up immediately. I can’t stand it. As a Christian, I look forward to Christmas and celebrating the birth of Christ. Non-believers please respect as I do you. This year, the build-up seems to have annoyed me more than ever. I felt brain washed into thinking I was behind with my own preparations. I’ve grumbled at every TV advert and moaned about decorations being displayed early. Bah humbug. December 1^st is soon enough. My whole year has been a roller-coaster ride consisting of more downs than ups with no end in sight to balance things out. Everyone, well, nearly everyone wanted me to address my 70^th birthday with bells and whistles. I didn’t, but anyone who wanted to celebrate on my behalf was welcome to go fill their boots – at their own expense. There were some special moments. Thank you for the fine dining, you know who you are. I was so glad to go and hide and hibernate for a couple of welcome weeks at our favourite lodge in Dumfries & Galloway, out of the rat-race and with a fabulous view.

Of course, the Christmas build up was also under way in Castle Douglas and Kirkcudbright, but in a nice way and I could cope quite happily. I’m better suited to the pace of life there.  We’d missed the arrival of Santa who made his annual sail into Kirkcudbright harbour the week before we got there. It is a spectacular event and great for the children. We’ve seen it before and filmed most of it, still on a camera somewhere. As I fretted over Christmas and not being ready, I did some gift shopping as calmly as I could, keeping panic mode at bay. I enjoyed a quiet afternoon using my new, birthday present pen to write the cards that required posting. Anyone receiving my card through the mail can be forgiven for thinking we’ve moved, at last. I wish.

The build up to Christmas continues at home, now that we’ve returned. With four excited grandchildren still of an age to be enchanted, I can’t be too ‘humbuggy’. Our tree, old faithful that I intend to replace and say so every 12^th night, was hurriedly put together so the kids could hang their chosen decorations. It’s since had a small tidy – sorry, but I had to – and looks okay, if a bit askew.

This week, I’ll return to the school library and enjoy the company of more excited children in Christmas jumpers, and some naughty elves, I’m informed. My eyes will be moist as I hear their carols and Christmas songs coming from the hall, and I’ll put maudlin to one side for a while.

This is a poem from a Christmas card I have in a frame and bring out every year,

Christmas Memories

Christmas memories stir the waters of the well of thought –

And reflect the best of what the passing years have brought…

Past and present mingle when we hear the Christmas chimes.

Names come back as we recall good things and happy times.

Patience Strong  1907-1990

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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A Favourite Poet - Too Many to Mention

Poetry books are in abundance on my book shelves and bedside table. I love poetry. I love words, artistically shaped into meaningful phrases. I wish I had the talent to do it better and I keep trying, but I think I peaked some time ago. My head is packed with stress and nonsense which I hope will eventually spill out and evaporate, giving me back some clarity and concentration, and something to write about.

As for choosing or having a favourite poet, for me, it’s like music and depends how I feel. They all have a place.

I suppose we all start as children, learning nursery rhymes and progress into poetry from there. My first poetry book must have been A Children’s Garden of Verse by Walter de la Mare. It’s a slim, hardback, well-used and dog-eared, still knocking around my house somewhere amongst my saved children’s books. I enjoy sharing books with the children at school. I often choose something that tells the story in rhyme, like Dr Seuss and ask the class if anyone can guess what word is next. I like to make it fun. I’ve borrowed a poetry book for children by Michael Rosen which my elder grandson enjoyed. I recently introduced him to my poem about Blackpool Tower, written a few years ago. He was arguing about when it was built, how long it took and I couldn’t convince him that it was less than a hundred years, so out came the book with the poem in it. I read the poem out aloud, not letting on that I’d written it until the end, when I showed him the name. Now he knows that I’m a published poet, I might have gone up in his estimation. I’m not just Nanna, who makes delicious muffins.

When I was a child, we had to learn poems or verses off by heart. It was part of English and usually set as homework to recite to the class. No escape. Here’s a favourite,

From Home-thoughts From Abroad by Robert Browning.

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!

Later it was Shakespeare’s sonnets and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales.

My fondness for Dumfries & Galloway began with a visit to the birthplace of Robert Burns when we were on holiday near Ayr. Our first stay in the area was never going to be enough and over the years we may have traced his steps from Alloway to Ecclefechan and back again many times, visiting his various homes and his resting place in Dumfries. I wrote this some time ago,

You captured my heart with your words of romance,
I would have embraced you, if given the chance.
We might have been lovers and perfect soul mates,
What a shame I was born two centuries late.

John Betjeman, Simon Armitage, Maya Angelou and Lemn Sissay are all dear to me. How wonderful to see the work of Lemn Sissay displayed as artwork on the side of a Huddersfield University wall, and another in Manchester. We haven’t met, but I feel like I know him through his life story and his daily quatrains, and I want to hug him and say, “Look, at that! Look how far you’ve come!”

I have met Manchester poet, Mike Garry. His poetry still takes my breath away and I’ve seen him many times. The first time was 2012 at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal when he was on with John Cooper Clarke. Mike Garry, totally different to JCC, with an equal talent that blew me away. Read him, go and see him, listen to him on YouTube.

Dr John Cooper Clarke, he’s gone from strength to strength. Punk poet in the 1970s to GCSE and A-Level Curriculum inclusion now. Clever, witty and great in concert, with all his handwritten poetry on loose sheets of paper. That’s how it was in Kendal. I wonder if he ever got my Terza Rima?

When Manchester became Mad-chester.

Those of the time embraced every word,
Listening in wonder to John Cooper Clarke,
The Bard of Salford who had to be heard.

Rapid from the mouth and skinny and dark,
‘Evidently Chickentown’, effing good,
He’s magic with words, bright as any spark.

His wholesome description meant that we could
Smell the inhabitants of ‘Beezley Street’,
Rich mixture of urban decay and blood.

Life, humour and truth, a picture complete
And painted with colourful language that
Reaches all listeners not just the elite.

So thanks, JCC, I know where I’m at,
Laughing out loud at the poem called ‘Twat’.

PMW 2012

I haven’t got a definite favourite. I’ve missed lots out and there are people I know through open-mic and similar formats who write some terrific poetry and make me want to snap all my pencils.

This is a long blog, but thanks for reading, Pam x

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