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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Mask - Take Them Away

Masks are scary. I don’t like them at all, not even when they are meant to be fun like the ones of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Gareth Southgate and more recently, Donald Trump. I just find them sinister and I expect it stems from my childhood.

My father’s brother worked in Nigeria for a few years, late 1940s and early 1950s. Our family had lots of African bits and pieces he had brought on visits. Most of it is lost now but my sister still has a pair of beautiful occasional tables. One of the items thankfully lost, is a large, wooden Nigerian mask which was a gift to my father. It was plain, just black with eye holes and no decoration.  My father hung it on the office wall of which ever pub we were living in, probably because my mother wouldn’t have it anywhere else. It was horrible and scared the living daylights out of me. There was another one, almost the same and just as frightening, on my uncle’s bedroom wall at my grandparent’s house. In Africa they have a purpose. Masks are worn, or were once worn in certain rituals and they had a meaning. They weren’t made for décor. Some are quite ornate and more fierce looking than others, depending on what spirits they were designed to fight off.

The ‘Scream’ mask terrified me when I saw the film, but not as much as the V for Vendetta which is too creepy. The worst, by far is Hannibal Lecter’s lower face mask in The Silence of the Lambs. Although it looks nothing like our Nigerian one, something fearful reminds me of it.

Hallowe’en usually brings a constant stream of small vampires, witches and ghosts to my door. Last October there was a new trend of scary clowns like Stephen King’s ‘It’, wearing masks of the character. Ugh!

And the nips and tucks on real faces, trusting a surgeon with an extra-fine, extra-sharp scalpel. So many face-lifts end up looking like a mask. Too much Botox gives a startled, unchangeable expression. Sometimes, when I glance in the mirror and see the reflection of a much older woman, it is more frightening than all of these horrid masks. I can’t possibly have earned so many facial creases, not yet. I’ll learn to embrace these ‘over 60s’ dips and folds. For me, surgery is for a life or death situation.

I found these two poems, Dylan Thomas, making me wish I had a mask to hide behind sometimes, and Sylvia Plath, another favourite.

 

O Make Me A Mask

by Dylan Thomas

 O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies

Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws

Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,

Gag of dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies

The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,

The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,

Shaped in old armour and oak the countenance of a dunce

To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,

And a tear-stained widower grief drooped from the lashes

To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive

Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses

By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.

 

 

Face Lift

by Sylvia Plath

 You bring me good news from the clinic,

Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white

Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.

When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist

Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask.
 The nauseous vault

Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.

Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.

O I was sick.

They've changed all that.
 Traveling

Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,

Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,

I roll to an anteroom where a kind man

Fists my fingers for me.
 He makes me feel something precious

Is leaking from the finger-vents.
 At the count of two,

Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard.
 .
 .

I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,

Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.

Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.

Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.

When I grin, the stitches tauten.
 I grow backward.
 I'm twenty,

Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers

Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;

I hadn't a cat yet.

 

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady

I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—

Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.

They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.

Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,

Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.

Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,

Pink and smooth as a baby.

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

---

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Winter Ghosts - Nearly Christmas

Christmas is taking shape. I’ve made the cake, bought some but not all gifts, made food plans and put the tree up. I loved the looks of delight on the faces of my two and a half year old grandson and one and a half year old granddaughter when I showed them the tree and the special things hanging on it. The baby, another grandson, is too young to take any notice yet, but I showed him everything and told him about the star, the angel and mix of baubles that all mean something. They don’t know it, but these beautiful children save me from getting too maudlin when I miss my family.

I’m fortunate to have a wonderful family round me of my own making but I miss my mum, dad, grandparents and all my extended family and friends who are no longer with us. I’m grateful to have grown up in such a family to give me strength of character and confidence to stand and grow alone when I had to. My guardian angels who picked me up when I fell, pointed me in the right direction when I took a wrong turning and stopped me from roaming a rocky path. Christmas brings them all near and even if I’m weeping yet again for what is lost, I’m joyful for the magical memories of Christmases past.

These winter ghosts gather to share in the Christmas of today, surrounding me with the love I grew up with. I hope our dinner is perfect, our company convivial and I wish, as I always do that just one more time, the family I miss could be sitting round the table. My Nanna, still with her pinny on, making sure everyone has everything they want, and my dad checking the wine. Until we meet again.

I will do my best to cook a lovely dinner. We’ll share thoughts and memories, we’ll laugh but not cry.  Someone will raise a toast to those who have passed but with us in spirit. The children will jump at the snapping of crackers and play with the contents then later mess about until they fall asleep, cheeks rosy and hearts full of love. It’s a family circle and I’m Nanna now.

I hope in years to come, my children and grandchildren will look back with fondness on memories of their own.

I have this poem in a frame and bring it out every Christmas.

Christmas Memories by Patience Strong.

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.
 

 

The photos are copied from my late father's colour slide collection. I apologise for the poor quality. It's a work in progress.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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ESP - Second Sight

My mum called it ‘second sight’. She had inherited it from her mother and grandmother. It has come down the generations to me, though mine differs from theirs. The first time I encountered it was at our hotel on Central Promenade. I was a young teenager making myself useful by helping, or possibly hindering, the receptionist.  I was sent to fetch my mum to attend to a guest, a woman who was in great distress. I ran upstairs, along the corridor to our private rooms and found my mother on the settee, waking up from a nap. Before I had chance to speak, she said,

“Her son drowned in a boating accident. I just dreamt it.”

What struck me most was the calm, matter-of-fact way that she said it as she stood up, smoothed her skirt, popped her shoes on, combed her hair and checked her lipstick, all in two seconds before she was out of the door. Sadly, that’s exactly what had happened and the poor lady had just received the terrible news.

I am told that my great-grandmother sometimes dreamt names that matched horses in forthcoming races. I don’t know how lucrative it was for her, but it hasn’t come down the line to me, though I’m not into horse racing.

From an early age I knew that my Nanna could see absolutely everything and she knew what everyone was up to. Her eyes looked like she could see right inside a person’s thoughts. With her, everything and everybody was safe. Things came to her in dreams and sometimes she would sit, deep in thought then tell you what you wanted or did not want to hear, never less than honest and nothing ever ‘wrapped up’. I adored her.

I don’t tend to dream things, I just know, usually out of the blue. My sister was in the early stages of her second pregnancy. Very randomly I told her she was having a daughter and she would be born early, a bit poorly but she would be fine. I could even pin-point the date to either 31^st October or 3^rd November, which didn’t mean anything at the time.  My niece was born by Caesarean section on 31^st October, 1988, spent a short time in the Special Care Baby Unit and has grown up into a beautiful young woman. My daughter was born on 3^rd November, 1994.

There was an avalanche in the Alps at a time when people I knew were in the area. I was sure I’d heard something on the radio news, but it wasn’t on the next bulletin, no mention of it on teletext and nothing on the TV news, until the next day when it actually happened. The same thing happened with an earthquake.

I don’t know if it’s connected to ‘second sight’ or an entirely different phenomenon, but I have had ghostly encounters. There are many, but what always makes me smile is the Most Haunted episode featuring The Old Hall in Sandbach. We lived there for a short time when my father was licencee. I hated that move to Cheshire and I’ve mentioned it, not by name, in previous blogs. Yes, it had ‘occupants’, we quickly became aware, but none of our ghosts matched any of the findings in the programme. Strange.

     I found this poem. I can really relate to it.

 

 
    Conjugal Telepathy
    Have you ever noticed when you’re talking with your spouse?
    No matter if you’re out with friends or wandering round the house,
    That when you have a thought you think is worthy to express,
    You’ve scarcely uttered half of it before your thoughts digress,
    And you have quite forgotten what it was you wished to say,
    But there is no need to panic for your spouse will save the day,
    And without the need for prompting, and indeed without a pause,
    Your partial thought’s completed, with an extra thoughtful clause.
    My friends to whom I’ve spoken, and I’ve spoken to a few,
    Have noticed this phenomenon, and so perhaps it’s true,
    That when you live together an extended length of time,
    The need for speech reduces and there's more accent on mime.
    So perhaps there is no worry when your mind begins to go,
    For even out in company, no one really needs to know.
    There is a great incentive to always keep your cool,
    When your spouse's intervention stops you looking like a fool,
    For even if the utterance is not what you would say,
    It is best to grin and bear it and pretend so anyway.

                                                                           By Ian Smith

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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Did you check under your bed?

Whether you believe in fairies or not, one should never take the chance. Because what if you're wrong? What if all those things are real? That as you sleep Trolls come and try to steal your breath, or monsters as big as your room come to feast on your eyes.

What if every nightmare you've ever had wasn't a dream, but just your way of remember what actually happen that night? Is it worth taking the chance? For five minutes of your life each night, is it worth risking your very soul?

Take heed of the lessons of old written in the texts of tales. Centuries have morphed them into children's stories, rhymes of amusement. Read them and remember their lessons, for these are not just fanciful yarns designed to induce imagined creatures dancing in the shadows of the fires light. These so called 'fairy tales' are a warning to anyone who will listen. 

As the night draws near and dusk begins to snuff out the days sun, remember to doubt what you think you know, take the safe option. 

Are your sure your windows and doors locked?  Are the draft cracks covered? and...

Did you check under your bed?

When you lie alone at night,

Just before your eye shut tight,

And the journey of your dreams takes flight.

Did you check under your bed?

Make sure the monsters aren't hiding there,

In-between boxes discarded without care,

Waiting to jump out to give you nightmares.

Did you check under your bed?

Using your torch the examine the corners,

For wee little beasties and nocturnal marauders,

Often found in the pages of horror authors.

Did you check under your bed?

That scratching sound is it a cat?

Or maybe a giant mutated rat?

Looking for a new habitat?

Did you check under your bed?

Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies and Demons,

Ghosts, Ghouls and creatures of legions,

You could be moments away from being eaten?

Always check under your bed!

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Graveyards

Nine days from now, where will you be? Perhaps you’ll be indoors, trying to get on with real life whilst being constantly interrupted by children. Perhaps you’ll go out for the night, fancy dressed to the hilt for the scariest night of the year. Perhaps you’ll put a sign on the door, one side reading ‘Newborn child: No noise after six’, the other reading ‘Shift Workers: Please do not disturb’. No? Well maybe I’m just a misery guts then. I think it has something to do with the fact that, cute as young children are, I find absolutely nothing endearing about what can only be described as gangs of teenagers hammering door to door demanding sugary treats and money from old people. 

This is the reality of what happens here on All Hallows Eve and I’ve yet to meet a trick or treat yobo that can explain to me when All Saints Day is. If they can’t open a diary, check a bit of backstory or even make their own outfit (you know the ones, dressed in either a bleeding Scream mask or as a KKK ghost), then why should I. There will be no sweets on offer here.  Whilst I did used to like the idea, I have better things to do… plus I don’t really believe in ghosts.

In celebration of all the hard work put in for the Haunted Blackpool illuminations project, we’re devoting two weeks of blogging to ghosts and other such things as a lead up to the event (see post below). Understandably, this caused a bit of an issue for me- a non-believer so I’ve dredged up a poem from the notebook. I realised there have been a lot of memorable moments for me that were set in graveyards. From pilgrimages to moments of reflection, they form a landscape almost everyone can relate to. We all have access to a graveyard, we’ve all probably been in one and we’ll all end up passing through one at some point. I suppose this poem is about all of those things- the little moments, the fragments of memory and the reflecting upon it. Hope you enjoy.

Graveyards

Beside a granite slab I once remembered

Sat down and cried myself into a mess

Then left rejuvenated, full of memories

Uncovered from my mind’s seldom sought depths.

I lived another day seeking a writer

Whose time had passed so many years too soon

Beside me was the girl whose chief inspirer

Was buried by our feet that afternoon

And there were times as kids we used to laugh there

We fished and swung from ropes tied up on trees

We gathered there at night to put the frighteners

Up local kids as we told ghost stories

This solemn place we avoid all our lifetimes

The place we lay when no more days to give

Reveals the vast spectrum of man's emotion

Dares us to consider how we live.

Thanks for reading,
S.

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By Any Other Name

Hope Mirrlees' poem, My Soul Was a Princess, was first published last year, in a posthumous collection, some 33 years after her death.  Although her most famous poem, Paris: A Poem, is in the modernist style, this piece is more lyrical, more personal.  It seems to cross between the narrative and the lyrical.  Were it not for the first two words, this could be a description lifted from fairytale or fantasy, as in Mirrlees novel, Lud-in-the-Mist.  Instead, the soul is personified in a manner which psychologists would, no doubt, find fascinating.  The perceived author's historical soul becomes a character from another world (I'll leave it to you to work out the number of narrative levels between writer and reader) which smacks of emotions repressed, perhaps embarrassing to divulge.

The drab, unfulfilled tone of longing is sustained throughout the verse through sound and imagery.  The assonant, open-mouthed 'Oh' is engaged from the second stressed vowel in 'soul'.  On line 4 it reappears with 'no hope' only to reemerge on line 10 in 'ghosts of long dead woes', culminating in the final, forceful molossus, 'one red rose'.  And the molossus is used to break up the rhythm and create emphasis in a poem with an abundance of unstressed, or invisible, sounds which add a ghostly whisper to the spoken words.  On line 8 in particular, the phrase 'gray, chill, yearning' forces the reader to slow down, to dwell on the image of the desolate palace, the longing soul. 

The palette which comprises the bulk of the poem is greyscale.  A white moon is followed by silver and pearls.  There is 'no hope of noon'.  Her garments are like 'shrouds' - another ghastly apparition - and violet, which seems a cold, hard colour.  Her fate and her face are both 'wan', her eyes grey, her skin like milk.  Her hair is fabulously captured as 'a pinion of night' so that you can imagine a great, dark swathe of black hair sweeping down towards the ground like a raven's wing. 

What action there is harks back to the theme of the ghastly or demised.  The princess 'dwelt in state', the word dwell being akin to lingering, suggestive of a long, dull passage of time.  A body 'resting in state' is also called to mind which further emphasises the dormant nature of the character.  On line 9 we are told that she 'sat and wept' and by line 12, when she seems to come to life, the double-meaning of the verb 'cry' is not lost on the reader. 

The repetition and layering which creates a scene of oppressive drabness is finally broken by a single, uncluttered image - that of the 'one red rose'.  A powerful symbol of love which stretches back to the classical Greek era, this red bloom is sufficient to sweep away the entire scene which preceded it. Finally, the extended metaphor is clear.  This is what she was yearning for, something bright and full of life; of promise and passion.  The focus of the reader is left on that expectation of fulfilment.  The grey, empty days in the palace seem reasonable as they fade into the background while the 'one red rose' blazes, temptingly, outside the window.  And ultimately this is what gets us through the winter isn't it?  The long, dark nights stretch out before us and the air begins to nip.  But we can withstand winter's woes because we know there's a red rose waiting to draw breath, if we can only withstand the chill a little longer. 

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