Deadlines

2pm. There’s a quote by Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) ‘I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by’. But I’m exactly the opposite in that I need to finish a task well in advance so that I can relax.

But for this topic I’m going to take a risk (gulp) and imagine that the Boss has just rung me up and said he wants around 600 words on ‘Deadlines’ by the end of the afternoon. Hence the time at the beginning of the piece. And also these blogs always take longer than an afternoon. My Dead Good Blog colleagues say much the same thing.

2-10pm. So that was thinking about how to approach this week’s blog. Now what? I’m now thinking about what is a deadline. Is it something to do with water, is it the end of a race, a printing term, a broken landline phone? I’m wasting time. Go to Google.

2-26pm. Waded through a lot of stuff with titles of Deadline. So many films and records. There are bands. TV series. None of which interest me. Fishing line? No.

2-35pm. Several articles claiming origin of word is from Civil War. (Note to self: they don’t actually say that it is not the English one).

2-44pm. I’d better include the following although I don’t like it:

The original ‘deadline’ was a four-foot-high fence that defined the no-man’s-land inside the walls around the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville during the Civil War.

Any captive Union soldiers who crossed the deadline were shot. The word first appeared in an inspection report written in 1864 by a Confederate officer, Lieut. Col. D. T. Chandler: “A railing around the inside of the stockade and about 20 feet from it constitutes the ‘dead-line,’ beyond which the prisoners are not allowed to pass.”

After the war ended, Capt. Henry Wirtz, the commandant of the camp, was tried and hanged for war crimes.

2-51pm. Ok I can sort of see that could be an origin but where is the time element? It doesn’t really sound true.

2-53pm. Where to look next? Another trawl through Google and this sounds more up my street.

3-04pm. Well, that was very interesting. I’ll have a coffee and cake and think about how to write it up and read a bit more.

3-45pm. It’s getting a bit tense on the timetable. But here is the subject that rings more true and it is from the printing industry. This is one of the best explanations I found.

‘The literal deadline was the point on the bed of the cylinder press after which the type would get smashed or would otherwise fail to print properly. On an offset press that used metal plates, it was the point on the plate beyond which the image would not print properly. There is a maximum page size for any press and once it is filled, there is simply no more room. One-page newssheets or the front pages of major newspapers would be held for late-breaking news but once the deadline had been reached, that was it: the paper had to go to press.’ (Thanks to Josna Rege in his blog Tell Me Another)

3-50pm. Now there is the problem that often takes more time than you would imagine. Finding the images to go with the article. Have to have a printing press. Reluctantly the prison. What about the third? Got it, Douglas Adams started this off.

4-23pm now for the poem to round it all off. Luckily I know the one I wanted to use straight from the start of this article. Not always the case.

Parts
(For Maggie)

At the last rehearsal
the actress looks the part
carefully dressed in innocence
flowers on blue cotton
there’s nothing much to do
move that table
take a break
the sleeves of her dress
could be two inches longer

could be must be
there’s nothing much to say
and no one will hear
as you turn on the lights
in the spare room
at the back of midnight

two inches is four inches
of stitching and coffee
an hour an inch
but don’t think about that
because she won’t
and what does it matter
the play’s the thing
this is your part

and you know it well
know as the curtains rise
the audience won’t read
their unwritten lines
and at two a.m.
with one side done
you take a break
wrap your fingers
round a warm mug.

First printed in my collection ‘The Amen of Knowledge’ (IDP, 2013)

Thanks for reading,  Terry Q.

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Weird - In My Crazy Dreams

‘Venus is the only planet that spins clockwise.’ Is that weird? As long as it doesn’t knock me over, I don’t care. I don’t take much notice of planets, apart from what the National Curriculum sets out to teach children, but I don’t think Venus is alone there. It might be Uranus that also spins clockwise, something to do with toppling over on its axis. No? Well, that will be just me on my statin induced weird dreams, then.

I blame the statins, like I do for everything else, but it could be the chocolate. Just try Cadbury’s ‘Darkmilk’, though maybe not too much before bed. I’m not having nightmares, thank goodness. My dreams are vivid and just weird, sending me into odd situations, like trying to figure something out at work in a dental surgery. I retired nearly three years ago, and I didn’t work in surgery, I was on reception. I dream about my family, including those who have passed away. Years ago, when I was having chemo, I regularly dreamt of going into a room full of people. It was welcoming and cosy. I was greeted with affection. This was where I belonged. The people were my family, my passed away family. There was my mother, young and pretty as I remembered her before she was ill, and my grandparents with aunts who were special to me, taking me into their fold. The dream was always much the same and with the same missing person. My dad wasn’t there. It upset me to think that if I died, my dad wasn’t waiting for me. It was disturbing, to say the least, as if there wasn’t already enough going on. It was just a very weird, recurring dream brought on by the chemicals that helped to save my life. As I recovered, I stopped dreaming so much and stopped worrying.

Imagine waking up in a spotlessly clean and tidy bedroom, bathed in sunlight filtering through tilted blinds. Outside, the neighbour who never speaks to anyone, smiles and calls out a cheerful ‘good morning’. On the main road, a few cars go by, carefully observing the twenty mile per hour speed limit and the pavement slabs are even with no trip hazards.

This would be too weird for words – or I had died and gone to Heaven.

Meet the Weird-Bird

Birds are flyin’south for winter.
Here’s the Weird-Bird headin’ north,
Wings a-flappin’, beak a-chatterin’,
Cold head bobbin’ back ‘n’ forth.
He says, “It’s not that I like ice
Or freezin’winds and snowy ground.
It’s just sometimes it’s kind of nice
To be the only bird in town.

                           Shel Silverstein (1930 – 1999)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Missing - Is it The Borrowers?

One of the highlights of my week is the afternoon I spend as a volunteer in the Key Stage 1 library at my local primary school. I take groups of children from their classrooms to change their books, help them to find what they are looking for and help them to choose something that they could read for themselves. The afternoon usually includes me reading a story to a class, where I love to interact with the children and involve them as much as I can. Aged between five and seven, their smiles have gaps from missing baby teeth, some with new adult teeth erupting to fill the space. A wobbly tooth signifies that rite of passage towards growing up. It’s an event to be proud of, and when that perfect, well-looked after tooth comes out, it is treasure for Peggy, the Tooth Fairy, who sometimes leaves a reward. I never miss an opportunity to remind children to care for their teeth. My grandchildren are all at this stage, but it’s not just teeth that are missing in my house.

All kinds of things manage to become lost. Perhaps The Borrowers have taken up residence under our floorboards – it might be worth checking. There are jigsaws with pieces missing, I am reliably informed by the eldest. No one has bothered to try to find them. They have a 3D wooden dinosaur made of ten brightly coloured interlocking pieces which are numbered. Number seven, which I believe to be a piece of tummy and coloured red, has been missing for ages. They used it for a ‘Hunt the Thimble’ kind of treasure hunt. No one can remember where number seven was hidden and I have exhausted myself searching. Duplo and Lego get mixed together and I don’t bother checking them. The missing things don’t start and end with the children.

We’re still in January, just about, and already something is missing from a Christmas present belonging to my husband. A small charger cable, unique to the electric item it came with. This is odd because he looks after his belongings and keeps things together properly. We have searched everywhere, endlessly. A replacement is not obtainable. He bought something almost the same that would do. It required slight adjustment to which a Stanley knife was the appropriate tool. A Stanley knife can give a nasty cut to a thumb and it can bleed like billy-o for those on Warfarin. We don’t think it needed a stitch.

I have a younger sister, occasionally mentioned in blogs. She was a toddler in 1964 when we lived in a pub in the village of Padfield, near Glossop. I had my ninth birthday there. The village was considered safe and I was allowed to play out with friends, either on the street or further along to the swings and slide on a cinders-covered playground. My mum let me take my sister out in her pushchair. I took her to the playground. I don’t know what happened, I guess I became distracted and forgot about her. Later, back home, Mum’s asking where Anne is – I still have that sinking feeling – I’d left her in the playground. We ran all the length of Temple Street and thank goodness, she was still there, sat in her buggy in the twilight. My mum muttered something between clenched teeth about what I’d get if Anne had been missing. I’ve been dealt a few good hidings from my mother who was definitely a smack first, ask later sort of parent, but the smacked bottom I got for this was by far the worst. I mentioned that Padfield was a safe village and all the children had the freedom to play out. Another year and news of the Moors Murders broke. We had been on their doorstep.

My Haiku,

Do The Borrowers
Live underneath our floorboards
Claiming belongings?

Wooden dinosaur,
Its tummy is still missing
After sev’ral years.

We’ve waited for this,
Tooth fairy on full alert!
Wobbly one is out!

Front teeth are missing
And he’s got a gentle lisp,
Lovely impish grin.

It’s just a charger,
Ordinary, not special.
Why can’t we find it?

Where is your sister?
I felt my insides drop down.
Another smacked bum.

PMW 2024

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Missing: Pets Lost And Found

Much loved pets go missing every day. Some are lost forever, whilst others are incredibly found days, weeks, months or even years later. Here is a mixed bag of stories.

Lost and Found © 2023 KEW (Image credit: Kate Eggleston-Wirtz)

The Hamster
One summer, our neighbours were going on vacation and I was asked to look after their two pets, a hamster and a cat. I was young and keen to take on the responsibility. This did not go well. On one of these caregiving mornings I was greeted with an empty hamster cage, door wide open. The hamster was never found.

The Snake
When I was growing up my brother John kept a menagerie of animals down in the basement. The mini zoo included several different types of snakes (thankfully none poisonous), a tokay gecko, a tarantula and loads of mice that were raised to feed the snakes. The basement was expansive and centre stage stood a monstrous octopus-like furnace entombed within walls of stone and cement. Vivariums lined the wall on one side. There was also an open entrance to a massive crawl space with a dirt floor that I never had the courage to enter, too many places for creepy-crawlies to hide.

I was about eight years old when one day John pulled me aside and let me in on a little secret, the boa constrictor had gone missing! He only shared this privileged information with me. This was in the middle of the summer when our family was just about to go on vacation for three weeks to visit relatives. On this occasion, my sister Becky was on her university break and working at a local department store. This meant she was going to be home alone with an unbeknownst to her, slithering escapee.

Now perhaps it was not the best idea to keep this information to ourselves, then again maybe it was. I wish I had an exciting tale to tell such as how my sister stumbled upon the snake in the kitchen, was terrified, threw open the back door that was violently ripped off its hinges, then frantically waved her hand in the air and ran away screaming. Now there’s a picture and that would have made for a really good story, however this is not the case. Seemingly her home alone experience unfolded quite uneventfully. Becky went to work and enjoyed her solitude. We came home and shortly thereafter she traipsed back to university none the wiser. About three months later John called me to come down into the bowels of the house. “Look at this,” he exclaimed. And there peacefully curled up around a big iron kettle on top of one of the mouse cages was the boa constrictor alive and well.

On a side note, recently I was talking about this particular incident to my friend Ruth Honey (appearing in the Elsa story below). She raised an excellent question, who fed the animals when John was away. John would have been the logical one to ask but sadly he is no longer with us, so I turned to my sister who said,

This is how I remember it but pretty sure I did not go into the basement to feed anyone…[The basement] was not inviting, which is why I wouldn’t be feeding the mice!

The Cats
Admiral Pet Insurance research showed that in August 2023 over a quarter of a million cats were listed as missing. The survey data disclosed there were particular circumstances that caused cats to suddenly disappear including: owners moving house, owners going on holiday, builders renovating the home or acquiring another pet.

However some good news came out of the API report 41 percent of these missing animals returned on their own volition, 18 percent were found by their owners, 16 percent had been found in outbuildings, 13 percent were found at their own home and the final 16 percent were found by someone local.

Jaffa

I remember a number of years ago glass artist Colette Halstead posting for several weeks on Facebook that she was desperately searching for her ginger cat Jaffa. The torment of the situation has stuck with me. When considering this article I contacted her to find out more. She has kindly given her permission to share the story.

Collette had recently moved to the country when Jaffa became her companion. He stood by her, soothed her soul, supported her as she started her glass making business out in the Lancashire countryside. They were inseparable for six years until one Friday evening Jaffa vanished. By Saturday morning she knew something was wrong.

When it happened I had an overwhelming sense that he was gone, but this didn’t stop me turning my immediate neighbourhood upside down to find him. I printed off a five-mile radius of Google earth screenshots, taped them together and used them as my map, I left no stone unturned to find him in case he was locked in anywhere. I systematically searched the area. Friends came with dogs to search the fields, friends came and helped me flyer everywhere, friends came and comforted me.

The first three weeks were the worst, I knew that by slim chance if he’d been trapped that he would not survive beyond that time frame, I really struggled emotionally here. I stopped looking and wandering through fields after about four weeks. I still miss Jaffa terribly…The worst feeling in the world is having no closure…

Elsa
Every so often in the news there are extraordinary stories about missing pets that miraculously reappear. One such story appeared on the BBC Midlands website about Elsa, a cat who went missing in 2007 and was joyfully reunited with her animal loving owner and original carer Ruth years later. In 2021 Ruth received an unbelievable phone call. Elsa had been found half a mile away from her home in Leicestershire. Apparently workers at the Nutts Lane industrial estate had been feeding her for over a decade until someone noticed a lump above one eye and out of great concern took her to a local vet. It was through the microchip database that Ruth was traced.

Ruth went on to crowd fund and raise over £2,000 for operations to remove Elsa’s multiple tumours. Elsa recovered brilliantly. Ruth said that at first, Elsa was very standoffish, but settled and became the most cuddly and loving cat.

Elsa and Ruth (Image credit: Ruth Honey)

Before I take leave, here are a couple of poems inspired by my brother’s escaped snake.

My Snake Marigold

She slithered out of her stronghold,
was lost for months my Marigold,
then found wrapped ‘round a kettle cold.
I brought her back into the fold.
And there she stayed, but not for long.
The great escape and she’s still gone.

Marigold’s Great Escape

I’m not hissss ssssnake, I never wassss.
I left him just becausssse, becausssse
I had to sssscare all that wasssss
out there! Beware! My tongue! My jawssss!
I’m ssstaying here in grassss and weedsssss
to sssslither doing sssscary deedsssssssss.

Thank you for reading, Kate J

Sources
BBC East Midlands, 10 December 2021. Owner’s cat found at nearby Hinkley factory after 14 years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-59594010 Accessed 24 January 2024.
Halstead, C. 2024. Email correspondence to Kate Eggleston-Wirtz 22 January.
Honey, R, 2024. Video call with Kate Eggleston-Wirtz 23 January.
Improve Veterinary Practice, 2022. New research and tracking experiment reveals extent of missing cat epidemic and behaviour of cats outside the house.
https://www.veterinary-practice.com/2022/cat-research-reveals-behaviour-and-missing-cats%20accessed%2021%20January%202024 Accessed 28 January 2024

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Come Friendly Bombs

Come hold me now,
Come see the sun,
Come stand with me until the morning comes.
And as the warm red sky of dawn ignites,
We wave good bye to the bad dreams,
Of those monsters in the night.

And with only minutes left,
We remember fallen friends,
And give thanks to the life,
The life we had,
The life that we left behind.

Come smiling tanks
Come friendly Bombs,
Come lay waste to our towns with your loud song.
And as the building fires burn bright,
We welcome back in to our minds,
The monsters in the night.

And with only time to spend,
We count our missing friends.
And give thanks to the life,
The life we had,
The life that we left behind.

Come sit with me,
Come dry my tears,
Come help with the pain of all my years.
And as my own dusk starts to fall,
I understand your feeling Dad,
As your bell began to toll.

And with only moment till the end,
I see my long lost friends.
And give thanks to the life,
The life I had,
The life that I leave behind.

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Where's Shaun?

 by Ashley Lister

Have you seen this poet? 

Nominal reward offered for anyone able to locate this missing poet. Shaun was last seen blogging a few weeks ago. Since then he's disappeared from the face of the planet. 

If anyone is able to locate this blogger-cum-poet and get him to post his Monday blog entries again, we will offer a copy of the Poets' Guide to Blackpool.

All communications will be treated in the strictest confidence. The public are warned not to approach this man as he will probably try and bum a fag off them :-)

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If Found...

MISSING

Last seen three weeks ago mooching around my mind, sniffing at an unfinished poem.

Small, often invisible, and with a tendency to wander off during times of self-doubt.

Has previously been responsible for several ideas.

Invaluable to creative types.

If found, please return to the poet who can’t write.

*     *     *

Lara

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No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.

I'm missing kisses at the moment.  Therefore, I'm thinking about kisses often.  The thought of kissing distracts me regularly.  I'm becoming obsessive.  Until recently I had kisses on tap.  Mine for the taking at any time.  Now I'm reduced to remembering kisses, dwelling on kisses past.  Longing for kisses.  Pining for kisses.  (I did mention I'm becoming obsessive)  With this in mind, I've combined obsession and theme to produce a poem:


What I have learned about kissing

That it's better approached gingerly, like a nervous mammal
That pheremones pass between us, suggestive of immortality
That crossing the streams does not end the universe
That breath can be swapped only so long before dizziness
That trumpet players' lips are more prone to dryness
That sometimes the mouth becomes all that exists
That breathing is less important than commitment to the kiss
That lip-reading means knowing a murmer's purpose
That the moment before connection should be prolonged indefinitely
That the best kisses feel like both home and adventure
That teeth don't matter
That hands should be actively engaged
That eyes can be open but ought to be closed
That busy supermarkets spark memorable kisses
That kisses should occur whenever they are considered.

 

This is the second poem about kisses I've written.  The first I wrote when I was 18.  I don't remember it all and I'm not sure I have a copy but it started like this:

My kisses are not thoughtless gifts.

Nor are my caresses to be taken lightly

Though lightly they were given

As gently I traced the tracks of your smile

On your lips and beyond.

So maybe I've always been a little obsessed by kisses.  I suppose if you're going to be distracted by something, considering kissing's not a bad way to pass the time.  

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