Reflect

 

Our summer didn’t turn out as we hoped. One thing after another put obstacles in the way of our plans, but we were fortunate enough to salvage one pre-booked break away by changing location. We’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the situations we’ve faced, and looking ahead, think about what to do next. We’ll take what comes and do our best to keep a positive outlook.

Saturday put a smile on my face. It wasn’t just Blackpool F.C.’s 4-0 win placing them at the top of the League One table, it was the return and involvement of the player in the number 12 shirt, Jerry Yates. His signature song, ‘Spirit in the Sky’ never sounded better. If you’re reading this, Jerry, - you never know – welcome home.

Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar stayed untouched on my ‘awaiting reading’ shelf for months before I decided it was time. Things I’d read about her unnerved me and yet I felt compelled to read her work. I wanted to know. I wanted to understand and reflect on the complexities of her life. I found it to be a great read. I took it slowly, to process carefully and often stopped reading to reflect on what she, or her main character, Esther Greenwood was doing. I found this poem,

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Light in the Darkness - Shine, Jesus, Shine

I was born into a Christian family. It was a mix of Catholic and Protestant and some had a stronger faith than others. I was baptised in a Church of England church, but my Sunday Schools were always Methodist. One was a strict Wesleyan Chapel that could not accept monetary gifts from my father, a publican. I have always had my faith, never faltering in my darkest of days, and believe me, I have pulled through some dark, hard times. I believe in ‘each to their own’, respectful of family and friends beliefs, non-beliefs, thoughts and preferences. If I have a grandchild sleeping over, they always get a ‘night-night, God bless’.

My christening gifts included a C of E Book of Common Prayer and a bible with my initials on. These were from both sets of grandparents, I think. As a child, I was fascinated by the picture inside the prayer book, ‘The Light of the World’ by Holman Hunt, and found the person, who I later learnt to be Jesus, a bit scary looking. The light in my darkness. 

Our recent stay in Dumfries and Galloway got off to a confusing start when there was a mix up concerning our accommodation. We’ve stayed in the same lodge so many times that we consider it to be our own. It took a few moments to accept that it was occupied. All turned out fine. There are only six lodges spaced between trees and shrubs, all very private and all much the same. We soon found ours. It was only tea-time, around five, but dark already. This is a recognised Dark Sky area and glancing up, I couldn’t believe my eyes, especially my peculiar eyes. The sky was full of more stars than I’d ever seen, sparkling brightly, some tiny, some big, millions of them. We stopped unloading the car and switched off the lights and torches we were using, and just stood, staring at the sky. I could actually see them, my eyes, with problem vision giving me a struggle to focus all the time, could process this wonderful night sky. The most amazing lights in the darkness.

On Christmas Eve, my daughter and I took her three children to the Christingle service at our local church. The children had been before to various services and to Christingle last year, so knew to sit quietly. After a while they were a bit fidgety. Matilda had seen a classmate across the aisle and wanted to sit with her, but was too shy to move. The boys, who had been sitting together, now had their mother between them and the threat of no Christingle orange. There was respite in the chance to sing as a well-known hymn began. As we stood, I heard one of the boys say ‘It’s Nanna’s God bless you song’ as I popped Matilda to her friend, with a ‘thank you’ to her Nanna who is a friend of mine. Shine, Jesus, Shine. I used to choose it a lot when my children were small and part of my Sunday School class. With all the children joining in the chorus, it must be a popular hymn from school assembly. A little later a loud chorus of ‘Sing Hosanna’ was raising the roof. At the end, all lights were switched off and flames from all the Christingles flickered around the church as everyone sang Away in a Manger. Beautiful lights.

A light in the darkness, a light at the end of a tunnel, a flicker of hope, that cloud with the silver lining. There is always hope for everyone, faith or not.

No poem today, sorry, but thanks for reading. A Happy New Year to everyone. Pam x

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Plague - Bubonic, Covid?

I haven’t been to Eyam, but I believe it to be beautiful and interesting. It is on my bucket list of places to visit. Eyam is a small village in the Derbyshire Peak District which worked hard to be self-contained during an outbreak of a highly infectious disease.

Taken from ‘The Plague in Eyam ’ by George May,

“The plague which was a highly infectious and very unpleasant disease widely known in Britain and Europe, came to Eyam in the summer of 1665, possibly in a bale of cloth brought up from London. The people in the house where it came to, caught the disease and died in a short space of time. Before long, others had caught the disease and also died, after a short and very painful illness. It spread rapidly. The local rector, The Rev. William Mompesson and his predecessor, led a campaign to prevent the disease spreading outside the village to the surrounding area. This involved the people of the village remaining in the village and being supplied with necessary provisions by people outside.

the boundary stone

                                                            
"There is still on the outskirts of the village a location called the Boundary stone, where traditionally money was placed in small holes for the provisions which those from the local area brought for the villagers. As a result of this action, the disease did not spread, but almost a third of the villagers died. Interestingly some of the villagers who were in contact with those who caught the plague, did not catch it. This was because they had a chromosome which gave them protection. This same chromosome has been shown to still exist in those who are direct descendants of those who survived the plague, and who are still living in the village at the present time. The action of the villagers in staying in the village is almost unique and makes the village the place of significance that it is.”

The nursery rhyme Ring-a-ring-of-roses is thought to have come from this event.

We had to apply a similar process during the Covid lockdown, by relying on grocery deliveries and isolating ourselves as much as possible. I will forever, keep to social distancing when possible and be mindful of handwashing and disinfecting.

Here's poet laureate, Simon Armitage,

Lockdown

And I couldn’t escape the waking dream
of infected fleas

in the warp and weft of soggy cloth
by the tailor’s hearth

in ye old Eyam.
Then couldn’t un-see

the Boundary Stone,
that cock-eyed dice with its six dark holes,

thimbles brimming with vinegar wine
purging the plagued coins.

Which brought to mind the sorry story
of Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre,

star-crossed lovers on either side
of the quarantine line

whose wordless courtship spanned the river
till she came no longer.

But slept again,
and dreamt this time

of the exiled yaksha sending word
to his lost wife on a passing cloud,

a cloud that followed an earthly map
of camel trails and cattle tracks,

streams like necklaces,
fan-tailed peacocks, painted elephants,

embroidered bedspreads
of meadows and hedges,

bamboo forests and snow-hatted peaks,
waterfalls, creeks,

the hieroglyphs of wide-winged cranes
and the glistening lotus flower after rain,

the air
hypnotically see-through, rare,

the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow
but necessarily so.

                            Simon Armitage, 2020

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Collage Poetry #1

Collage

The art of making a picture with various materials or objects…

stuck onto a larger surface.

Poetry

A piece of writing in which the words are arranged in separate lines,

often ending in rhyme, and are chosen for their sound and for the

images and ideas they suggest.

Considering these two definitions put forward by the Cambridge Dictionary, Collage Poetry to me is the art of making a piece of writing whereby words are cut out or made out of different material. These elements are then put together creating new images and meaning whilst considering visual shape and the symbolism of individual or a combination of words to evoke feeling and/or an idea. The symbols/text can be arranged on separate lines but not necessarily so.

Collage and writing poetry have both been part of my creative practice for many years. I have incorporated text into my assemblage and collage artworks i.e. from magazines and newspapers as a background. If I collage words to make a poem, I first write the poem then find words or letters that are appropriate. I’ve never created collage poetry in a somewhat random sense and thought this blog was an excellent opportunity to have a go.

I chose the BBC Wildlife Magazine, August 2006, for this exercise selecting a headline from 21 different pages.

I then chose the first word of each headline and started exploring creatively. I followed this by cutting out the last two words and had a bit of a play.

Finally I cut out all the words from the headlines and made attempts to create some writing that made some sort of sense. I didn’t put pressure on myself to use all the words. The first end result I believe was influenced by current tragic world events.

The second one turned out to be a bit of fun...

The third one, well, I'll leave that up to the reader:

I found the outcome really interesting and thought I'd have another go with the BBC Wildlife Magazine, July 2006. I carried on with the same process using 15 headlines this time.

My first attempt at making a poem yet again turned out to be seemingly influenced by events in Eastern Europe.

Since I used wildlife magazines and the given text, it's no surprise that nature-themed poems were also an outcome. 

Finally, I collected all the leftover words from both headlines, separated them out and categorised them by nouns, verbs, adverbs etc. which led me down a Google rabbit hole and revisiting lessons in grammar rediscovering words like determiners (five types), conjunctions, articles amongst others. This mess of individual words taken out of their original context and the exercise of separating them out by function highlighted what role the words had to play in making meaning. It was helping to make sense of a giant puzzle. The cut out words both inspired and directed ideas, whilst my past experience and intuition played a part in selecting, grouping and assembling. During the process the lack of certain words available also affected how the poems were constructed.

Here are the final results.

Just like fitting in that last piece to complete a challenging jigsaw, producing these poems has been very satisfying.

Thank you for reading. KEW 😀

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Rare Earth - Learn These Elements

Every day is a school day and this morning I’ve buried myself in the equivalent of Double Science – not a favourite subject unless we’re doing biology and anatomy - with a teacher going too fast for me to keep up with. I’m still digging my way out of a pile of seventeen elements I hadn’t heard of before and probably won’t remember. There are some unpronounceable names and I wonder who dreams them up. I won’t list them, they are easy enough to look up. There’s no need to test me, by the way, the knowledge, or some of it, is retained.

Rare Earth Elements, known as REE or Rare Earth Metals,  “are a group of elements widely used in high-tech goods and low carbon technologies. China produces 95-97% of the world supply, but is reducing exports and increasing prices to foreign customers. The direct impact of these restrictions to the UK economy is currently limited as it only has a small rare earth processing industry. However, a consistent supply is of future strategic as well as economic importance to the UK. Alternative sources are expected to become available from USA and Australia by 2014, predicted to meet the anticipated global non-Chinese demand.” Quoted from Parliament information, dated 2014.

In 2020, a site in Hull was chosen as the proposed location for the UK’s first plant to process rare earth materials. Saltend Chemicals Park was given the go-ahead earlier this year and would create 100+ jobs. This is expected to be safe and not have a negative impact on the environment.

Recent research in the US has found that REEs are finding their way into Colorado water supplies which is considered dangerous, even at low levels. From what I read, it is down to global warming and this is due to mining, not processing.

Quoted from USA account of the situation earlier this year, “In the mountainous regions of the western US, historic mining has led to acid mine drainage, i.e. the run-off produced when water comes in contact with exposed rocks containing sulphur-bearing minerals that react with water and air to form sulphuric acid and dissolved iron. This acidic run-off dissolves heavy metals including copper, lead and mercury which in turn pollute ground and surface water. Acid mine drainage is the main cause of polluted water in the US with devastating effects on biological activity in many streams. In this new study, researchers have shown that the same processes mean more heavy metals are finding their way into streams and are also acting on rare earth elements. By making measurements in Snake River in Summit County Colorado, the researchers found concentrations of REE that were several orders of magnitude higher than is typical for surface waters in this region. They also found that increases in REE in the Snake River corresponded to warming summer air temperatures, demonstrating that climate change will likely continue to exacerbate this effect in the years to come.”

Phew! That was a hard lesson and I’m more than happy to be back with daytime tv. I’d better learn these REE names, just in case I’m on Pointless, or playing along at home. To make it easier, they all end in ‘ium’.

This poem by Sam Illingworth, was inspired by the described research.

Rare Earth Water

Cascading carelessly
Past weathered ore
You slither into view
Against the levee’s edge.
Sparkling waters that
Blister in the warming sun,
Their see-through hues
A deceitful abstraction
For what lies beneath,
Refracted in the scattered light
Your provenance unwinds,
As the filthy discharge
Of a thousand
Discarded cell phones
Drifts downstream.
The rarity of extraction
Tempered by the
Ubiquity of release.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

(Photo is Saltend Chemicals Park, Hull)

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Altered States - "Turn on, tune in, drop out"

The effects of an over-indulgence of Bacardi and coke in my youth shaped my almost tee-total lifestyle.  I should have known better.  Being a licensee’s daughter, I’d seen enough of the downside of having too much to drink in other people.  The strange feelings I had in my head, referred to as ‘being merry’ was no enjoyment.  It was a scary, altered state of mind that made me feel horrible.  The experience taught me to be wary of alcohol and anything else likely to mess with my thought process.

When I was a young teenager, just getting into the Moody Blues, progressive rock, Rolling Stones and later Beatles stuff, it was cool to know who Timothy Leary was.  I thought he was a named character in a Moody Blues song. When I found out that he really existed, I understood him to be a psychedelic guru who opened people’s minds to another level, to see things in a different way and hear music beyond the sounds coming through the speakers from the vinyl. I didn’t know how he did it. I was happily naïve.

LSD – lysergic acid diethylamide – a hallucinogenic drug which Timothy Leary, actually a clinical psychologist, considered to be useful in psychiatry therapy. It was a known recreational drug in those heady, hippy times of the ‘60s and some of the songs from the musicians of the day sound like they were enhanced by something and the lyrics made no sense, well, not to me, but I loved them anyway and still do, in my un-altered state.

 

 

 

Nice to be Here

 

Nice to be here, hope you agree
Lying in the sun
Lovely weather, must climb a tree
The show has just begun

 

All the leaves start swaying to the breeze that's playing
On a thousand violins
And the bees are humming to a frog sat strumming
On a guitar with only one string

 

I can see them, they can't see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them, they can't see me
Much to my delight

 

And it seems worth noting water rats were boating
As a lark began to sing
The sounds kept coming, with Jack Rabbit loudly drumming
On the side of a biscuit tin

 

I can see them, they can't see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them, they can't see me
Much to my delight

 

Silver minnows were devising water ballet so surprising
A mouse played a daffodil
A mole came up blinking underneath an owl who's thinking
How he came to be sat on a hill

 

I can see them they can't see me
I feel out of sight
I can see them, they can't see me
Much to my delight

 

I know you won't believe me, but I'm certain that I did see
A mouse playing daffodil
All the band was really jumping, with Jack Rabbit in there thumping
I found that I couldn't sit still

 

I just had to make it with them 'cause they played my kind of rhythm

 

Ray Thomas  (1941 – 2018)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam xx

 

 

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Spring - Hello Sunshine

At last, the long awaited hint of spring sunshine is here. I don’t care that it shows up how much my windows need cleaning or draws attention to dusty surfaces, I’m happy to have daylight into the early evening and I don’t mind the sacrifice of an hour’s sleep to get it. Spring. I can wake up, renewed as I begin to feel some energy.

 A few years ago, I recognised that I develop some symptoms of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) from November to March / April. It varies in severity, but nothing unmanageable, so far. Usually it is just the desire to hibernate brought about by fatigue and generally feeling a bit fed up. The change of scenery offered by a couple of breaks in Dumfries & Galloway works wonders and on this occasion, took my mind off other health issues that are being investigated. The SAD is lifting now.

There is cheerful new growth in the garden as plants come back to life. Spring flowers have been bursting through the borders and filling my patio pots with bright colours. I’m particularly proud of a tub of orangey tulips. It all gives a feeling of well-being after months of darkness.

Spring cleaning and sorting out is on the agenda. I’m aiming for retirement and I want to organise belongings in preparation for a possible future move. It will be a slow, meticulous process because I’m easily distracted and have to look at everything. I spent ages this afternoon going through personal memorabilia and deciding what to keep. It was good, singing along to Jack Savoretti and reading old newspaper cuttings, but it didn’t really make much of an impression on the task. There’s no rush, luckily. Tomorrow, if I feel like it, I might attempt to clean some windows and dust round. Oh and there’s a couple of cobwebs that must have been manufactured during last night and need sweeping away before one grandson in particular goes on a spider hunt.

The poem I’ve chosen is Home Thoughts from Abroad by Robert Browning. It is one of my favourites and I’ve probably featured it before but it’s worth another airing. I’m so fortunate that my secondary education included poetry and learning whole poems off by heart, this is one such poem. It's a discipline that seems to be missing now. I had wonderful, enthusiastic English teachers that introduced a world of poetry and literature of which I’m still firmly placed in.

 

Home Thoughts From Abroad

 

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!

 

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower

—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

 

Robert Browning  1812 - 1889

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

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