Paths

The dictionary definition is of a way or track laid down for walking or made by continual treading. It is the course or direction in which something moves.

There are so many routes to this topic, (pardon the pun) and so many literal types of path, never mind the metaphorical kind.

pathway (author's photo)

I love paths, wandering along letting the mind free itself into the ether or countryside or rain, not really caring about destinations and definitely not counting steps is my idea of life enhancing. Of course there are the popular walks where there will be people in passing but if I can find one that is “off the beaten track”, where I may have to contend with brambles and unexpected obstacles and being surprised by where I’ve ended up and feeling at an advanced age that I CAN STILL DO IT!! pure joy.

Many have disappeared, that short cut through the field or byway gone to car park or other concrete sites and farmers hate us chancers, marauding on paths they have thought were grown over long ago, and disturbing their cows and sheep.

illustration for The Salt Path (artist Angela Harding)

Cliff paths are really exciting, being conscious of the dangers but so worth it for the views and the interesting flora, fauna and bird life. I have been recently reading “ The Salt Path”, by Raynor Winn, a novel she wrote after walking the South West Coastal Path with her husband Moth ,who had been diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s Disease and at the same time they were made homeless and destitute. They had nothing to lose so set off with only a tent for shelter and somehow managed to walk 630 miles, they coped well enough to continue walking and covering more mileage on more walks. The interesting result was Moth improved under duress! Now it is a film.

I have to mention Robert Macfarlane’s slim but quite beautiful book “Holloway”, which is “ an impressionist piece of landscape writing”. Hol weg, Holwy ,Holway,Holeway Holewaye, Hollowy, Holloway, is a sunken path,” a deep and shady lane, a route that has been harrowed into the land by centuries of footfall, hoof hit, wheel roll rain run” and existing only where the stone is soft e.g. chalk. In places they are 16 or 18 ft below the level of the fields. He states these ways are the result of repeated human actions that relate to other old paths and tracks, ways that still connect place to place, person to person. He also feels they are places in which you can “ slip back out of this world” or within which ghosts may quietly be - citing Edward Thomas and Eric Ravilious having mystical experiences.

illustration for Holloway (artist Stanley Donwood)

Looking at the artwork in this book, these places seem magical and spooky places where someone could hide away for days undetected ( think priests).The oldest Holloways date back to the Iron Age, none less than 300 years and began as sites of pilgrimage, ways to the sea or markets. Now they are too narrow for use and overgrown but seem to hold an otherworldly message for us in our everyday preoccupations.

The Distance Forward

The afternoon rolls out
it’s carpet of seduction
limestone outcrops, balsam
somewhere a river.

Bees dark and brimming
from unexpected hives.
A farmer in the background
nurtures his field.

At one with sensation
from a quicksilver spine,
I’m lost but content.

I’m lost and a follower
of overgrown lanes, the couple
with their dog who tell
in North Country vowels

that lull me to my past;
the distance forward is the same
as the long walk back.

Cynthia Kitchen

First published in “That Untravelled World” 2015.

Thanks for reading.

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A Favourite Poet (or Two)

The problem in choosing one poet from the legions that have had an influence over a lifetime is the feeling that there are ghosts gathering in the room, perhaps displeased with my choices. So it must be those alchemists of the language who “ blew me away “ on first reading them, who made me fall in love with poetry when I had no intention of writing any.

Dylan Thomas drew me to visit Laugharne and I still have a painting of him sitting in his workroom overlooking the estuary of the river Taff writing the wonderful “Fern Hill,” “And Death shall have no Dominion.” The dissolute lifestyle and too - young death were part of the attraction for me. Brendan Kennelly was a poet who I felt connected with, each time I read him something different emerged. Someone said a poem should move the head, the tongue and the heart and I try to remember this as a guide. Another Irish poet, whose eccentric style was a joy to read was Paul Durcan, who I was lucky to meet on a course and really enjoyed his company.

So after this preamble I have selected the two greatest influencers, in my honest but totally unoriginal opinion as mind-blowers. They are Ted and Sylvia. I was hooked years ago by Plath, not having read anything to compare with her, and Hughes’s affinity with nature has produced some of the best writing on this subject I have read.

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston Massachusetts USA in 1932 and was educated in that country until she received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge England. It was here she met Ted Hughes and an immediate relationship was formed. Sylvia wrote poems tied to her personal experience and used starkly expressive work tied to a feeling of alienation. Her well known poems are “Daddy” “Lady Lazarus” and the novel “The Bell Jar”. She was a major poet of the Confessional school which Robert Lowell belonged to.

Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd in 1930 deep in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire and was heavily influenced by the huge overhanging cliff there and his adventures in the countryside making him have a realistic, non sentimental view of nature. He had an attachment to folklore and mythology. He went to Cambridge University in 1951 and married Plath in 1956.

Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

Their story is not a happy one although their meeting of hearts, souls, body and mind produced strong, passionate poetry, Ted didn’t fit the restrictions of children and marriage and escaped from their farm in Devon to commence an affair with Assia Wevill, who although giving birth to a daughter couldn’t get him to commit to her.

Sylvia, left with two young children in a London flat in the extremely harsh winter of 1962//3 killed herself. Ted was devastated and stopped writing for 3 years but then Assia also took her own and her daughter’s life.

It is a high octane tragedy and you wonder how Hughes recovered enough to carry on, remarrying eventually and becoming The Poet Laureate in 1984 .One tale he told was of studying English at university and the essay wouldn’t gel so he went to bed and a fox in his dream showed him its charred paws saying “ Look what you are doing to us”, He changed his course the next day to Anthropology. He died in 1963.

This poem was written after that dream and is his first animal poem –

The Thought Fox

I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: 

Something else is alive 

Beside the clock’s loneliness 

And this blank page where my fingers move, 

Through the window I see no star: 

Something more near 

Though deeper within darkness 

Is entering the loneliness: 

Cold, delicately as the dark snow 

A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; 

Two eyes serve a movement, that now 

And again, now and now, and now

 

Sets neat prints into the snow 

Between trees, and warily a lame 

Shadow lags by stump and in hollow 

Of a body that is bold to come

 

Across clearings, an eye, 

A widening deepening greenness, 

Brilliantly, concentratedly, 

Coming about it’s own business 

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox 

It enters the dark hole of the head. 

The window is starless still, the clock ticks, 

The page is printed. 

                                Ted Hughes

You’re

Clownlike, happiest on your hands, 

Feet to the stars and moon-skulled, 

Gilled like a fish. A common-sense 

Thumbs down on the dodo’s mode 

Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, 

Trawling your dark as owls do, 

Mute as a turnip from the Fourth 

Of July to All Fools' day, 

O high-riser, my little loaf. 

Vague as fog and looked for like mail, 

Farther off than Australia. 

Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn. 

Snug as bud and at home 

Like a sprat in a pickle jar. 

A creel of eels, all ripples, 

Jumpy as a Mexican bean. 

Right, like a well-done sum. 

A clean slate, with your own face on. 

                                  Sylvia Plath 

A more cheerful one during her pregnancy.

Thanks for reading. Cynthia Kitchen

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Favourite Film

Where to begin with this blog subject? There are so many to almost make it to the final count. My mother let me miss an afternoon’s school to sit through an interminable,” Gone with the Wind,” with her, but I think I’d rather have been in class. I loved the kitchen sink type of film, "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" with the marvellous Albert Finney , "A Taste of Honey" was quite shocking, dealing with homosexuality and unmarried motherhood. This was a breakthrough drama so different from the Hollywood kind.

My sister was an extra in "A Kind of Loving" which was filmed partly in Preston’s arcade. My friend dragged me to see anything starring Cliff Richard and Elvis and put me off both permanently. I remember the shock of seeing Olivier in "The Entertainer", such a jump from Shakespeare but it was brilliant.

Sitting here thinking, so many come to mind. "ET", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Alien" are all noteworthy. I’ve just remembered some more to cram in, Alan Sillitoe’s "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and Richard Harris in "This Sporting Life". I fall for the poetry of the titles sometimes - "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?", "Suddenly Last Summer". What strikes me is my favourites will always be overflowing with dialogue, the complex interactions of characters. I loved all Tennessee Williams dramas and who can forget Brando in "On the Waterfront"?

movie still from Rebecca

So I’ll quit my self indulgence and narrow it to two. The runner-up is "Rebecca," shot in black and white in 1940, based on the book by Daphne du Maurier and classed as an American romantic psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the young never-named woman who becomes his second wife. 

The plot revolves around the first wife’s reputation and others' recollections of her. It is a thoroughly good story with interesting twists. One scene that I can’t resist is, on asking her ( Joan Fontaine) to move to Manderley, his manor, she asks naively if he means as a secretary, he replies :-
“ I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” A priceless, hilarious proposal. The other character of influence is Mrs Danvers, played by a scary Judith Anderson. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her superb portrayal of the demented housekeeper so obsessed with the dead Rebecca.

So to number one and it has to be FANFARE 🎺 🥁 "ALL ABOUT EVE" starring the one and only Bette Davis who I was lucky to see in the flesh at Southport theatre. I could fill the blog with the marvellous dialogue, the most well known being “fasten your seatbelts it’s going to be a bumpy night,” George Saunders plays a masterly role in this film and in Rebecca also.

movie still from All About Eve

This film received a record fourteen nominations at the twenty third Academy awards, becoming the only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations. It won six awards including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time and I will stop talking and becoming a spoiler for those who haven’t seen it yet. Hope you love it like I do.

Thanks for reading, I can’t think of a suitable poem.

Cynthia

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The Witches of North Berwick

To the east of Edinburgh is the town of North Berwick, an old fishing town whose claim to fame was the nearby island of Fidra believed to be the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's ‘Treasure Island'. This town has been named as the best place to live in Scotland  by the BBC but this contrasts with an ignominious past of murderous intent aimed at women.

King James V1 was travelling to Denmark to bring back his bride, Anne, in1589 and during the sea crossing severe storms broke out, so severe were they he had to turn back and a furious King became convinced this was the work of witches specifically from, you guessed it, North Berwick. These creatures were out to ruin him, there was a belief that one of them sailed into the Firth of Forth in a sieve in order to summon the storm. So this was a double crime of being a witch and a regicide.

James’s hatred was well known and during his reign 70 - 200 “ witches” were put on trial, tortured and/or executed from North Berwick alone. This number is approximate as the final number can’t be known. The number burned at the stake alive in Scotland was around 4,000.

There was a small kirk on the green in the town where the women met, danced and summoned the Devil, according to gossip, they were older women, midwives, healers who worked with herbs and curative plants. These people were prime targets.

Acts of torture here were particularly cruel. In order to obtain a confession a breast ripper was used ( I’d never heard of this before ) a Scold’s Bridle which is a metal device to fit around the head with metal prongs into the mouth making it impossible to speak. Some  men were said to use it on their wives!.

Shakespeare actually wrote the witches into Macbeth during James’s reign in the early 17th century using the tale of the sieve -

“But in a sieve, I’ll thither sail
And, like a rat without a tail,
I’ll so, I’ll do I’ll do.

My poem below was first published as runner-up in Second Light Poetry Competition.

Night walk with Phantoms

Women are out - not the moon,
pale and listening by hedges
to the zeppelin raid of hail.

They darken by chance
in a lull of wind, quicken
from tree shapes, crouch
forgetful in wasted grass.

Cloud lifts - huge, silver-bellied.
The crone plays at trickery;
squat on shrubby heels, she’s
whiskered with new growth.

She springs elbows to east and west,
becomes a stiff weather-vane
all set for change.

Thank you for reading,

Cynthia Kitchen.

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Magazines

From my young days as a child visiting a makeshift chest clinic in a terraced house on Walton’s Parade’ in Preston clutching the latest copy of ‘Sunny Stories’,  by Enid Blyton, who became a firm favourite, to my stacks of ‘Nova’ magazine which had to be abandoned in a flat on Cheetham Hill as I made an escape from a dubious flatmate, I have been hooked. 

In the early days of ‘Bunty’ and ‘Girl’, we were lucky to have them delivered with the newspaper and I only had to make the effort when I wanted to read 'Dandy' and 'Beano' which weren’t thought suitable, so I had to go to the shop to buy them. My favourites were the school stories and the girls' wonderful times at boarding school so I remember ‘The School Friend’ which looking at copies Online now are really well presented but from all points of view ‘not politically correct’. In them was an escape from my basic boring Comprehensive school of everyday things to a wonderland in a mysterious old house or mansion where you could be with a group of pals who had adventures and afternoon tea served to them. Sometimes they dressed up in gowns and masks as’ The Silent Three’ to right a wrong. It was very moralistic with honour for the school and each other. I loved the names Polly Linton and Betty Barton, Cora Grandways was a troublemaker. 

'The School Friend' was published by Amalgamated Press as a story paper for girls from 1919 to 1929, renamed The Schoolgirl and continued to1940, revived as a comic in 1950 as a mix of comic strips and prose stories published by AP, then Fleetwood and IPC .In 1965 it merged into ‘ June and Schoolfriend’ edited by Mavis Miller. Some original titles were:

 

     The Gypsy Schoolgirl 

     The Heroism of Phillipa Derwent 

     The Girl who Deceived the Form 

     Bessie Bunter’ s Busy Day 

This was supposed to be the correct way to think and mostly went unchallenged. 

As a young adult let loose from the claustrophobia of home there were so many versions of life shown in the monthly editions and as for the top shelf men’s mags!

The American edition of 'Cosmopolitan' was a find and much better than the later British version but returning to the 70’s there was ‘Spare Rib’. 

This was serious stuff, not the sitting down with a packet of chocolate digestives to while away an hour, material. This magazine was founded in 1972 in the U.K. to shape debate about feminism, challenging stereotypes with a jokey title referring to the Biblical reference of Eve who was the first woman created from Adam’s rib and showing there was no independence for women from the beginning of time. The first issue was distributed by Seymour Press but  W.H. Smith refused to stock it because it had an expletive on the back page! Later it was distributed to a network of radical and alternative bookshops. 

It had to have the ‘look’ of a woman’s mag but it’s purpose was to investigate and present alternatives to the traditional roles of virgin, wife and mother and to set the record straight on Women’s Liberation by reaching out to all women. It ceased publication in1993 as there were splits in thinking. 'Spare Rib' is recognised as iconic today in the U. K and was digitised by the British Library in 2016. It remains one of the Women’s Liberation movements most notable achievements. 

There are too many magazines to do them justice here but they have featured over many decades of my life. Sorry, can’t find a poem for this and thank you for reading.

Cynthia

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Missing

To be or not to be is the question for Southport pier. It is there as a phantom stretching its considerable length over reaching sands, but shut, locked to those faithful wanting to tread the rebuilt wooden boards to the distant sea or to reach the Pier’s head and Pavilion with its distractions and welcome cups of tea. 

The original iron pier, the longest, bar one at Southend, was built in 1860, its length 3,600 ft ,its architect was Richard Krill Freeman and was Grade II listed. Pleasure and fishing boats would berth at pier head until the bay silted up and the length was extended (tides go out far beyond it).

In the year 2000, the structure was rebuilt with poor materials and workmanship which has apparently caused the wooden boards to need replacing much earlier than expected and in December ‘23 the order from structural engineers was ‘Times Up”. 

The special timber used for the flooring has to be sourced from West Africa. There have been “scare stories” saying that the whole is to be demolished but this has been denied by the owners, we shall see!

The Pavilion is host to a vintage arcade of appealing penny slot machines with tiny animated papier-mâché scenes of bedroom farce and a poor soul being hanged, fortune telling, bagatelle and the ubiquitous laughing sailor seen usually at funfairs. 

Southport’s pier is not a seductive, gothic, starling murmuration edifice as Blackpool’s North pier was when I last visited, but is a straight, no frills place which walking, wind whipping your cares into a cocked hat feeling of temporary escape as you perch above muddy northern sands is gold dust. With the view of massed razor shells, herring gulls and mallard, then watching the fishermen from the head trying for eels, flounders, doggies and schoolies and the sweeping vista towards Blackpool tower. I miss the amazing beauty of sunset seen through it’s metal heart.

Not a place but missing a friend- 

Fragment 

I carry the weight of her 

along the summer lane 

grasses bow and shift 

as if uncomfortable with grief 

sun bears down on willow herb 

this mighty weed moves in 

to lift a heart 

to grace a lane. 

Thank you for your reading time. Cynthia.

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Pills and Others

When I was six or seven I was given a bottle of little torpedo shaped medication and told to swallow two with water, the bottle was stuffed with them and I had no idea these were to save my life and would be a lifetimes dedication. Make sure you take the full course was the mantra instilled and back then that seemed an enormous number to take at a time particularly when you are so young. They were antibiotics of course, I think the first in my case were Streptomycin. I remember being interested in the names as I progressed to other variations but the link was to the earlier discovery of penicillin. 

I will be forever grateful to both Alexander Fleming and Selman Waksman, who it was said was the sole discoverer of Streptomyces in the 1940’s and who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine in 1952.In fact the antibiotic synthesised by the soil organism Streptomyces griseus was discovered by American biochemists Albert Schatz and Elizabeth Bugie in 1943. The drug acts by interfering with the ability of a microorganism to synthesise several proteins. Streptomycin is used to treat bacterial infections, particularly TB.

 

I was probably a bit of a Guinea pig and given far more per infection than I would be today. The courses are streamlined now and come in pill form. Then, my mother worried about my ingesting masses of plastic, decided to cut the capsules in two, empty powder onto a teaspoon and expect me to swallow. I can remember that clagging dry mass in my throat now and I was “happy” when allowed to swallow the plastic again. 

My mother’s story was the tragic one. She had various ailments and took all kinds of pills and medicines, the GP visiting the house produced a syringe and after injecting her with Adrenalin, I think, left it on the mantelpiece, to give me a permanent fear of needles. I was woken one glorious May Sunday by my Vice Principal while I was at College to be told she had died. She was only fifty two, I was poleaxed as stupidly this hadn’t crossed my mind. Whether the drugs gave her longer life or shortened it will never be known, but it has given me a horror of casual and unnecessary pill taking and I avoid it when I can. 

Some 

sort of 

inheritance 

You have left your pot 

drugs that kept you going,

 

in the reaches of my mind.

 

I drag it out, strip off the lid

 

witness again the chemists’ 

dreamscape of colours 

it takes to carry a life 

yours and mine. 

Thanks for reading ,Cynthia

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Soaps

In December 1960 something completely different emerged in the North of England for a short run and remarkably is still running today. The Soap I sat in front of in the living room on a cold winter’s day was Coronation Street, a gloomy looking drama set on the grimy, cobbled streets steeped in Northern life.

Well, it didn’t look too promising but my mother and I were hooked in to the dialogue and characters as types we recognised and I can remember their names now. It started with Florrie Lyndley’s first day in the corner shop being told the local gossip and which people to avoid, whilst arranging cans. Elsie and Dennis Tanner are next, arguing about his lack of employment after prison and in one scene Elsie looks in her Compact’s mirror and says:- 

       Just about ready for the Knackers yard. 

and we laughed and from then on we saw it was entertaining and not too serious and Elsie became a key character with her fights and rows with Ena Sharples and men always coming and going in her life.

It is quite amazing that Ken Barlow started in the first episode and is still there although probably reading his lines stuck to lamps and chairs out of sight, how else does he manage? 

There is a memorable bit of conversation between him, down from university and transformed into a “snob”, asks his dad why he is drinking tea at meal times. 

       I like my food swilled down properly, his dad replies. 

We, up North, didn’t all talk or behave like this although Southerners like to believe we are still stuck in a time warp, but the popularity of this soap couldn’t have been thought possible then. Joe public craved more and Granada commissioned more episodes from its original bi-weekly offering.

early Coronation Street cast ensemble

To go back to the first emergence of Ena buying Fondant Fancies must have stuck in my memory as a mysterious thing to eat and the wonderful Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst drinking stout at a circular wrought iron table in the Rovers pub wearing the drabbest macs the props department could find. How sad I was when she dies whilst swigging the stout she loved.

They say the success of it was down to the strong female characters and the males do seem a weaker set. The drama has continued down the years with many memorable parts for women, Sarah Lancashire who played Raquel being one. What a clever concept of Tony Warren’s to give us everyday characters we would recognise and ongoing drama mixed in so we are hooked in following their story - lines seemingly forever.

drinking in the Rovers Return

Coronation Street

If someone could direct me to a street where I could stand
Cobbles beneath my feet tearful with rain;
The shadows of my hopes behind the stained - glass windows of a pub, ghosts -
I would turn up the collar of my coat, walk, number each small, terraced house by heart:
Birthplace; neighbours - hard man, hussy, harridan, hustler, hero, heroine -
Threshold, bride and groom as clueless of next year as Christmas Eve;
Or exit-place, a hearse, a raw and local grief…
Then I’d retrace my steps, perhaps a baby’s cry sharp as a sudden star nailed to the sky,
To stand now in this backstreet bar, nursing a beer
All my griefs, my gifts, and glad I live here.

                                                                   by Carol Ann Duffy, 2010

Thank you for reading,

Cynthia.

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Flood

I remember the old black Morris that struggled up hills and how my dad used to switch off the engine to let it roll silently down again (to save petrol) and the particular struggle he had getting over Shap Fell.

One year on our way to visit relatives we diverted from calling on my mother’s cousins and ended up in a dusty triangular shaped building. We walked from one end to the other, nothing much to see I thought and forgot about it. Years later I realised this was the dam that had been built to drown the valley and village of Mardale Green in Cumbria to provide a reservoir for the burgeoning city of Manchester and my appetite grew to discover more.

Mardale

The countryside here is remote and it doesn’t take much romancing to think of the idyll of mountains, waters and green pastures, it must have been entrancing a valley enclosed on three sides without traffic except the odd bicycle and car and only the sound of sheep calling, birdsong, and the school/ church bell tinkling among the greensward, but as in all good tales this wasn’t to last.

Manchester was left out on a limb after Liverpool turned to North Wales, another source was needed and Mancunian eyes turned to Haweswater, the highest and remotest lake in the Lake District. In 1919 Manchester Corporation secured the Haweswater Act which gave the go-ahead for the creation of a new reservoir from the lake and large catchment area. It was agreed that the lake be increased from 2 1/2 to 4 miles long, the water level to 96 feet. Sir Edward Holt stating: “ In my opinion Haweswater is presently very much over-rated. It will be more beautiful in years to come.”

As a huge amount of “manpower” was needed, a village of small bungalows was to be built on the fellside at the entrance to the valley, called Burnbanks. Work on building the dam began in 1930, was postponed because of lack of finance and recommenced in 1934.

construction of the dam

Some of the workers left to join the forces when war broke out, but building continued and was completed in 1942. So the valley became a lake with the old road submerged, the farms, church, the Dun Bull Hotel blown up by the Territorials and only the school survived, being dismantled and rebuilt near Burnbanks. Several thousand people gathered for the last church service with loudspeakers fastened to the church tower. The Bishop of Carlisle stressed he didn’t weep for Mardale as sacrifices had to be made to help the urban populations, the stones of the building to be used for the draw-off tower and the graves had all been relocated.

Just think of the mixed feelings, the intense sorrow of the small community the loss of everything they had ever known, being without choice, knowing their homes were wiped out never to be revisited but maybe, just maybe a few people who are seeing new beginnings, new prospects before them.

Today, it still feels cut off from the rest of the lakes but it is known for the only Golden Eagles in the country. It is still a wonderful setting tinged with mystery which a cohort of the faithful visit after a particularly dry season when magically those low stone walls, remnants of field and track and bridge appear and can be walked on as though there is no permanence to their drowning.

Haweswater

I couldn’t find a poem about Haweswater or Mardale so opted for poem XL from Housman’s 'A Shropshire Lad ':

Blue Remembered Hills

Into my heart an air that kills

From yon far country blows:

What are those blue-remembered hills,

What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

Thanks for reading, 

Cynthia.

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Flamboyance

Flamboyance/Flamboyant.  A word to savour. It conjures a world of overemphasis coupled with style and personalities to match. The gestures, glitz and glamour to take us away from the drab '50s when I was nobbut a little lass. We were surrounded by the dull and derelict, even the cars were a uniform black. We needed 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium ', to show us people with huge charisma and extreme dress sense while we had to carry on with drab! 

It was the '60s when we threw off the school uniform, struggled into tiny Lurex outfits, took ages applying individual false eyelashes and blue nail varnish from the theatrical shop and hit the town, innocent compared to now but we got noticed. 

Flamboyance, the noun comes from the French 'flamboyer ' to flame and its root word means to shine, flash and burn. One definition is “marked by ostentation but tasteless”. 

Then there is the tree... 

 

Royal Poinciana

In 1966 my dad and I flew to Bermuda with B.O.A.C. My sister and her husband had taken jobs there to escape winter and left in the February, our mother died in May, so dad cobbled the fare together somehow and we found ourselves dressed to the nines (I was wearing a matching coat and dress), stepping into this luxury with air hostesses not stewards, and eating an edible meal. It would have been wonderful if we hadn’t been overwhelmed with grief. We came down to earth in the small, searingly hot apartment they had rented, days later bizarrely all grouped around one small radio listening to England winning the World Cup. What has this to do with anything?

When I looked up the word it took me to the Poinciana which is a showy tropical tree native to Madagascar, widely planted in tropical regions for its immense scarlet and orange flowers and I remembered it as this amazing mass of colour I had seen in Bermuda. It was introduced there in 1870 or thereabouts and known as the Royal Poinciana, Flame of the Forest or Flamboyant. I will never forget seeing the vibrant colours of the flowers and fauna on Bermuda in contrast to the delicacy of colours on this island and both have their richness. 

The poem is about another vibrant flower, the Tiger Lily. 

The Magnificence of Lilies

 

As Tigers are unfettered 

from cellophane 

fumes rise, 

two of us drugged, lit up 

for change. 

Wild words dissolve 

before these flames, we 

slowly inhale and hear 

colour tell a tale 

of hidden depths and 

long neglect. Faint 

music from new open throats 

begins to swell this room, soon 

our ceiling will burst the lock 

on song that has never been heard. 

C. Kitchen. 

Thanks for reading,

Cynthia

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Winging It

Winging it. An interesting term conjuring ideas of air, theatre and life. Good and bad experiences come to mind, perhaps it gets easier with age but I think some people are more adept and successful in pulling it off.

My friend was brilliant at this, laid-back and charming she managed to distract her tutor away from her non-existent essay into him forgetting to ask to see it, gaining an excellent grade in the process. As a teacher she made it with a hastily prepared plan (we could do this in the past) and deliver a grade 1 lesson. On attaining a headship and suffering a visit from OFSTED they never suspected the files were bare as she entertained them royally and dined out on the stories. Living life in the moment, she is still thriving and never dull.

Anyone raising a family and working, spinning plates, juggling necessity, tedium and pleasure, everything last minute, our hair unkempt, appointment’s missed, just made it that time. Some periods in our lives are all “winging it.”

We have a P.M. who has taken a vow to wing everything, at least that is what we see, and people have ‘loved’ him for it, Look how his charm woos the public unlike the solid, probably much more reliable leader of the opposition.

My main reliance on winging was as a supply teacher. Starting with the early morning call, the rush around, grabbed piece of toast, crammed bag full of ‘hopefully’ material for the correct age group. The journey, probably East Lancs, then the prayer that the children won’t be rioting when you arrive. It was usually fine and the rest of the staff so pleased to see you and that you could actually control the little darlings and teach. The nightmare one was arriving to be asked “Can you take the assembly?” and there you are faced with the whole school staring expectantly at your wholly unprepared self, the true meaning of “winging it”.

Everyone Sang

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoner birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on-on- and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away…O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

                                                                                     Siegfried Sassoon (1919)

Thank you for reading, Cynthia.

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Olive Oyl

Described as tall, gangly, big-footed with black hair tied in a bun was my introduction to Olive Oyl, the long-time love interest of Popeye the sailor man. To think that a monochrome cartoon squashed onto a tiny T.V. screen could cause such excitement after a day at school seems amazing now but this was from the USA and we lapped it up.

Olive had reigned supreme for ten years as the only member of the original Thimble Theatre cast, created by cartoonist Elzie Segar in 1919, to survive, before it became a star laden vehicle for Popeye himself in 1929. Olive’s original boyfriend was Harold Hamgravy who was a dead loss being constantly attracted to wealthy women and craving an easy life. Hamgravy hired Popeye to man his ship and set out for treasure hunts. Popeye was a hit with audiences and eventually replaced Harold as Olive’s beau.

We loved the way Popeye spoke: “ I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.” out of a gravelly mouth and calling his adopted baby an “infink”. He was always looking for a fight and does so constantly with his rival Bluto, a hulking, brute of a man. Then there was the ever ready can of spinach to hand which enabled Popeye to win. This was a mystery as we had never heard or seen this vegetable and the green sludge disappearing down a throat did nothing to attract us. It’s amazing how limited our diets were and our knowledge of foodstuffs in the 50’s and 60’s, spinach as easy to buy now as any vegetable.

Olive’s relations had entertaining names which we may not have appreciated as children. Her brother was Castor Oyl and his estranged wife was Cylinda Oyl, Nana Oyl was Olive’s mum, father was Cole. The baby Sweet Pea was delivered to Popeye’s doorstep in a box and was a particular favourite with us kids.

In a long running series of animated films produced by the Fleischer brothers in the 1930s, 40’s and 50’s Olive’s squeaky voice was created by Betty Boop voice actress Mae Questel. In the 1980’s live action film Olive was portrayed by Shelley Duval and Popeye by the brilliant Robin Williams.

Lyric from the Cartoon:

I’m Popeye the sailor man 

I yam what I yam so I am 

I’m strong to the ’finich’ 

Cos I eat me spinach 

I’m Popeye the sailor man. 

Thanks for reading, Cynthia.

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Confessional Epiphany

One bored day in my dingy Manchester flat I picked up a magazine, flipped idly through it and found a poem. I knew nothing about poetry except for the War Poets, a smattering of Shakespeare and some Tennyson read under the counter at a Saturday job selling corsets. I would no sooner have tried to write a poem than I would have attempted cartwheeling down the central reservation outside. My eyes flicked through this short piece of verse and I was blown away. What kind of writing was this and who is Sylvia Plath? I remember that moment because it had the same effect as when I heard "Love Me Do" for the first time. This was new, exciting and very different, setting up a hunger to know more. 

Critic M.L. Rosenthal coined the term Confessional Poetry, in reviewing Robert Lowell's 'Life Studies' published in1959. A branch of Postmodernism emerged in the U.S.A in the 50's which are poems opening to personal faults and frailties. Plath put the speaker herself at the centre of the poem. The literal self in Lowell's poems is the literary self. In some of Plath's poems the figures are generalised and not real life. She observed the poet should be able to manipulate experiences with an informed and intelligent mind, a perfect vehicle of expression for the orderly, disordered mind. The best confessional poetry has a universal appeal. 

There were others who had a fascination with death and took their own lives, John Barrymore, Anne Sexton among them and their life stories make compulsive reading. The poem that had such an impact on me is "Mirror".

(image credit Charlotte Unsworth)

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.

                                                                      by Sylvia Plath (1961) 

Thank you for reading this, Cynthia.

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Snow In Spain

The recent heavy snowfall in Spain reminded me of a holiday we experienced some years ago.

We wanted to escape winter in Blighty so took up the invitation to visit the Malaga region in January 2009. We, consisted of six of us, friends from way back plus husbands, and the plan was to stay in Malaga centre for the processions and sweet throwing, then make our way to the mountains of Axarquia to stay in a villa just below the highest peak, "La Maroma,"(The Rope), named after an ancient ice house located close to the summit. We were looking forward to mild temperatures and a glimpse of an Almond tree in early blossom among the Olives. 

So far, so good. It was wonderful to be in such a remote place and have it to ourselves. We set off one evening for the local village of Camares dressed appropriately for Spring and the local taverna "Raffles." The owner was permanently wheelchair bound after falling from the mountainside some years ago. 

We were on a narrow, unmade street, when we entered the bar, our intention was to stay some time. In under an hour of tapas nibbling and wine sampling the scene changed to shrieks and arm-waving, people rushing in talking in high-speed dialect, then we made it to the doorway. In the time we had been happily consuming it had snowed heavily, over 9 inches in old money. I glanced at my silly, flimsy shoes.

 

It was falling like inflated golf balls and we hadn't a coat between us not to mention any transport. An angel, in the form of a local woman of the village found waterproofs and fitted her size four boots onto my feet and off we went. 

It was blinding, driven, lots of words would fit. People were joyous, out celebrating, clinking wine glasses and bottles along the deepening road. Washing was stiff and white on lines. One man was in tears as he hadn't seen any snow for 47 years and now there was snow we could hardly trudge through. The village left behind, with darkness at our backs for the first time we felt a twinge of fear. 

Now we were on our own some of the excitement diminished but this was an adventure wasn't it? Then, a 4 by 4 pulled up and offered us 'girls' a lift so we piled in leaving the men behind reluctantly. The snow filled the windscreen as he talked incomprehensibly and we tried to respond. We reached a fork in the road got out and stood together with steep drops on either side, white everywhere and suddenly the lights were switched off, but where? The village of Solaris, in the valley to the left of us was as black as pitch. I remember that moment now and how otherworldly and magical it was walking in the silent night, arriving back, the men returning safely. 

The next morning the roads had been cleared. We were amazed but most of the snow had thawed leaving the odd patch on a few surprised plants, the experience remained fixed into ours and the villagers memories, where it is still casts its spell. 

Real Weather at Last

I haven't brought my glasses

you wear someone's hat, 

not a street-map between us, or clue 

whose borrowed boots I'm tramping in. 

Flakes drive us, huge as fists, 

in the photos they'll be glowing balls

of hellish fire, lighting our fade

to indistinct. 

We could pray, 

but we pass a man's unsullied joy

 

at white not witnessed 

for forty-seven years. 

His laugh absolves us as we strive

your jacket wraithed in sleet. 

This world feels for us, lets us go, 

two half realised ghosts, 

you supporting me 

in my lagging, borrow-booted crawl.

 

C Kitchen. Thank you for reading.

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