Survivors

What’s your all-time favorite album?

Daily writing prompt
What’s your all-time favorite album?
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What’s your all-time favorite album?

My stamp album, of course. I am old enough to remember the joy of receiving letters from friends and pen-pals in far-away places with strange sounding names and oh, the joy of those colored squares of paper stuck in the top, right hand corner of the envelopes.

Then there were stamp dates, and stamp parties, where we gathered and swapped stamps, each trying to improve his or her collection. Not that I remember many young ladies saving stamps in those days, it seemed to be a boys only sport, like Conkers. I guess that was because those games were all dependent on one-up-man-ship. And yes, we have boycotts (some of them even open the batting for England), but I have never heard of girlcotts or one-up-woman-ship. I guess there are flaws in the language, all languages. Ceilings as well, probably – the height of linguistic folly.

Then there were stamp competitions when we could take our collections, more or less specialist, and show them off to our friends, admirers, and bitter rivals, hoping to gain fame and fortune. I for one never did. But I learned so much about the world, the rapidly changing world, as maps changed, borders changed, kings and queens changed, countries changed their names, divided their borders and morphed into something else.

Don’t forget those FDCs – First Day Covers – with their postal histories, not to mention the little booklets with the tear-out pages telling us all about Peter Rabbit, Flopsy Bunny, Mrs. Tiggy Winkle. and a dozen other tales. And then there were the special stamps – the penny blacks with their multiple Maltese Crosses, the Queen Victoria 9d green (mint), the Sea Horses, the French Painting Series, the Spanish Civil War stamps, issued on, and by, both sides of the conflict, and you mustn’t forget my own face as it appears on a Mexican do-it-yourself stamp, photo taken in Oaxaca, and the stamp sent back to Fredericton, NB, Canada, just for the fun of it.

My own stamp collection now sits in a cupboard, all covered in dust. I guess it is worthless. Nobody sends or receives letters anymore. Nobody collects stamps. Used stamps are now so much rarer. And those pristine new issues, so bright and cheerful, have never felt the lick of a lover’s tongue. And those envelopes have never borne the imprint of our secret messages – SWALK – PHTR – ICWTSY – and so many other little joys of a life that is long past, but never forgotten.

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

“We think in eternity
but we move slowly through time.”

My daily duties nibble and gnaw.
I slowly shrink beneath their onslaught.
I feel myself diminishing, gradually,
hour by hour, disappearing into myself.

Even sunshine and silver-lined clouds
weigh heavily upon me, some days, when
my legs grow weak, my strength fails,
and my frail and feeble mind seeks out
a simpler way to continue my journey.

I favor those paths that gently slope,
downhill, preferably, and I avoid
rough, stony ground. Pilgrim through
this barren land, close to my journey’s
end, where footsteps are perilous,
stumbles lead to tumbles, I cannot risk
 a fall, for if I fall, like many who have gone
before, I may fall to rise no more.

Souvenirs

Souvenirs

Where have they gone,
the old days, the old folk,
the old ways of doing things?

I search for them, day after day,
but my cell phone isn’t
the old-fashioned circular dial,
nor the pick-up phone
with the shared party line,
when everybody listens in.

The garage is a mad hatter’s
maze of a workshop,
in which things grow legs
and walk this way, that way
every way to Sunday,
constantly getting lost.

I think I can hear them.
chittering, chattering.
but I cannot see them
nor hold them,
even though I would like
to clutch them tight.

Bats in the belfry,
and in the attic
mislaid items,
pens, ink, paints,
a tuck box, with keys,
a cricket bat,
cracked and yellow,
abandoned,
and forgotten.

Coal Face

And Every Valley

And every valley shall be filled with coal.
And the miners will mine, growing old
before their time, with pneumoconiosis
a constant companion, and that dark spot
on the grey slide of the sidewalk a mining
souvenir coughed up from the depths
of lungs that so seldom saw the sun
and soaked themselves in the black dust
that cluttered, clogged, bent and twisted
those beautiful young bodies into ageing,
pipe-cleaner shapes, yellowed and inked
with nicotine and sorrows buried so deep,
a thousand, two thousand feet down,
and often so far out to sea that loved ones
knew their loved ones would never see
the white handkerchiefs waved, never
in surrender, but in a butterfly prayer,
an offering, and a blessing that their men
would survive the shift and come back
to the surface and live again amidst family
and friends, and always the fear, the pinched
-face, livid, living fear that such an ending
might never be the one on offer, but rather
the grimmer end of gas, or flame, or collapse,
with the pit wheels stopped, and the sirens
blaring, and the black crowds gathering, and
no canaries, no miners, singing in their cages.

Comment: A friend wrote to me about the closing of the pits in Nottinghamshire and how the mining communities had suffered, were still suffering, and might never recover. This poem is the first one in a sequence on the mine closures in South Wales and other mining communities. Poems For the End of Time – the book is available here.

Low Ebb

Low Ebb

We have been apart too long, my love,
night’s dark corridor lying between us
and neither of us approaching the other
when doors close and blinds are drawn.

The way to the heart of the matter is not
an easy path to walk, not any more.
Our secret ways and dreams lie cold
upon chill, empty sheets and pillows.

Each day the tide revives the beach,
flowing out, abandoning its wet debris
for the sun to perform its magic: fresh
seaweed drying above warm sand.

Sea-birds bury their beaks, writing claw
letters as crabs burrow, dig deep, waiting
for the tide to return and re-create
its alternate reality of dreamy waters.

Half of my bed performs its nightly duty.
The other half lies cold, empty, lonely.
No sea-life wanders there, not even in
my most creative dreams of sun and sand.

Comment: The loneliness of old age is compounded by many factors, including ill-health, sleeplessness, and the need to sleep in separate rooms. How many homeless people suffer that loneliness, and more, and at ages much less than ours? And then there’s the distress of trying to live in poverty, to survive from day to day, with safety net that will not protect us, if we chance to fall. A sad world then, as Polly Toynbee points out in today’s Guardian.


What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

Daily writing prompt
What TV shows did you watch as a kid?
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What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

Well, first of all I want to define the age group that outlines the meaning of ‘kid’. Here’s one definition: What age range is a kid? Children (1 year through 12 years) Adolescents (13 years through 17 years. They may also be referred to as teenagers depending on the context.) If we start with the 1-12 year old age group, then I can safely say I had no favorite TV shows as a kid, quite simply because during those years, we didn’t have a TV. Ipso facto, not having a TV, I couldn’t watch one.

That said, our first family TV was bought by my maternal grandfather in June, 1953. It was very small, black and white, very grainy, and was the only one on the street where he lived. I remember all of us crowing into the sacred room where the TV stood and watching the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. I was 9 years old at the time. I don’t remember much about the Coronation, but it was my first TV show.

Early TV. In the beginning, there were black and white sets. The BBC had only one channel. It came on from 12 noon until 1:30 or 2:00 pm, then shut off until 5:00 pm when it opened for evening programming until 9:30 pm or 10. I was safely tucked into my bed by then. And since I visited my grandparents at odd times, I rarely saw any TV shows. I do remember Sooty, a hand puppet, hitting Harry Corbett, the puppet-master, with a hammer (!), and I have vague visions of Muffin the Mule, a string puppet, dancing on a piano.

By the age of nine, I had been removed from my first boarding school and was attending my second. There were no television sets in boarding schools in those days. So, guess what? There were no favorite programs. In the holidays, with both parents working, to make enough money to send me to boarding school, as they so frequently told me, I often spent time with aunts and uncles (no TV) or with my paternal grandmother (no TV). The bungalow was our favorite summer residence, and that didn’t even have running water or electricity, let alone a TV set. It had one radio, an item of religious importance, that ran off a battery, and was for the sole use of my uncle. It sat on a high shelf and was untouchable. One bungalow in the bungalow field actually had a telephone, and that was only used for emergencies.

So, in the age group I am writing about, age 1-12, I rarely, if ever, saw a TV set and I certainly had no favorite programs. Radio programs, yes. But that is a different story, one that tells of a single radio in the dormitory, to the sound of which, eight or ten or twelve boys, in rows of beds, fell asleep to the sound of music. It also tells of prowling masters who would enter the dorms and switch the radios off. I will not go into the horrors of boarding school life during those formative years. I have done that elsewhere. But the shows that I remember were all true life horror shows where real flesh and blood, in the 6-12 age group, suffered appallingly, at the hands of older boys and brutal masters. But those shows, and I remember them well, were never seen on TV and were denied vehemently by the perpetrators, boys who had been bullied in their turn, and masters who claimed they were only doing their duty and making men of us. Men, indeed, and an adulthood that I, among many others, never wanted to enter.

What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Daily writing prompt
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?
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What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Things I carry with me

            That old black cast-iron stove, wood-fired, that baked the best ever breads and cakes and warmed the bungalow on cold, summer mornings. The Welsh dresser with its age-blackened rails that displayed the plates, and cups, and saucers. The old tin cans that ferried the water from the one tap located at the end of the field. Full and wholesome, its weight still weighs me down as I carry it in my dreams. The Elsan toilet from the shed by the hedge and the shovels that appeared, every so often, as if by magic, as my uncle braved the evening shadows to dig a hole on the opposite side of the field, as far from the bungalow as possible.

            The outhouse at the end of the garden. The steps down to the coal cellar where they went when the sirens sounded, to sleep in the make-shift air raid shelter, along with the rats and mice that scurried from the candles. The corrugated iron work shop in the garden where my uncle built his model ships, the Half-Penny Galleon and the Nonesuch. The broken razor blades I used to carve my own planes from Keil Kraft Kits, Hurricanes and Spitfires, an SE5, and once, a Bristol Bulldog. Twisted and warped, they winged their ways into nobody’s skies, though once we built a paper kite that flew far away in a powerful wind and got tangled in a tree. The greenhouse from which I stole countless tomatoes, red and green. Kilvey Hill towering above the window ledge where the little ones sat when there were more guests than chairs in the kitchen. The old bombed buildings across the street. The bullet holes in the front of the house where the Messerschmidt strafed us.

            The old men spitting up coal dust from shrivelled lungs. The widows who took in lodgers and overnight travelers. The BRS lorries, parked overnight, that littered the street. The steep climb upwards into those lorries. The burrowing under dirty tarpaulins to explore the heavy loads, and many other things. The untouchable, forbidden drawer where the rent money waited for the rent collector’s visit. The old lady, five houses down who, when the shops were shut, sold warm Dandelion & Burdock and Orange pop for an extra penny a bottle.  The vicious, snub-faced Pekinese that yapped fierce defiance from the fortress of her lap. The unemployed soccer referee who on Saturdays walked five miles to the match and five miles back just to save the bus fare, his only financial reward. My father’s shadowy childhood. His first pair of shoes, bought at five years old, so he wouldn’t go barefoot to school. 

            Wet cement moulded onto the garden wall, then filled with empty bottles to be smashed when the cement set solid. The coal shed where the coal man delivered the coal: cobbledy-cobbledy, down the hole. The outside toilet with its nails and squares torn from yesterday’s newspaper. The lamp-lighter who lit the lamps every evening as the sun went down. The arrival of electricity. The old blackout curtains that shut in the light and shut out the night. The hand rolled fabric sausage that lay on the floor by the door and kept the heat of the coal fire in the kitchen. The kitchen itself with its great wooden chair drawn up by the fire. That chair: the only material possession I still have from that distant past.

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

Daily writing prompt
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
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What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

Looking around me and seeing the way that the world I know is so totally divided, and knowing that words and ideas will bounce off people’s backs like rain off a duck’s back, I do not expect my blog to make any changes, big or small, to the world. Would I like it to? Yes, I would. But whether it will or not is a different question.

My blog consists of several elements. Let us start with the poetry. If I can reach out and touch somebody with one or more of my poems, then I will be very happy. This is, after all, a poetry blog. And part of that blog is a continuing discourse on creative writing and poetic creativity. If one of my articles / posts on creativity can help one person, just one, to improve their creativity, then I will feel justified with all the hard work and thought I have put into the posts.

I also write about Discourse Analysis, the meaning of words and texts. In our current, doubt-ridden world, it is often the loudest voice that carries the most weight, and he wildest ideas that get the most attention. I always remember that still, small voice that comes after the fire and the thunder: “What doest thou here, Elijah?” Alas, I am not an Elijah, nor am I a prophet, nor am I out to make a profit. But if someone, somewhere, recognizes my voice as a still, small, voice speaking a little bit of sense in this wilderness of wild words, then I will be satisfied. My creative prose comes next. It is mostly composed of flash fiction, memoirs, and short stories. If I can bring tears or laughter to the eyes and the heart of just one reader, then again I will feel that I have done my work.

Then there is my art work. I have always been told that I am useless at art. Mind you, I think those people came from the same school of thought that told me, as a teenager, that I would never go to university – except on a train. However, I discovered Matisse and his words ‘making meaning out of color and shape’. Then came Dali – ‘I don’t know what it means, but I know it means something.’ Out of those words have come cartoons and paintings, some funny, some sad, and all of them unique. Again, if one reader / viewer finds joy in them, then I will be happy. And if my own work persuades one battered, belittled artist that he or she can paint, create, make meaning out of color and shape, then I will have achieved the minor miracle of helping to change someone’s life for the better.

As for these prompts, I have only just started to be prompted into doing something. Why? I am not sure why. I just think that I have a different view of the world from most people. If I can offer that alternative view of reality, a joyous reality, I might add, to one, or maybe even two people, then once more, I can feel that yes, my blog has made one, small change to the world around me. And I cannot ask for more than that.

Meanwhile, I think of the studies I did on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The right kept moving further right. The left kept moving further left. The middle ground where discourse, creative thinking, and debate can flourish, slowly vanished. Then, when positions and thoughts became so deeply entrenched that there was no room for mainoeuvre / manouver / maneuver, whichever way you wish to spell it, then shooting broke out and people went to war and found, all too often, their often-violent deaths. I would not wish that fate on any person, government or country. If just one person would read that powerful and bitter history, and learn from it, then the world might be a better place.

To talk to one person at a time, that’s what I want from my blog. Then I want that person to talk to another person, and the third one to a fourth, and so on and so forth, until we have established, one person at a time, a linked chain that may, just may, be long enough and strong enough to help lighten the darkness and head off the dangers into which we seem to be steering.

Qué será

Qué será

Peace in the Peace Park,
here on the headland,
where cool grass slopes
down to the water’s edge.

Geese have nested close by
and gifted us with goslings.
Golden balls of fluff, they walk
on the land right now,
but soon will take to the water.

A thin, yellow line, they will
paddle behind their parents,
webbed feet invisible
beneath the water’s flow.

And I, in the metal coffin
of my over-heated car,
sit and watch them, envying
their freedom of movement,
waiting for whatever will come.

My beloved draws near.
I sense as much as see her,
as I covet her strong steps,
the ageless sway of her body.

Alas, I am growing old,
and not with any grace,
but fighting it all the way,
and qué será, será
is all that I can say.