One thing leads to another

 

 

Why, I asked myself, was I half singing the words of a half-remembered kids’ song that I last sung on a seaside beach, possibly in Cornwall almost seventy years ago?  And the words of an evangelical song at that.  It was not, I hasten to add, that I had been struck by the theological import of the words that passed me by all those years ago:

 

Deep and wide,

Deep and wide,

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide,

Plunge right in

Lose your sin

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.

 

No, it was not a surrendering to the enticing idea of redemption, especially through water – one of my favourite elements – with the addition of a fountain, for which I have a fascination almost as potent as my being irresistibly drawn to fireworks, making the image even more forceful.  No.  The reason the words (and the tune that I also remembered) was because I had said something with the dum-di-dum rhythm which triggered the memory of Deep and Wide.  A Proustian moment, conjured by sound rather than the taste of a madeleine.

     And with that, I am back on the sands of St Ives or somewhere similar as a very small child – well, not that small, I was ever tall for my age even when I was very young.  Going back, daily, to the little group of evangelical mission workers who encourage their young audience to sing along with them and learn a bible verse, to be recited the next day and if that learning and recitation was continued until the end of the week, then . . . something was promised.  The eventual gift (I even demanded a bible to refresh my memory on one day) I no longer recall – but the words and the tune have stayed with me, waiting to emerge as the ear-worm that will now stay with me all day.

     I suppose I should say something about the potency of memory, but as Marcel has taken over a million words on the subject anything I can add would seem merely meretricious at best or entirely redundant at worst.  Or possibly the other way round.

     I would merely say that the words and tune do not come alone in my memory, but it opens up a whole range of family holidays when the three of us would pack ourselves into the Ford Prefect and set off with sometimes only the haziest of ideas of where we would go and where we would end up, but always with the eventual objective of being by water.  Sea, lake or river, but water.

     At a time when close friends have died, and other friends and acquaintances are showing the signs of age, it is amazingly comforting to think back to the times when the concept of death was just that: a word, and idea, something in stories, but not an element in my life.  Not carefree, no child’s life is carefree.  Our childish cares may be just that, childish, but they are as real as anything in the adult world.

 

 

 

     In the late Tom Stopppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead one character asks

Whatever became of the moment
when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it.

And it’s true.  I cannot remember the moment when I fully realized that we “don’t go on for ever” even though I ‘knew’ what death was.

     It took the death of my grandmother, my father’s mother, for Death quite literally to bring me to my knees.  And not in prayer.

 

I saw the corpses of each of my parents when they were prepared for the funeral service for cremation, and I was unmoved by the sight.  Not because I was numb with grief, or unfeeling, but more because what I was looking at were palpably not my parents.  Even when my parents were seriously and terminally ill, and comatose, they had more life in their features than those corpses.  The corpses were other.  Not my parents.

     But they live on in my memory.  And they live well.  And I welcome each and every unsolicited nudge that lets them walk though my mind again.

 

A Pill for Everything!

  

I have always found shame to be a great stimulus to writing.

     It was salutary to see that the last time that I wrote in my blog (that has been in existence since 2006) was in February of this year, and that 2022 was the last year in which entries for the whole year managed to stagger into double digits.

     It is not as if I have been leading a completely incident free life for the last few years: operations and publication have vied for my personal attention and, not one to waste an opportunity, I have allowed one to inform the other.

     As I have said before, if you are an English teacher and you want your class to talk, all you have to do is ask for them to relate their injury experiences.

     Hitherto taciturn students will suddenly blossom forth in expressive language in much the same way that blood did from their injuries.  Indeed, in some classes after listening to the vicissitudes that my students have suffered, I am amazed that they are still alive to recount the gory details.

     My eyes and knees have been sliced open and various (though different) artifacts have been inserted to improve my sight and my perambulation.  Both are better than they were, but by no means perfect – even though my eye surgeon keeps telling me that I have 20-20 vision.  I can read the small print on the eye chart, but the small print of the ingredients list on produce is not so easy to decipher.

     In the Old Days when I was short sighted, I could not see distance other than as a blur, but I could bring things close to my eyes and I could see incredibly small details.  That is no longer the case.  And, if I am truthful, that had not been the case for some time as my eyes managed to be short sighted and long sighted at the same time – but there was no real ‘sweet spot’ of perfect unglassed vision.

     The difference after the insertion of new lenses in my eyes (rather than in front of them) has been remarkable and generally I do not need glasses at all.  When I am reading there are times when my eyes are tired and I do feel the strain, but I usually can’t be bothered to find my so-called part-time reading glasses and so I adjust to a new normal.

     And that is what you do.  Each new improvement comes with a cost and limitation, and the trick to good health is working with those limitations and remembering What It Was Like Before.

     For me a key memory is walking to a restaurant in Sitges with my cousin.  I had parked in an underground car park ‘within walking distance’ of our destination, eschewing the usual distant parking space on the borders of the central district that we usually used.  

    It took me the best part of a week to recover from the exertion of simply getting there.  That is the memory to which I return if I think that the weather is making my knees a little factious and I am inclined to grumble.  That was then, now I can get by with a great deal more fluency, and I mean that word literally as I frequently bewail my miserable state as I remember that I used to play squash and badminton and jump down groups of stairs!

     All things being equal, the present-day discomfort has been caused by medication.  I have now reached the stage when I take medication to counter the effects of other medication – the Domino Pill Effect.

     Ever since I graduated from injections of Rat Poison (that’s what it is, look it up) to thin my blood to counteract the incipient thrombosis in my legs, to somewhat more sophisticated medication I have had tummy trouble.  The first pills I had lulled me into a false state of security as I suffered no after effects from them for a month or so, and then suddenly, the cumulated after effects came down on me like the proverbial Assyrian on the fold, and reduced me to a gibbering wreck, clutching fruitlessly at my middle.  I then turned to the ignored pills for the pills and gobbled a few in the hopes of immediate relief.  Which was not forthcoming.  But eventually (that comforting word!) calm was restored and I now take my pillsforpills religiously and reverently.

     And even those pills have been changed into a tiny bright red pills that are blister packed and look dangerous!

     It was with some degree of trepidation that I took the first of these Devil Pills last night and I have been waiting for the tremors to start.  So far, so good.

 

It is surely a sign of increasing age that I can type an A4 page of 12 point about the mechanics of a body and regard that as time well spent.  I used to say that it takes fewer than 5 milliseconds for the meeting of two teachers before they start talking about school.   

     Now that I am retired, it takes the same amount of time for my contemporaries and I to start talking medication and clinic visits!  And I, like Coriolanus, flaunt my scars, by wearing shorts above the knee, the better to display the incisions where two full knee replacements have happened.

     But, as the old philosopher said, “Such talk is better than the alternative!”  And since when has silence, either in speech or writing suited me!

    

Fill that gap!

    

The questing tongue is an unsettling companion.

     As an opening sentence I am almost tempted to leave it as the total content for this entry.  But when have I ever allowed the laconic to take the place of the loquacious?  So, I am prepared to give a little more content for the opening thought.

     A broken tooth is a sad experience, but when that tooth is a molar and that molar is not entirely in good health then the gory reality of digging it out of the gum after it had been condemned is an unsettling experience.

     I was In The Chair for over an hour, and I was visited by three dentists as part of the extended process of extraction.  I cannot pretend that I was writhing in agony during this attention as my usual “I don’t want anaesthetic” was not an option given how far and how deep the dentists (What do you call a collection of dentists?  A clench?  A drill?  A despair?  A pain?) were preparing to go.

     Patching up or filling was not a possibility and so the excavation down even to the deepest root was the only possibility.

     I was not shown the enamelled remains of the offending tooth as it came out in bits and after a great deal of effort on the parts of the various dentists who took a bash as it.  In some case quite literally.

     Eventually, I was allowed to stagger from the inclined plane, and after paying (always adding insult to injury in my view) for the bloody mess that was my mouth, and leave.

     And this is where the tongue plays its part. 

     Looking at your remaining teeth in a mirror gives only one impression of the small discrete space left by an extracted tooth.  Your tongue tells entirely a different story.  The tongue tells you that there is a yawning chasm in your mouth, that will be an echoing source of attention to anyone looking at you.

     My casual enquiry about an implant was noted, but I was told that any work would only be able to be undertaken after a period of at least six months or more to allow the ravaged excavation pit to return to some sort of normality.

      My progress towards this normality was a ragged one.  Quite literally.  After a few weeks, my ever-restless tongue detected a small lump in the empty socket, which gradually (at least according to the mapping of the tongue) took on a more aggressive character as the pinnacle of a sharp mountain of enamel began to be revealed.  It got to the point (ha!) where it could not really be ignored.

     A reference to the dentist brought about another visit and yet more digging necessitating a couple of stitches by the time the remaining fragments had been de-gummed.

     And at that point, I had had enough and was quite prepared to let the gap remain.

     My dentist had other ideas though, and much later. I was called into his little office where he had prepared a cut-price offer to make the astronomical cost of an implant seem reasonable.  And I went along with it.

     I was not prepared for the number of individual appointments that I had to make for the stages of checking, installing and finally capping the gap.

     As I type, I can see the plastic versions of my gnashers that were formed by a series of photographs downloaded to the computer and then created on a 3D printer.  The last time an impression of my teeth was made, I had to bite into a lump of medicinal clay (?) and then a plaster cast was made.  Such is progress and a frightening amount of money.

     The gap is now finally filled, but before I left, I was given various dire warnings about the need to ensure that the new tooth (and more particularly its organic setting) was kept clean. 

     As I do floss (usually) I thought that my dentist would be satisfied, but he indicated that a water pik was a much better alternative, and I was told not to get the large version but to buy a ‘travel’ pik from Amazon, as it doesn’t cost much.

     At this point I am inclined to recall a conversation that I had with my dentist back in Cardiff, when we talked about our pay negotiations that were both on-going at the time.  We seemed to have a lot in common, until I looked out of the window and saw the brand-new Merc that my dentist owned!  So cost is relative.  As always.

     However, I am never one to deny myself buying something, so today (before 11 pm) I should get my new water pik and start a new regime of cleansing to my dentist’s exacting satisfaction.

     And I hope to god that no further teeth crumble.  I can’t afford any further replacements!

   

    

A Book for a Meal?

 

 

In what looks suspiciously like a carefully curated corner of chaos on my desk, the proof copy of my latest book rests, casually, with a series of post-it stickers jutting out from the side indicated pages on which I have found infelicities in the printed presentation.  The fact that there are only seven instances where I have found the spacing, print, illustration, font, type to be lacking suggests that I have missed a great number more that will later come to haunt me lurking on the 500+ pages that I have 'edited'.

Having duly sent off my 'corrections' to the printers, I sat back and waited for the presses to run and deliver my quota of books to Catalonia.  Of course, as soon as the 'corrected' books arrived I discovered a fault that I had missed, but I trust it is one that others will miss too.

There is a certain type of word blindness in an author looking through his work for the umpteenth time, where sometimes glaring typos go unnoticed even after scrutiny that has to have noticed the fault.  there is also a major difference between proof reading something and 'reading' it.  Too often I am caught up in my writing to catch some errors - and that is not an example of arrogance, it would be a sad author indeed who did not 'go with flow' of what he has written and find pleasure in those phrases where he can hardly believe that he actually wrote them!

So, good, bad, or indifferent The Book is done, and done in good time for the official 'publication' date of the 24th of October.  That date had to be brought forward to the 3rd of October to allow The Book to be given to the atendees at the Indian Buffet taking place in Cardiff in celebration of my birthday, in Cardiff because of the difficulty for some of the atendeeds getting to Catalonia for the day itself.

Before those celebratory days in Cardiff and Catalonia, I am luxuriating in that golden period between when a book is printed and when it is published and others get to see it.  In that literary lull before profane eyes rake the pages, there is a tranquility composed of satisfaction at a writing task done, and the complacent anticipation of commendation.

That tranquility is, of course, short lived because no matter how cynical a writer may feel himself to be, the first comments (unless they be of untrammeled praise) cut into the beating heart of fainting confidence!  There is no hypocrisy like criticism serenely accepted.

"Corby" - a name and a trigger.

 One hundred and twenty-seven pounds sterling.  One hundred and twenty-seven pounds to renew my aged passport.  Not counting the expense of the car park and the cost of the postage to send my old passport to Corby.

Corby.  A name from the past.  The outré sister town of the so much more prim Kettering.  I remember during my first year of full time teaching in the Boys School in Kettering that I much preferred going to Corby than going in to town in Kettering - though, of course, Kettering was the place with the Waitrose and not, emphatically not, Corby.  

There was a more immediate vitality about Corby, and then there was always the shock of hearing the Scottish accent as the predominant one in that town in the centre of England.  I was told that a steel works had shut in Scotland and the work force flocked to Corby to take jobs in the steelworks there and the accent had persisted.  I was also told, to take taxis and ignore the busses there as "Corby was rough".  

I never found it so myself and often scoffed at people in Kettering who wondered at my bravery in chancing my arm in such a place.  So, as my old passport was stamped and slotted into the system in Castelldefels to get it to Corby and get a new one sent to me, I supposed that the Passport Office situated there was a government initiative to try and find some work for the folk who having moved from Scotland to find work in an open steelworks after their own had closed, had to think about upping sticks again after the Corby works closed.

It brings back a whole slice of my early working life, whose memories are now more of a melange of impressions rather than distinct narratives of day to day existence.

I can no longer find my way about the haunts that marked my home in Saint Botolph's House in Barton Seagrave and my way to school and into town.  Not unreasonable you could say as my memories are half a century old and based on my being there for little over a year before I moved back to Cardiff and promotion, in a city that would see me to the end of my teaching career.

The passport is being renewed because I am going back to Cardiff for a pre-birthday Birthday Party, and in digging out my passport (not used for years) discovering that it expires in August of 2025.

My passport is a burgundy one, with the European Union stamped across the top of it, a passport that gave access to a bewildering number of countries until the narrow-minded cretins of Brexit ensured that our insular geographical situation was mirrored in our political and social states.  

My new passport (one hundred and twenty-seven pounds worth of it) will be a British Beggared one, and my saving grace is that I moved to Spain before the idiocy of Brexit limited possibilities and therefore I have permanent residence and a card to show for it.  It means that when I come back into the country I show my residence card first so that my passport is not stamped, and therefore does not start the countdown of the time that I am allowed to spend in Spain.

The longer I spend time away from the country of my birth, the less Britain remains a living reality in my mind, and the more it appears as a sort of stage setting for past memories.

I don't really know the price of anything.  I understand that the price of 20 fags is now astronomical, though it is still not enough to repay the lost revenue from early death that the cancer of smoking steals.  I don't know how much a pint is, or how much a loaf of bread is.  I am used to Catalan prices and I am prepared to be shocked by how much the staples now cost.

But this visit is about Time, and my seventy-fifth birthday, and more importantly about seeing friends, ex-colleagues and family whose lives have gone on without my day to day involvement!

There are some people where no matter how long the time has been since last seen, to meet up is to be back where the relationship has always been.  This is something that is especially relevant considering the death of my old friend of more than sixty years, Richard.

In writing about him for his funeral service I went back to the essential triviality of shared experience, the nothing occasions that mean everything - the slight and the transient that stay with you for ever.

The death of friends of such long standing, are not tragic, they are unthinkable, in so far as it is so difficult to imagine a constant presence (in spite of geographical distance) not being there.  It takes time to realise the loss, with memory fighting to fill the gaps to kid you that nothing has really changed.

One part of my mind does, obviously, register the loss, and that will give an added urgency to the meet-up in early October (the passport office and the good folk of Corby allowing) in seeing people who have not remained the same age as I last remember seeing them, but, like me have lived the years through.

I remember talking with my Uncle Eric (a teacher who was retired and drawing a pension for longer than he had been in teaching!) once telling me that he had watched his entire generation, one by one, die off until, as he said, "I think that there is only one boy I was with in Junior School left, and I'm not sure that he is still with us."  

This was a man who was evacuated after Dunkirk, in a much less well-known chaotic rescue mission from Cherbourg, and whose stories about the farcical, quasi-Surrealistic experience of fighting in an all-out war had to be heard to be believed.

Unlike my father and my grandfather, I have not had to fight in any war.  Indeed I was a decade too late to have the horror of Conscription forced on me, and I was able to toddle my way from school to university lubricated by free milk and free tuition.

Although I seem to have digressed, it isn't really a diversion from the main theme of memory and responsibility: the memory of what was and the responsibility to articulate a response to who you are now.

And if that sounds a little pretentious and high-fauluting, then I should also say that the return to Cardiff is also the opportunity to have a decent Indian Meal and to drink a real pint of authentic Bitter, preferably a pint of Brains SA!

A name to conjure with!

 

I like to think that I have a passing knowledge of the history of art – at least the generally white, male, euro-centric version that I have studied.  But the one thing about knowing a little of a subject is that knowledge gives you more and more opportunities to discover just how slight that knowledge actually is.

     I do acknowledge that my interests lie in the rough timeline of Giotto to Guston – not a good example of a modern contemporary artist to go with the C.13^th Master, as I don't like the work of Guston, and also he died a quarter of a century ago.  But you get the idea, I am generally in the realm of Modern-ish art, where allowing for the vagaries of how artists cope with perspective, their painted characters stand on their feet and not tiptoe and there is something recognizable about the way that they have painted the world.

     As I have also studied Modern, Modern Art, I have also had to come to terms with wildly un-representational art and all the strange and wonderful ways in which artists have interpreted the world around them.

     But, in spite of having studied with the Open University where such things as feminism are de rigeur, my knowledge of women artists pre C.20^th is still a little lacking.  And that lack of knowledge goes for female living artists too. I mean, I can rattle off a list of woman working in the plastic arts today, but it is nothing like as extensive as the list I can draw up of male artists.

     So, it was with something of a peaked interest with which I responded to the information sent to me by MNAC that there would be a lecture and view of the new exhibition of the work of Suzanne Valadon.  [Museu National d’Art de Catalunya.  Suzanne Valadon: a Modern Epic.  19^th April to 1^st September 2014]

 

 

A little light research later and I was ashamed that previously I could do little more than bring to mind a couple of paintings by her.  There is so much more!

     Her dates (1865-1938) meant that she was 35 years old at the turn of the century, and by that time she had made the transition from poverty, via hard poorly paid jobs, through being a circus performer to being the model for a group of artists including Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Berthe Morisot, Puvis de Chavanne, Steinlen and Degas!  Quite the roll call of talent.

     An accident put paid to her career in the circus and so she developed a talent for art that she seems to have had from an early age, and managed to make a name for herself in the cut throat world of the turn of the century centre of the art world in Paris.

     Her first marriage ended after she fell in love with one of her son’s friends and she married André Utter although he was more than twenty years her junior.  Her painting of the nude Utter casting a net, shows him in three different (though decorous) poses and is remarkable in presenting a female gaze, unashamedly presenting the naked male as an object of sexual desire.

     To be fair many of her nudes are of women, but her odalisques and Eves are a more modern take on nudity and the presentation of the female body than the male generation of artists around her were producing.

     I am writing this before the exhibition, and I will write more when I have seen the more than 100 works that this exhibition boasts.

     I only hope that they have a catalogue in English, as neither my French (lots of loans from French Museums) or Spanish or Catalan can cope with academic art-speak!

     I live in hope!

New book. New readers?

I have never let the obvious subject matter, stand in the way of my writing something.  I am a great believer in the thought that, if you are sincere in wanting to write then something (anything) will suggest itself as a subject worthy of words.

     This time, for this entry, I do actually have something to say.  (And as someone who cares about writing, I couldn’t help notice that I have overused the word “something” in the last couple of sentences.  Noticed?  Yes.  Going to do something (ha!) about it?  No.

     So, to The Matter of Import!  I have written (another) book.  The last effort was a ‘chapbook’, which is more of a glorified pamphlet, but my latest effusion is a real book.  You can tell it’s a real book because it has a spine, and it is wide enough for the logo of Praetorius Books to be printed thereupon.

     Called, “Caught in the Conceit” the book is the latest in the series of books and chapbooks that I have produced during Holy Week over the last ten years.

     I started writing the poems because (ten years ago) I hadn’t realised that the Sunday on which I was having my post-swim cup of tea was actually Palm Sunday.  There was nothing to differentiate it for any other Sunday.  No sense of special, no sense that this was the Sunday before Holy Week, leading up to the most important celebration in the Christian Church of Easter Sunday.  It was the sense of ordinariness, the complete lack of otherness, that struck me.  How far, I seemed to ask myself, had we travelled/progressed/declined so that what was once an important part of the year (let alone the Church Year) was so casually ignored.

     The first poem in the first edition of Poems in Holy Week (“Clocks of Dust”) did reference the lack of appreciation of the significance of the day, but always at the back of my mind was the thought that this was not just about Christianity but was rather about how attitudes to what was once thought of as an essential and defining part of the year had declined into ‘just part of the weekend’.

     Things change.  Even institutions and concepts that have seemed to be set in stone (thinking about it, that could be literally true) are coming loose or crumbling.  The only certainties we are left with are “Death and Taxes”!

     As an atheist I did not feel myself to be bound to an overtly Christian theme, even though the poems were written in what used to be an overtly Christian time of the year.  The subject matter ranged far and wide, but that was not a deliberate rejection on my part.  I might be atheist but, as I have said too often to people who don’t really care, but I am an Anglican atheist! 

     As someone who was brought up (by my mother) as a Christian and (by my father) as a Humanist, and as someone who regularly went to church for the best part of thirty years of his life, I am imbued with the ‘trapping’ of the Church: its liturgy, its ceremonies, its architecture, its music, its art, its theology, and most importantly, its words.  I have no intention of repudiating such elements that have played their part in making me the person I am today and I regard myself as interested but uninvolved in religion.

     The writing of those first eight (sometimes more) poems (I take Holy Week to extend from Palm Sunday to Easter Day) gave me real satisfaction, and I resolved to repeat the process the following year.  Which I did, and then carried on.  For example, as well as the poems that I have written for each day this year during Holy Week, I have also written a handful of haiku to accompany each day as well.  Each volume is slightly different from the one that went before.

     For the Anniversary Edition of Poems in Holy Week 2024, I decided to add a section which looked back on the almost 100 poems that I had written over the years, and to make a personal selection of poems and prose from the various introductions to the chapbooks I had written.

     So, that is what “Caught in the Conceit” is, this year’s poems and a selection from the last decade.

     The volume is illustrated in a variety of ways, ranging from the garabatos (that I regard as a form of graphic meditation) to use of AI to give some sort of visual form to my wordy instructions in the programs that I have used.  There are also treated photographs and a touch of graphic design!

     At the moment the book is with the printer, and I am enjoying that indefinable moment of something like lazy satisfaction, between the work having been completed and holding the finished volume in my hands.  Then the real work starts of getting information out about the book and getting people to buy it!

     It is possible to leave a message on this blog if you want to reserve a copy of Caught in the Conceit.  There are a limited number of copies, and they are available only from the author, myself.

     Book details: Full colour cover, 172 pages, including this year’s Poems in Holy Week, together with selection of poems from past editions, short prose and poetry extracts, garabatos, photographs, illustrations, and a brief introductory essay.  Each copy of Caught in the Conceit comes with its own unique bookmark!

     I should have the books printed and in my hands in the next week or so and then I will look forward to the next stage in the books development when eyes other than my own read through and pass judgement!

 

As a sort of freebie to encourage good thoughts about Caught in the Conceit, the following QR Code will take you to a copy of my last chapbook, "A sight too much?"  Use your mobile phone to scan and you should be taken to a site where you can download the file and read my last series of poems.

Enjoy!

Scan me!