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Radio Shropshire Calling

30/9/2014

Colin Young was kind enough to host me on his Radio Shropshire show and to talk about One Dog and His Man.

Click on the link above to listen in.Interview from 35 minutes to 55 minutes-ish, plus a couple of mighty groovy tunes from way, way, way, back when. The link won't last long. Which may be as well. My radio debut wasn't a triumph despite some fine editing. But, hey, Colin reads out one of my poems. Live on radio. From a trading estate on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. Rock 'n' roll folks, rock and roll.

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Teaching a Stone to Talk

29/9/2014

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Unless I've been hibernating the last thirty years (and that is possible) I don't think Britain has done Annie Dillard. Unlike many American kids, who seem to have been spoon-fed her words at school and have a relationship with her entirely accordingly – occasional love, much boredom.

Well, I've just read Teaching a Stone to Talk and it's blown me away, sentence by sentence. Even her Author's Note is a prose poem to die for:

“Some of these have not been published before; others, such as 'Living Like Weasels' and 'The Deer at Providencia' were published obscurely. At any rate, this is not a collection of occasional pieces, such as a writer brings out to supplement his real work; instead this is my real work, such as it is.”

It's a collection of short pieces about nature, life, enormity, God and god, time sliding downhill, and about trying to plumb the unfathomable, and always, always, failing. With many Oxford commas. But, oh, the sentence construction. How about this on stumbling upon a weasel:

“I have been thinking about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance...He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window. The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging beneath an enormous shaggy wild-rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness, twisted backward on a tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key....It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.”

Or this, on an old Pawnee notion that when you are in your thirties and forties you are “on top”. She disagrees

“On the contrary, the crest is so small that I, for one, missed it altogether...You are young, you are on your way up, when you cannot imagine how you will save yourself from death by boredom until dinner, until bed, until the next day arrives to be outwaited, and then, slow slap, the next...But momentum propels you over the crest. Imperceptibly, you start down. When do the days start to blur and then, breaking your heart, the seasons? I am hungry. In all the history of the world, it has never been so late.”

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Bermondsey Street, London, and the more things change...

17/9/2014

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Here's four snapshots of London. The first three of these are collected in a lovely book, “A London Year” compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Rennison. The fourth isn't.

London - The Centre of Good and Evil

And now, London, I must bid thee 'Farewell.' Thou art the centre of Good and Evil, of Virtue and Vice! How many and how various are the characters which inhabit thy walls! How magnificent thy palaces? How mean thy cottages! How miserable some, how happy others! Some fatten on the spoils of poverty, others starve in the midst of plenty. How many thousands are insufficient to supply the luxury of some, while others want a crust of bread to satiate the calls of hunger!
(Thomas Asline Ward - Diary - August 1804)

The Advantages of London

But you must not think I am a discontented person and grumble all day at being in London. There are many advantages here, as I say to myself whenever it is particularly disagreeable; and if we can't see even a leaf or a sparrow without soot on it, there are the parrots at the Zoological Gardens and the paintings at the Royal Academy; and real live poets above all, with their heads full of the trees and birds and sunshine of paradise.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Letter to Miss Commeline – August 1837)

London is the Place for Me

Poets may talk of the beauties of nature, the enjoyments of a country life, and rural innocence, but there is another kind of life which, though unsung by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior to the dull uniformity of country life. London is the place for me. Its smoky atmosphere, and its muddy river, charm me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the crystal currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to the splendid varieties of London life, 'the fine flow of London talk', and the dazzling brilliancy of London spectacles. Such are my sentiments, and, if I ever publish poetry, it shall not be pastoral.
(Thomas Macaulay - Letter to a friend - August 1815)

London Has Let Me Go

London has let me go. I felt the moment quite clearly. I was walking down Bermondsey Street overwhelmed by the difference between how I remembered the place and what it has become - greasy caffs turned into chi-chi coffee bars; smoky old boozers into gastropubs; Barry into Torquil. Of course, what did I expect? Moniza, and Sharon and all the others I taught, were gone, gone girls long ago. But the change hasn't happened slowly over the last three decades, it's swept through in the few years we've been in Shropshire. And, of course, some of the old still lurks in the shadows. I tried to reach out and touch it, tried to turn it into poetry, but failed. As I walked back towards Tooley Street I passed The Garrison and in its clear glass window caught sight of London walking behind me. He tapped me on the shoulder. 'You don’t belong here any more' he whispered.
(August 2014)

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Happy Families (a sideways glance at Scotland)

11/9/2014

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I wasted some time today looking for a Granta essay which had a big impact on me years ago but, of course, I lost all my Grantas in the great Shifnal flood. Shame, because it seems to have even more weight right now and seems to add something critical that doesn't seem to have been part of the great debate. It was written when I was working in Glasgow (mid 90s) and encountering wonderful warmth from some people who have become lifelong friends but outright hostility from others simply because I was English, when normally it's because I'm a twat.

As a result, when I left Scotland I made a conscious decision to call myself English rather than British thereafter and that's still how I fill out forms etc. I can't remember who wrote the essay, nor the full detail, but its grand sweep was something like "if we don't have our hatred of the English to bind us, then what? Given that we seem to hate each other." In essence, that chimed with my experience of a basically sectarian Glasgow.

I've been around Britain this summer. In Sunderland I was fully expecting some Geordie-bashing. None occurred. In Swansea I was treated like royalty by everyone bar the Mecure hotel chain. But on the course I ran in Edinburgh there was a rant from a lovely woman about how the "East and West up here hate each other". Such a nation coming out of a referendum split 50/50 is surely a worry either way....?

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I grow old...I grow old...

4/9/2014

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Bobby's Getting Old

Bobby is nearing his 7th birthday. I suppose if we were to think about him in human terms he is nearing my age. And, chasing cars aside, there's one thing he loves to do most. He loves to chase swallows. Give him a field and low-flying birds and he's gone, solid gone.

When he was young it was as though he could sprint forever, turning and wheeling as the swallows dipped and weaved and teased him. Sad to say, this summer, whilst he still looks sleek and athletic, he's become something of a jogger. The only thing that remains in perpetual motion is his tail. Instead of chasing he's started to stand and stare – ever upwards – ever barking. “Come here” he shouts. “Come on, I'll have you. No, not you, the other one. Yes, you. Get a move on. Oh, no, I meant that one. Yes, no, the other one, this one, no that one. Aagh. Bastard swallows.”

But I'm Getting Older

Lately I've been touring the country running a course that is basically a seven hour stand-up routine titled “One Old Fat Man and His Flipchart”. The notices have been great and I really enjoy doing it.

But, oh lord, the words. So many. I say more on one course than I'd normally say in a whole month. They fall out of me way ahead of my brain's ability to properly process or censor them, tumbling away over the heads of the audience, bouncing off the far wall and colliding with the next breathless paragraph.

By the end of the day I'm utterly spent. Broken down. Knackered. Twenty years ago I was best known for a trademark, carefully-crafted, actorly pause; trainees would lean forward expectantly. Now when I pause it's more likely that my brain has frozen-up mid sentence, its memory spent, my eyes rolling wildly as I buffer or reboot. It came as no surprise to me that, when I staggered back to my hotel on Tuesday, the receptionist took one look at me and said “you look like you need an upgrade.”

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Radio Shropshire Calling

Teaching a Stone to Talk

Bermondsey Street, London, and the more things change...

Happy Families (a sideways glance at Scotland)

I grow old...I grow old...

Writing

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