Amongst the circuits of light,
Lies a windswept serenity.
The cascade of sky on sea,
The clinging salt-tang air,
Centred, heavy and cut with the starkest blue.
Along the haunted promenades,
And over supple sands,
Your voice trails off and outward,
Like a ship's wake.
Scars the sea.
The secluded bays against the cliff,
Where the muddy chalk bears down,
Are where we laid our hopes and fears
An aching love,
A red sun that drowned.
And when I visit, now and then,
The sea will always be,
The witness, silent, brooding still,
Of what you said to me.
Sunday 20 December 2009
The Grumble’s Tale
Once in a dark, dark forest, in the darkest shadows of a black, black mountain, on the shores of the gloomiest, doomiest lake, there lived a grumble.
Now, a grumble is not an animal like an owl or a cat or a frog in the strictest sense. It’s a creature that lives in the little line between where your shadow ends and where the sunlight starts. And grumbles can only live in the blackness or they blur and blow away like dust.
But this grumble was sad. His name was Grumbledum and he was all alone. Sometimes he would walk out of the forest and sit on the shores of the lake and talk to the weepfish, in all their brilliant greys, about how sad he was.
One weepfish, called Wailsford would drift close to the surface and listen, and Grumbledum’s tears would sprinkle down into the oily waters and make soft ripples above Wailsford’s scaly head.
One day he drifted right up to the surface and popped his fishy lips above the water.
“Grumbledum. Every day you come here and you cry in our water. What is wrong with you?”
Grumbledum let out a booming sob.
“No-one understands me. So I sit here on the shores of the gloomiest, doomiest lake and make water come from my eyes.”
“Oh dear” said that the fish. “Why don’t you try to go to the very edge of the forest and look at all the meadows and fields on the other side flooded with sunshine and think that there are still good things to be seen?”
“Because,” said Grumbledum quietly, “I will be jealous of the bunnies, of the birds and of the foxes that can play and chase in the long grass and smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on their furry faces”.
“But if you did that” said the wise weepfish, “If you played in the sunshine, you wouldn’t be a grumble. And that’s what you are. A grumble.”
Grumbledum sniffed. And then he walked back into the forest, slowly and sadly, and sat in the sorrowful sorrowful cave by the tantrum tree.
The weepfish watched him go, and they agreed that without his tears, they would not be there, and the doomy gloomy lake would be dry.
And the doubtgulls chattered on the low branches that without the grumble’s groans and sadness, the dark, dark forest wouldn’t be there and they would surely be homeless.
And the despairfrogs that jumped and ribbited in the rockpools at the foot of the black black mountain all concluded in their slimy way that the mountain would be too hot, bathed in sunlight in the grumble’s absence.
So they made a pact, to thank Grumbledum for everything around them.
The weepfish dredged midnight pearls from the oysters in the deepest cracks in the lake and strung them on a creeping sadvine to make a beautiful necklace.
The doubtgulls flew up and plucked the bitterest bitterberries from their clusters beneath the sharpest leaves and made precious jam for Grumbledum.
And finally the despairfrogs practiced their ribbits in time to make a hymn to Grumbledum’s gifts, a strange and sorrowful melody.
And one day, they gathered at the edge of the lake and waited for Grumbledum to come out of the dark dark forest.
When he came at last, he sat on a cold stone and sure enough, he started to cry once more.
But the weepfish swam close and presented him the beautiful necklace.
And then the doubtgulls swooped down and gave him the bitterberry jam.
And then the despairfrogs started their tune which reverberated into the very corners of the dark dark forest.
And Grumbledum smiled.
And the clouds parted and sunlight beamed down, and swept him away like smoke.
And in time, the lake ran dry, and soft yellow daylight came again to the mountain and the forest thinned out.
All that is left, on a still cool day, if you listen carefully, at the mouth of the odd little cavern by the peculiar tree is the faint sound of sploshing fish and ribbitting frogs and cawing birds.
And beyond it all, if you strain to hear, and crane your neck a little closer to the dark, dark cave, is a rare and precious thing.
Like the smile of an old friend, an unexpected letter, a tiny tickle on your ribs.
Like a present, a ladybird, a rainbow or a sunny day.
It’s the sound of a grumble that turned into a giggle!
Now, a grumble is not an animal like an owl or a cat or a frog in the strictest sense. It’s a creature that lives in the little line between where your shadow ends and where the sunlight starts. And grumbles can only live in the blackness or they blur and blow away like dust.
But this grumble was sad. His name was Grumbledum and he was all alone. Sometimes he would walk out of the forest and sit on the shores of the lake and talk to the weepfish, in all their brilliant greys, about how sad he was.
One weepfish, called Wailsford would drift close to the surface and listen, and Grumbledum’s tears would sprinkle down into the oily waters and make soft ripples above Wailsford’s scaly head.
One day he drifted right up to the surface and popped his fishy lips above the water.
“Grumbledum. Every day you come here and you cry in our water. What is wrong with you?”
Grumbledum let out a booming sob.
“No-one understands me. So I sit here on the shores of the gloomiest, doomiest lake and make water come from my eyes.”
“Oh dear” said that the fish. “Why don’t you try to go to the very edge of the forest and look at all the meadows and fields on the other side flooded with sunshine and think that there are still good things to be seen?”
“Because,” said Grumbledum quietly, “I will be jealous of the bunnies, of the birds and of the foxes that can play and chase in the long grass and smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on their furry faces”.
“But if you did that” said the wise weepfish, “If you played in the sunshine, you wouldn’t be a grumble. And that’s what you are. A grumble.”
Grumbledum sniffed. And then he walked back into the forest, slowly and sadly, and sat in the sorrowful sorrowful cave by the tantrum tree.
The weepfish watched him go, and they agreed that without his tears, they would not be there, and the doomy gloomy lake would be dry.
And the doubtgulls chattered on the low branches that without the grumble’s groans and sadness, the dark, dark forest wouldn’t be there and they would surely be homeless.
And the despairfrogs that jumped and ribbited in the rockpools at the foot of the black black mountain all concluded in their slimy way that the mountain would be too hot, bathed in sunlight in the grumble’s absence.
So they made a pact, to thank Grumbledum for everything around them.
The weepfish dredged midnight pearls from the oysters in the deepest cracks in the lake and strung them on a creeping sadvine to make a beautiful necklace.
The doubtgulls flew up and plucked the bitterest bitterberries from their clusters beneath the sharpest leaves and made precious jam for Grumbledum.
And finally the despairfrogs practiced their ribbits in time to make a hymn to Grumbledum’s gifts, a strange and sorrowful melody.
And one day, they gathered at the edge of the lake and waited for Grumbledum to come out of the dark dark forest.
When he came at last, he sat on a cold stone and sure enough, he started to cry once more.
But the weepfish swam close and presented him the beautiful necklace.
And then the doubtgulls swooped down and gave him the bitterberry jam.
And then the despairfrogs started their tune which reverberated into the very corners of the dark dark forest.
And Grumbledum smiled.
And the clouds parted and sunlight beamed down, and swept him away like smoke.
And in time, the lake ran dry, and soft yellow daylight came again to the mountain and the forest thinned out.
All that is left, on a still cool day, if you listen carefully, at the mouth of the odd little cavern by the peculiar tree is the faint sound of sploshing fish and ribbitting frogs and cawing birds.
And beyond it all, if you strain to hear, and crane your neck a little closer to the dark, dark cave, is a rare and precious thing.
Like the smile of an old friend, an unexpected letter, a tiny tickle on your ribs.
Like a present, a ladybird, a rainbow or a sunny day.
It’s the sound of a grumble that turned into a giggle!
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Yates Wine Lodge...
I discovered an old post of mine on another blog. Upon re-reading, as with so many of these things, it was actually quite good in distant retrospect. It concerns the closure of Yates Wine Lodge in my old home town of Margate, and I penned a post for that ill-fated blog experiment at the time, which I reproduce here for my audience of no-one in particular...
Yates's Wine Lodge Closes
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
An Epitaph to an Armpit
There were really no redeeming features to Yates's Wine Lodge in Cecil Square.
An ugly building jutting out like a beery hooker, plying it's wares without shame to the passer-by. Devoid of character, this was a glass and wood teat, suckling a willing, bovine crowd with Cherry Vebas and cider. Spending an evening in there was a cross between a school disco for angry children and being contained in a trapezoid mandala designed to eat your soul. All the same, it was assuredly Margate and assuredly Thanet. Which is probably why it closed.
In other towns and cities, the Yates brand had retained an air of faux-exclusivity, regarded as somewhere to congregate before the drinking started in earnest. A genteel Wetherspoons. You'd rarely find the same old faces propping up the bar, sallow-eyed and oozing surrender. You'd find a smorgasbord of "types", mingling uneasily by the fruit machine. Something about Yates's always seemed aloof, the brass and the shininess, the strictly MOR musical selection and the stout refusal to concede to a karaoke night, football on the telly or a dart board. When it opened, it seemed other-worldy, a place with sofas and natural light, that sold food to the hungry. You were always hungry, as it usually took 2 hours to arrive, which must be considered a cunning marketing ploy.
Of course, the residents of Thanet customised the Yates experience, emptying the shelves of alcopops and acting with bewilderment at the "no hats" rule. I myself was relieved of a felt fedora, previously liberated from a bearded chap at the Britannia public house.
Despite this dearth of virtues, Yates's was a landmark. And in its dying days, it filled with pathos where it emptied of customers.
A friend took dinner in the middle of the dance floor, eating fish and chips with his beau while the tables were cleared around him, like a scene from a New York romantic comedy. Where once spit and sawdust marked the lifespan of the pub, the thudding beat of music and the crazed laughter borne from fluorescent apple shots now haunts the place.
It's bound to be an estate agents.
*******
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
Yates's Wine Lodge Closes
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
An Epitaph to an Armpit
There were really no redeeming features to Yates's Wine Lodge in Cecil Square.
An ugly building jutting out like a beery hooker, plying it's wares without shame to the passer-by. Devoid of character, this was a glass and wood teat, suckling a willing, bovine crowd with Cherry Vebas and cider. Spending an evening in there was a cross between a school disco for angry children and being contained in a trapezoid mandala designed to eat your soul. All the same, it was assuredly Margate and assuredly Thanet. Which is probably why it closed.
In other towns and cities, the Yates brand had retained an air of faux-exclusivity, regarded as somewhere to congregate before the drinking started in earnest. A genteel Wetherspoons. You'd rarely find the same old faces propping up the bar, sallow-eyed and oozing surrender. You'd find a smorgasbord of "types", mingling uneasily by the fruit machine. Something about Yates's always seemed aloof, the brass and the shininess, the strictly MOR musical selection and the stout refusal to concede to a karaoke night, football on the telly or a dart board. When it opened, it seemed other-worldy, a place with sofas and natural light, that sold food to the hungry. You were always hungry, as it usually took 2 hours to arrive, which must be considered a cunning marketing ploy.
Of course, the residents of Thanet customised the Yates experience, emptying the shelves of alcopops and acting with bewilderment at the "no hats" rule. I myself was relieved of a felt fedora, previously liberated from a bearded chap at the Britannia public house.
Despite this dearth of virtues, Yates's was a landmark. And in its dying days, it filled with pathos where it emptied of customers.
A friend took dinner in the middle of the dance floor, eating fish and chips with his beau while the tables were cleared around him, like a scene from a New York romantic comedy. Where once spit and sawdust marked the lifespan of the pub, the thudding beat of music and the crazed laughter borne from fluorescent apple shots now haunts the place.
It's bound to be an estate agents.
*******
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
Friday 11 December 2009
Remember....
It always seemed dark, that was the first thing. It was at the lowest point of a uniform crescent of identical houses, the bottom of a lazy terraced curve. The house looked nondescript but foreboding from the outside, towering over me, framed forever against a leaden and featureless sky in my mind.
There was something medieval about its placement; with the sentinel flour mill on the hill and the monolithic red brick viaduct on the other side, it was hemmed in by giants, squatting in a shallow noose. The viaduct the ramparts of a living castle, the flour mill the keep. They seemed permanent and ever there.
Moving inside, through the bottle green door, through a tiny threshold, the sensation of the felt flocked wallpaper across my fingertips, the vague smell of coal and flour, and the dancing shadows from the open fire playing across the wall, eldritch ciphers from another world.
A small window looked though to a yard no more than a concrete square with a mouldering back gate and high wall. Stillness reigned where once there was noise. And outside, the drain where my father, according to folklore, replete with quiff had killed the rat, that had fled in zig-zag terror from the flour mill during the monthly purges.
A square of mud, and a water-butt complete the scene, the pathway now choked with weed and thistle.
There was a slow drip of tarnished tap in the back annexe, crowded by cupboards with ancient brands making dubious claims. Always cold there, steamed by cooking, but always cold, with recesses and black corners between appliances and in kickboards where spiders of terrifying size would occasionally emerge.
Inside the living room, the squeaking 1960s armchairs, black plastic that were too large for the room, brushed countless times between door and kitchen. The horse brasses, no longer cleaned, but retaining a dull resplendence, hanging like stilled pendulums from some immense and ornate clock. And the chair, in the corner, near shelves of ephemera, trinkets, curios where my grandfather would sit, chin set, thumbing his nose between rolling his cigarettes, eyes gleaming in the half-light, tobacco smoke conjuring ghosts in the air.
And so he would tell us his stories, voice deep and even but lost in a white noise, a snowstorm of forgetting now. Sporadically a sentence ended with a gruff “see?” where understanding was sought. A vocal quirk, that in reverie I find myself repeating in certain company.
He was watched, until she left for the nursing home, by my grandmother, knitting with muffled clicks in the opposite chair, and occasionally they would exchange glances we could only aspire to understand, coded and veiled.
And such stories. As we sat, full and warm before the fire, pre-bathtime, no television, no music, no dreaded clarion call of “That’s Life” or “Songs of Praise” to summon Monday all too soon. Just a deep voice, and glinting eyes in a warm orange glow. Only the occasional interruption of the shipping forecast, intoning a spell into the gloom at the hands of my grandmother by force of habit. Just words, sounds rolled around tongues, punctuated by the hiss of wood and carbon in the grate, the smell of Old Holborn and the rain drumming on the window pane.
He remembered storm-battered nights in the channel, dragging fish and strange creatures from the boiling deep, the pallid ghost-ships and whispered legends of the Goodwin Sands, of dodging the Luftwaffe that strafed the ground at his feet, of meeting the men of the Clyde after adventures sailing the coast. The downed aircraft, the bombed buildings, desolate places peopled with curiosity and character. The morass of air-raid tunnels that merged with the train tracks and the tantalising network of smuggler’s tunnels under our very feet. The names he mentioned peopled an exotic continent that we could only visit as bedazzled tourists, before the modern day dragged us from that dim cocoon as though it were nothing but a peculiar dream.
And so his life and his death were fashioned, and in passing left us his postcards, his words and his deeds too delicate – and however we shelter them from the waves that time sends our way, they will erode. Then each of us, our lives laid out behind us, will assume that mantle, and recreate that languid sorcery before the bulging eyes of our own grandchildren.
But first, before us, my own father will hold court and make his own tales dance for our broods.
And when I see him now, in advancing years, he sometimes takes a moment, in his chair, surrounded by his own ephemera, and sets his chin, thumbing his nose and something lives on, an uninterrupted line.
“See?”
Something older than us all binds us for a wordless moment.
And we remember.
There was something medieval about its placement; with the sentinel flour mill on the hill and the monolithic red brick viaduct on the other side, it was hemmed in by giants, squatting in a shallow noose. The viaduct the ramparts of a living castle, the flour mill the keep. They seemed permanent and ever there.
Moving inside, through the bottle green door, through a tiny threshold, the sensation of the felt flocked wallpaper across my fingertips, the vague smell of coal and flour, and the dancing shadows from the open fire playing across the wall, eldritch ciphers from another world.
A small window looked though to a yard no more than a concrete square with a mouldering back gate and high wall. Stillness reigned where once there was noise. And outside, the drain where my father, according to folklore, replete with quiff had killed the rat, that had fled in zig-zag terror from the flour mill during the monthly purges.
A square of mud, and a water-butt complete the scene, the pathway now choked with weed and thistle.
There was a slow drip of tarnished tap in the back annexe, crowded by cupboards with ancient brands making dubious claims. Always cold there, steamed by cooking, but always cold, with recesses and black corners between appliances and in kickboards where spiders of terrifying size would occasionally emerge.
Inside the living room, the squeaking 1960s armchairs, black plastic that were too large for the room, brushed countless times between door and kitchen. The horse brasses, no longer cleaned, but retaining a dull resplendence, hanging like stilled pendulums from some immense and ornate clock. And the chair, in the corner, near shelves of ephemera, trinkets, curios where my grandfather would sit, chin set, thumbing his nose between rolling his cigarettes, eyes gleaming in the half-light, tobacco smoke conjuring ghosts in the air.
And so he would tell us his stories, voice deep and even but lost in a white noise, a snowstorm of forgetting now. Sporadically a sentence ended with a gruff “see?” where understanding was sought. A vocal quirk, that in reverie I find myself repeating in certain company.
He was watched, until she left for the nursing home, by my grandmother, knitting with muffled clicks in the opposite chair, and occasionally they would exchange glances we could only aspire to understand, coded and veiled.
And such stories. As we sat, full and warm before the fire, pre-bathtime, no television, no music, no dreaded clarion call of “That’s Life” or “Songs of Praise” to summon Monday all too soon. Just a deep voice, and glinting eyes in a warm orange glow. Only the occasional interruption of the shipping forecast, intoning a spell into the gloom at the hands of my grandmother by force of habit. Just words, sounds rolled around tongues, punctuated by the hiss of wood and carbon in the grate, the smell of Old Holborn and the rain drumming on the window pane.
He remembered storm-battered nights in the channel, dragging fish and strange creatures from the boiling deep, the pallid ghost-ships and whispered legends of the Goodwin Sands, of dodging the Luftwaffe that strafed the ground at his feet, of meeting the men of the Clyde after adventures sailing the coast. The downed aircraft, the bombed buildings, desolate places peopled with curiosity and character. The morass of air-raid tunnels that merged with the train tracks and the tantalising network of smuggler’s tunnels under our very feet. The names he mentioned peopled an exotic continent that we could only visit as bedazzled tourists, before the modern day dragged us from that dim cocoon as though it were nothing but a peculiar dream.
And so his life and his death were fashioned, and in passing left us his postcards, his words and his deeds too delicate – and however we shelter them from the waves that time sends our way, they will erode. Then each of us, our lives laid out behind us, will assume that mantle, and recreate that languid sorcery before the bulging eyes of our own grandchildren.
But first, before us, my own father will hold court and make his own tales dance for our broods.
And when I see him now, in advancing years, he sometimes takes a moment, in his chair, surrounded by his own ephemera, and sets his chin, thumbing his nose and something lives on, an uninterrupted line.
“See?”
Something older than us all binds us for a wordless moment.
And we remember.
Thursday 10 December 2009
Meeting Haikus
1.
Mouths moving
Among white noise
Unspoken words
2.
Poignant care
For nothing much
Horizon-ing
Mouths moving
Among white noise
Unspoken words
2.
Poignant care
For nothing much
Horizon-ing
Wednesday 9 December 2009
Dispatches
An idle flick from page to page.
A moment’s sombre reverie
as I fall upon a brief précis
of hero or villain,
or captain of industry.
The balance of a life curtailed
mapped and packaged neatly
upon a pallid sheet displayed
albeit incompletely.
How decadent I feel, and am
when these morsels of endeavour
are laid before me
condensed and served
in monochrome decanter.
With a turn, the page is gone,
A lost minute from the clock.
Pushed aside by times of tides
or clatter from the rolling stock .
The pages catch and flutter now,
sails set, wind-tossed.
I grapple, fold them to a square
and ponder one across.
A moment’s sombre reverie
as I fall upon a brief précis
of hero or villain,
or captain of industry.
The balance of a life curtailed
mapped and packaged neatly
upon a pallid sheet displayed
albeit incompletely.
How decadent I feel, and am
when these morsels of endeavour
are laid before me
condensed and served
in monochrome decanter.
With a turn, the page is gone,
A lost minute from the clock.
Pushed aside by times of tides
or clatter from the rolling stock .
The pages catch and flutter now,
sails set, wind-tossed.
I grapple, fold them to a square
and ponder one across.
Tuesday 8 December 2009
New Home for Alpha Course Review
I've moved the blog to somewhere a little more intuitive, and given it a quick brush up, applied a snazzy new template and generally tinkered with things to make it a bit better.
So without further ado, here's the new location:
Please head over to take a look
Thanks!
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