Location, Location, Location

Tags

Balti House, Boden, Brassica, Clammie, Kirstie, Listed Building Pemission, Little Greene paint, Location, micro-brewery, One Direction, Phil Spencer, poppadoms, Rumpelstiltskin, Skyfall, Tristram, Vindaloo

Clammie had succeeded in getting her own way, as usual.  Tristram, her longsuffering husband, had been instructed to come home early from work, even though there was a big contract in the offing, as she had arranged a viewing of the eight-bedroomed, double-fronted Georgian house in High Street, Suttonford- (the one she had lusted after through the window of Shelley’s Estate Agency.)

Tristram had been unenthusiastic-understandably so-, given that their outgoings on school fees and mortgage were already crippling them financially and they had not even put their own home on the market.  So Clammie had brought in the big guns, namely Kirstie and Phil from the programme, Location, Location, Location.

Tristram was on a hiding to nothing and he knew it.  He had dutifully returned early, but Clammie had already smoothed most of the logistical difficulties by arranging for her boys to go to an early screening of Skyfall with Brassica and her twins.  Scheherezade was going to stay over at Tiger-Lily’s to work on their joint art project, while listening to One Direction.  Seven pm was an annoying time for a viewing, but Kirstie was a busy woman and that was the time they had been given.

Clammie had laid out his best, but casual Boden gear and then she had spent most of the afternoon trying to look cutting-edged, but understated.  This meant that she hadn’t organised a meal for their return, so Tristram telephoned and placed an order for an Indian takeaway with Benares Balti House.  He just hoped that the salt content wouldn’t do irreparable harm to his kidneys.

When Kirstie- certainly not understated- opened the door and ushered them into the hall of Nemesis House, Clammie fell instantly in love.  It would have made more economic sense if she had fallen for the rather dishy cameraman, but they squeezed past him as if he was invisible and the first soundbite to be recorded was Clammie uttering the totally original : Wow!  She then produced the suspect sentence that she had been invited to use in order to promote the programme:

Our priority is Location, Location, Location.

The camera focussed on Tristram, but not picking up the appropriate expression, swivelled to Clammie again, who said:

The large kitchen-cum-dining room has just the dimensions we crave for family bonding at mealtimes.

Kirstie felt she had it in the designer handbag, so she allowed them to go upstairs with Dan, the cameraman and then she texted Phil, who was sinking a pint in The Peal o’ Bells around the corner.

Get butt here pdq.  Sense sale.  Wild card not needed.  If no deal will eat espadrille. Kirstie addressed him differently off-camera.  She’d been on her feet all day and so she slipped off her wedged platforms and cooled her stockinged soles on the Welsh flagstones in the kitchen.

Phil thought: In my own time, hussy.  (He was enjoying a third pint of the local micro-brewery’s Old Badger and was getting the low-down on the market from some of the locals.)  However, he knew all about being shown the red card, so he drained the glass, wiped the froth off his upper lip and hared it round the corner.

Clammie rushed into the kitchen, flushed and exclaiming:

Most of our furniture would fit and a lick of Little Greene paint would cover the cinnabar in the hall and the cardamom in the boot room.  Listed Building Permission for a few things and hello! –I mean, Voila! – Our Forever Home!  She looked into the lens, hoping that the entire nation would recognise her bilingual skills.

So you want me to phone Shelley’s in the morning to make an offer?  Kirstie could see a sunbed featuring on her horizon.  I think we should go in at the asking price.

Tristram wanted to put his foot down, but he knew that even Rumpelstiltskin could have put his foot through the floor and it would have made no impression on his wife.  The cameraman gave him a sympathetic look.  Both women ignored him.

Phil let himself in with the spare key.  Before he could enter the kitchen a make-up girl powdered his receding hairline.

Quick work, Kirstie, but just before you get too excited, I have something to say.  Do you want the good news or the bad news?

I don’t like these infantile games, Phil, Kirstie scolded, nodding to the cameraman to switch off.

A guy in the pub has just told me that the owner of the Balti House put in a good offer this afternoon and they’ve taken it off the market.

What did he offer? shrieked Clammie.

The full asking price, I believe, said Phil, who just wanted to go home.

But we would have offered more. Gazump them! screamed Clammie, turning the colour of Vindaloo.  Clearly she planned Montezuma’s revenge.

Sorry, said Phil.  He sealed the deal with a promise of complimentary poppadoms for life.

Kirstie spat, Poppadoms are SO last century.  It was difficult to make out what she was saying, though, as true to her word, she was beginning to eat her espadrille.

It dawned on Tristram that Balti, along with something else, was going to be off the menu for a very long time.  He hoped Kirstie and Phil, or the cameraman and make-up girl, might like a doggy bag at eight thirty. Meanwhile, the indignity of it: he would have to join the queue for pollock and chips at Frying Tonite.  He’d never get the smell out of his new Boden Chinos.

 

 

The Coal Man

Tags

babuschka, Babushka Baba Yaga, Chekhov, coal fire, coal man

 It’s dark now that the clocks have been changed and in the evening all one

can think about is activating the wood burner and settling in with the hope

that something interesting will be on the television.  I go out scavenging

for wood- from skips, with permission, -or just appropriating blown down

twigs and slender branches.  After a walk I look like a babuschka trundling

home in a Chekhov landscape, or Babuschka Baba Yaga, to be more precise.

When I was little I was unfamiliar with the concept of a  wood burner, but

very au fait with the actuality of a coal fire.  Here is a poem that I wrote

about:

The Coal Man

 

Once a week the coal man called with his sack

of bulging hessian, a shouldered sheep

wrapped round his sooty neck, his black back

bent double.  He left a glistening heap

in bunkers, bawled on like a hoarse banshee.

Peeping from behind the curtain, my eye

would meet his own and in childish fancy,

its balefulness predestined that I’d die,

cursed by the red-lipped  gollywog’s fixed stare.

His load was the object of poker, tongs,

its coke-corrupted, crackling dross the flare

of a chimney fire; feeling which belongs

with hearth mythology, childhood’s subtle

fears of elemental forces.  The guard

was prohibition’s symbol; the scuttle

source of adult power to ignite flames barred

to the uninitiated.  Daybreak

began with vestal rituals, the sweeping

of ash, its careful wrapping.  I would wake

to a smoky haze, the first blue leaping

through yesterday’s newspapers.  A stray spark

had to be stamped before it took its hold:

individuality’s searing mark,

product of the dark trolls, Vulcanesque gold.

God took His own delivery; the sky

rumbled as His cellar filled with tinder

and this child, captivated by a lie,

trembled.  The Coal Man might note smut, cinder

in grimy heart of smallest sinner-a

companion set no talisman or charm

against His briquettes’ outpoured brouhaha,

or sudden brilliancy which caused alarm.

The Grimy Giant’s voice was the thunderclap

Which sent one to the haven of a lap.

 

Apocalypse Now!

Tags

Apocalypse, Birmingham Crater, Crouching Tiger ; Hidden Dragon, Dan Snow, Derren Brown, Felix Baumgartner, Gregorian Calendar, Guy Fawkes, Highland Spring, paintballing, parkour, Pippa Middleton, Salisbury Plain, Yves Klein

Monday morning and so I sidled into Divas’ Deli and found Carrie there buying the Pippa Middleton book: Celebrate.

Thought this would be ideal for Clammie’s Chrissie prezzy, she beamed.

Was somewhat annoyed as I had been considering it for the very same recipient.  Still, if I buy one and very carefully open the pages, but don’t bend the spine, maybe I can get away with off-loading it on someone else, once I have noted down any useful tips on my Tablet. Didn’t say anything, but hinted that I wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking, in addition to Dan Snow.

Carrie is over the moon that the awful Juniper is not going to be going to Clammie and Tristram’s Guy Fawkes party.  Her horrible little brother John is also not being invited.  Juniper’s behaviour at Tiger-Lily’s sleepover was reprehensible enough and none of us wants our children to mix with such delinquents.  I hasten to add that it is nothing to do with Juniper’s gender fluidity issues; it is just her utter self-gratification and her brother’s bullying tendencies that have upset us all.

Carrie divulged the reason for this joyous news: apparently Juniper is plastered- not in the sense that she was at the sleepover, however. No, she is in plaster with a broken arm.  She is crazy.  She jumped off the Art block roof.  Clammie’s daughter, Scheherezade, witnessed the whole event, or should I say, happening?  And she is not a girl to make up stories.

Juniper has been obsessed by Felix Baumgartner’s leap from 128,000 feet.  At her School for the Academically-Gifted they believe in a cross-curricular integrated approach to learning and so everything recently has been based on leaps: leaps of faith, Kiekegaard’s Semantic Leap, leap years and the Gregorian Calendar, French urban vocabulary, such as traceur/ traceuse etc.  Yves Klein’s Jumping into the Void was studied in Art History and in PE they learned about the training skills associated with parkour, that weird sport which owes its origins to military obstacle course training. It resembles some of the moves in Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon. One has to travel from A-B in as short a distance as possible and without one’s feet touching the ground. (In my childhood this was when a parent grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and marched you off to bed.  But I digress.)

Anyway, Juniper had been unusually attentive in the Art History lesson and afterwards she climbed onto the roof and shouted to some girls who were engaged in some artistic activity round the back of the building to capture her launch moment on their mobiles.  She threw down a scrap of cartridge paper which bore her bowdlerised mission statements, to wit:

You have to realise the impregnation of space by your own sensibility

and

Neither missiles nor rockets nor sputniks will render man- nor woman- the conquistadors of space.

The girls didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but a couple of them managed to take a digital image of her as she jumped.  Scheherezade said she was shouting:

I’m not falling; I’m rising!

And then? I asked.

And then she went splat on the roof of Clammie’s 4×4, which had been parked there as Clammie had made an appointment to see the art teacher about Scheherezade’s installation.  There was a crater the size of Birmingham on the roof.  Cosmo said it was more like a black hole in his current account to cover his insurance excess and to have the bodywork restored.

Birmingham? I asked, incredulous.

No, there really is a lunar crater called that, she stressed.  Cosmo told me once when he was showing me round his observatory.

Beats etchings, I muttered.

Anyway, she continued, ignoring my sarcasm,  Juniper is now asking everyone to sign her plaster cast and she is going to submit it for her Art History Practical. She’ll probably get an A*.  It’s so annoying. 

So, it’s cost them an arm and a leg, I said, without thinking.

Just an arm, Carrie said, laughing and paying for the book.

And Juniper’s nasty little brother, John, isn’t coming to the party either?

No.  Their mother has also been getting fed up with their behaviour and so she phoned Derren Brown and arranged a personal mini-Apocalypse for them.  It’s a set-up where they are being driven to Salisbury Plain, thinking they are going to paint-balling, and then some tanks emerge and block the road and there is a mock-up of a meteor strike.  By the end of two days they will have been introduced to the concept of altruism as they have to share a bottle of Highland Spring and a bag of Kettle Chips, or starve.

Wow! That’s amazing! I exclaimed. I wonder if any other mothers would be interested in signing up their sproglets?

Apparently Derren Brown has been inundated by requests and can’t personally hypnotise or deal with them all, so he is hiring out Parent Packs of tanks, flame throwers and DIY nstructions.

Well, that should solve the problem of bored teenagers in the school holidays, I remarked, a shade too eagerly, perhaps.

Precisely, said Carrie.  We are sending for our packs tomorrow before they run out.

 

 

 

 

The ‘C’ Word

Tags

007 fragrance, C word, Clanger, Dottling Pauline, Fake or Fortune?, FT, Glenelg, Goya, Grayson Perry, Judith Leibner, Life of Riley, Monica Vinader, Philip Mould, Sarah Brightman, Strictly Come Dancing, Theo Fennell, Visnja, www.howtospendit.com, Zanzan Avida Dollars

Suddenly the temperature has plummeted here in Suttonford.  (Yes, it’s Candia.)

Why have you not been regaling us with the antics of your Suttonford friends and neighbours?  I hear you ask.  Why did you publish all that poetry recently?

Well, dear readers, I had OTHER THINGS TO DO and I thought the poetry would keep you amused till I got back on track.  You see, my geraniums- the ones that didn’t even flower this summer, owing to lack of sun- had to be uprooted and brought indoors before the first frost.  Then I searched in vain for seed from my sweet peas, but they hadn’t flowered either, so there were no pods.

Now I am continually hearing the ‘C’ word bandied around town.  Yes, Christmas will be upon us and I, like my female friends, will be found prostrate over the kitchen table, my head being attacked by Goyaesque, bat-like creatures representing the nightmarish oppression of trying to figure out what to purchase for all the individuals on my festal recipient list.  Our spouses, who take little to do with such trivialities, may be found prostate from other causes, but that’s another story…

What to buy for Sonia, our clairvoyant neighbour…?

The vicar solved this one, as when I attended the Curs in Crisis event at the local church hall, I bought an auction promise of a Bell, Book and Kindle exorcism which he had donated and which our medium might like to activate against her cavalier, in every sense of the word, ghost.  A signed copy of a media-friendly London art dealer’s book: Sleuth: The Awesome Quest for Lost Art Works might be appropriate as a souvenir of her having been featured on the BBC programme, Fake or Fortune (see earlier post.)  Sonia would probably prefer the author himself, but you wouldn’t want Mould in your stocking, would you?

Gyles’ mother Ginevra is easy-peasy:

a bottle of Dewlap’s Gin for Discerning Grandmothers always hits the spot.

Unfortunately one of her family will have to invest in their future by supplying her with a Theo Fennell USA Space Shuttle Tequila shot set. £15-18,000 is somewhat out of my league.

The Husband:

likewise no problem.  Vouchers for Pop My Cork!  and a DVD of Great Cricketing Moments fits the bill.  Maybe a Life of Riley bottle trunk if he is good. (No more ogling at Ola Jordan’s hot pants in Strictly Come Dancing.)

Starstruck Cosmo, who sleeps in his observatory-or that’s his story:

James Bond OO7 fragrance and an alibi.  Or maybe a certificate twinning Suttonford with a Martian market town. ( Don’t laugh. It’s already happened in Glenelg.) Cosmo could be registered for a Space Tourist flight with Sarah Brightman and could have a promissory note in a nice envelope. (Come to think of it, SB always sounded a bit like a Clanger.)

But does he wear man perfume?  I think of Tatiana in To Russia with Love: she tried to persuade the spy to dab a little and coaxed, Russian men use scent and James Bond replied tersely: British men bathe.

Gyles:

alligator loafers. Smooth.

Tristram:

a Dottling Pauline safe- no, wait a minute!  That’s £90,000. That’s a couple of years’ school fees. I suppose he could rent out the drawers for B&B in the manner of those mortuary file hotel rooms in Tokyo.  No, he can have a set of Grayson Perry The Vanity of Small Distances table mats instead- only £360.  He likes laying the table. Clammie told me.

Carrie:

a Visnja Power brooch.  Oops- no, that is £48,000.  She’ll have to make do with some Zanzan Avida Dollars sunglasses@ £260.  Wasn’t Avida Dollars an anagram of Salvador Dali, dahling?

Brassica:

Okay, she might have sent a note up her chimney to Santa Baby for a Judith Leibner Starfish clutch bag covered in Swarovski crystals, but at £3,125, she might just have to accept a less expensive Monica Vinader Agate-print scarf.

Clammie: Pippa Middleton’s Celebrate book.  Actually, no.  I’m keeping that for myself.  She can have a tube of anti-cellulite cream to assist her in maintaining a rear formidable like the Duchess’ sister.

And so on… You see, all you have to do is visit the FT howtospendit.com– simples!

Now I can concentrate on Clammie’s Guy Fawkes Party…

 

Ruskin Falls, Brig O’ Turk, 1853

Tags

Glenfinlas, John Ruskin, Millais, Trossachs

They thought I was in contemplative mood

when I gazed at those lichens and bubbles.

In fact, non-consummation makes one brood.

Damned rain exacerbated our troubles.

Effie assiduously sewed red cloth,

her hair crowned with a garland of foxgloves,

while Everett circled her like a moth,

the pair of them billing like turtle doves.

You’d look like a hyena if your wife

was trailing around the Trossachs like that.

You’d feel that you could take a palette knife

to the one against whom she leant and sat

for hours, reading Dante, while he drew.

And, having him cooped up in that snuff box,

tickling her with fern- as if I misconstrue.

His doodles made me uncomfortable.

He’d come in damp from studying these rocks,

clutching his oils, sepia ink, sable

brushes, teasing her, calling her Countess.

She even trimmed his hair for him one night,

collecting the blonde curls on The Witness,

some Edinburgh newspaper, not quite

read by William, or myself.  And his hand

was bandaged because the fool had injured

it, trying to make unstable stones stand

in the stream, for her to cross.  I’d endured

enough by then.  I watched the salmon leap

in Glenfinlas waterfall and pondered

what they were sowing and what they would reap.

They played battledore in the barn, wandered

the moors and bogs.  He said chilly mountains

made him love soft, warm breathing bodies and

all the while it incessantly rained- rains!

Do they think because they are in Scotland

the normal marriage vows do not apply;

that they can shelter under a shared plaid

and return soaking with another lie?

The bubbles have all burst, I’m afraid.

I stand in the midst of this turbulence.

Passions, torrent roars: I counter silence.

 

Toshie

Tags

Art Nouveau, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Margaret Macdonald, Willow Tea Rooms

You’re one of the Immortals now. Your tree

of ambition no longer grows below

a sun of indifference. The cemetery

you lived by as a child cast a shadow

of upthrusting obelisks on your art,

exaggerating your perspective.

Chastity, abandon were not apart

under your harvest moon. Your objective

in all those white rooms was to set the rose,

its falling petals, organically;

to counterpoint the geometry of those

rectilinears. Asymmetrically

your stylised willow branches swept the ground,

lent elegance to Glasgow women who,

with chequered backgrounds flocked to those renowned

Tea Rooms, to gossip while oiled pigeons flew

past the mirrored windows, green, silver, pink,

landing on grey Sauchiehall pavements.

Prim and proper matrons perched on the brink

of high-backed chairs, replacing tenement

tedium with scones and Lapsang Souchong,

while you wrote: “There are cobwebs on your chair,

Dearest Margaret.” You wanted to belong

and now the legacy of your affair

belongs, not just to Glasgow, but, unfurled,

like a woven banner, makes proclamation,

displays your genius to a dreaming world,

wakening through your imagination.

New Master

Tags

Christ, Dora Maar, George Braque, Guernica, Pablo Picasso, Picasso's Blue Period, Venus

My blue period arose because few

pigments were in the range I could afford.

I prematurely blossomed with rose-hued

saltimbanques.  Those dull, bullish critics gored

other artists, but I escaped attack:

a skilful matador…Who loved me best?

I’d say no woman, but my old friend, Braque.

When lovers left, they could, in truth, attest

I missed their dogs more than I missed them.  Did

I propose to Gaby?  I don’t know.  War,

its ghastly preoccupations, outbid

her for my attention.  Yes, caviare

was Olga’s favourite; I preferred sausage-

Catalan- and beans.  She wanted her face

recognisable; to be centre stage:

wanted too much from me, in any case.

her image had by then begun to fade:

I was playing with Dora Maar (a mouse),

slashing Guernica with a razor blade,

careless of mistress, as careless of spouse.

Woman becomes a suffering machine.

Some Nazis asked me: “Did you do this art?”

I replied: “No. You did.”  When black with spleen,

Francoise and I could claw each other’s heart.

She who had resembled Venus became

Christ.  Martyr.  She left me: it was her loss.

She’d been expert at apportioning blame:

“Who was it then who put me on the cross?”

I did, but, so doing, set her apart:

made her immortal in the realm of Art.

Merton Abbey Mills

Tags

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Epping Forest, Liberty, Merton Abbey Mills, Morris, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Topsy, Wandle, William Morris

“If William Morris were alive today

he would turn over in his grave,” she said.

Reneging on co-operative roots,

weasly traders attempt to fob folk off

with cheap crazed pottery and Repro stuff

under bestriding Betjeman pylons

in the shadow of a silver Kaaba:

Sainsbury’s Savacentre.  Poor Topsy

would have topped himself to see his named pub,

a Riverside Free House, serving (slowly)

Pre-Raphaelite burgers and Liberty

Jacket potatoes.  Some spoof has written

under “Today’s Specials”: Leek and Cat Shit

Pie, £1.75 and Spinach and

Scrotum Quiche, £2.75.  Thick smoke

reminds one of past local industries:

snuff and tobacco.  Wading through potholes

one wonders at the willow-fringed Wandle

where fine printed silks were dipped by his hands,

dark, indigo-stained, like those large blue plums

which grew on the wall in his Woodford plot

in days when he rode through Epping Forest

in his miniature toy suit of armour,

looking for dragons to slay.  Now he knew

dyeing was an art and when the fierce floods

whipped the millwheel into activity

such as might have wrecked the very millhouse,

he may have thought his enterprise would fail

like the relationship with the beauty

who was such a burden to him.  But now

his Strawberry Thieves grace the punters’ ties.

“Have only beautiful or useful things”

falls on deaf ears, as past ideals take wings

and shopping trolleys fill with plastic junk

purchased from the monopolising store

which conserves workshops, but kills small growers.

Morris, you should be living at this hour.

England hath need of thee!  Here be dragons.

Textile printing at Merton Abbey c. 1890, from a booklet commemorating the 50th anniversary of the firm, 1911 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Andy Warhol At Tate Modern

Tags

15 minutes of fame, Andy Warhol, Campbell's Soup, Gap year, Jackson Pollock, Jerry Hall, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King

Jerry Hall’s drawl tells you what you should think;

lets you know that he did her portrait too.

For twenty years he consumed the same soup –

Campbell’s – over thirty varieties.

Think what he could have done with Heinz Baked Beans.

But what did he love more than anything?

Money.  His friend charged him for that response.

He treated nothing like it was something:

creation ex nihilo.  Quite divine.

He took the piss out of Jackson Pollock.  (Literally).

He shared bullets with Martin Luther King,

yet had no point of view.  Presentation

was all.  He left his camera running.

Its film ran out before he was ready,

but the party reviews were terrific.

From his silver-foil shimmered studio,

he said, “I’ll be your mirror” and balloons

and shadows became Rohrschachs of the self.

Chief dog of the hungry bitchpack, his wigs

out-peroxided Marilyn Monroe.

His intimacy on the telephone

was like those who freefell on the eleventh

from the Twin Towers, but who called home first.

Though voices were brief and bright as flashbulbs,

their stark images were stamped on our screens.

The body hanging from the ambulance

and the tuna-poisoned smiling victims

did not surprise him.  Even the sneaker

beneath the tyre had to be repeated.

Orange car crashes fourteen times over.

A Chelsea newsagent’s grim headline runs:

Crocodile Girl: Family’s Grief.  Just once.

In her Gap Year she’s found publicity –

fifteen minutes of fame in the world’s lens.

He could have painted her a thousand times.

To Marthe-Love Bonnard

Tags

Danae, Pierre Bonnard

Suffused with a golden glow, like Danae,

you alighted from that trite Paris tram.

Trailing you to the sweatshop where you stitched

artificial pearls on artificial

buds, I was proffered your alter ego.

We co-habited for half a century.

After thirty years you divulged your name,

unrolled like black stockings from white flesh.

Muse and millstone, you would immerse yourself

in one tub after another until

I preferred one who drowned in white lilacs

to you in your liquid sarcophagus.

For a while I dipped my brush in sunlight.

Now I stare at the bathroom mirror; shake

my futile fist at fate; ask another

to transmute green ground to gold, before death

transports me through the French windows, removes

the screen which separates us from ourselves,

bathing us in a calm chiaroscuro;

dissolving rigid contours by our love.