You Know You Want It

Tags

acai berries, baobab, bee pollen, Brabantia, Cadbury's Creme egg, Calgary Avansino, Castor and Pollux, chia seeds, Chris Martin, Coldplay, Emma by Jane Austen, flax seeds, Gwyneth Paltrow, Innocent Smoothie, lacuma, maca powder, macrobiotic, no carbs, quinoa, Tesco Express, Vogue editor

Try these, boys.

Twins, Castor and Pollux turned their noses up at Brassica’s latest smoothie,

made with frozen kale, chia seeds, bee pollen and baobab powder.

No thanks, Mum.

Not hungry.

But I’ve made them specially for you.  Try them with some quinoa toast with

almond butter.

Give it a rest, Mum.

Don’t be cheeky.  It’s what Calgary Avansino gives her kids.

Who?

The well-being editor of Vogue.  She doesn’t believe in carbs and junk

food.

Is that the person who gave you the idea of putting flax seeds in our

packed lunches? groaned Castor.

She probably persuades her followers to make their family eat locusts

and wild honey, joked Pollux.

It’s all the fault of that actress, Gwyneth Paltrow, added Castor.

Yeah, she even called her kid Apple, continued Pollux.  I bet she put her on

a core curriculum.

Enough, boys, Brassie intervened.  I went to a lot of trouble to source the

maca and lacuma powders; the freeze-dried acai berries and so forth.

I bet you didn’t find them in Tesco Express, quipped Castor.

Maybe, acknowledged Brassie, but if we were to alter our eating behaviour,

they’d have to stock up on these healthier ingredients, wouldn’t they?

Wouldn’t they what? asked Cosmo, entering the kitchen from the garden

observatory.

Dad! Try one of these! chorused the twins.

Emmm, I’ve just had a coffee.  But thanks, guys.  He looked at the glass

goblets with evident aversion as he bent down to place a small ball of coloured

foil in the Brabantia bin, as surreptitiously as he could.

Cosmo! shrieked Brassie.

She opened the lid and triumphantly picked the sphere out of the bin.

You are setting a very bad example. (She recognised the colours of a

Cadbury’s Creme Egg wrapper.)  What’s the point of Gwyneth, Calgary

and myself trying to improve our family’s health if we are continually being

undermined?

I only ate one, Cosmo admitted sheepishly.

Castor and Pollux ran excitedly in the direction of the observatory.

Egg hunt! they whooped.

Brassie knew that she was defeated on this occasion.  She sipped one of the

smoothies and then poured it into the food waste bin outside the kitchen door.

I bet Chris Martin of Coldplay doesn’t negate everything that Gwyneth is trying

to achieve macrobiotically, she sniffed.  Mind you, he was photographed

munching crisps recently. You are all the same.

Oh, let’s face it, she’d have been a better Emma if she had experienced a bit

more ambivalence in her own life. Cosmo, in one brief film critique had uttered

a damnatio memoriae while peeling a chocolate ovum behind his back.

He passed the naked temptation in front of her, tantalisingly.

As she opened her mouth to protest, he popped it in dexterously.

Go on, he laughed. You know you want it.

Gmmmumph! chomped Brassie.

And it was markedly more enjoyable than the smoothies, she had

to admit. Today the press had suggested that the Innocent varieties

of vital one of “five-a-days” were not all that they professed.

So, maybe moderation was a better idea. She had forgotten how

satisfying sinning could be.  She felt positively -?-happy!

They weren’t very big after all.

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The Bad Samaritan

Tags

Beachy Head, Center Parcs, Duke of Gloucester, Goneril, I-Talk, Iron John, Regan, Samaritans, samphire, Scott Peck, St Wilfrid, The Road Less Travelled

Candia?.

Yes?

You know you were talking about Goneril and

Regan recently…

Mmm, the ungrateful children of King Lear…

Yes, well all the families seemed to be

dysfunctional. I mean, what about

Gloucester and so on?

Well, Brassie, knowledge comes at a profound cost sometimes.

Look at Lear himself…  He’d have been phoning I-Talk or some such NHS

Counselling Direct site.

You wouldn’t have another poem on that subject, would you?

As a matter of fact, yes.  But it focusses on Gloucester and his counsellor,

who evidently lacks training!

Let’s be having it then!

THE BAD SAMARITAN

Hi, Samaritans here.  My name is Mike.

Would you like to tell me yours…or just talk?

Gloucester?  Well, Glos., are you suicidal?

You’re in a BT phone box, Beachy Head.

Beaten up?  Red hot pokers in your eyes?

That must have been rather painful for you.

Someone has rubbed egg whites in the sockets?

Homeopathy can work for some folk,

but promise me you will see your GP.

You stumbled when you saw.  Very poignant.

The only person you can change is you.

The fact you have a friend waiting outside

who pointed out the sign and our number

and helped you with the digital buttons

must prove that you are an OK person.

Easy to get lost.  The mist comes down fast.

He intended to lead you to Dover?

Just because St. Wilfrid saw Saxons leap

here because of famine, no precedent

needs to be established.  Projection’s bad.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.

People from dysfunctional families

are the norm.  Some end up working for us.

Have you read “The Road Less Travelled”? Scott Peck.

“Further Along the Road” is good as well.

You are not responsible for your son.

Hey, illegitimacy is all right.

You feel that you’ve misjudged your other son?

“Iron John”: now that’s another fine read.

Go to Center Parcs and bond one weekend.

You didn’t get on with your wife? Pity.

“Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”

has quite recently been a best seller.

Yes, it should have been a semi-colon,

but Shakespeare got his apostrophes wrong,

so, we mustn’t judge others too harshly

and we must be tolerant of ourselves.

But you say your son mocks astrology;

had he been born under Virgo’s aspect,

he feels he would still have been a bastard.

(Should that have been a colon, I wonder?)

Everyone’s entitled to their own view:

certainly we would never express ours.

But, we can help you to clarify yours.

Bastards can have a nice side to them too.

Do you feel any better now we’ve talked?

There’s a pub behind you called “The Beachy Head.”

Go and speak to some samphire gatherers.

There’s always someone worse off than yourself.

Look at all the fingernails left on the cliffs.

Yours are still attached Oh, sorry, they’re not.

Take the Stagecoach bus to Eastbourne. Things change

come the morning.  You could take a short break.

You’ve gone off the idea of Cornwall?

You’re afraid of Goneril and Regan?

Look, the clinics are quite anonymous.

Have it checked out.  It may only be thrush.

Five hundred feet covered in six seconds?….

1471- Are you there, Gloucester?

We are always there, day and night.  Call again.

Easter 1996

Tags

Easter, Good Friday, John the Baptist, Lazarus, solar eclipse

Candia, you are not going to post another poem, are you?  Brassie said.  I

mean, how many have you written?  Maybe your public would like to know

how Augustus Snodbury is doing after his romantic disaster in Bradford

-on-Avon.

Well, it’s the school holidays, so we will have to report on the outcome in a

week or so.  Until then, the Muse dictates what is to be posted.

Oh, go on then, Brassie groaned.  What have you got for us now?

Just an Easter poem I wrote a long time ago, but-hey!- it’s topical at the

moment.

EASTER 1996

That week we ventured outside at midnight,

when a shadow gradually snuffed the moon,

till the reddened orb, deprived of its light,

stared like the Baptist’s eyeball. In high noon

we think the spotted sphere no longer there.

All the primitive tribes rise to my mind,

who must have viewed such an eclipse, despair

weighing stricken hearts. How they must have signed

to each other when they became aware

of its reappearance. So a small group

watched the waning of their Son as darkness

covered the earth, but they were to recoup

The Light of the World. This Easter I bless

the God of Heaven for resurrection,

looking to the sky for inspiration

through my cataract eyes. So inspection

of the new moon tends to celebration.

Astrological symbols directed

men to the babe. Lunar allegory,

which by most people would be rejected,

confirms for me the Good Friday story.

Most of the time I look through the wrong end

of the telescope; get a false picture;

let the neon town lights obscure my Friend;

forget he’s an omnipresent fixture.

He who controls the weather, cycles, tides,

is sometimes indiscernible through cloud;

never disappears, though he sometimes hides:

rises like Lazarus minus his shroud.

Wikipaedia image

Eulogy

Tags

arils, butts, Eulogy, Fortingall Yew, Holinshed, hot cross bun, lychgate, Picts, Pontius Pilate, yew

The Fortingall Yew, photo:Wikipaedia

Of course, I said, Pontius Pilate was thought to have been brought up in

Scotland.

Oh, Candia, you’re always making out that Auld Caledonia was-no, is,

The Promised Land.  How on earth do you justify that last remark?

Holinshed-Raphael, I said.

Who? (Carrie didn’t study Shakespeare in her degree.)

The chap whose Chronicles was a source that Shakespeare drew on.

Oh yeah.  Right. (She’d never heard of him.  Raphael, I mean.)

Well, it has been mooted that Pilate’s father was a high ranking member

of a Roman delegation which was sent to negotiate with the Picts.  He married

a local girl in Perthshire and fathered young Pilate. Then the young family

returned to Rome.

Well, said Carrie.  That’s obviously a load of old rubbish. (She was munching a

hot cross bun.)

What makes you feel you are a better authority than Holinshed?

I felt a little belligerent, as I had denied myself a bun and was irritable

through hypoglycemia.

(Well, that is my story, and I am sticking to it as firmly as Holinshed stuck to

his fanciful proposition.  Okay, okay, I know he was wrong about so much,

but he just liked to pep things up for the Bard. I agree: Macbeth was probably

a New Age stay-at-home father with a fully-developed feminine side to his

character.)

All right, Carrie, I swallowed, why is it a lot of codswallop?

Because I can’t imagine anyone thinking that they could negotiate with a

Pict. Not if you are anything to go by.

Charming, I said.  You deserve another poem, my good friend.  And yes, I will

have a bun after all. With jam. So there!

EULOGY

Pontius Pilate played under your branches

in Fortingall, it’s alleged, two thousand

years ago, before he would wash his hands

of innocence.  Crimson shells of arils

broke out like bloodbeads on a thorned brow

and he trod on golden prickles, so sharp

they pierced his sandals.  Rootstock of saplings

for a future planting, you are much more

than three-in-one.  Funeral corteges

passed through your hollow trunk more easily

than camels through the eye of a needle.

Later young men trimmed your boughs for longbows.

Ancient churchyard trees abutting the butts

united sacred and secular.  In this space,

one rootball bound the dead

of the parish in a communal grave.

Portions of this yew may have been a man

the Governor knew.  Memento mori;

toxic and taxil, your lost heartwood rings

defy establishment of your true age.

Christian evergreen; Druidic icon?

You were a linchpin of society

by the lychgate of a newly planted church.

You may stand here when certainties are gone.

Palm Sunday in Salisbury

Tags

Arundells, Bruckner, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Holy week, Julian of Norwich, Mocha, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, Tower of Babel, University Challenge

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!

And Sometimes Tea

Tags

bergamot, Cona, Earl Grey, Spode blue and white, tea ceremony, William Morris

I blush to have to confess something to you, Dear Reader.

Candia- truly-you can tell me anything.

Yes, and it will be round Suttonford in a couple of hours.

No, please don’t be cynical.  It’s not like you.

(It is actually, but hey!)

Well, Carrie, Brassie, Clammie and I had tea yesterday.

Tea!

I know.  Don’t be shocked.  We haven’t forsaken Costamuchamoulah

coffee shop. It’s just nice to sit quietly in a friend’s house and watch her

perform a tea ceremony.  So soothing.

Okay, so you wrote a poem about the experience?

No, not exactly.  I remembered that I had one in my file, so here it is:

AND SOMETIMES TEA

(That’s from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, isn’t it?)

Shut up and read!

AND SOMETIMES TEA

If there is a way to take tea you know

how.  It is something to do with the pot:

essentially silver.  Weak Earl Grey’s flow,

with its exotic scent of Bergamot,

is dispensed by your deft, be-rubied hand

into Spode blue and white cups which you use

always.  The William Morris tea pot stand

absorbs the heat while you hold court; amuse

me with your anecdotes.  Kitchenesque is

your period.  A background Cona drips

its homely memento mori.  For this

is an expansive moment while we sip

and sit, straining Time still.  We lean elbows

on a peacock-plumed Liberty oilcloth,

whose preening practicality yet shows

your craving for an aesthetic.  We both

counsel take, give; sacramentally eat

a forbidden bun-two latter day Eves

who do not try to read success, defeat,

by auguring the dregs of drained tea leaves.

We know that Life is hasty, brutish, brief-

the beautiful and fine are what we need,

to ease our pains and soften all our grief:

this ceremony necessary creed.

Misericordia

Tags

A Winter's Tale, Holy week, iconography, King Lear, misericordia, misericords, pelican, pelican daughters, Physiologus, Resurrection

I think the term was ‘pelican daughters’, I said to Brassie. Have you read King

Lear?

No, should I have?

Well, it’s where you see the trouble with familial ingratitude, and virtue having

to be its own reward, I expounded.  It’s the same with A Winter’s Tale. 

By the time some people view things clearly and they understand compassion

and forgiveness, it can be too late for any joy in this Vale of Tears.

Life is too short to bear grudges, she agreed.  People can be so gullible

and take everything at face value.

King Lear again, I agreed.  Anyway, I was intensely struck by a misericord a

few years back.  I wasn’t aware of the iconography, but I felt the symbolism

keenly.

Vulning is the technical word.

What’s that? she asked.

Oh, it’s sacrificial wounding.  I read it in a description of a book

called Physiologus, about animals, created about 200 A.C.

Are you going to post another poem? she sighed.

Well, it is one that I wrote a long time ago, but maybe it needs an airing

in Holy Week.

Voila!

MISERICORDIA

A pelican bends her sinewy neck

towards a famished and clamorous brood.

Her ruffled breast is rent by one sharp peck.

She feeds her offspring with her own lifeblood.

Now phoenix-like, amid a flickering fire,

her neck is arched; her throat emits no cry.

The suckling of her children then conspires

to pierce her very heart and suck her dry.

And, as I look, the bird has disappeared.

Gross, engorged chicks ignore what she bequeathed.

And, one by one, these darlings that she’s reared

cannibalise their siblings, claws unsheathed.

But there’s another version that I’ve read:

how male bird, suffering insurrection,

struck by the chicks, twisted each little head.

Three days on, he witnessed resurrection,

having pierced and sacrificed his own blood,

in order to revive his own dear brood.

The Ballad of St Mary Overie

Tags

ballad, Cromwell, emoticon, Southwark Cathedral, St Mary Overie

Brassie texted me: What’s all this poetic activity you are indulging in?

She doesn’t understand texting, so she always writes formally and at length.

Oh, I just had all these ballads hanging around, not being published, so thought

that I’d give them an airing.

I actually condensed the latter quite a bit.

She sent me an emoticon!

Anyway, here is the last ballad you will be getting for a while!

THE BALLAD OF ST. MARY OVERIE

John Overs was a waterman.

Lucrative trade plied he:

before a bridge the Thames did span,

he controlled the ferry.

A goodly living he then made,

so bought a large estate,

but, miserly, he felt betrayed

by what his servants ate.

To feign his death seemed a good plot:

his household then would fast,

but nothing happened as he’d thought-

they gorged what he’d amassed.

Enraged he leapt out of his bed.

A servant at the wake

thrashed an oar about his head

until his skull did break.

Thinking that Satan had appeared

to take his master’s soul,

he split John from the nave to beard:

the ferryman paid his toll.

He paid his toll for his folly.

His daughter, deep-distressed,

in bereavement’s melancholy

beat at her brains and breast.

“Send for my lover.  He must come

in this my hour of need.

We two have gained a princely sum.

Tell him to come.  God speed.”

Her lover hastened in his greed,

beside himself with glee.

But, riding he did not pay heed;

was injured fatally.

Her whole inheritance she gave

to found a convent there.

Two lives were lost, so she would save

others through her prayer.

St. Mary Overie became

Southwark’s Priory and

St. Saviour’s Church was its new name

when Cromwell stormed the land.

Now a cathedral, it stands proud,

though founded on men’s sins.

London was thereby endowed,

which proves Grace always wins.

The Tichborne Dole

Tags

Lady Day, Sir Roger Tichborne, The Crawls, Tichborne Claimant, Tichborne Dole

painting by Gillis van Tilborgh

I

Lady Mabella, gravely ill,

from her four poster bed,

begged Sir Roger to change their will

so the poor could be fed:

“On Lady Day all who request

should know they can claim flour.

I trust you’ll honour this bequest

in my decisive hour.”

Sir Roger Tichborne lit a brand.

“They shall have corn,” smirked he,

“but you will have to mark the land;

crawl round its boundary.”

Twenty three acres she secured,

with bleeding palms and knees.

Sir Roger’s oath was not abjured:

“I waive all feudal fees.”

Relieved her husband did comply,

her breathing yet grew worse.

“Should any of our line deny

this dole, he’ll earn my curse.

Seven daughters in succession

will cause his name to fail.

He must grant all intercession,

if Tichborne’s to prevail;

if not, the house will turn to dust.”

The taper’s flame spluttered.

“See to it that you do what’s just.”

Its final glow guttered.

Lady Mabella’s blazing eyes

closed as the ember died.

“He must be Satan in disguise,”

all her maidservants cried.

Up from the stubble, with respect,

they placed her on a bier.

Sir Roger’s guilt made him abject.

His mouth was dry with fear:

“These field ‘The Crawls‘ will be re-named,”

in penitence he said.

“For what I’ve done I am ashamed,

now that my wife is dead.”

II

For centuries, on Lady Day,

rowdy and dissolute,

scavengers came, in disarray,

till dole was in dispute.

Gentry and magistrates, as one,

cancelled the codicils.

The baronet then had no son.

Grass grew on window sills.

Seven daughters, as prophesied,

Sir Henry’s table graced.

A missing nephew was devised

to aid the now shamefaced.

Advertisements placed in the press

tried to contact this youth,

thought lost at sea.  Nevertheless,

someone replied, “In truth,

I am the missing heir you sought:

Roger, in certitude.”

They thought him an escutcheon’s blot,

worth penal servitude:

fourteen years for one who’d perjured

the High Court and his soul.

“Of one thing only we’re assured:

we must restore the dole.”

This butcher’s son found he had scored

no success with his tale.

True Tichborne claimants had restored

their right to bread and ale.

So if on Lady Day you faint,

to Tichborne importune,

accept the purchase of a saint

and bless your good fortune.

The Forgiveness Window

Tags

Dorset, Dorset County Museum, Forgiveness Window, Judas Iscariot, Judas tree, Laurence Whistler, Moreton Church, Thirty pieces of silver

You know, Candia, I like the idea of forgiveness.  Even the vandals that committed that terrible act of desecration in Steep Church are merely re-enacting a type of evil behaviour like that of poor old Judas, but there is a wonderful tradition of felix culpa, isn’t there?

Yes, Brassie.  The sadness of destruction reminded me of another Whistler window- a 13th pane which was rejected by the villagers of Moreton.  It is now in the County Museum in Dorset.  It struck me very powerfully some years ago as I considered the whole theological debate as to the ultimate salvation of the betrayer.

(Judas tree)

Whistler himself had written to The Independent in 1994, from Watlington in Oxfordshire, after experiencing the rejection of his offer of this 13th pane.  It would only have been visible from the inside of the church.  It showed Judas being pulled into Heaven by the rope around his neck.  Some people are as resistant as that to salvation, I suppose.  Anyway, he commented that three minutes of agonising strangulation was not to be compared to the extended suffering of crucifixion.

You wouldn’t have a poem on that, would you, Candia?

Well, actually, yes, I do, as a matter of fact:

The Forgiveness Window

(Engraved for Morton Church, by L. Whistler.  Now in

Dorchester Museum.)

 

This was to have been a thirteenth blind pane,

seen only from the outside of the church:

replacement for its bombshell-slivered glass.

Judas the betrayer hangs from a tree.

His grasp relaxes and thirty pieces

of silver metamorphose into a

c

a

t

a

r

a

c

t

of flowers.

Discernment can come from outside the Church.

Inside some, coin-lidded, opt for cataracts.

Most see through glass darkly; few face to face.