DEPARTURES

Tags

Beijing, carp-shaped kites, Chengde, Daoist, Deng Xiaping, firecrackers, Five Pagodas Gate, Forbidden City, George Osborne, Great Wall, Guanzhou, Heze, Hong Kong, Mao, Putuo Zongcheng, Qin Shi-huang, Simatai, Sir Ben Ainslie, Taoist, Tiananmen, venue of Eternal Peace, Wanfaguiyi, Yangtze, Year of the Ox

(..uploaded by Rabs 003)

I could hardly make out what Brassica was saying, as the skoosh

of the coffee machine, coupled with the background animated

conversation in Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe left me

exhausted with the intense concentration which was necessary

to filter out the brouhaha , as well as the baristas’ choice of radio

station.

(Photo from HM Treasury)

I was talking about George Osborne and his Chinese fascination,

she shouted.  You went to China once, didn’t you?

Twice, I mouthed.  In the mid to late nineties.  It was a college trip.

What did you do? she asked.

Em, the first time, we mainly stayed in Beijing and went up to

Chengde to the Mountain Resort.  It was a summer getaway for the

Emperor- but it was February when we went and there was snow.

The students had a free day in the town, but I hailed a taxi and

went to the Putuo Zongcheng Temple, to see the golden roof of

the Wanfaguiyi Hall and the Five Pagodas Gate.

Did you go to The Forbidden City?

Oh, yes and the Wall at Simatai and Taoist and Daoist temples.

We had Sir Ben Ainslie with us.

Was he promoting Olympic sailing?

No, he was in my Form Class and was a very pleasant

young man.  He was only eighteen, but already well focused.

So, what did you do on the second trip?

Look, I can’t hear you very well.  I’ll e-mail you something

tonight.

A poem?

Wait and see.

DEPARTURES

(Portrait by Zhang Zhenshi and a Committee of Artists)

We filed past Mao before we left Beijing

and wondered if he had gone to meet Marx,

or his Maker, in his great leap forward.

The digital countdown in Tiananmen

displayed in red a hundred and thirty

days, till Britain would quit Hong Kong’s harbour.

The sleeper to Guanzhou arrived on time.

Some minor official’s car drove along

the platform.  His compartment was the same

as ours- First Class.  The red carpet was out.

We settled in our bunks and asked our guide

if the Chinese ever tried to de-bunk

their leaders.  Did they wait till they were dead?

No, not really, she insisted, for Deng’s

‘one country; two systems’ helped our peasants:

1.3 billion poor, to be precise.

She looked over her shoulder and we laughed.

At dawn we stopped at some dismal station.

Black market rail tickets were being sold.

Uniformed females with loudhailers quelled

a near punch-up.  We watched behind lace nets.

A man with torn shoes, grim smile and cake box

seemed resigned to his unsuccessful bid.

The next train would be in twenty four hours:

not a good start for The Year of the Ox.

We crossed the Yangtze where it was averred

macho Mao had swum to the other side

to show prowess..  The pink agapanthus

and formaldehyde had not fragranced him-

those floral tributes on sale, re-cycled,

we had thought, as none rested on the glass

against his tomb.  We felt we’d seen it all:

The Forbidden City and The Great Wall;

the dear-departed father figurehead.

We even speculated Deng was dead.

Our guide told us when Qin Shi-huang had died,

his courtiers were so afraid, they’d tried

to mask his corpse’s stench with crates of fish.

That whiff of death came with us from Beijing.

Peasants in Heze watched a meteor shower.

The entire sky became a vivid red.

They felt a dynasty was going to fall:

and fall it did.

Yet, contrary to what was said, some joked

when Deng departed later that same week.

Outside the Wax Museum, someone said,

Deng may be dead, but you can see him here

before 3.30, if you pay ten yuan.

A carp-shaped kite played in the sky above

Tiananmen, while yellow stars fell to earth,

from a venerated flagpole: a scene

so different from 1989,

when student posters said: The wrong man’s dead.

We were in the clouds when bold headlines screamed:

Deng has massive stroke; in Arrivals

when the news broke; had opened our brandies

by the time Beijing had been prepared

for the incineration of Xiaping.

(ROC govt, 1937.  Uploaded by Tholme)

As the smoke ascends, we watch his rival.

All over China, nervous firecrackers

exorcise demons, calm jittery nerves.

And the man on the platform, with stale cake,

wonders if he’ll get a ticket this time;

wonders if there will be a departure

from what he has accepted as the norm.

A hundred thousand line The Avenue

of Eternal Peace, while a minibus

travels through white blossoms on leafless trees.

Image- 2010: Austalian Cowboy talk)

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Scything

Tags

Alan Bates, Andrew Marvell, Antiques Roadshow, Babylon, barmkin, Ben Batt, Corydon, Damon the Mower, Deep Heat, Downton Abbey, eclogues, Farmers' Markets, Fiona Bruce, Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, Green-Winged orchid, Grim reaper, Hayter, Highgrove, Lammas, meadow management, Mower to the Glow-Worms, Mr D'Arcy, One Man Went to Mow, pastoral, Pele Tower, Ph.D, Pig-gate, Poldark, Schroeckenfux, scything, snath, Stag's Breath liqueur, The Go-Between, troubador, Voltarol, wu wei

Diana Fotheringay-Syylk was administering embrocations

and a little tlc to a recumbent Murgatroyd, who is, as some

of you will recall, the owner of a Borders Pele tower.

Privately, Diana thought that he had been over-doing things

and Voltarol was not really having a great deal of an effect on

his lumbar aches and pains.

It had not helped when he had lugged plastic crates round the

local Farmers’ Markets, selling his Empress Bangers and porcine

medallions.

Yes, Dear Reader, Pig-gate had already struck, before the

Cameronian variety hit the news.

(Photo:Alpha from Melbourne)

Once he had cleared out the pig-pen area he decided to

re-seed it, to please Diana, who had been upset when their

gardening firm had rotovated the wrong field and inadvertently

destroyed their recently established Highgrove-style wildflower

meadow and a group of what she took to be Green-Winged Orchids.

(Photo by Didier Desouens)

From then on, Murgatroyd had decided to do away with mechanical

Hayters and, Diana, having been inspired by Aidan Turner, like so

many females d’un certain age, had booked him in – Murgatroyd, that

is – for a Lammas weekend scything course in Brighton, where he was

going to learn the sociology of the bar peen.

His back-ache had been exacerbated by carrying the large A4 pack of

information he had been given at the start of the course.  Someone had

probably gained a Ph.D in Rural Studies from producing it.

That meant she could watch the boxed set of Poldark in peace, while

he practised with his new, Austrian light-weight, zero-carbon

Schroeckenfux.

However, her pastoral idyll had been disturbed by Murgatroyd’s

complaints, not in the manner of a Corydon, or passionate troubador,

but more in line with the average husband who experiences muscular

twitches, or sciatica.  He was recumbent and had hung his instrument on

the equivalent of a willow tree, while he lamented his estate, as if he

had been exiled from Babylon.  He felt as if one of the Four Horsemen

of the Apocalypse had wounded him – perhaps that skinny one with the

hoodie and the big scythe.

He groaned.

We’ve run out of  ‘Voltarol’.  You’ll just have to use the ‘Deep Heat’ until

the shops open tomorrow and  I go down to the pharmacy, Diana

informed him, noting that The Go-Between was on later that evening.

What a pity she didn’t have a little gopher, like Leo, to pop upstairs

with the tube of emollient.  She was fed up running up and down stairs

pandering to the invalid.

Having taken him a Stag’s Breath liqueur and having poured a generous

shot for herself, she settled down with the remote in a comfy armchair, in

the barmkin.

This had better be good, for she had enjoyed the Alan Bates version.

For some subliminal reason, she hummed One Man Went to Mow, Went to

Mow a Meadow…

It wasn’t too long before she found herself re-winding to check the length

of the snath handle Batt was implementing.  Impressive-and that was just

his wu wei.

Meanwhile Murgatroyd was looking at a John Deere catalogue while Ben

Batt cut a swathe through Downton‘s viewing audience and no one could

remember what Fiona Bruce had been rabbiting on about on The Antiques

Roadshow.  For, there was an attempt to high-jack a Mr D’Arcy moment for

posterity.

Later, in bed – the spare bed – Diana could not clear snatches of eclogues

from her overactive mind.  She kept thinking of Andrew Marvell poems, such

as Damon the Mower, The Mower to the Glow-worms and Mowing Song.

Snippets of the verses repeated themselves:

Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,

And withered like his hopes the grass.

and

How happy might I still have mowed,

Had not Love here his thistles sowed.

…there among the grass fell down,

By his own scythe, the Mower mown…

T ‘is death alone that this must do:

For Death thou art a Mower too.

Well, she reflected, Life is too short for meadow

management. I think we will just pave it over again

and get some pots with pelargoniums.  I’ll go to the

Garden Centre after I’ve been to the chemist’s.

And she decided that Alan Bates had, after all,

been more satisfactory.

Coming!

Another Look At The Arundel Tomb

Tags

Arundel Tomb, Chichester Cathedral, Fitzalan, Larkin, Lewes Priory

(Photo by Tom Oates)

I might have known

the tender clasp

evoking the tension

between Time and Love

(symbol of faithfulness)

is possibly a nineteenth century

addition; a terminal inexactitude.

But is it?

Now it’s thought to be original;

its loyalty as genuine

as the little dogs under their feet.

I might have known

Larkin’s best phrase:

final blazon

was Monica’s invention,

replacing his weak signal.

I might have known

Arundel Tomb isn’t a grave.

It’s in Chichester

and is a memorial,

strictly speaking.

The Fitzalans are buried

in Lewes Priory,

to be precise.

So, what is truth?

Maybe we should all cross our fingers

and hope that we can make it work.

Eleanor crossed her legs

and yet seemed to make

the public presentation

more than acceptable.

Nothing is written in stone.

Per Ardua Ad Astra 2

Tags

Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Corniche, Flamborough Head, Monterey, Per Ardua Ad Astra, remand centre, Temptation of Jesus, Twinkle twinkle little star

(Photo by Brocken Inaglory)

Gary was nearly a man now and there was nothing he wanted more than

to be able to drive -legally, but he couldn’t afford proper lessons.  Terry

refused to teach him as he kept asserting that he had passed first time

without any instruction. Gary doubted that he had ever sat a test.

Sometimes Gary would dream that he was cruising an Aston Martin

on the Corniche, or driving a Chevrolet on the coast road to Monterey.

He’d seen that on the videos.  He wasn’t that bothered about having

a blonde in the passenger seat.  His mother had put him off women for

the time being.

He had experienced a dizzying moment of power on The Ridge.  It

had seemed a shame to tip the car over, but he couldn’t lose face.

He’d had a hazy recollection of an RE lesson where Jesus had been

standing, looking down from a high position.  He was being tempted

to cast Himself down, but He had resisted.  Gary knew that he wasn’t

The Son of God.  He wasn’t under any illusion about that.  Nevertheless,

he would have been happy if a cohort of angels had appeared and

borne the Astra up on their wings.  The whole experience reminded him

of that time he had stood with his father on the cliffs at Flamborough Head

and he had felt as if he could have launched himself off, to spiral down

on a thermal like a seabird.  Dad had been clutching the belt of his

jacket, so that he felt stable and safe.  It was just shortly after that

summer holiday that his father had disappeared from his life.

( Image:areadeandavid Flickr Flamborough Head)

There it is, Alan.  I told you, he said the following day, pointing to the

blackened wreck that clung tenaciously to the bushes.  It was still

smouldering slightly.

I’m going to have a closer look, said Alan, scrambling down.

Gary stood for a moment, surveying the scene in daylight.  He could

see one or two other joyridden wrecks littering the slope.  He suddenly

wondered why he had done it.

A loud boom reverberated and rattled the windows of nearby houses,

shattering Gary’s meditation.  He looked down with horror as a sheet of

flame engulfed the stricken vehicle.

Alan!  ALAN!

He could see that it was no use.  His baby brother had been swallowed

up in a funeral pyre as the petrol tank exploded.

(Photo by NathanWest at English Wikipedia,

transferred to Commons by Ebe 123, using Commons

Helper.)

Per Ardua Ad Astra that had been his Dad’s motto once and Gary reflected

on that as he gazed out of the Remand Centre window from his top bunk.

He felt for the badge which was still pinned to his hoodie.  One star glittered

more brightly than all the others.  He remembered Alan singing Twinkle,

Twinkle when he was a kid.  Their mother kept shouting at him that it was

‘what’, and not ‘where you are.‘

Now Gary didn’t know where his Dad or his brother were, but he felt that

the bright light that was like a diamond in the sky definitely belonged to Alan.

(Photo by Romazur, Wikipedia)

Per Ardua Ad Astra 1

Tags

Arndale Centre, Astra, Bacofoil, Chevette, Colonel Sanders, Existentialism, Headingley, Hot Wings, James Bond films, KFC, Lightwater Valley, Meanwood Valley, Per Ardua Ad Astra, Royal Air Force, Tetley's beer, The Skyrack, urban farm, urban foxes, WD40, Yorkshire Ripper

The ‘G’ registered white Astra sped through a red light on Headingley

Lane and took a crazy right turn up a quiet residential street, on

burning rubber.

Gary was high on speed, but only the vehicular variety.  In his mirror,

he could see the shadowy faces of his three mates, their mouths agog

with inane laughter and the sensation of being on a seemingly out-of-

control roller coaster.  This was cheaper than Lightwater Valley and the whole

escapade would give them the ‘street cred’ they craved back at St Augustine’s

High.

Watch this! he shouted, as he took an unmade stretch of road, rutted with

pot-holes, which steeply descended towards The Ridge.

They felt Tetley’s beer slosh around their stomachs as the car’s suspension

rocked violently and its exhaust scraped sickeningly on some large stones.

It was so dark on The Ridge.  You were on top of the world and all the lights

of Meanwood Valley twinkled from the dark shapes of densely-packed back-

to-backs.  Leeds slept and Gary and his pals emerged from the car, almost

reverentially.  The trees gave a rural impression.

The urban farm’s down there, remarked Gary, lighting up a fag.  He

remembered being taken there by his Dad and kid brother, Alan.  They’ve

got horses and stuff.

So what? commented Brian.  Who needs horses when you can have

horsepower?

Gary leant over the driver’s seat and released the handbrake.  The others

pushed on the rear bumper.

As if in slow motion, they watched the Astra tilt forwards and then lurch.

It somersaulted once, like a stunt car in a James Bond film, and then rolled

on its side against a scrub-like bush.  It had only travelled a hundred yards

or so down the slope.

(Photo 2006 Lewis Collard)

Gary chucked his cigarette stub inside and the lighter fuel which had drenched

the upholstery performed its ignition.

The darkness was illuminated by a spectral bonfire.

To Woodhouse then I came,

Burning, burning, burning, burning…

Gary recalled his English teacher reading out something like that the

previous week.  The rhythms had remained with him along with an

incendiary craving.  No one else had been paying attention.

Scarper! he shouted and they headed for Kentucky Fried at the Arndale

Centre, just round the corner from the site of The Yorkshire Ripper’s final

murder.

The boxes of congealed chicken debris- Hot Wings– were thrown into a

hedge for the urban foxes to sniff out.

We had ‘Hot Wings’ tonight, a’ right!  Brian joked.

They started a competitive routine, sniggering as they built on Hot Wings; Hot

Lips, Hot Chick and Hot Rod.

Gary fingered the Royal Air Force badge on his hoodie.  Dad had given it to

him after they had all been to an airshow.  It had been in his sock drawer.

Speed and Flight.  Freedom.

But Mum had laughed.  You were never airborne. Derek.  Admit it. You were

nowt but a filing clerk. 

Like Father; like sons.  She always put her menfolk down…  Took pleasure

in’t clippin’ wings, so she did.  No wonder the old man had scarpered. That’s

what Terry always said.

Where have you been, you piece of dirt? snarled Gary’s mum.  You’ve got

school in’t mornin’.  Don’t waken Alan up.  Terry’s still at The Skyrack, lucky

for you. Get out of my sight, or I’ll crack you one!

A’right – don’t have a nervous breakdown.  He ducked instinctively, avoiding a

blow to his head.

The bedroom door needed some WD40.  It creaked and Alan roused his head

from under the duvet.

A’right?  Any joy?

This wasn’t an Existential interrogative,

Shurrup. Mum’ll hear us.  No problem, Gary swaggered.

What’s twoccin’? Alan persisted.

Takin’ without t’owners’ consent, our kid.  Now shut it.

Stepping out of his jeans, he threw his soiled hoodie into a corner before

climbing in beside Alan.

You stink of bonfires, Alan said.  And Colonel Sanders. Did you get an Astra?

Yeah, it’s down The Ridge.  I’ll show you tomorrow if you don’t believe me.

Alan had to be content with that, for Terry had come back from t’pub and,

from the sounds in the hall, it were better to pretend to be asleep…

Gary had felt responsible for Alan ever since their Dad had left.  Dad had

never owned an Astra; he had possessed a beaten-up old Chevette, with

Bacofoil filling the wings.

(Photo-Wikimedia Commons)

Every wing has a silver lining, he had once quipped.

He still had a silver halo for Gary and Alan. but it had slipped somewhat in

their mother’s eyes.  She wouldn’t let him back into the house, the idle slob.

Terry was relatively new.  Her toy boy.  He wasn’t too bad when he was

sober, which wasn’t often.  But, at least he had a job.  Sometimes he gave

you a couple of notes and told you to get lost, or to get kitted out down

t’ market.  Other times, he told you to go to Hell.

She’s Leaving Home

Tags

Art Deco, Celestial City, Clyde, Clyde-built, dredgers, Dumbarton Rock, Flybe, Glasgow airport, Glasgow University, John the Baptist by Da Vinci, Kilpatrick Hills, Luftwaffe, Paisley, River Cart, Singer Factory, soor ploom, speug, Titan Crane

Yes, folks, I’m back.  Here’s a wee poem for you, describing my thoughts as

Flybe took me out of Glasgow Airport:

SHE’S LEAVING HOME 

Instead of a speug’s* view at ground level,

I have a skewed vista doon the watter.

There’s a lump in my throat like a Soor Ploom,

as my keen eye picks out Dumbarton Rock,

before the plane’s wing and cloud wisps obscure

the Ben and those Kilpatrick Hills – cradle

of my childhood.  The tributary Cart,

where mighty hulks dragged their chains,

buoyed up those liners that would cruise the world,

while dredgers kept the channel free of silt

and every vessel seemed to be Clyde-built.

A solitary crane marks the spot

where political tourniquets strangled

the life out of industry and population.

Patchwork fields look as if they have been stitched

into a quilt by a local giantess,

the boundaries hemmed in by Paisley thread,

before Singer stopped treadling out machines

and its Art Deco clock had its hands tied,

as the shriek of town sirens was stifled.

I see my house, my school, the High Flats,

where Luftwaffe rained down a thousand bombs,

before I saw the light of day.  Yon spire

of Glesca Uny soars toward the sky;

beckons to a Celestial City,

just like the finger of John the Baptist:

a pointer to a life outside the frame.

Education – the sky was the limit.

And now I can never come truly home.

Photo by Stephen Sweeney, Wikipaedia Commons

• speug- a sparrow
• * soor ploom- a sour plum-flavoured sweet

Permanent Waves

Tags

ammonia, anaphylaxis, atropine, Bee-hive, bouffant, crimping, Monk Pear tea, nit-picking, perming, phrenology, T2 teas, Twink

1st Prize Hairdressing Fashion Exhibition, London 1935.

Image: Louis Calvete ISBN 1-897312-34-2

 

Oh, you’re back Carrie!  Come and have a Monk Pear!

What?

It’s the latest tea find.  You know, they order these T2 teas from

Melbourne.

Okay, but I will have to be quick.  I’ve still got loads of name tags

to sew on for the start of term. 

We went into Costamuchamoulah.

You’ve had your hair done.  It suits you.

Thanks.  I have to be in the mood, as I hate that salon smell.  It

gives me asthma, so I have to go when I am in a good phase and

there’s not too many women having their colour done.

Some women have died having their hair coloured.

I know.  That’s why I don’t risk it.  Anaphylaxis and all that.

I thought there was a girl in Scheherezade’s class called that.

Oh no, it was ‘Alexis’.  Anyway, I don’t like the smell either.  It makes

my eyes sting.

That’s just the price!  My mother and grandmother did their own-

on a Saturday afternoon.  I was reminiscing about it the other day

and, Look!

Let me guess…another one of your ‘pomes’!  Just as well I’m not

allergic to them.  Okay, give it here.

PERMANENT WAVES

Crimping waves while the sun shone, my mother,

grandmother, eased the men out of the house

for their afternoon.  Wanting no bother,

they sent them to a match.  One would douse

her white scalp at the sink and take the Twink

perming lotion.  My eyes would always burn

at its foul ammonia, wee-wee stink,

applied by each to each, in unctuous turn.

Pink plastic clips were screwed into their skulls;

chiffon scarves masked phrenological bumps.

Their billed features were as sharp as gulls,

contrasting with their rounded breasts and rumps.

The men returned in time to watch the fight;

wrestling; then quietly demanded their tea.

Bouffants, beehives deflated overnight.

Aesthetic judgements were left up to me.

Does it sit nice at the back?  What d’ye think?

I always said it suited them just fine.

Hope died, as no one ever took them for a drink,

with their tight curls ponging of atropine.

One whiff of salon fug and back it floods:

those weekend rituals, with the rigid roles;

the hair-clogged drains; old towels, basin suds;

the curling of coiffures; lacquering of souls.

And now my marriage gone with my long hair,

I stopped nit-picking many years ago.

I dyed daily, so now I do not care,

or seek approval- I just wash and go.