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Candia Comes Clean

~ Candid cultural comments from the Isles of Wonder

Tag Archives: Brussels

Blue Murder

22 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Candia in Arts, Celebrities, Humour, Literature, News, Poetry, Politics, Relationships, Satire, Social Comment, Suttonford, Theatre, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Boris Johnson, Brussels, Bullingdon club, David Cameron, George Osborne, Gove

Brassica laughed, It’s the English teacher in you.  You

can’t stop relating everything to literature.

I know, but hark at this.  Et tu, Brute and all that!

I pushed my scribblings over the table, for her to read.

ACT 3:3

Boris:  If there be any in this assembly,

any dear friend of Cameron’s, to him say

that Boris’ love to Cameron was no less than his.

If then that friend demand why Boris rose against

Cameron, this is my answer:

Not that I loved Cameron less,

but that I loved Britain more….as he was

valiant, I honour him: but as

he was ambitious, I slew him.

Here comes his corpse,

mourned by those who shall receive

the benefits of his dying:

a place in Parliament.  With this I depart,

pleading that I slew my Bullingdon pal,

for Britain’s good.

Citizen;:  This Cameron was a traitor.

Osborne:  Friends, MPs, Countrymen, lend me your wallets.

The noble Boris hath told you Cameron was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault

and grievously hath Cameron answered it.

He was my friend, faithful and just to me,

but Boris says he was ambitious- and Boris is an honourable man.

Cameron brought favours back from Brussels,

whose ransoms the general coffers might have filled.

When the poor have cried, Cameron hath wept.

You all did love him once, not without cause.

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgement!  thou art fled to brutish beasts

and men have lost their reason.

Citizen:  I fear there will a worse come in his place.

Osborne:  Yesterday the word of Cameron might

have influenced the world; now lies he there.

You all know Gove and Boris are honourable men.

And here’s a parchment with the seal of Cameron.

Let but The Commons hear this testament.

Some may go and kiss dead Cameron’s wounds-

yea, beg a law of him for memory

and, dying, mention it within their wills,

bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue.

I fear I wrong the honourable men

whose daggers have stabb’d Cameron.

Citizens: They are traitors!

Osborne:  Boris, as you know, was Cameron’s angel,

so this is the most unkindest cut of all.

Citizens:  Let’s hear his bequest!

Osborne:  To every British citizen he gives 75 drachmas.

Citizen:  Most noble Cameron!  We’ll avenge his death.

(Revolution ensues)

Osborne: Now mischief, thou art afoot.

Take what course you will.

 

Act 4   tbc

 

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Tunnel Vision

27 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Candia in Arts, History, Literature, Poetry, Psychology, Romance, short story, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

British Rail, Bronte, Brussels, Crystal Palace Exhibition, disassocoation, Harrogate, Haworth, Keighley, Let the train take the strain, M Heger, Night Mail, steam railway, Worth Valley Railway

R

Let the train take the strain- she had echoed that advertising hype,

originally linked to British Rail, as she parked her car at Keighley

Station.

She was preparing to meet a friend at The Tourist Information Office

in Haworth.  They would have coffee in one of the pseudo-authentic

shoppes on either side of the steep hill, which is the backbone of the

historic village.

Maybe then she would bring herself to show Anna the photocopy of the

letter which had been troubling her so greatly.  Afterwards they might

walk round the museum which drew the literary faithful from all over the

world.  Then she could catch the train back to Keighley and retrieve her

car, before returning to Harrogate.

The rail journey would not take long.  It was the nostalgic, comforting

element which attracted her.  The Worth Valley Line, with its steam

locomotives and Victorian stations, which had featured in televised films,

such as The Railway Children, had been on her bucket list of attractions

to be visited, for some time.

Once speed picked up, she felt her jangled nerves calmed by the rhythms

of the engine and snatches of verse associated with her childhood sprang

to mind:

This is the Night Mail crossing the border…

Imagine rhyming ‘border’ with ‘postal order! she mused.

Standing up, she looked out of the open vent at the top of a rather grimy

window.

Ouch!

She had not realised that sparks were literally flying and a smut had

entered her right eye, which began to water profusely.  Perhaps she

should remove her contact lens?

Opposite, a woman sat, reading a letter.  Quite small and somewhat

insignificant, she was dressed in dark clothing and seemed intent on her

correspondence.

Laura left her to her own devices as she was not in a mood for chit-chat

and since she was now seeing double, she dabbed her inflamed eye with

a clean tissue, which probably made things worse.  She managed to

extricate the lens with some difficulty.

The woman in the corner reminded her of her own letter, with its many

ambiguities. (At least, Laura was trying to interpret some of the phrases

as charitably as she could.)  However, the speck in her eye felt like a beam

and not a proverbial mote.  A saline deluge would have flushed the irritant

from her eye, but she had no idea how to deal with the emotional

inflammation she was experiencing.

An objective opinion from another woman would be welcome.  But did she

really want to know the truth?

Suddenly they were in a tunnel.  She could have wished to remain in the

velvety comfort of darkness forever.

She stepped off  into the surprisingly height between the carriage and the

platform.  Someone had taken her arm.  She was still having problems with

her vision.

She blinked and made as if to offer a polite appreciation and found herself

staring into the solicitous face of her fellow traveller, who promptly vanished

into the crowd, before Laura could express her thanks.

She bent down to rummage in her shopping bag for her ticket and it seemed

to have fallen out onto the ground.  But, on closer inspection, it was a

different colour than the one she had bought.  Maybe the woman had

dropped it.  She had disappeared, however, so Laura stuffed it into her

pocket, with her gloves.

She had to climb Main Street, which had been an open sewer over a century

before.  A blast of cold buffeted her.  She frowned at a wind turbine which

reminded her of an albatross which, if she had possessed a crossbow, she

would have shot down. The rotors, spinning round, combined with her watery

eye to create a sense of vertigo.  The conservationist in her battled with her

aesthetic sensibility.

Outraged sensibility– that was something to be buried in her subconscious, if

she was to survive.  Self-pity was not to be fed, nor her creative imagination

indulged.

She was too early.  Always too early.  So conscientious; so careful of other

people’s feelings.  What good had it done her?

Anna would be late.  She always was.  It would be warmer to shelter in the

church than to stand on the open corner.

She passed a little shop bedecked in sheepskin rugs and commemorative

tea towels.  The graveyard beckoned gloomily, with mossy slabs and desolate

cawing.  The spartan parsonage overlooked the scene, with its controversial

extension.

She reached for her gloves and pulled out the piece of paper.  What was it?

it was a ticket, but curiously it purported to be an entrance ticket for The

Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851.

Puzzled, Laura put it in her handbag and set off to check on Anna.  There she

was at their mutually agreed rendezvous, apologising profusely, as usual.

They headed for one of the tearooms- the nearest one.

Nothing in it, I’d say, re-assured Anna.  Too casual; too chatty.  She just

sounds insecure and desperate to me.

Laura felt relieved of a huge weight on her chest.  They even visited the

museum and as she studied the contents of the glass cases, wondering

at the doll-like kid gloves, the tiny waisted dresses and yellowed bonnets,

she felt that same sense of disassociation from reality that she had felt

during her drive from Harrogate that

morning.

She resolved to destroy the letter when she went home.  She didn’t want

some future literary critic to get their hands on her correspondence and

to publish some speculative theory about her personal life.

They paused at the family portrait by Branwell Bronte.  Why had he felt

such utter self-deprecation?  Why had he felt the need to erase his own

image?

Anna couldn’t fathom why anyone could lack self-confidence.  Laura made

no comment.

Then they came across the portrait of Charlotte and the written

explanantion of her trip to Brussels with the subsequent broken-hearted

return to Haworth and the realisation that her infatuation with M Heger was

not- could not– be reciprocated.  All he could offer her was sincere friendship.

Laura was riveted by the eyes in the portrait.  A chill far colder than the one

she had felt outside gripped her heart.

That quizzical smile seemed directed to her personally.  She knew, with a

confidence that she did not yet feel regarding the letter in her handbag, that

the passenger in the compartment had been none other than Charlotte

Bronte.

The letter that she had been perusing so intently must have been the hurtful

reply from her employer.  Laura felt as if she had been touched by a native of

Dreamland, as Charlotte herself would have put it.

There was gentleness and empathy in the eyes.  Laura continued to read of

the novelist’s survival and marriage to the curate- the unremarkable curate,

who turned out to have some recommendations after all.

Life for her too would go on.  She would survive her own fantasies and lay

her own ghosts.

There aren’t any spectres- except in your own imagination, Charlotte seemed

to say.

I still don’t understand Branwell, Anna remarked.

I do, replied Laura.  He just thought of himself as a figment of his own

imagination.  And why wouldn’t a young man of sensibility, if he inhabited

as confined a place as this?

Pilgrimage over! Anna stated in her pragmatic fashion.  It is too spooky

in here.  Let’s go and buy some fudge.

Laura thought that her friend sounded like a computer game.  She

wasn’t going to show Anna the ticket, but she was reminded of the

century that she must continue to inhabit.

Thank you, Charlotte, she whispered and, dropping the ticket into a

donation box, she stepped out of the time warp and into the rest of

her life.

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My name is Candia. Its initial consonant alliterates with “cow” and there are connotations with the adjective “candid.” I started writing this blog in the summer of 2012 and focused on satire at the start.

Interspersed was ironic news comment, reviews and poetry.

Over the years I have won some international poetry competitions and have published in reputable small presses, as well as reviewing and reading alongside well- established poets. I wrote under my own name then, but Candia has taken me over as an online persona. Having brought out a serious anthology last year called 'Its Own Place' which features poetry of an epiphanal nature, I was able to take part in an Arts and Spirituality series of lectures in Winchester in 2016.

Lately I have been experimenting with boussekusekeika, sestinas, rhyme royale, villanelles and other forms. I am exploring Japanese themes at the moment, my interest having been re-ignited by the recent re-evaluations of Hokusai.

Thank you to all my committed followers whose loyalty has encouraged me to keep writing. It has been exciting to meet some of you in the flesh- in venues as far flung as Melbourne and Sydney!

Copyright Notice

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012-2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Candia Dixon Stuart and candiacomesclean.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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