We had some lovely responses from the Merton Dark Angels group to Heather’s brief. If you missed them you can read them in a previous blog called “Dark Angels in Spring”.
So May has gone and June twinkles in with Chris Davenport’s new brief, which is this….
June is upon us, and I’m sure lots of you soaked up the warmth and atmosphere that came with the beautiful weather. The British seem to salute the arrival of summer unlike any other nation, and after two dud summers, I sensed a particular thirst for the life-giving glow of the sunshine.
Of England’s many celebrated poets, none celebrated the quaint idiosyncrasies of the British summer more idiosyncratically than Sir John Betjeman, By Appointment: Teddy Bear to the Nation. His summer was one of country gardens, tennis whites, steeples and marmalade. He was a sucker for the sporty Amazon, “the tennis-playing biking girl, the wholly-to-my-liking girl”.
He was also a good friend of Maurice Bowra, Warden of Wadham college, and clue number two on our treasure hunt with John (you’ll see Anelia perched jauntilly on his lap in some of the photos on the Flickr site). Betjeman said of Bowra “one did not have to look for Maurice, one only had to listen.” We did our fair share of looking, I don’t mind admitting, but it would be accurate to say that it was opening our ears that led us to the treasure in Oxford.
I’ve decided to celebrate the summer by going camping – a truly British pursuit – this coming weekend. It seems only right that Betjeman forms the basis of my brief. He once, famously remarked on the radio that his one regret was not having had enough sex. We can trace this back to the immortal rhyming couplet,
“I think that I should like
To be the saddle of a bike.”
So my task for you is thus…
* to think about what you might like to be, were you not the dazzling writers and good eggs that you indeed are, and
* write something, anything, based on that meditation.
It could be another thing, or a person, or just you in another time, another place, a tree, a bee, a book or a cook.
I leave you with a thought from Sir B:
“Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it’s the oil of life.”
If only people in the modern world valued words as much as they do oil. Our stock would be well and truly on the rise!
Thanks, for that, Chris. Add your responses below. I’ll start with the first one received from Neil Duffy, all the way from Japan.
Neil Duffy writes
Tokyo
Jaunty over Aoyama
Risen Summer Tokyo dawn,
Toddlers hand in hand with mama
Matching yellow bonnets on
Schoolgirls decked in naval kit,
In groups outside of cafes sit
From underground half crushed to death
Vexed commuters pause for breath
Gather round the outdoor ashtrays – quickly smoke and then are gone.
Lunchtime in Omotesando
Leisured ladies meet to eat
Catered for by staff who can do
Shady tables, sun-drenched street
Main point is to see and be seen
Crisp rosé, scant salad greens
Cotton whites and broad straw hats
Small lap dogs and collared cats
Elegance by far the watchword – no perspiring in the heat.
Just the spot for casual supper
Azabu relaxed yet smart
He gets there just a mite before her
Timing’s such a social art
Sashimi and yakatori
Rice and uni wrapped in nori
Sun goes down just after seven
Street signs on, electric heaven
Reaching out he takes her hand, evening over night time starts.
Short skirts rule in Ebisu
Above-knee sox and footless tights
Cute girls cluster in bar loos
Exhilarating urban nights
Sexy Riko, cool Ayako
Over biiru and tobacco
Plot the evening’s enterprise
While smoothing hemlines over thighs
Temperature and hormones rising under streets of neon lights.
I’d be John Betjeman’s laugh. It’s a laugh that bubbles up from deep inside, announcing to all the world that all the world is included in this bubble. It’s a laugh that cracks open silences so you can enjoy the richness inside; that creases the skin around the eyes in an act of rejuvenation; that envelopes you in a warm blanket on the coldest night. It’s a silly schoolboy’s laugh but the great joy is, he knows that and he doesn’t care. It’s a burst of summer sunshine on a day of lowering clouds. It’s the sound of sheer wonder to be here. He’s no longer here but I pause and I hear him, wherever he is, still laughing.
Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board
20th June 1976
English Language, Ordinary (O) Level
3 hours
Read through all of the questions in the examination paper before starting on section A. You will need to answer one question from each section. Make sure to allow enough time to answer three questions in total.
Section A
In this section, you must answer one of the questions below.
a) Write a story that begins with the following sentence: On our last family holiday, something happened on the first day that changed our lives forever.
b) Write an imaginative piece about the inside of a table tennis ball.
c) “I think that I should like
To be the saddle of a bike.” (John Betjeman)
Compose a piece of writing about what you would like to be.
Martin Lee – question c)
When you are sixteen years old, adults that you meet seem to be obsessed with your height, your future or both. In the case of your future, they are forever telling you things like ‘the world is your oyster’, or ‘the only thing that can hold you back is your own ambition’. It’s well meaning, but you’re left with the feeling that only the extraordinary will do. And yet what of these adults? We are being told these things by people who themselves are, in the case of my own family at least, a clerk for British Midland Airways; a bus driver; a housewife; a teacher or a retired iron foundry worker. In other words, perfectly respectable people who have led decent lives, but not a hint of the extraordinary, or of unfettered childhood ambition realised. I would like to ask them what they would like to be, except that it would be considered impertinent.
Fortunately, Mr. or Mrs. Examiner, you are never going to meet me, so I can tell you the truth. I would like to be normal. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be centre forward for England, and score the winning goal in the World Cup Final. But if even my friend Bob Trownson can’t get a trial for Nottingham Forest, and he’s the best player the school has ever had, then well… And for sure, it would be great to write poetry to rival Milton and Blake, but when the Evening Post only publishes one or two in five of my submissions for the Saturday Children’s Poetry Corner, then realism in the literary field settles in at an early age. It seems to me that in answering this question of ‘what would you like to be’, I need to be separating ambition from fantasy. I’m already of an age to understand the consolations of fantasy, and I suspect I’ll always have that. But ambition feels like an altogether trickier beast, especially when mine is so limited.
The nub of it really is this: normality is, to me, deeply attractive, and yet in our generation, we’ve been taught to think otherwise. My early consciousness, thinking back across the last ten years, is littered with unprecedented images – the moon landing, hippies putting flowers in soldiers’ guns, the Beatles going to India, Woodstock and many others. My parents have been continually amazed by the extraordinary, by things that their lives thus far had not prepared them for. Of course, we teenagers haven’t known any different, it has all been normal to us, but we have absorbed their sense of disbelief. The world has turned from being a habitat to a stage, and we all have to be players if we want to make an impact. Even war has developed the same dramatic vocabulary – they talk of the European theatre, the Pacific theatre.
And yet, is it so bad to crave the road more travelled? Take this exercise; a choice of three questions. I’ve ignored the routes that would have taken me into fiction, or even the fantastic, in favour of, in favour of what? A personal account – simply making plain and public that which is inside. No less, no more.
To the question then. What would I like to be? From an outward perspective, I’d like to have the things that appear to be out of fashion right now and that people don’t talk about – to love and be loved, to be a father, to be moderately prosperous. Not because I especially crave it for myself, but because it will be great to have children, and to provide stability in which they can grow with enough happiness and content to make their own choices in turn. It’s the way of things.
Besides this, the rest is just a means to an end. And yet, though I say that, there are ways and ways of achieving this. Let me illustrate. On Saturday mornings, it’s a habit of mine to take the bus into Nottingham and drift around the record shops and second hand bookshops. The highlight of this tour is a slightly shabby and perennially deserted bookshop well off the beaten path that’s a bit of an effort to walk down to. But it’s always worth it, partly for the books, but mostly to hang out with the owner, a softly spoken man in his thirties who, as often as not, is sat on the front step of his shop watching the world go by. He talks to me about the world of work and choices, about the trade offs between being poor and your own boss or well off and climbing the greasy pole of business life. More than that though, he talks to me about the world of ideas, about the freedom of the mind. He’s taught me one lesson about life that I hope will always stay with me, and which becomes the answer to this question. As a species, we call ourselves human beings, but in fact for much of the time we are human doings. So for me, whatever I end up doing, I hope that I will never forget to be.
The dark, empty tomb suddenly floodlit
as nature’s piercing stadium lights
burst through eyelid curtains’ slightest slit
blinding their bloodshot residents with ferocious might.
Hot. Heavy. Slow. Each laboured breath
swirls the pea soup fog that midday’s heat
has conjured up like death
to straddle shoulders. A world of pain, takes its seat.
Murky memories grumble, deep thunder
rolling over crumpled spirit. Regret and
nausea like dark clouds gather
in the valleys of this now vacant land.
Through slumber tracks were laid across the skull
and now each pulse through temples roar
a freight train of lament (no respite, no lull)
pulling endless carriages… impossible to ignore.
Fetid breath, lips parched
throat burning and neck tight.
An army of bullshit marched
across this tongue last night.
Over cup’s brim they spill,
the delicate aromas of Arabica’s strain,
to finally reach the border of hungry nostril
having floated ‘cross Marathon’s plain.
A deep groan. A slow heave. Atlas is bearly able
to rise from his sweaty pyre,
to find a seat at the breakfast table,
to whither slowly beneath her ire.
Behind dark sunglasses, sanctuary is sought.
While synapses flicker randomly and die,
fragments of truth are desperately wrought
to construct a flimsy alibi.
The day’s half-done, it’s almost one
and yet I’m wishing it was over.
Paying the price for last night’s fun
with this eternal, raging hangover.
Claire Falcon writes
‘Courage, ma brave’
If I could
I surely would
Go the length
To find the strength
Of heart I need
To do the deed.
I look inside
To where I hide
The things I know
I’ll never show.
But what is there
Except my share
Of weakness, fear,
With nothing clear?
They say I’m tough,
Don’t care enough.
‘You – feeble, frail?
You’re hard as nails.
Ice maiden, blue –
No heart in you.’
They cannot see
(Won’t let them see)
Their taunts are barbs,
Their words are shards
That pierce my shell,
Make my life hell.
Yes I feel, I cry
(Oh, how I cry)
For things that weren’t
The way I’d learnt.
But they shall not hear
Or see one tear,
Nor know the pain
Of their refrain.
And in my head,
Alone in bed,
I fear my choice –
Then hear your voice.
‘Courage, ma brave!
Be brave, be brave.
You know your heart,
Now play your part.
And, time will tell,
All will be well.’
No man
Think if we could merge, you said
One mind one soul like river to sea
And I stroked the dampness from your cheek
As your eyes searched my horizons
Folded in warmth and breathing
But would I flow from these desert shores
Or drown your light and hold you in dark fathoms
Perhaps just our island isolation
Lets us love my love
In this scene, DAVID and LAURA, a couple who spend most of their spare time engaged in amateur dramatics, are having a drink in a theatre pub. They’ve just finished the first audition for a new play, written by David, in the theatre space upstairs. VANESSA, a lawyer who’s just been made redundant has been auditioning for the lead role. It hasn’t gone well. She’s never acted before, but it’s always been a dream of hers. When she lost her job, she decided to take some time off and to use some of her severance pay to pursue that dream. She’s offered DAVID and LAURA a considerable sum of money to stage the play on the proviso that she plays the lead role herself.
VANESSA: Well, wasn’t that just the most fun?
DAVID: Wasn’t it just?
LAURA: Yes, great fun. You’re sure you won’t stay for a drink.
David shoots Laura a look.
VANESSA: No, I must be off. Thanks again.
LAURA: Pleasure. Thank you.
VANESSA: Speak soon. Bye.
DAVID: Bye.
LAURA: Bye Vanessa.
Exit VANESSA. DAVID and LAURA order a drink from the bar and sit down together at a table in the corner of the pub. There’s a moment’s silence as they settle, which Laura eventually breaks.
LAURA: So?
DAVID: So…
LAURA: Let’s start with the positives.
DAVID: She was on time. [Mimicking Vanessa] So very punctual.
[Another pause]
LAURA: And…
DAVID: Come on Laura, you saw as well as I did. She was awful.
LAURA: I was afraid you’d say that.
DAVID: Utterly utterly awful.
LAURA: You’re right, she was awful.
David pulls out tobacco and smoking paraphernalia and begins rolling a cigarette.
DAVID: If she wasn’t so keen and so earnest, I’d have thought she was taking the piss.
LAURA: So what are we going to do?
DAVID: We can’t use her.
LAURA: Really? It’s a lot of money David.
DAVID: Awful. Just awful.
LAURA: If we don’t take it, we’re dead in the water.
DAVID: Maybe, but just imagine if we do take it. We’ll lose all credibility. We’ll be dead on stage, which could be worse. Are you prepared to stand up in front of an audience with that?
LAURA: I don’t know. Don’t be too harsh, David
DAVID: I’m sorry, but imagine what the others would say. How could you keep a straight face? Awful.
LAURA: I know. I know. But I think her heart’s in the right place.
DAVID: And her purse.
LAURA: Aye, there’s the rub.
David smiles.
DAVID: So what are we going to do?
LAURA: Well the way I see it, we were sat here last week talking about winding the whole thing up. This woman shows up out of the blue, and all of a sudden we’re back on. It was a godsend David, I know you thought that too.
DAVID: Sure.
LAURA: And you’re right; she was awful today. But without her it’s all over. With her, we get to go on stage one more time, and then who knows. I feel like we’d always regret walking away. Don’t you? OK, it could be embarrassing, and maybe we’ll lose all credibility, but we’ll lose it doing something we love.
DAVID: So we sell out?
LAURA: It’s the only way of not selling out.
DAVID: OK. But I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.
LAURA: Let’s just not tell any of our friends about this one. If we’re going to completely humiliate ourselves, let’s do it in front of perfect strangers.
DAVID: That’s show business.
He tosses the cigarette into his mouth and heads for the door.
DAVID: She was on time. I’ll give her that.
LAURA: So very punctual.
Laura sips her drink and looks into the middle distance of the pub.
DUSK IN THE HARBOUR
In the sunlit sap-dappled bird chatter,
A man snoozes contentedly on his boat.
Strolling locals mutter about things that don’t matter
And the sky in the sea gold afloat.
Masts like asps sidewind the wobbling water,
The boat bobbing in time with each breath.
An old man fishes for time with his granddaughter,
Quietly imparting what he’s learnt on this Earth.
Thomas Heath writes
And another – typed with thumbs, a postcard from Anglesey for you:
‘It’s Heath family summer holiday – two weeks in a cottage on a cliff by a beach with kodachrome* sea views. A chance to choose whatever I’d rather be. So far I’ve chosen to rather be:
- feeling almost too hot in the sun
- getting almost too cold in the sea
- making excellent lemonade
- slightly improved at handstands, the guitar, skimming stones and sudoku
- loafing with Alex (6 weeks)
- dimly aware of Wimbledon on medium wave.
Holidays let you twiddle the fine-tuning knob of being. I’d rather they’d last just a little longer.’
Love from the Heaths
*kodachrome film was finally discontinued last week. End of an era.
Andy Milligan writes
Regression
As the sun slunk in your room
I imagined me into you
At first you frightened me, we
Were small. Fragile. Frangible
Then my breath became our breathing
Shallow. Fast. Precious
I begin to relax
Into your world
Now see its wonders
Remember discov’ry
Begin unlearning
The crack in the wall
Is an endless cave
That up there goes light
When you touch that wall
Again. Do. It. Again.
Your arms smell so nice, mummy
You warm me
Cheese san’widge be nice mummy
Drink a’ milk
I tired now. Get bear.
Go bed
Go beb
Ah ‘leep now
Ah bo beb
No wanna
Bo ba’
Turning five
You didn’t want to be five.
You told me that, sobbing,
And clung to me, sticky with grief.
What could I tell you?
You had glimpsed death in the distance, waiting,
And the road getting shorter each day.
Walk with me further, I wanted to say,
I’ll hold your hand as we go.
Susannah Hart
On turning ten
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins