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20-7-08
Reading Keats's letters I'm up to where he's on his 'Scotch' tour with friend Brown. He tells Fanny Keats, his sister, from Dumfries that he had proposed writing her from elsewhere but his knapsack has burst the seams of his jacket and it's at the 'Taylors'. As he has only one jacket with him, he's got to wait for it, so this is a good time for a letter.
Novels fail to hold the attention lately, unless it's a Haggard or some other old favourite.
Am into 'House to House', by David Bellavia, a shocking account of barrelling into Fallujah with the US Infantry. This is life. And death, and stinking shit. But some glory among the festering poop, boys. Every man feels meanly about himself for never having served in the Forces. But reading this.... You have to wonder how you'd behave in a Humvee amongs the Improvised Explosive Devices, but you thank your God you don't have to. Not that Bellavia had to. He joined up to prove himself to himself and his father after failing at the age of 23 to eject a couple of tooled-up crackheads who were pillaging his parents' home.
There were three morons on our bus the other day, one a beefy six-footer with a stubbly head, a skinny psychopath in trainers, baseball cap and a neon sweater, and a little one like a toddler, almost. The neon sweater started a monologue with lofty--they were at the front of the bus and they knew they had the whole bus as their audience. Things were in your face, man. We were sitting only a row away from them. Neon saw a girl through the window and said 'I think she wants a piece of my willy.' He also battered at the window to get the attention of a roadsweeper whom he knew. The sweeper waved, as if reluctantly, no big deal.
Still, they didn't fuck with us and they got off after a few stops. I wasn't going to protest about their language. It's their right to use chicken talk (foul language) these days--at least, they think so, I just kept looking out the window.
If they had stirred me up I don't know what I would have done. But they avoided looking in our direction. You never know if they've got a knife these days, do you?
Bus journeys provide some 'cases'. There's a nut-brown hailfella-well-met, lovely man must be nearly eighty, gets on--all smiles. Bit like the actor Sam Kydd. Trouble is he was over the other side of the alleyway from Joan and he didn't half pen-and-ink. Yeah, a rank outsider. Goatish armpits. That's how they are in the aptly named village of Cretingham.
There was a young woman puffing on a cigarette at the Cattle Market bus station--didn't get on our bus after all, but what a sight. Shoulders like Bob Mitchum, no arse and a pot belly. She must only have been eighteen or twenty. I got the idea that she'd been overdoing it at the gym. 'Muscle bound', as we used to say. (It's believed that over-exercising is what did for Douglas Fairbanks--the original, that is: Junior's father.)
There is a young chap we dubbed Einstein who is quick to assure anyone interested that the place where he is working 'voluntary' may soon have a permanent full-time position for him. Then he won't have to 'mix and match' whilst receiving Income Support. Good luck, bor!
You have to be fairly tolerant is you're a regular bus passenger. There may be smells and sounds you have to put up with. You don't want to argue if you can help it because you'll probably have to face your adversary over and over again. It's best to look out the window and hypnotise yourself, like; grin and bear it, play your mp3s (last week I had Kevin Coyne on--biggest hit for me on the album was 'Let Love Reside').
Crane Engineering Ltd--'Crane's'--has poured its last metal along Nacton Road. That foundry of theirs made them the largest private sector employer in Ipswich. I never wanted to work for them and now never will have to.
Actually, I did work at Crane's for a couple of weeks in the early '70s when I acted as a labourer for my dad when he had a short-lived bricklaying firm in partnership with Bob Woollard. We knocked down a chimney in there and built another one.
The production which took place at Crane's for 83 years has now moved to China.
Terry, after leaving the army (Martin Bell the TV journalist and now politico was in his squad),got a job at Crane's and stayed almost 40 years. Though he didn't want the carriage clock on retirement, they still insisted on going and getting him one.
When all's said, no one will derisively be told any more when they seem to have no aptitude for anything else, 'You better get up Crane's.'
I never worked directly for Crane's but I did work at Harris's, the meat factory which was the other narrow end of the funnel which received the cannon fodder of the employment market. Strangely enough, the Stock Unit where I'm now employed stands more or less on the same site as Harris's. No one would ever have thought, as people had to eat, that Harris's pie and bacon factory, that smooth-running pig Holocaust, would go. Nor the Post Office either, for that matter--the building now houses Lloyds TSB. (The P.O. also encouraged my meagre skills.) Truly, the mighty often in the eyepiece of eternity bulk tinier than could have been imagined.
Was going to get an annual ticket or card for the bus. It would cost £365 but represented a saving of over £600 a year.
Luckily Joan was with me when I arrived with a 3.5cm square photo done at home.
When I asked if I could use the ticket at the weekend too, the woman, getting the pad ready, said, 'Yes, it's unlimited travel on First Line.'
'First Line?' said Joan.
'Yes, your bus is the number 63, right?'
'No, we don't get that any more,' I replied. 'We've been catching the minibus instead, the 118 or 119, which takes 45 or 50 minutes instead of over an hour.'
'But they're Far East Travel,' the woman told us, 'the ticket won't be any good for them.'
The buses all ran from the Cattle Market bus station, so to me that meant they were the same firm. I didn't know First Line from Babe's First Try. But Joan was on the ball and saved me £365 which I would have had to struggle to get back. I would also have faced the ordeal of getting on a full bus and having my card sneered at, home made photo and all.
What's been great is listening to the mp3 player to and from work as bushes, houses, fields and shorn sheep flash by, even black ones. Lou Reed's 'New York' album is on there at the moment. First off I filled it with odd tracks downloaded from MySpace for free, and from other places including Napster, where I bought Polly Scattergood's 'Glory Alleluiah' for 79p and Bolan's 'San Francisco Poet' and 'The Third Degree'.
Our new abode is on the bank of the River Ore and, as the landlord told us, you are always going to get rats. The oddest thing yesterday, moving day, was that when we went back to the Cloisters to get the second van load of stuff we saw a rat not once but twice running across in front as we made trips back and forth with boxes. It was a medium-sized rat with grey fur and a little line of white down its back touching the root of its scaly tail. The first time in two years at the Cloisters that we'd seen a rat!
It's possible it had stowed away in the van and was disorientated by the Cloisters. The other possibility is that it was a Cloisters rodent that just wanted to say farewell.
For us it was certainly goodbye to the Cloisters which we knew could not be forever.
Picked up by Phil and Linda to go to Dedham for lunch on the wet Bank Holiday. We went by way of Washbrook, to call on Graham Kemp who when he heard we were seeing Phil thought it would be a good chance to catch up and show us his new domain.
We went there for coffee. It was a mansion all alone in a field with a swimming pool in the conservatory. (Part of the house dates from Tudor times but by some oversight it does not appear to be 'listed'.)
Graham, known to Phil and myself from the Boys' Brigade and Woolacombe Camp in 1969, is in a spot-on covers band called Infra Red. We have all been guitar strummers. In fact the original Infra Red used to rehearse in the evenings at the youth club at Nacton Road Girls' School around 1970. It was Phil and Graham on guitars and vocals, Paul Holland on bass and Glen Wood on drums. Girlfriends stood around watching as they practised. Some were snogged between tunes.
Graham's new wife Julie arrived while we were chatting. Very pleasant. Her grown up kids and one of Graham's were in residence.
So Phil, Linda, Joan and myself then continued to Dedham, the rain still glooping on. Across the road from the Essex Rose café they were helping Phil get out while I went to check that there was room for a wheelchair. I suggested we could bring it into the front part, but that was all reserved.
'The back should be fine,' I was assured, and Phil was soon bowling in and we sat at a black table as steady as Gibraltar.
This was Linda's treat (she handles all finances and Phil has pocket money). Joan chose soup, I had a jacket potato with cheese, onion and tom. Linda got a salad with a jacket and Phil contented himself with a plate of sandwiches, half of which he wrapped in a paper napkin, claiming they would last him two days.
Years ago when Pete and I used to bike to Dedham every Sunday morning (almost two hours to get there, we weren't racing) there was a waitress called Samantha. When she collected our tray one time I threw a folded note on it for her. It read, 'I dare not ask a kiss, I dare not beg a smile.'
She went to the serving end and looked over at us, picking the note up. When she'd read it she tucked it in her brassiere. Stupidly, I did nothing to follow up this palpable moral victory.
[Oddly, as we were driving home I remembered one of the waitresses looked at me and smiled as if with a secret meaning. A shade more matronly all right and different hair, but it could have been Samantha.]
Browser's bookshop in Woodbridge may become our next source of live and intercommunicating poesy. Called there last week in the midst of things. They were sitting in a circle, the poets and readers, in this attractive and independent bookshop café.
Kicking off the second half I read 'The King of Reynolds Road', an offering about Frank Wright the noted grocer and fishmonger of the Clapgate Terrace days, whose death at 99 had been reported in the Evening Star.
Perhaps emboldened by my street-wise near-the-gutter effusion, Rosalind then recited (in an Eliza Doolittle rant) an ode in which were invoked the words 'tosser' and 'bastard'. Intake of startled breath all around--and comments afterwards on the boldness of this language. What were things coming to?
I knew then why Fred the invigilator asked to look at the MS before I was allowed to perpetrate. Apparently they've had porn, yeah brother, and all sorts there fiendishly inflicted. They did not wish to be caught again.
But Frank Wright was found to be pukka, if with a bit of a gutterish tinge.
There were some sinewy lines that night, and insights galore, so we look forward to good listening on future dates.
Also, by email comes an invite to the first anniversary reading--champagne and cake provided.
You've got to get in, right? With your peers and that, yes?
Am printing the latest Ragged Edge Magsheet ('Bluer Than the Blues'), which is #17. It is actually the 18th magsheet, but the last was a 'Merekatz special' with no number assigned. Now and again it's handy to do a 'special issue' ('hors série', as the French call it) with a particular theme. The Merekatz one, I see now, was good but not crazy enough. With a special issue one is entitled to go crazy, it seems to me, and the opportunity that time was missed. But next time may see 'waterspouts and hurricanoes', behemoths and cockatrices, hallucinating litanies forever incomprehensible. Just so long as the rag don't tear and the old printer holds together, what?
The magsheet was actually the best thing that came out of the Merekatz episode. It could have been so great, but it didn't come together. We could have seen poesy and music melded, but it was not to be. Our gig at the Norwich Arts Centre was a failure, becoming simply a wank of a party with boozy self-congratulation and boasting. It didn't encroach onto the real world. It's true a paying audience was there--of eight people.
Still, the magsheet wasn't too bad--and was the first to feature poetry as well as prose and have a double length sheet glued in which amounts to eleven folded pages concertina-wise.
The new one, leading with Bryn Fortey's meditation on blues singers and their music and followed by a piece 'Night Out With a Sansatchee Indian' by yours truly, is available for £1 or $2 post free. Email for details of where to send your money, friends. (Email link up top of this page on right--says 'contact'.)
Reading William Shatner's autobiography Up Till Now. For years Shatner had received glowing praise for his TV and movie work. Every project, he was assured at the start, was the one that was going to make him a star. None of them did. This was a state that he endured for many years until there came along the chance to take the lead role in a silly little space series on TV.
In this chatty and witty book Shitface reveals that many times he was on the point of jacking the whole rigmarole in. All that work, all that praise, but no one really seemed to know who he was and he had to struggle, as a man with a wife and child, to pay the bills. Other actors were getting there with manifestly inferior talents and feeble work behind them. (Sounds a bit like the small press world and the 'mainstream', doesn't it?)
Anyway, Shatner saw his good work passed over without any tangible benefits coming to him--except more good reviews which were starting to sound rather hollow.
So of course it's as Captain Kirk that Shatner goes down--or up--in the annals, though T.J. Hooker, the no-bullshit L.A. cop, was a great role too.
I never knew Shatner, like the blond fireball Vic Morrow, was Jewish. As he came from Canada I'd assumed he had Scottish blood--particularly as he bears a resemblance to two old school pals of mine who were jocks, Brian Anderson and Keith McKenna. Not that it makes any difference, of course. Jewish, shmewish.
Ted's got to go into hospital for his gallstones and Karen may stay with him and forfeit the holiday that's been booked in a caravan with Ruby and Grace and four other family members. Ruby was explaining it all. Yep, seems Karen might have to miss her holiday, man. It's annoying, and damned selfish of Ted. If he was going to develop gallstones why didn't he arrange it so it wouldn't clash with the holiday plans? Or failing that, couldn't he arrange to have them done at the Pakefield holiday camp, so no one was put out?
It's rather like when I was working at InfoLink and all the fiddling little religious sects and so forth that we had entries for were always getting into a mess in the file drawer. You didn't have just the Seventh Day Adventists but the Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals and the Mormons or Latter Day Saints. Then there was the Church of God. The Church of God was the one that, to quote the Rev., 'if you look at your Bible, all the others are then Apostate.'
Now why couldn't people worship in a way that would have made my job easier, man? You could have had just Catholics and Protestants and then the rest, and under those three banners everyone could have had a card which would then have neatly been arranged in alphabetical. No one in the office would have had any objections to that. But no, this one's God is not that one's God, they've got to be headstrong and selfish (as Ted was, in another way), worship as to them seems best and let the pieces fall where they may.
Went to see a house in Cumberland Street, Woodbridge, yesterday (found it on the internet). It was furnished, which we hadn't noticed in the advert, but still you never know what 'furnished' means until you see the place. But our little hearts went pitty-pitty-pat not to take it. As a sometime holiday home to be let by the week it had everything, including medieval-thick walls between you and the neighbours, who are never there during the week in any case. The house was originally part of the Cherry Tree pub which is therefore very conveniently next door.
We were tempted to give everything we had, including four 6-foot bookcases, to Oxfam. But in the end we were like the New Testament's 'rich young ruler' whom Christ instructed to sell all he had and give to the poor. The unlucky git, like us, had to shake his head at a road in life he would otherwise have loved to go down. He had to pass the cup 'for his possessions were very great.'
It would have been hard to find a place for my computer, even. I'd have had to get one of those wafer laptops.
When you live in rented accommodation and are liable to have to move more than you'd like, you get rid of things. eBay is the destination for a lot of once-treasured possessions. But one book I intend to keep hold of is For Those I Loved by Martin Gray. A poor title, maybe. The French is Au nom de tous les miens.
There are those who say this story (co-written with Max Gallo) of Mietek the Cat in the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka is full of lies. (Some commentator on Amazon even claims that Treblinka itself is fictitious.) Even if this book were a novel though, it would still be something outstanding and a real page turner. When there's a James Bond exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, well, this book has a claim to be regarded as close to reportage. The passion in it has to be real; surely the details could never have been invented or merely researched. And the photographs, where did they come from, then? Can anyone deny that Martin Gray was in Warsaw?
It's a very convincing story, the tale of the (Aryan) Polish toughs that the young ghetto Jew draws into his schemes to smuggle grain, sugar, milk etc.--Dziobak the Pox, Pila the Saw, Mokotow the Tomb, Brigitki the Card and that Judas, Ptaszek the Bird.
If co-writer Max Gallo used a bit of storytelling licence or bullshitting in the aid of spicing the mix, well, that stops it being a simple list of facts. There is no denying that through it all runs the theme that Martin had to go on, not for himself, for that would have been almost meaningless--he had to do what he could to save and protect whatever was left of the spirit of his family and those close to him, he had to have courage and use his cunning and resourcefulness in the name of all those who were his own.
The book was made into a pretty good TV movie with Michael York as Mietek.
I read two poems from Gerry Locklin's new book at the poetry party at Nacton on Tuesday night. They went down very well. One was 'Ernie Andrews at the Jazz Bakery', a sad and glorious poem about the old mortal coil and jazz artistry and this led to talk about George Melly and the films they made of him up to his death. Also the recent death of Humphrey Lyttelton.
When Florence had arrived earlier she came up and embraced Joan and me, which was great, after the Merekatz gig in December. What flops we all were then! Eight punters turned up, that was all. Still, at least Florence didn't have any horrendously bad memories of that fiasco, in fact to her it was artistic comradeship and human life, simple as that.
I also read 'Demi-Paradises Or Less' from Blue Velour. Joe recognised the poem. I gave him a copy of Next Exit: Six as he drove us home. After all, he deserves something for picking us up like this almost every month.
We may get to his Bury poetry meeting at the end of this month. There are also, as I find from 'the Big Q' which I had in at the Stock Unit to distribute to libraries, many music and poetry events on at the Quay Theatre, Sudbury. It may be worth putting ourselves out to get to some of these, even booking a B&B for the night to save the rush.
There's a boy who lives in the flats across the courtyard from our place known to be a pain. You can hear him braying away as he plays with the other kids.
He's the one who pulled the leaves off the pampas grass and kept stirring the water in the pool to get the fish to come to the surface. For a joke he put a piece of wood in the gate so it wouldn't close properly, than watched.
Yesterday we were back from work and just enjoying a cup of tea and a crunchy biscuit when there was a funny sound. The bugger had been throwing stones and smashed one of the frosted panes in the front door. Joan ran out and at first he denied it, then owned up. I came out and told him his dad would have to pay for the repair. (And well he ought, said I to myself, for letting a son get set in the ways you have acquired, matey.) He and his little sister ran home and soon the mother appeared, a very nice woman (probably too nice--to him) and agreed to pay for a glazier.
We've also got the painter coming today which means I've got to open all the windows before going to work. He should be here most of the day and I'll see him when I get home, the painter I mean, but naturally I start to wonder what will happen if someone gets in. Then there's this fucking glazier. When is he coming? Last night we slept with a tin of coins on a stool next to the front door so if a burglar put his arms through and opened the door there would be a commotion and I would come running with my African cedar stick.
To Joan, none of this is a worry, she just sails through, calm, everything will work out. (Though she hates the little vandal as much as I do, he'll hang one day if they bring it back.) I'm paranoid and uptight, can't relax. I'm the weakling who has to let Joan sort it all out while I retire behind my First English Edition of Remember to Remember and Gerry Locklin's latest, New and Selected Poems.
Only 45 years after the lad and Gypsy Dave Mills left the place, we reached St Ives, Cornwall, fresh on his tracks. The first café we went into the owner had used to play guitar alongside Donovan and other beatniks on the sands. The Lifeboat was a favoured pub in those days with Donovan and friends, we were assured. I already knew we had to look for the Three Jolly Sailors (which we didn't find).
We asked about a bit, but it savours of the insult if you are implying that someone could be old enough to have encountered a hard-up minstrel in 1963, or for that matter to even know who he was, and not Jason Donovan.
The weather was bright and hot but there was mist even in the steep narrow streets up and down which motorbikes and cars, even boxy great 4-wheel drive ones, threatened to take the skin off your heels.
Unfortunately I could not remember from The Hurdy Gurdy Man the name of the place where Donovan was employed (and sacked) as a dishwasher. (Found out later: The Harbour Bar.) Nor did we find the pill box he dossed at for a while with other repobrates. We did see saffron cake in the shops though (as he sings in 'Mellow Yellow': 'I'm just mad about saffron...').
We only had three hours in St Ives and briefly touched the thread of the seagull-loud Donovan saga. How a penniless lad from Hatfield hitchhiked and went Beat and hung out with the arty and the cool, then found fame via a TV show in London. What a brave myth of the times it was, me boys.
Long story short of it, there were few traces of Donovan left. Appropriately though I found a nice hardcover Treasury of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, with dust wrapper, in a charity shop for £1.75. Donovan's second album, 'Fairy Tale', includes a song made out of the Tin Soldier story.
Last week we were in Helston, Cornwall, where Joan was one of Julia's bridesmaids in 1969. On either side of the road Helston has a gulley with a swift-flowing stream open to view.
At the library I checked emails and surfed for £1.50. No messages of interest, but there's always someone wanting you to buy something or join something. No rave reviews or orders for books or CDs.
After that was sorted out I took three shots of Joan outside the Wesleyan Chapel where Julia and Roy got wed. She stood next to the original pink marble pillars which are still there.
Safe in the rucksack were five videocassettes of 'The Onedin Line' (sold by the library for £1 each), plus a hardback book (also from lib) by Mikal, one of Gary Gilmore's brothers. Looks like a good companion volume to The Executioner's Song. Then in a charity shop I found a hardcover biography of Simon Wiesenthal the Nazi hunter.
Back on the bus to Porthleven for lunch to watch 'Bargain Hunt' and afterwards write my story about Mog Probert, fistic gladiator of the Transport and General Workers' Union Games.
Travelling first class by train you have wider, softer seats (airline style, it says on the ticket) and curtains at the windows. Also complimentary tea and coffee. Plus, naturally, more of a 'squirearch' clientele.
The passengers in our carriage to London however included two oiks who didn't seem like toffs to me. When the ticket guy came round, a 6ft 4inch 18 stoner with the guts of a louse, they kept him talking quite a while and for reasons which to him seemed adequate he allowed them to stay. Though they seemed overawed and well-behaved the phone conversations in which they expressed amusement at being in first class were clearly audible.
Looking at 2nd class later the people all seemed packed in like Smarties in a tube.
Even in first class though, you get those who bray into mobile phones.
On our last leg out, Plymouth to Penzance, we were not first class, it wasn't available. Still, we settled with headphones to listen to an old Black Museum radio show with Orson Welles. As I was listening the youth seated at a table in front of us (we were facing him and he happened to be quite a lengthy drink of water) kicked my leg with his sneaker. Laughter followed this. It was an accident, and I was following the Black Museum story, so I let it pass. Later as I was looking out of the window his foot nudged my rucksack forward then settled close to mine. I gave it a hefty kick whilst remaining composed as if it were an accident. He said nothing, but the foot disappeared.
Oh what a sweet-tempered traveller am I.
Up and to Endeavour House, the Britten Room, for an 'Away Morning'. As an ice-breaker we were asked to share with everybody something good that had happened in the last week.
I quietly bragged about the story 'Getting in With Ganymede' being put up on the Savage Manners website. (Never miss a chance.) Then into quite a relaxed 'do', the mid-point of which was coffee and cake--plus a Belgian chocolate.
Hearing Liz and Alison talk made us feel close to the hinges of ACS power. I learned quite a few things, and diligently scribbled in my reporter's notebook.
For instance, the libraries may become a Charitable Trust, which would exempt us from paying Council Tax on the buildings we work in for a start. (Though this loophole may close at any time. But it could be a good move to become, if not a Charitable Trust, some other 'thing', because then if the Unitary Authority comes to be and Suffolk County Council is defunct we, as an entity, will remain.)
Just after 9:00am Joan had seen me approaching the building with umbrella up and intercepted me at reception. I naturally was looking worried. It felt cosy though, visiting 'her' building as I have done only a few times before.
The morning went 'as the wings of birds' and left me for one a shade more insightful into this scene and hive of life.
That meal served to us at Pauline's 50th birthday party, it seemed like a waste of good ingredients in an attempt to be Gordon Ramsay. They should have paid more attention to Delia Smith. It was some sort of a savoury tart smothered in luke-warm gunge. Leathery mushrooms were in there too, wild ones specially picked under a new moon.
The dessert was all right: three little tubs of brulee: rhubarb, blackberry and apple and something I can't remember. That was creamy and delicious and I for one was bloated and tired by ten. There had been plenty of free wine. I got plenty of red, even having to refuse a top-up finally. The hammer blows to the head next morning were only foam rubber.
The chatter was the best. To my amazement Trish and Phil said they never read books, though they've got loads on the shelves. What have they got them for, then? Just for Sam? They only read the papers and the internet. But they seem pretty well-informed. Trish might read a fat holiday paperback on the beach. Well, well, well.
Was so looking forward to a week all to myself. Acting like figures to be seen at certain resorts in the old days, or feeling like them. A flaneur as they call it. The Nigel Havers of his day. Baby's still working--I have extra leave still to take this year before it's taken from me. The idle cannot experience the deliciousness of the prospect of this empty week.
At the old Stock Unit they'll miss my expertise in sending out the leaflets and posters. There'll be apologies when I return--they did do some of them, everybody had a go, but there are still piles of them, haemorrhoids, man. (It doesn't worry me, it's great to be wanted, to be the one who has the inner knowledge even for something as apparently straightforward as dealing with leaflets and posters. After all, it has to be done right.)
So I'll be reading Beat Scene magazines from the 1990s on. Old Mad magazines too. Must finish a library book about the Bright Young People (including Beverley Nichols) post-1920. It's endless, the prospect, rich and endless and the more you get into it the more there is to get into.
Got a DVD of the '7 Ages of Rock' I'll watch again. Also Richard Burton as Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon (of which I had the colour comic around 1958).
Story of mine on the Savage Manners site: 'Getting in With Ganymede'.
