A visitation

Poem for the week, 27 November 2022

A visitation
Talgarth, Powys, Wales, United Kingdom

In a house near a hamlet near a village near here,
the White Lady walks, they say.

Even amid the braggadocio of drunk tongues,
voices hush for the tale in reverence,
in melancholy, in deference.

There is talk of a fire in a cellar
and a deliberately locked door.

There is talk of a miscreant cursed
with the head of a giant bull.

Stories hop across my synapses
as I lodge in the shadows of Lord Hereford’s Knob.

My imagination shifts the spirit
from lady to daughter to serving girl,
until a library clock lullaby of a dozen tiny bells.

In the noiseless night, the house inhales
the hamlet’s restless air.

Without waking or dreaming, I find attention upon me,
held in the power of an impartial curiosity.
Without seeing or hearing, I observe the observer,
bathed in the pale aura of a subconscious whisper.
Without moving, without feeling,
I am returned to my sleep, not permitted my senses.

Night drifts on.

After days after hours locals chat in the pubs,
pausing at cook’s clatter and caterwaul.

In a house near a hamlet near a village near here,
the White Lady walks, they say.

from Those Footsteps Behind (buy here)

So endeth the second Elizabethan age

 

So endeth the second Elizabethan age 

And just like that,

your life is history.

The new old king

can don the crown as if forever,

and already fading memories--

many decades of postage stamps,

coins and badges,

demands for tax returns,

souvenir tea towels, legal decrees,

and fashionable comedy skits--

are tagged for a museum,

as pronouns of routine and in that song

are overwritten in one missing heartbeat,

hardening understated feminine

into the ages-old patriarchy.

So today your life is yesterday

in scratched vinyl like a Beatles tune--

or maybe today was always this way,

but you were so busy that you did not see.

Long live your life.

Forwards backwards

 

Other poetry by this author:

Quarantining: poems in the time of Corona
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Crazy golf

Whitby

Whitby was one of my favourite towns in England when I was growing up.

My school class did geography fieldwork there.  For one assignment, I stood on a remote side street, where I had to count passing cars for an hour.  I think there were six.  Maybe I added a couple out of boredom.

At least we got to make lots of colourful charts and maps using the combined data, and I suppose our teachers got a free hour in the pub.

The main thing, though, was that Whitby was one of the seaside towns that we used for family outings when we were living in North Yorkshire.  Each time, we had to do all the sights: the fishing boats bobbing at the quay, the whalebone arch over the footpath, the 199 steps up to the churchyard following the route Dracula had taken.

Then we'd stroll back along the cobbled streets, where my mother would disapprove of the smell of fish and chips and my father would look disappointed.

Our route home took us up from the town centre and along the cliff-top.  Up there, above the lingering aroma of cooking fat and malt vinegar, there was a weather-beaten crazy golf course of 12 holes or so.  I used to love crazy golf (well, who didn't), but this was a set-up that I particularly liked.   The last hole was one of those affairs arranged so that you could only have one attempt.  The ball would go past a net of some sort and drop into one of a series of holes out of reach of the player.  There it could be collected by the ticket seller, marking the end of the round.   There was a sign above the last hole that said "ring the bell and win a free game". 

The free game was such a child's objective.  I fantasised that one day I would be able to get my little ball up the ramp and between the windmill sails at just the right angle to fall into the correct hole to make the bell ring.  Like a parrot wanting a cracker, I suppose. 

Finally, one day, after many visits in the stinging salt-air wind, I actually managed it!   I got the ball into the one hole in a dozen that would ring the tinny little bell.  Then, full of excitement, I ran up to the wooden ticket booth, all peeling paint and splinters, to claim my free game.

The free game was, of course, another round of crazy golf.  I don't know what I imagined the free game would be otherwise.   Something that wasn't a round of crazy golf.  My chagrin knew no bounds, made worse by the fact that my father was a bit pressed for time that day (or so he claimed), so I didn't get to savour every last moment of my unwanted free round of crazy golf. 

I'm sure this taught me a lesson in expectation management, but I am reminded of it now by a round of medical tests that I'm currently taking.  Each test so far has been a success in that it has been negative, but each test points to the possibility of a further test.

With each test result, I ring the bell and win a free game that I find I didn't really want.

Time travellers

Poems in the time of Corona

An extract from Those Footsteps Behind: Around the World in 50 Poems


Time travellers
Lyme Regis, Dorset, England

They did not come here to die. Who does?
These stony time-travellers
sunbaking along the shoreline.

Wrinkled features peering towards the waves,
they sit coiled side by side
as if trapped in a laboratory show-case.

Deck-chair ammonites, escaping
oil wells, gas fields, tar sands,
make this coast a permanent vacation.

They've been this way so long
they're too petrified to move: decades pass in familiar
scents and salts, the same view of the Cobb.

Grayscale glass plates and climate change histograms,
past and future,
old bones become ancient shells on the beach.



Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

As I like it

Barbers are becoming quite uncommon, it seems. I found a listing for a local barber in the modern e-world equivalent of the Yellow Pages, but he was shut. Hairdressers are beginning to dwindle, too, apparently.  So I passed by the braiding salon and ended up at a stylist. I think that must be vogue.  The lady was not from these parts, so we got chatting about what it's like to live your life in a strange country.

It's a conversation that I've had a few times before. One of the biggest talking points is usually the things that you miss the most.  In this regard, I haven't lived in my own country for a while, so I tend to think about my previous place of residence, too.  I can also give a couple of other places a passing mention.  As such, here are one or two things that I like in different countries.


The UK (my country of birth)

Pubs. Not surprising, perhaps, but true.  I have tried to analyse this, but it is difficult to get to the root of it.  British pubs are somehow unique.  In other countries, they become bars or something similar, and it's not the same thing.  I don't know what it is that does it.  It's not cosy furnishings, because I know several fine pubs in Edinburgh where the only seating is bare wood.  It's not dim lighting, because, heaven knows, I've been into some distinctly gloomy bars over the years. It's not even the beer, because British draught ale has become a popular import in many parts of the world. (Not here in Valdosta, though - where, I might mention, one waitress suggested to me that a local Georgia beer to try would be Guinness. But that's a different topic.) I know a pub when I walk into one.  I just have difficulty defining it.

News media.  This may be a little controversial post-Leveson, but I don't mean the puff-pastry tittle-tattle that replaces real news in some rags. The better news organisations in Britain still know a thing or two about investigative journalism, and many papers report the facts even if they don't sit neatly with the general editorial sympathies.  There is also a variety of views: left of centre, right of centre, and the plain old awkward squad.  I have not found the same breadth, coupled with the same hard-nosed questioning, in the mainstream anywhere else. Pick up a couple of weekend papers, and find a nice pub in which to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon: luxury!

Let's not get into Britain's leaking plumbing or creaking railway system. That would be tasteless.


Finland (my previous country of residence)

Sauna. I'm not sure how well this notion will travel for anyone not familiar with the Nordic countries.  Sauna is not a hot room where you go with your swimming trunks and a vague sense of naughtiness. You wouldn't wear clothes in the bath, would you? Get naked and relax. Get your steam on.  Life is not the same without it.

Doctors and nurses.  Which is not to say that health care is poor elsewhere, and maybe I was just lucky in Finland ... but with a combination of occupational health services and an insurance policy, it all seemed so easy.  Sure, it's not free at the point of delivery, as is traditional in the UK, but one big point for me is the idea of holistic well-being that seems so big in Finland. In some places, you are expected to just get the jab and walk straight out, for example.  I always found the care in Finland to be sympathetic and thorough. Two healthy thumbs up.

We will not dwell here on the long darkness of winter or the lack of air-conditioning in summer.


Bulgaria (a shout-out to some memories from years ago)

Hospitality.  I do not think that I've found any people so eagerly hospitable as the Bulgarians. I was invited into an incredible number of homes, even by hosts with whom I did not share a language.  It goes beyond buying a drink at a bar or a meal at a restaurant.  People opened their lives to me for long hours of nibbling salad and sipping vodka, and usually I couldn't leave without being given a bottle of home-made rakia or a package of meatballs or ... just something to keep that warm feeling alive.


The USA (where I have now landed - for the moment)

Grocery shopping.  I am still building my impressions stateside, but there is already one thing that I find myself thinking about when I'm elsewhere.  That is, how the food shops are always well stocked with a good range of ready-to-eat fresh fruit and vegetables.  This is not to say that the produce in Britain or Finland, for example, is not fresh, but it does tend to be more seasonal. It also tends to be less convenient. Maybe the truth is that I just like it when someone else does the washing, slicing, and dicing of fresh produce.  Perhaps it's my imagination, but cooking seems so much easier over here.

Who's in awe of the IT guy?

So. Two stories.

The first story takes place in the coastal town of St Annes-on-Sea in north-western England. I have my mini-laptop with me, with its built-in webcam, but need a headset to go with Skype. One possible port available: USB.

So I walk into a self-proclaimed computer shop. There's a guy doing something technical in the workshop at the back. I decide to not waste his time and get straight to the point: "Hi, I'm looking for a USB headset."

"Pfirrrrpp," replies the guy, inhaling through his teeth in the manner of a middle-aged man caught masquerading as a specialist. "I've never seen one of those in the catalogue."

I resist the obvious reply ("Have you ever looked?") and believe his assurances that such fanciful technology doesn't exist.

Except that I don't. Instead I go to the shop over the road.

This place is different. Not much on the shelves, but two eager looking chaps behind the counter. I try a different approach. "Hi. Look, I've got this headset with the audio in/out jacks but my laptop only has a USB port. What do you think I should do?"

Hardly a moment's pause from the younger of the two techies. Then: "Have you thought about getting a USB headset?"

I play the part of the naïve technovirgin. Oh, does such a thing exist? How wonderful and how clever you are. Yes, if you can get me one by tomorrow morning, that would be perfect.

Job done.

Now, before all the Finns start laughing at how backward the British Isles can be in matters technical, let's cross-cut to Espoo, Finland.

Second story. Having got all Skype-happy on the young upstart mini-laptop, it would be nice to do the same on good ol' desktop. Headphones are no problem. I've got the ones with the audio in/out jacks, you know. But how about a webcam?

Hmmm. Webcam.

I walk into an electronics shop (expert [sic!], with a wonderfully web-savvy lower-case logo, for those who know) and find a USB plug-and-play webcam, no software necessary, no requirement specifications listed on the packet. I wander over to the counter and ask casually if this will work on Windows 2000.

The look the sales assistant shoots at his colleague tells me instantly that I am a contemptible technocaveman.

"Pfirrrrpp," the young guy inhales. Here we go again. No, he doesn't reckon it will. He has the schadenfreude smile of someone who senses that a painful clean install of Vista is imminent.

"Is there a webcam for Windows 2000," I persist, wielding my brontosaurus bone in self-defence. No, no. You need Windows XP or ... (significant pause) ... newer. So I believe his assurances.

Except that I don't. Instead I go upstairs to the department store (Anttila, for those who care). Avoiding the look of the sales assistant, which isn't too difficult as he's browsing facebook or something, I scan the shelves. Clearance offer on a webcam, special low price. Suits ... *drum roll* ... Windows 2000.

Thank goodness there's always an IT guy around when you need one, eh?

Seeking John Thomas

Five weeks of sick leave gives one time to fiddle. To do some of those things that have been at the back of one's mind for a while.

Oh, stop it. You know what I mean.

My current project is genealogy. In the last few years, a good number of Internet search engines and databases have sprung up to make this easier than, say, ten years ago. With such assistance, so far I have been relatively successful [sic!], and in one case have got back as far as the 16th Century.

The good dude keltanen asked me yesterday what I get out of it. One thing, I said, was a sense of identity.

Let me reconsider that. What I mean, I think, is a sense of connection: with people, with history, with a culture.

For example, Charles Dickens published Nicholas Nickleby in 1838-1839. I now know with a high degree of probability that, at that time, my great-great grandfather James was a teenage woolsorter in the West Riding of Yorkshire. The genealogy gives me a personal context to a whole set of historical and literary images and allusions that I have accumulated over the years. I can now do this to some extent all the way back to Shakespeare.

Another bonus is being able to see how a cultural identity has developed over time, and to be able to get a personal reference point in that as well. For example, although I haven't yet found an actual John Thomas among my ancestors, it is certain that Thomas begat John and John begat Thomas. And with the amount of begetting that went on in those times, it becomes easy to see how certain expressions arose.

The European work ethic

Everyone likes a good public holiday, right? Well, not governments and corporations, of course. And especially not in the North, it seems.

This point came home to me again over the last couple of weeks. All Saints' Day, on 1 November, is a Roman Catholic holiday, fair enough. So it is no surprise to see it observed as such in countries such as France, Italy, and Spain. (But not in Ireland, if someone can explain that to me without blaming the English.)

Finland and Sweden, although not Roman Catholic by statute, try hard to be equitable but chicken out at the last and place the holiday on the nearest Saturday, which is nice for shop workers but makes life difficult for everyone else. Though it looks good on paper. (And as a side note, Finnish law has this disingenuous habit of counting Saturdays in its quota of annual leave, which makes employers sound more generous with holidays than they really are.)

Then the UK ... ah, the UK ... not only ignores All Saints' Day completely, but also ignores Hallowe'en as an opportunity to make vacational amends, and even ignores wicked ol' Guy Fawkes as a reason to give people an extra feel-good winter day off.

And by the way, is the UK the only country in the world to celebrate the day when the revolution didn't happen? Never mind. It's obviously not a real holiday.

And in Finland, we get Saturday off, so there!

What?

D'oh!

A life not remembered

A short while ago, good friends and fellow Prima Donnas keltanen and hannamime posted childhood images of themselves. As a dedicated follower of fashion, naturally I had to do the same.

I wish I could remember more about those days. I was born in Swansea and until the age of four lived on the Gower peninsula. (And although I'm four in the picture, it was actually taken on holiday at Loch Ness in Scotland.)

In theory it should have been an idyllic childhood: a small coastal town with a friendly local community, in an officially designated area of outstanding natural beauty. Family stories of that time are populated by kindly Welsh ladies called Mrs Jones, and feature endless afternoons running along wide, sandy beaches. Alas, I remember no stories for myself, just occasional images.

However, I do get sensory echoes of those times: the salty tang of the smell of the sea, and the plaintive cry of distant seagulls (the word 'plaintive' must surely have been coined specifically for seagulls). Even the primal feeling of unease in the gut as a storm brews somewhere over the water.

There are occasional faint reminders of these in Helsinki. Some seagulls certainly sing the same song. Others, however, are city scavengers that do not provide the same romantic resonance as the ocean-goers circling high overhead. Furthermore, the Baltic Sea, although noble in its own way, is brackish rather than salt. The air is not fully flavoured with the sea in the manner of my childhood.

I don't do watersports and I don't care for hours of roasting on the beach. But for deeper, less explicable reasons, sometimes I feel that, at the heart of my subconscious, I want my seaside back.

Little England

Oh dear.


This comes from a chat group. I'd like to think it's tongue in cheek, but in context it seemed serious. It's about Crewe, the town where I lived aged 4-9:



"We now have a Pizza Hut, Bingo and an American themed bowling alley, so if you're looking for a popular vibrant and cultural place to live come here!"


'Nuff said, I think....

A stranger in your own land

Thinking back to Christmas, and other occasions when I've visited the UK in the recent past, it's quite odd to feel like a stranger in the country where you grew up. The country whose passport you carry and which you are seen to represent. The country of your blood, in fact.

People you meet there have the illusion that because you share a common heritage, you must also keep up-to-date with the latest tittle-tattle.

Such encounters are usually disturbingly Pinteresque. The conversation here is fictional but typical (and any similarity to real persons is entirely coincidental):

(Them): "Did you watch Gordon Ramsay last week, then?"
(Me): "Who's that?"
"That chef chap on telly. He gets real wound up about stuff. Almost did his nut."
"No, I don't know him."
"He's Scottish. Does this cooking programme."
"No, I've never seen him."
"On ITV."
"No, we don't get much of that in Finland."
"Oh." (Pause.) "You must watch. It's great."

Fortune-telling (1)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Yes, it's around this time when we peer into the crystal ball to see what the year ahead holds. Well, a crystal ball reading in Blackpool at Christmas would have cost twenty quid. So I went for a palm reading instead.

Gypsy Petulengro held me in her steady, twinkly, blue-eyed gaze as she surveyed my palm and unhesitatingly told me about myself.

Paraphrased and summarised: You are careful, think deeply, and don't tell people more than they need to know. You trust people too much. This has caused you tears in the past and you should remember that not everyone else is like you. You have been giving a lot recently and there are plenty of people around who are willing to take, so you should allow more time to look after yourself. There are opportunities coming up and you will turn the corner and find happiness ahead.

There was lots more, of course, and maybe some of it was to a formula, but it worked for me. By that reckoning, it looks like 2007 will be the Year of the Selfish Kanikoski.

From England with plastic bags

Most bits of Bruce are back online. Some bits are still catching up on some well-earned kip. Other bits are waiting for the New Year before emerging.

Returning from England - the realm of eternally late trains and silk-smooth beer; a haven for men with anoraks and plastic bags - I look into my suitcase and wonder what I can learn about myself from the things that I have taken the trouble of bringing back to Finland. All wrapped in plastic bags.

Item: six-pack of salt and vinegar crisps

Item: Branston pickle

Item: lime marmalade

Item: six sticks of Blackpool rock

Item: toy fireman's helmet

Item: collection of old photo albums

Item: Olbas oil, pastilles, and inhaler

Item: Marina Lewycka novel 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'

Oh dear. Stop the analysis there. I don't want to know.