You know how Samuel Becket plays consist of snippets of conversation which have no particular plot line. For instance long conversations about whether one ought to buy the Evening Standard or the London Evening News. These dialogues illustrate the trivia of human existence, but also sometimes show how that trivia can hide tragic and painful situations.
So I'm in a pub having a quiet pint in the corner, trying not to watch the telly with the sound on silent. At the bar a father and son. Father calls him Son so I assume it is so. Across the bar area you can see into the Lounge where a solitary woman is drinking. Suddenly Son notices woman in the other bar.
"Why don't you come over here and have a drink with us."
"No thanks, I don't like the company you keep."
"Never mind him. Come and have a drink with me."
"Why can't you come round here and have a drink with me?"
"I'm with my Dad."
"Exactly."
Its a sad world, but I seem to be alive again and will start blogging again soon.
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Thursday, 5 September 2013
Moving House and Home
I have not posted a blog for more than a year. That may have something to do with our decision to move to somewhere hundreds of miles away from my beloved London. I used to write something every day, perhaps adding bits to my two novels in progress, writing a poem, or doing a blog. In twelve months all I have written is one bad poem The cause was not the well documented "writer's block." It was paralysis. I was so stunned after we had moved, I sometimes found it difficult to cross a room. To sit down and write would have been impossible.
It is well known that moving house is traumatic. I suppose I should have known that doing it at the age of 78 would be exceptionally traumatic. I had no previous experience of how it was likely to be.
We decided to move out of London to somewhere quieter, more suitable for a retired couple. I had always dreamed of living out my last days sitting in a sunlit garden overlooking the sea. However, as I am more than a decade older than my lovely wife, we decided we ought to move somewhere where she would have family support when I shuffle off, though please note I have absolutely no plans to do so yet.
So we looked at the map to find somewhere near my wife's sister. This led us to Frome in Somerset. Neither of us had ever been there. We booked a week's holiday in an apartment overlooking the river, on an unpleasant modern estate which we did not much like. However, we had a couple of excellent meals in town at the George Hotel and one at the Corner House. We discovered a pub called the Olive Tree which had an attached Thai restaurant where you could eat in the garden.
One morning my wife and her sister went off for a shopping day in Bath, leaving me to my own devices. I wandered into a part of the town a bit away from the centre and discovered a maze of narrow cobbled streets, with boutique and vintage clothes shops, a proper butcher's and an ironmonger where I am sure Ronnie Barker would have been able to buy forkandles. Not a chain store in sight. A vegetarian café with a secluded garden, known as the Poetry Café. And pubs. I love traditional old fashioned pubs. Frome has more than several. I was walking down a cobbled hill to see if it might lead me back to the town centre. Two elderly men were toiling up the hill towards me. Frome is quite hilly. They stopped in front of me, struggling for breath. One of them asked me "Are you a man who appreciates a good pub?"
"Yes I am," I replied.
"Then you ought to know you have just walked past the best pub in Britain."
"Really?"
"Yes. We've come on a day trip from Yeovil just to have a drink or two in that pub. Come on, turn around and see if we're right." Thus I discovered the Lamb and Fountain in Castle Street.
The following day I took my wife on a walkabout of the older streets of Frome which you do not see if you are driving through. I did not take her to the Lamb and Fountain. It is not her sort of pub. But she was enchanted by the old town and we decided to move to Frome.
We made 2 further trips to Frome, staying at the old fashioned, comfortably friendly George Hotel, while we looked at houses. Having discovered that our little terraced house in Walthamstow was worth double what we had paid for it, we realised we would be able to buy a much more impressive house in Frome. We selected a couple on the internet, either of which would have impressed our friends and family and taken all our money. Fate saved us. In both cases, having come all the way from London and booked into a hotel, we received a call from the agent the night before viewing, telling us the property had been sold. We decided to buy an 18th, 19th and 20th century cottage (it had been added to twice in different centuries). It was run down but cheap enough that we decided we could use the profit from our London house, to make the house exactly as we would like our home to be. Three months later we still have builders and an electrician in every day, but it gets better and better. The decaying conservatory has become a new living room. The garden is a pleasure to sit in in the evening. Next week the trellis will be attached to the front porch for the wisteria to climb. Four brackets will be attached to the outer walls of the conservatory, with two at the front of the house, ready for flowers to cascade down from hanging baskets. We have a fitted wardrobe in our newly decorated bedroom. A free standing wardrobe would have toppled forward. The floor slopes away from the wall. The wall could be described as a bit curly. We like it.
We are on the edge of town, next to an industrial estate. The estate has everything you could possibly need, carpets and flooring, a bathroom centre, Homebase, Sainsbury's, Pizza Hut, a carphone warehouse, a wholesale draught cider warehouse. You name it. It is there, somewhere. And in this industrial estate there are buddleia covered in butterflies, and hedges of rosemary.
If you walk seven minutes through the industrial estate, you are in Sandy's Hill Lane, a peaceful green country road, dripping with blackberries and rosemary, with views of the Mendip Hills and almost no traffic. So I am beginning to forget the depressing trauma which enveloped me like a black cloud of gloom when we first came here. I kept asking myself when are we going home? Only there was no home. It had gone. I became paralysed with utter misery.
But now, after three months, I am a happy Somerset man. I was a runner up in July in the competition to decide the Frome Festival poet laureate. I am looking forward to the September meeting at the Poetry café.
But I shall return to London for National Poetry Day at the Royal Festival Hall on October 3rd and hope to see some of my London poet friends. Yokel though I am fast becoming, I shall keep popping up in the Smoke from time to time.
It is well known that moving house is traumatic. I suppose I should have known that doing it at the age of 78 would be exceptionally traumatic. I had no previous experience of how it was likely to be.
We decided to move out of London to somewhere quieter, more suitable for a retired couple. I had always dreamed of living out my last days sitting in a sunlit garden overlooking the sea. However, as I am more than a decade older than my lovely wife, we decided we ought to move somewhere where she would have family support when I shuffle off, though please note I have absolutely no plans to do so yet.
So we looked at the map to find somewhere near my wife's sister. This led us to Frome in Somerset. Neither of us had ever been there. We booked a week's holiday in an apartment overlooking the river, on an unpleasant modern estate which we did not much like. However, we had a couple of excellent meals in town at the George Hotel and one at the Corner House. We discovered a pub called the Olive Tree which had an attached Thai restaurant where you could eat in the garden.
One morning my wife and her sister went off for a shopping day in Bath, leaving me to my own devices. I wandered into a part of the town a bit away from the centre and discovered a maze of narrow cobbled streets, with boutique and vintage clothes shops, a proper butcher's and an ironmonger where I am sure Ronnie Barker would have been able to buy forkandles. Not a chain store in sight. A vegetarian café with a secluded garden, known as the Poetry Café. And pubs. I love traditional old fashioned pubs. Frome has more than several. I was walking down a cobbled hill to see if it might lead me back to the town centre. Two elderly men were toiling up the hill towards me. Frome is quite hilly. They stopped in front of me, struggling for breath. One of them asked me "Are you a man who appreciates a good pub?"
"Yes I am," I replied.
"Then you ought to know you have just walked past the best pub in Britain."
"Really?"
"Yes. We've come on a day trip from Yeovil just to have a drink or two in that pub. Come on, turn around and see if we're right." Thus I discovered the Lamb and Fountain in Castle Street.
The following day I took my wife on a walkabout of the older streets of Frome which you do not see if you are driving through. I did not take her to the Lamb and Fountain. It is not her sort of pub. But she was enchanted by the old town and we decided to move to Frome.
We made 2 further trips to Frome, staying at the old fashioned, comfortably friendly George Hotel, while we looked at houses. Having discovered that our little terraced house in Walthamstow was worth double what we had paid for it, we realised we would be able to buy a much more impressive house in Frome. We selected a couple on the internet, either of which would have impressed our friends and family and taken all our money. Fate saved us. In both cases, having come all the way from London and booked into a hotel, we received a call from the agent the night before viewing, telling us the property had been sold. We decided to buy an 18th, 19th and 20th century cottage (it had been added to twice in different centuries). It was run down but cheap enough that we decided we could use the profit from our London house, to make the house exactly as we would like our home to be. Three months later we still have builders and an electrician in every day, but it gets better and better. The decaying conservatory has become a new living room. The garden is a pleasure to sit in in the evening. Next week the trellis will be attached to the front porch for the wisteria to climb. Four brackets will be attached to the outer walls of the conservatory, with two at the front of the house, ready for flowers to cascade down from hanging baskets. We have a fitted wardrobe in our newly decorated bedroom. A free standing wardrobe would have toppled forward. The floor slopes away from the wall. The wall could be described as a bit curly. We like it.
We are on the edge of town, next to an industrial estate. The estate has everything you could possibly need, carpets and flooring, a bathroom centre, Homebase, Sainsbury's, Pizza Hut, a carphone warehouse, a wholesale draught cider warehouse. You name it. It is there, somewhere. And in this industrial estate there are buddleia covered in butterflies, and hedges of rosemary.
If you walk seven minutes through the industrial estate, you are in Sandy's Hill Lane, a peaceful green country road, dripping with blackberries and rosemary, with views of the Mendip Hills and almost no traffic. So I am beginning to forget the depressing trauma which enveloped me like a black cloud of gloom when we first came here. I kept asking myself when are we going home? Only there was no home. It had gone. I became paralysed with utter misery.
But now, after three months, I am a happy Somerset man. I was a runner up in July in the competition to decide the Frome Festival poet laureate. I am looking forward to the September meeting at the Poetry café.
But I shall return to London for National Poetry Day at the Royal Festival Hall on October 3rd and hope to see some of my London poet friends. Yokel though I am fast becoming, I shall keep popping up in the Smoke from time to time.
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Oxford
Journalists refer to Oxford and Cambridge as if those two towns and their universities were solely devoted to grooming our future rulers, as politicians, bankers or executives of the global corporations which control our lives. I don't know Cambridge very well, but I often visit Oxford. Of course it has the dreaming spires and the amazing mediaeval buildings I love to wander through. But it is also a productive centre of the British motor industry, or should I say used to be. The old Morris works at Cowley, later Austin Morris then British Leyland, BMC etc etc and on it went into decline like the rest of British manufacturing industry. But now BMW (oh dear, BMW, bombed by members of my family turning in their graves), BMW are expanding production of the Mini in Oxford. Danke BMW!
On a recent visit I saw a notice saying, "Domino's delivers pizzas anywhere in Oxford until 5 am seven days a week." Well that should get those £9000 a year students' brains stimulated. Do they do that anywhere else - London? I don't know, don't eat pizzas at any time, certainly not at five am.
Confusing place, Oxford. I was in the White Horse in Broad Street, having a small libation after a lecture at the Bodleian Library. I escape to the Bodleian from time to time, the oldest and most venerable library in Britain (tell you about it in a later blog). The White Horse makes a change from the Warrant Officer in Higham Hill Walthamstow where I usually drink. But of course I don't know anybody in the White Horse Oxford. It's a bit crowded and I'm conscious that I'm occupying a corner of a table for six. So when a man asks me may he sit at my table I say yes. He's big, menacing. I say yes, please, welcome.
He's overweight, or as the current fashion prefers, he's obese, seriously. He is fat faced and sweating, wearing a well creased and very worn shirt, obviously unwashed, open to the waist, diplaying his fat hairy belly. He also wears pseudo camouflaged trousers and large tarnished brass rings in his earlobes. You might generously describe him as a slob. He sits down with two pints of Guinness. Of course I wish I had said no to him sitting at my table, but I would not dare. He is built like Giant Haystacks - remember Haystacks on Saturday afternoon TV wrestling? Then a small, dapper, immaculately dressed gent, spectacles, suit, stiff collar, college tie, gery hair, distinguished looking, joins him. Smart dapper gent raises second pint of Guinness and says, "Thank you Sir, cheers!" Toff calls slob Sir, so who is this guy at my table?
They proceed to discuss in loud upper class accents the criteria for University entrance in such a way that I realise the posh man in the suit is going to make some important decisions for the youth of our country, only if they meet with the approval of this open shirted sweaty slob with Guinness foam all over his top lip. But that's Oxford for you. And the slob does speak with a beautiful accent, and I bet he has a suit when needed. Our elected leaders are inclined to say you should not despise a regional accent, when what they really mean is a working class accent. I agree. So I suppose it is just as reprehensible for me to be put out by a man dressed as a working class slob speaking in a cut glass public school Her Majesty (Princess Elizabeth) in 1947 accent, especially when it is clear he is making important decisions about our vulnerable young people. Rubbish of course. Who cares in what accent he makes the decisions as long as they are the right ones. In fact I had a similar experience in The Village Inn in Walthamstow. You really must not judge people by their looks or clothing. This man wore muddy boots, looked like a builder's labourer. I walked past him as I went to the bar to get a drink. He was reading Euripedes in the original Greek. I thought he must be Greek, but Euripedes was ancient greek. He wasn't Greek. He spoke to his companion, sounding like a person born and bred in Walthamstow. Later I discovered that the Village Inn at 4 pm is a favourite haunt of teachers. I shouldn't have been surprised. Passing the school nearest to where I live I noticed all the children were in smart uniforms, but the teachers were dressed like scruffy louts.
The next table became vacant. Three Japanese pounced on it appearing from nowhere. Oxford is overflowing with Japanese tourists all pointing enormous complicated cameras at everything in sight. These were Mum and Dad and daughter. Daughter spoke perfect English. She read out loudly from the menu, "Beef and Ale Pie," then translated it into Japanese. Mum and Dad nodded OK. Fat slob at my table was saying, "Sorry professor but I cannot possibly sanction that."
Then Japanese Mum at the next table but facing me, put her enormous handbag on the chair opposite me. She pulled the chair away from my table towards herself. Daughter said to me, "I'm so sorry." I said, "That's quite OK, I don't need that chair." Daughter jabbered away in accusatory Japanese to her mother, then she turned to me and said, "Thank you Sir, but I have explained to my mother that someone else might require that chair."
Japanese Mum took her bag off the chair, rummaged in it, and brought out a beautiful gold and jewel encrusted gadget, which she clipped on to the edge of their table, then hung her very large bag upon it. It swung there securely. She looked at me and beamed and said, "My daughter is not aware of technology." I smiled and thought what a splendid old lady.
Left the pub to walk to the station and back to Walthamstow. Long blond haired girls on bicycles swing by along Broad Street, unattainable when I was a student decades ago, certainly unattainable now. Not that I want to attain them. What a relief to be free of all that effort to impress, the need to cajole, to conquer. Lovely to go home to my lifelong wife, my reclining chair and my garden in dear old Walthamstow. Good night.
On a recent visit I saw a notice saying, "Domino's delivers pizzas anywhere in Oxford until 5 am seven days a week." Well that should get those £9000 a year students' brains stimulated. Do they do that anywhere else - London? I don't know, don't eat pizzas at any time, certainly not at five am.
Confusing place, Oxford. I was in the White Horse in Broad Street, having a small libation after a lecture at the Bodleian Library. I escape to the Bodleian from time to time, the oldest and most venerable library in Britain (tell you about it in a later blog). The White Horse makes a change from the Warrant Officer in Higham Hill Walthamstow where I usually drink. But of course I don't know anybody in the White Horse Oxford. It's a bit crowded and I'm conscious that I'm occupying a corner of a table for six. So when a man asks me may he sit at my table I say yes. He's big, menacing. I say yes, please, welcome.
He's overweight, or as the current fashion prefers, he's obese, seriously. He is fat faced and sweating, wearing a well creased and very worn shirt, obviously unwashed, open to the waist, diplaying his fat hairy belly. He also wears pseudo camouflaged trousers and large tarnished brass rings in his earlobes. You might generously describe him as a slob. He sits down with two pints of Guinness. Of course I wish I had said no to him sitting at my table, but I would not dare. He is built like Giant Haystacks - remember Haystacks on Saturday afternoon TV wrestling? Then a small, dapper, immaculately dressed gent, spectacles, suit, stiff collar, college tie, gery hair, distinguished looking, joins him. Smart dapper gent raises second pint of Guinness and says, "Thank you Sir, cheers!" Toff calls slob Sir, so who is this guy at my table?
They proceed to discuss in loud upper class accents the criteria for University entrance in such a way that I realise the posh man in the suit is going to make some important decisions for the youth of our country, only if they meet with the approval of this open shirted sweaty slob with Guinness foam all over his top lip. But that's Oxford for you. And the slob does speak with a beautiful accent, and I bet he has a suit when needed. Our elected leaders are inclined to say you should not despise a regional accent, when what they really mean is a working class accent. I agree. So I suppose it is just as reprehensible for me to be put out by a man dressed as a working class slob speaking in a cut glass public school Her Majesty (Princess Elizabeth) in 1947 accent, especially when it is clear he is making important decisions about our vulnerable young people. Rubbish of course. Who cares in what accent he makes the decisions as long as they are the right ones. In fact I had a similar experience in The Village Inn in Walthamstow. You really must not judge people by their looks or clothing. This man wore muddy boots, looked like a builder's labourer. I walked past him as I went to the bar to get a drink. He was reading Euripedes in the original Greek. I thought he must be Greek, but Euripedes was ancient greek. He wasn't Greek. He spoke to his companion, sounding like a person born and bred in Walthamstow. Later I discovered that the Village Inn at 4 pm is a favourite haunt of teachers. I shouldn't have been surprised. Passing the school nearest to where I live I noticed all the children were in smart uniforms, but the teachers were dressed like scruffy louts.
The next table became vacant. Three Japanese pounced on it appearing from nowhere. Oxford is overflowing with Japanese tourists all pointing enormous complicated cameras at everything in sight. These were Mum and Dad and daughter. Daughter spoke perfect English. She read out loudly from the menu, "Beef and Ale Pie," then translated it into Japanese. Mum and Dad nodded OK. Fat slob at my table was saying, "Sorry professor but I cannot possibly sanction that."
Then Japanese Mum at the next table but facing me, put her enormous handbag on the chair opposite me. She pulled the chair away from my table towards herself. Daughter said to me, "I'm so sorry." I said, "That's quite OK, I don't need that chair." Daughter jabbered away in accusatory Japanese to her mother, then she turned to me and said, "Thank you Sir, but I have explained to my mother that someone else might require that chair."
Japanese Mum took her bag off the chair, rummaged in it, and brought out a beautiful gold and jewel encrusted gadget, which she clipped on to the edge of their table, then hung her very large bag upon it. It swung there securely. She looked at me and beamed and said, "My daughter is not aware of technology." I smiled and thought what a splendid old lady.
Left the pub to walk to the station and back to Walthamstow. Long blond haired girls on bicycles swing by along Broad Street, unattainable when I was a student decades ago, certainly unattainable now. Not that I want to attain them. What a relief to be free of all that effort to impress, the need to cajole, to conquer. Lovely to go home to my lifelong wife, my reclining chair and my garden in dear old Walthamstow. Good night.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
FRINTON
There is a poem in the Morning Star about Frinton Golf Club, so here is my poem about Frinton generally. Most of my family enjoyed their holiday there, but this is how it seemed to me.
FRINTON
There are no dogs in Frinton,
no ice creams, no cycling, hardly any
buses; buses are vulgar, so by decree
all buses drop you at the Boundary.
There are some gulls of course, not raucous,
for unseemly noise is not allowed
so seagulls clamour silently.
Retirement homes and swathes of grass
mowed tidily, and seats adorned
with tasteful plaques in memory -
"He died upon the greensward
after a fine day's fishing" far beyond
the beach huts serried row on row.
The back rows though more private
are considered less genteel.
Wandering north of Frinton, seeking countryside
I wondered why they dropped industrial containers
along a headland, but of course as I approached
I saw that they were beach huts, supplementary
beach huts. I presume you cannot possibly
have superfluity of beach huts.
There are careful cries of children
in well bred sunshine, rushing slowly,
digging circumspectly, dancing courtly,
throwing gently, catching,
wading in quiet water to the waist,
a little jump with each miniscule wave,
breasting the ocean in a fledgling way,
and the butterflies upon the greensward
as fine as any in the world.
The wind farm on the far horizon
is the future, but remote enough
to not disturb a cup of tea
in a beach hut contemplating
leviathan propellers on the sea,
in a resort where seagulls dare not scream.
Norman Andrews, on holiday, Summer 2011.
FRINTON
There are no dogs in Frinton,
no ice creams, no cycling, hardly any
buses; buses are vulgar, so by decree
all buses drop you at the Boundary.
There are some gulls of course, not raucous,
for unseemly noise is not allowed
so seagulls clamour silently.
Retirement homes and swathes of grass
mowed tidily, and seats adorned
with tasteful plaques in memory -
"He died upon the greensward
after a fine day's fishing" far beyond
the beach huts serried row on row.
The back rows though more private
are considered less genteel.
Wandering north of Frinton, seeking countryside
I wondered why they dropped industrial containers
along a headland, but of course as I approached
I saw that they were beach huts, supplementary
beach huts. I presume you cannot possibly
have superfluity of beach huts.
There are careful cries of children
in well bred sunshine, rushing slowly,
digging circumspectly, dancing courtly,
throwing gently, catching,
wading in quiet water to the waist,
a little jump with each miniscule wave,
breasting the ocean in a fledgling way,
and the butterflies upon the greensward
as fine as any in the world.
The wind farm on the far horizon
is the future, but remote enough
to not disturb a cup of tea
in a beach hut contemplating
leviathan propellers on the sea,
in a resort where seagulls dare not scream.
Norman Andrews, on holiday, Summer 2011.
Saturday, 9 June 2012
Curtains.
Sitting in my local pub, not talking to anybody, just sitting at the bar listening to the conversation around me, I heard the following:
"I'm 69 years old. I've lived in a hostel for single men for the last ten years. Done time in prison before that, so I've never expected much out of life. This hostel was so cold and my room was so far from the loo that I used to pee in a bottle rather than go along the corridor in the middle of the night. Then after 10 years on the waiting list I suddenly got an offer of a council flat, well Housing Association, same thing. It had central heating, warm, lovely. I just love it."
The friend he was talking to said, "I saw you got your flat. I could see you through your window. Ain't you got no curtains?"
"Well, I've only got nets and of course you can see through them if I've got the lights on."
Someone said "Can't you get a grant from the Council for proper curtains?" and he said, "Yes probably I could but its such a hassle, filling in forms and being interviewed. I just don't want to tell some clerk that I can't afford curtains."
I had a sudden thought. I phoned my wife and asked her have we got any spare curtains. Yes she said, we've got a boxful in the cupboard upstairs. I told her why I was asking. She knew where I was and said See you in ten.
She arrived with this big bag full of very good quality curtains we had abandoned over the years. Why we have to keep buying new curtains is beyond me. She asked me to point out the cutainless man and she went over to him, never having met him before and said "Would you like to choose some curtains for your new flat?"
He looked her in astonishment, then realising she was serious, and real, he looked carefully through the selection and said, "Thank you Darling, can I have these?"
Then he said "Oh my God, I don't know how to hang curtians. I havn't got a stepladder." Dave the Decorator and John the Roof both said "Don't worry, I'll put them up for you." That's the sort of pub it is. I rushed in there one Saturday afternoon and Tony left his pint to rush round and stop the leak in our washing machine, in the middle of a football match!. I think it was Dave who hung the curtains.
On the way home, my wife said "That was better than giving them to Oxfam."
As always, I agree with my dear wife.
"I'm 69 years old. I've lived in a hostel for single men for the last ten years. Done time in prison before that, so I've never expected much out of life. This hostel was so cold and my room was so far from the loo that I used to pee in a bottle rather than go along the corridor in the middle of the night. Then after 10 years on the waiting list I suddenly got an offer of a council flat, well Housing Association, same thing. It had central heating, warm, lovely. I just love it."
The friend he was talking to said, "I saw you got your flat. I could see you through your window. Ain't you got no curtains?"
"Well, I've only got nets and of course you can see through them if I've got the lights on."
Someone said "Can't you get a grant from the Council for proper curtains?" and he said, "Yes probably I could but its such a hassle, filling in forms and being interviewed. I just don't want to tell some clerk that I can't afford curtains."
I had a sudden thought. I phoned my wife and asked her have we got any spare curtains. Yes she said, we've got a boxful in the cupboard upstairs. I told her why I was asking. She knew where I was and said See you in ten.
She arrived with this big bag full of very good quality curtains we had abandoned over the years. Why we have to keep buying new curtains is beyond me. She asked me to point out the cutainless man and she went over to him, never having met him before and said "Would you like to choose some curtains for your new flat?"
He looked her in astonishment, then realising she was serious, and real, he looked carefully through the selection and said, "Thank you Darling, can I have these?"
Then he said "Oh my God, I don't know how to hang curtians. I havn't got a stepladder." Dave the Decorator and John the Roof both said "Don't worry, I'll put them up for you." That's the sort of pub it is. I rushed in there one Saturday afternoon and Tony left his pint to rush round and stop the leak in our washing machine, in the middle of a football match!. I think it was Dave who hung the curtains.
On the way home, my wife said "That was better than giving them to Oxfam."
As always, I agree with my dear wife.
Saturday, 19 May 2012
Why Do I Write Poetry?
People in my local pub have asked me Why do you write poetry, or even Is it true you write poetry? Yes I do, and I assure you that writing poetry is not incompatible with drinking in pubs. I have done both for more than sixty years.
When I was ten our English teacher said to us today just write anything you like, whatever you find interesting, write something about it, but it would be nice if somebody could write a poem. So I wrote "Ode to a Bubble" and to my astonishment it was published in the school magazine (edited by our English teacher.)
Oh Bubble
Spectral sphere
Do draw near
For if you veer
Suddenly or wobble
Oh Bubble
I'm afraid
You'll burst!
Not exactly Shakespearean, but that was how it all started. I continued to write poetry secretly for the next 60 years, during which time I earned my living in various ways, as a cook, barman, hotel manager, publican, commercial manager of Motorcycle News and Angling Times, shopkeeper (prams and baby goods), Co-Op milkman, manager of betting shops. Then at the age of 41 I decided to be sensible and qualify as an accountant. Being over 40 it is difficult to get a proper job, so I became a lecturer in Accountancy. After a few years I was so overwhelmed with people asking me to help them sort out their tax problems, I had to become self employed as an accountant, which I have remained for the past 36 years and guess what - throughout this whole life's odyssey I have scribbled poems into a succession of scruffy notebooks.
It never occured to me that my poems might be published. But one day on a whim I decided to join the Poetry Society and I went along to an open mic session at their headquarters in Covent Garden. Apart from the fact that they meet in central London to read poems to each other, I discovered that poets are very much like ordinary people. It was bit like venturing into a mental hospital and discovering that the inmates were as sane as the people outside. I started going regularly.
On my third visit, as I paid my OAP reduced entry fee, Niall O'Sullivan the poet who runs the open mic session asked me "Will you be reading?" "No I don't think so thank you," I said, though by then I had found sufficient courage to arrive with two poems in my inside pocket, though not enough courage to volunteer to read them.
Then the following week, in a rush of bravado, I said yes. I sat in the second row and thought to myself "Have I gone mad, what am I doing here?" I listened to the poets who read and thought, here we are at the headquarters of the Poetry Society (of GREAT BRITAIN), surely these must be eminent, established, probably published poets, so what am I doing here?
Then Niall announced "And tonight we have a virgin reader, Norman Andrews." I'd have been a bit sad to still be a virgin at 75, but he was right, I was certainly a virgin reader of poetry in public. So suddenly there I was, microphone in hand before a sea of expectant faces in a darkened room. There was no escape. So I just did it. The clapping seemed reasonably enthusiastic and afterwards in the cafe upstairs a couple of people said "I liked your poem about...." as I was recovering with a glass of wine. I recovered quite a bit that night, a very friendly place the Poetry Cafe.
That evening changed my life. I joined the Waltham Forest group of poets known as Forest Poets, who meet monthly at the Rose and Crown in Walthamstow, where I have had my poems constructively and helpfully criticised, occasionally praised, and I have made some good friends at a time of life when many people retreat into the sad and lonely cocoon of home. I get leaflets through the door inviting me to the Over Sixties Club. I do not wish to drink tea and play bingo with a load of wrinklies (even if I am one).
Since I said Yes to Niall O'Sullivan who invited me to read at the Poetry Society, I have now read poetry in public on 33 occasions, and on a few of those occasions the public has actually paid money to listen to me. And I am honoured to have twice stood on, or in front of, the Poetry Society's giant knitted poem (knitted by about 800 women and a couple of men - see Guinness Book of Records) where I have reminisced about Dylan Thomas then read the knitted poem by him "In my Craft and Sullen Art."
At the age of seventy seven, I write at least one poem every week, though some of them will not be read till after I have gone, So there!
When I was ten our English teacher said to us today just write anything you like, whatever you find interesting, write something about it, but it would be nice if somebody could write a poem. So I wrote "Ode to a Bubble" and to my astonishment it was published in the school magazine (edited by our English teacher.)
Oh Bubble
Spectral sphere
Do draw near
For if you veer
Suddenly or wobble
Oh Bubble
I'm afraid
You'll burst!
Not exactly Shakespearean, but that was how it all started. I continued to write poetry secretly for the next 60 years, during which time I earned my living in various ways, as a cook, barman, hotel manager, publican, commercial manager of Motorcycle News and Angling Times, shopkeeper (prams and baby goods), Co-Op milkman, manager of betting shops. Then at the age of 41 I decided to be sensible and qualify as an accountant. Being over 40 it is difficult to get a proper job, so I became a lecturer in Accountancy. After a few years I was so overwhelmed with people asking me to help them sort out their tax problems, I had to become self employed as an accountant, which I have remained for the past 36 years and guess what - throughout this whole life's odyssey I have scribbled poems into a succession of scruffy notebooks.
It never occured to me that my poems might be published. But one day on a whim I decided to join the Poetry Society and I went along to an open mic session at their headquarters in Covent Garden. Apart from the fact that they meet in central London to read poems to each other, I discovered that poets are very much like ordinary people. It was bit like venturing into a mental hospital and discovering that the inmates were as sane as the people outside. I started going regularly.
On my third visit, as I paid my OAP reduced entry fee, Niall O'Sullivan the poet who runs the open mic session asked me "Will you be reading?" "No I don't think so thank you," I said, though by then I had found sufficient courage to arrive with two poems in my inside pocket, though not enough courage to volunteer to read them.
Then the following week, in a rush of bravado, I said yes. I sat in the second row and thought to myself "Have I gone mad, what am I doing here?" I listened to the poets who read and thought, here we are at the headquarters of the Poetry Society (of GREAT BRITAIN), surely these must be eminent, established, probably published poets, so what am I doing here?
Then Niall announced "And tonight we have a virgin reader, Norman Andrews." I'd have been a bit sad to still be a virgin at 75, but he was right, I was certainly a virgin reader of poetry in public. So suddenly there I was, microphone in hand before a sea of expectant faces in a darkened room. There was no escape. So I just did it. The clapping seemed reasonably enthusiastic and afterwards in the cafe upstairs a couple of people said "I liked your poem about...." as I was recovering with a glass of wine. I recovered quite a bit that night, a very friendly place the Poetry Cafe.
That evening changed my life. I joined the Waltham Forest group of poets known as Forest Poets, who meet monthly at the Rose and Crown in Walthamstow, where I have had my poems constructively and helpfully criticised, occasionally praised, and I have made some good friends at a time of life when many people retreat into the sad and lonely cocoon of home. I get leaflets through the door inviting me to the Over Sixties Club. I do not wish to drink tea and play bingo with a load of wrinklies (even if I am one).
Since I said Yes to Niall O'Sullivan who invited me to read at the Poetry Society, I have now read poetry in public on 33 occasions, and on a few of those occasions the public has actually paid money to listen to me. And I am honoured to have twice stood on, or in front of, the Poetry Society's giant knitted poem (knitted by about 800 women and a couple of men - see Guinness Book of Records) where I have reminisced about Dylan Thomas then read the knitted poem by him "In my Craft and Sullen Art."
At the age of seventy seven, I write at least one poem every week, though some of them will not be read till after I have gone, So there!
Monday, 14 May 2012
Return to Blogging After a Year's Absence
My last blog was May 2011. Sometime after that I had trouble publishing a new blog. I reported the problem to Google, the proprietors of Blogspot. After I had answered a number of questions, they astonished me by declaring that I no longer had any access to "Normanandrews.blogspot.com" because the answers I had given had caused them to decide that I was not Norman Andrews. After a few more fruitless attempts to correct the situation, I gave up and, thoroughly disillusioned, ceased to be a blogger.
Today, out of curiosity, I accessed my old blogspot, silent for a year, and here I am. If this works and gets through to my readers I will start blogging again.
No point in saying any more, it may never spin out into the ether!
Today, out of curiosity, I accessed my old blogspot, silent for a year, and here I am. If this works and gets through to my readers I will start blogging again.
No point in saying any more, it may never spin out into the ether!
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