Boiling Water.

I walked away from it and headed north.

Towards evening on the second day the snow came, 
two hours later I was seeking shelter. 
Without snowshoes my progress was laboured and awkward.  
I came across a cave in a narrow ravine; 
a drift of smoke and footprints in the snow 
from someone coming from the north; 
small footprints, 
a woman or a child.

The cave was lit only by the fire 
enough for me to see the woman, 
dressed in grey, 
sheen of her hair like a well oiled gun, 
a woman from an unknown tribe, 
sitting, 

heating water. 

The makings of some ritual tea ceremony 
laid out on a rock.

Startled but unafraid she silently watched 
I found myself a place to rest opposite her, 
the fire between us. 
In perfect English she said: 
'We will wait for the water to boil. I will make tea'.
A shoulder gesture indicated the paraphernalia on the rock beside her. 
'Then you must leave'.

We sat in silence but for the fire 
as something foreign to us both crept into the cave 
settled within us. 

As the water in the pot trembled close to boil 
she she added a ladlefull of ice cold snow-melt. 
We sat on in silence.

As the water in the pot trembled close to boil 
I took up the ladle and added snow-melt to the pot. 
we sat on in silence.

Into the early hours we sat watching that pot never boil. 
Finally, having covered me in a blanket, 
she lay nearby. 
We slept.

I awoke to find her making coffee. 
We talked; 
each to the other brought magic.

On the second morning we departed, 
heading South.

In the cave on the fire rested the pot of water. 

Singing as it boiled.

Dead Tutus.

As the ballerina grows she sheds her tutu to grow anew
and as she ages the tutu changes colour
from the gaudy candy floss pink of youth
to the white of her prime.

Quite often these discarded tutus
can be found at night
in the lanes and alleys of Covent Garden
especially after an arduous Swan Lake!



  

SPIT or the American dream.

SPIT!

Molly and John had been childhood sweethearts
Shared sodas at picnics
in the meadow by the Big Loving
as it snaked easily through the county.
Shared illicit beers beneath the bleachers
when she cut cheerleading and he cut track.
Shared moonlit skinny dips in the same old Big Loving
at the sand bar on the bend
where the turtles basked back in the day.
She had run naked laughing through poison ivy;
he had spat in his hand and rubbed it in the itching places.
Later she did not need the ivy to make the itch,
she had an itch of her own 
and he rubbed his spit onto that itch 
but that itch never completely went away.

Molly took that itch to New York.
John took his spit to LA.
Molly found music in the cafes at night, 
revolution in the air. 
‘New York City, imagine that’. 
She wrote him - as she itched at a sidewalk café 
– in an early westbound letter.
‘Yes I can imagine that’. 
He had replied. 
But he couldn’t.
So she itched in the city 
closed her eyes to the viscous string of men 
while he spat on the coast at a succession of starlets 
who practiced the Stanislavski itch  
tunelessly singing the Hollywood orgasm.

Fast forward… 
The two of them came together again, 
out of boredom most likely. 
Boredom and guilt, 
prompted on her part by the metronomic click of the clock, 
on his part by the young guns on the boulevard 
the fear that he was all spat out.
When they married the orange blossom was already dead. 
The children when they arrived 
trod the rotting petals into the floorboards 
of their Chicago brownstone.

He made money; she spent it. 
The American dream.

Molly sat on her itch for twenty years, 
took a course in etching early on 
never looked back and couldn’t look forward. 
Her life etched itself into her face. 
She got a part time job 
filling condom machines at railway stations.
Twenty years of itching and etching on molly’s part 
as she watched john occasionally drool diddle his secretary 
(did he buy his condoms at the station?) 
was enough.
　
　
　
Molly came to Spain 
change of life, 
change of continent, 
change of tense. 
for a week.
John had grudgingly agreed that she could take a vacation, 
a break from the shattered life they now shared. 
She would visit a friend in Toledo  
maybe take in an El Greco or two.
On her last day of work prior to traveling 
the itch had slipped a dozen condoms into her purse  
then dragged her into Victoria’s Secret on the way home.
The flight was uneventful; 
she sat between the two overweight boors 
each airline is obliged to provide. 

Marta met her at the airport.  
The Spanish air crackled.
The bullfight was - to Marta - an odd choice 
for an afternoon’s entertainment 
but Molly had read Hemingway,  
wanted to sit ringside  
black beret scarlet lipped 
as Eva Gardner had once done. 
She had little experience of bloodshed save her own; 
but blood in the afternoon held no fear.

Manolo arched his back,
flicked a disdainful cape 
at the snorting bull  
an ubiquitous sneer at the crowd,
stood in his black slippers
stained with blood and dust 
hawked a glistening gob of spit 
that sizzled as it hit the sun scorched clay. 
The bull died bravely as bulls in such tales do. 
The spit dried to a disc of mother of pearl 
that shimmered against the blood red earth 
as the bulls ear parted unhearing from the head; 
arcing it’s way into the stands, 
into the lap of Molly. 
An unrecognizable Molly. 
Molly lost, Molly found. Molly free, Molly bound.

‘Manolo.’ 
She whispered much later 
when the sun had gone down 
and the fiesta had dissolved itself 
into the barrios and tourist hotels. 
‘Manolo.’

I took up the dog eared copy of THE TIN DRUM. 
It fell open at the chapter titled ‘fizz powder’  
I read to her again of little Oskar 
spitting into the navel of Maria.
　
Molly flew to Boston four days later  
made her morning connection to Chicago 
.....in good time.
　
The fire-fighter moved dazed 
through the rubble of what had once been the World Trade Centre. 
The dust was thick and acrid  
he wished he had some kind of mask or respirator. 
He hawked and spat into the debris at his feet, 
onto a small black slipper. 
A slipper stained with blood, dust and tears.

America.
　

Harp in Westminster synagogue

April Casburn or the convicted copper and the dodgy adoption.

April Casburn is the Met DCI who tipped off the News of the World about the phone hacking investigation.  She was convicted and sentenced this week. Her sentence which should have been three years was shortened to 15 months because she was adopting a baby.

Hang on!  The woman is 53 years old. No one can adopt in this country at that age which implies that she has sourced the child elsewhere (the Ukraine is the destination of choice for this sort of thing these days).  So why suddenly, when she must have known that a prison sentence was looming, does she toddle off abroad to adopt?

I guess she knew she would get a lighter sentence.

What amazes me is that the scam fooled the judge.

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia.

This is what Andrew Clements has to say in the Guardian:

Britten: The Rape of Lucretia – review

Kirschlager/Bostridge/Gritton/Purves/Coleman-Wright/Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble/Knussen
(Virgin Classics, two CDs)

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  • The Guardian, Wednesday 16 January 2013 16.05 GMT
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This remarkable recording is taken from concert performances in Snape Maltings during the 2011 Aldeburgh festival. The Rape of Lucretia seems to have been heard there more often than any of Britten's stage works in the last 10 years, almost as if its reputation as one of the most problematic of his operas has been the reason for its frequency, in the hope that familiarity will dilute the text's problems. Perhaps it could even make more palatable the awkward ending that Britten insisted upon, in which an epilogue preaching Christian forgiveness is grafted on to a drama that offers little scope for redemption.

There are no weaknesses there, either. The Male and Female Chorus, Ian Bostridge and Susan Gritton, set the standard in their introduction, each word ringingly clear, every shade of meaning registered. Their commentary is wonderfully objective and humane, just as the protagonists in the drama are presented in all their contradictions – from Angelika Kirschlager's Lucretia, by turns sensuously honeyed and harrowingly moving, Christopher Purves' assured Collatinus, and Peter Coleman-Wright's startlingly feral Tarquinius, to the equally well observed smaller roles of Benjamin Russell (Junius), Hilary Summers (Bianca) and Claire Booth (Lucia). If Britten's own Decca version, with Janet Baker as Lucretia, will always have a special place in the work's history on disc, as will those featuring the original cast from 1946 and 1947, then this performance is surely the best of recent times, redemptive in a way that the work itself can never be.But what Oliver Knussen's reading shows above all is that the best possible justification for performing The Rape of Lucretia is the quality of the score, which emerges more pungent and fiercely dramatic than I've ever heard it before, bathed in the warmth of the Maltings acoustic and captured in every detail by the wonderfully vivid recording. All the instrumentalists in the Aldeburgh Festival Ensemble are identified in the credits, and that's just as it should be, for Knussen sees to it that the contribution of every one is as just as significant as those of the singers.

The Salt Ghost.

Going through Jan Nieupjur's papers the other day I came across this old photograph. There was nothing to tell me who or where. I showed Jan the image and asked about it... He sighed and whispered the words: 'The salt ghost'. He went on to tell me that he only knew the woman standing on the left by the initial 'M' but that she was known throughout eastern Europe during the last war as the snow ghost. He went on to tell me that 'M' spent the entire war with a band of renegades hindering the enemy (quite who the enemy was is a mystery) by scattering salt on ice-bound canals that were being used as roads in the winters and over salting their food in daring night time raids on military canteens. She disappeared shortly after hostilities ceased. I asked where she was now. 'Don't know'. said Jan. 'She could be in south America or fifty yards down the road'. 'But I bet she's still got a lot of salt!

There is gold in dog turds.

It started like this: I read in the Guardian that a blind man had been given an on the spot fine for allowing his dog to crap in the park. The blind man's argument that he was blind and did not see his dog crap was not good enough for the park jobsworth who served him with the fine anyway. Are these park nazis paid pro rata on number of turds spotted or do they do it for fun?

It ended happily after many bureaucratic movements with the blind guy providing written evidence of his handicap, however, the nazi jobsworth did not have to provide proof of his stupidity. I guess that goes with the job.

Descartes once said (but didn't write down): 'I didn't see it poo therefore it didn't'!

This made me think! The government is missing a job creation wheeze here; what every seeing eye dog needs is a seeing turd companion to pick up the stuff. there are 5,000 seeing eye dogs in the UK, therefore we need an equal number of 'seeing turds' to keep our park nazis happy. No qualifications would be needed meaning that it would suit the average state school leaver who didn't make the tertiary education criteria. It would also suit redundant bankers who are well used to handling shit. the up-side of this job in the winter months is that the dog creates little hand warmers for the collector.

And then a horrible truth hit me... There are 10.5 million dogs in the UK producing over 33 tons of crap a day.  The man who finds something to do with dog turds will make a fortune.

Alan Sugar springs to mind... He seems to be able to make money out of shit wherever he goes.

Murray Lachlan Young on the radio.

Murray has a regular spot on Radio 4 this week. Catch it HERE

Phallic symbol shrinks as snow hits Notting Hill.

Yep! It's a Ferrari!

Last week a 654 Priapus GT. This week, after the snow, a tiny shrivelled up thing!

Tesco introducing Naggis for Burns night!

I have hear that after the publicity gained from the horse burger scandal Tescos is to introduce it's own take on haggis with the 'Naggis'*.

My only concern is that due to the size of a horses bladder it will be unsuitable for small Burns night gatherings.

I am currently working on my 'Address to a Naggis' and will post it in due course.

*Naggis: a horses bladder stuffed with equine odds and ends mixed with oats.

Horse looking for mum in Tescos

I don't know what all the fuss is about... Surely eating horse is no different from eating cow or pig. In fact I think I would rather eat a horse than a pig, horses don't eat shit!

30 something skateboard dude.

You see him under the west way
you see him in the park
he hangs out in Meanwhile Gardens
and in the Piazza after dark

He clatters down the pavement
clack clack clack clack clack
i pod and spare hoodie
bijou back packed on his back

He likes Zep and AC/DC
plays bass in a garage band
dreams of St Moritz snow
and black Hawaiian sand

He talks of ramps and half pipes
his half pipes all half full
of verts and nailed 360's
and all that kind of bull

He lives at home with mum and dad
works in the video store
doesn't have a social life
so he can skateboard more

He's the 30 something skateboard dude
the medieval slacker
the ever moving obstacle
the clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack
clack clack clack clack clacker