The Grief Cannon - another story of the Boy from the Year 2000

“Good grief!  Good grief!”

Jimmy sat on the bottom step of the stairs sobbing as if he was about to burst with the effort.

“Jimmy!  Jimmy Darling! What is the matter?”  His Mother sat awkwardly beside him.   Jimmy tried to speak but all he could manage was great gulps of air.  The tears continued to roll down his cheeks.

“I’m so sad.”

“What’s all this?”  Jimmy’s Father breezed through the front door and stopped in shock.  “Crying!  You shouldn’t be crying, Jimmy, you’re nearly a grown man.  You’re thirteen years old.”

But Jimmy still could not manage to control the enormous emotion that was ripping through him.

“For goodness sakes, stop the boy blubbing.  You can hear him all down the street.”  Said Jimmy’s father,  ignoring the fact that he had not heard anything but birdsong as he made his way up the path.

“I can’t stop him.” said his Mother, a worried expression on her face.

“This is what comes of spending too much time with his Mother. “Jimmy’s Father’s voice was rising in pitch.  “Now listen, son.  You stop that.  Control yourself, do you hear?”

“I caaaaaan’t” wailed Jimmy. 

“Yes, you can.  Men don’t cry.”  Jimmy’s Father glowered at Jimmy’s Mother.

“All right,” she said.  “I’ll try another way.  Jimmy....   Jimmy... Can you hear me?”

Jimmy nodded between his wracking sobs.

“What has happened?   What were you doing?”

“We...  we... we were playing in the Smith’s garden”.  Jimmy fought hard to get the words out.

“Yes.  Who with?”

“Tommy Smith.”

“Good, go on...  Did he do something to you? Did he call you names?  You know names cannot hurt you.”

“Did he hit you, son?”  Interjected Jimmy’s Father.  “If he did you should’ve hit him back.  Hard.  Right on the end of his snitch.”

“No.  No.  No.”  Wailed Jimmy.

“You should’ve kicked him on the shins, given him a Chinese burn.  I knew that lad was no good.   I worry about his parents.  I’m not sure they’re the right type for this neighbourhood.”

Jimmy’s Mother snorted.   Tommy Smith’s father was some sort of government scientist and was always driving about in some new fangled hover car or other.  Jimmy’s father had always appeared to be in awe of him and he hung over the fence on summer evenings listening to his descriptions of the great inventions the other man was working on.   New holographic viewscreens, faster space transporters, personal rocket belts and so on.

But neither of them could get anything more out of Jimmy who just continued to wail uncontrollably.

“Right.”  Said Jimmy’s father.  “This has gone on long enough.  I’m going to get to the bottom of this.  Come along Jimmy”  and father and son were gone out of the front door before you could say “Impulsedrive scooter”.

“Just be careful.”  Called Jimmy’s Mother but what it was that Jimmy’s Father was meant to be careful of, he didn’t pause to ask.

The Smith’s door was opened by Mrs. Smith.  Jimmy’s father had always found the presence of Mrs. Smith deeply troubling.   Although everybody had been issued with the same silver suits at New Year 2000, there was something about the way Mrs Smith fitted into hers that was different from most of the other women in the street.  Mrs. Smith’s suit went in and came out where other women’s went straight down or bulged like large Christmas turkeys wrapped in foil.  And what’s more, Mrs. Smith’s silver suit seemed to cling to her so tightly that you could actually see parts of her breathing.

After several minutes of standing there examing Mrs Smith’s suit, Jimmy’s father managed to stutter “Is Tommy’s Father in?” 

“Of course,” breathed Tommyy’s Mother with a big smile that showed two rows of perfect pearly teeth.  “He’s just come in from the shed where he’s been tinkering with some invention or other.  He spends so much time in the shed that I feel quite lonely sometimes.”

Jimmy’s father could feel beads of perspiration forming on his upper lip.  He pushed past almost rudely.

“He’s in the front room.  Why don’t you come in?”

But Jimmy’s father was already in and confronting Mr. Smith.

Tommy’s father was lounging in a deep armchair.  His silver suit was unbuttoned at the neck and hung on him casually almost as it were the type of cardigan with leather arm patches that scientists wore before the year 2000.  “Ah, my dear chap,” he said pipe clenched between his teeth,  “Come in, come in..  Here sit down on the sofa.”    Jimmy’s father was about to say that he would rather stand over here in the doorway when he sensed Mrs. Smith’s sweet smelling breath on his neck.  He seized Jimmy’s hand and sat on the sofa opposite Mr. Smith.  “Now what’s it all about?” continued the other man, “You don’t often drop in for a chat.”

“It’s Jimmy.”  He gestured to his son.  “He seems to be.... upset, rather.” And to demonstrate, Jimmy let out a series of loud sobs.  “Jimmy’s thirteen, he doesn’t cry any more.  This is not normal behaviour. It all started when he was playing with your Tommy in your garden.  Now, I’m not blaming Tommy....

“Aha” said Mr. Smith leaning forward to knock his pipe out in an ash-o-matic standing in the fire place.  “I don’t think you need to blame Tommy.  You see, Tommy was in much the same state himself when he came in for tea this afternoon.”

“Poor lamb.”  Breathed Mrs. Smith sweetly.  “He couldn’t swallow his pills.  Not even the purple ones that I’d got specially as a treat.”

“I hope you’re not implying that Jimmy here had anything to do with that?”

Mr. Smith held up his hand.  “Not at all, not at all.”  He began filling his pipe from a well used plasti-cloth pouch and stood up “Come with me into the garden.”

Jimmy and his father followed out through the kitchen.  Jimmy hardly noticed that his father had his arm round his shoulders. 

On thepocket handkerchief  lawn, Jimmy’s father observed enviously the brand new Auto-mow fitted with all the sort of advanced features like grass vapouriser that he could only dream about.  But he had no time to marvel as Mr. Smith was unlocking the padlock on the little wooden shed swathed in a strange orange passion-flower. 

“I think this is what you’ve come to see.”  He said and stood aside to let Jimmy and his father peer inside.  On the bench was a strange looking device made up of coils and valves and oddly coloured sheets of perspex.  At one end was a sort of coppery nozzle pointing out the window.

“I’m not sure..... what...”  stammered Jimmy’s father.

“Come, come.  I’m sure someone of your technical ability can recognise a ring-field-oscillation bridge.”

“Oh yes, of course... it’s just that...”

“Quite, quite.”  Tommy’s father was using the stem of his pipe to point to features of the machine.  “What you won’t recognise is the way I’ve configured this thermionic snapple  gate.  Or this condenser valve rack.”   He depressed a few switches and the machine began to whirr and hum.  Rows of light began to twinkle.

“Er. What exactly....?”

“The government has asked me to come up with some new devices to help us combat some dissident forces that are at work.”

“I didn’t think there were any dissident forces.  Not since 2000 and the universal peace and harmony treaty.”

“Well, no.  You’re right.  Not dissident forces, as such.  I’m using old language.  Can’t help it sometimes.  I meant of course, that there are one or two unhappy individuals...  Yes, unhappy, that’s the word...  Who could be helped... with a machine like this.”

“Helped?  In what way?”

“To become less unhappy.   Yes, to become happier altogether.”  Tommy’s father was trying to light his pipe from a bunsen burner.  “like the rest of us.”

“And how does this machine do that?”

“It affects the emotional centres of the brain.  I’ve had some spectacular results.  Of course we wouldn’t want to harm anybody. I was callibrating it this afternoon.  It uses rays.”

“What sort of rays?

“Green ones.”

“Ah yes, green rays.   I can see how that would work.”  And in a flash of inspiration: “And Jimmy and Tommy....”

“Were playing just outside the shed .”

“You were experimenting on our children?”

“Not at all.  Not at all.   I had the window open to let my pipesmoke out.  But you must admit that it works. I just had the field polarity reversed so that instead of making them happy, it made them terribly terrible sad.”

“More to the point, is there any way the effects can be reversed?”

“Of course.  If Jimmy just stands over here, I can give him a good dose of the green rays now that they are properly sequenced.  It’s quite safe now – I tested it on Tommy a little while ago.”

“He’s in bed recovering.”  Breathed Mrs Smith right into Jimmy’s father’s ear.

And in a little while they were all back in the house shaking hands.  Jimmy was beaming  broadly again.

“Of course, you’ll keep this all to yourself, won’t you, Old man?  Until the government announces the good news.”

“Yes of course.  I’m just glad to have Jimmy back to normal.”

“I’m hoping that the government will release it for general use.”  Mrs Smith was speaking in that breathless way of hers that so unnerved Jimmy’s father.  “There are still so many emotional hangups that could be cured.   Even after 2000.”

“Are there?  I doubt it.”  Said Jimmy’s father running his finger round his collar.  “At least, not in a street like ours.” as he sidled to the door.   And they all laughed for some reason.

Royal Streak

The Aussies are twenty for one

The tension at Lords is palpable.

Excitement runs through the crowd

Like a member of the Barmy Army with a tray of pints

Desperate to get back to his seat from the bar

The Queen watching from the Members Enclosure

Is as thrilled by the prospect of an Aussie humiliation

As is everyone else in her commonwealth

(Except, possibly, the Antipodean ragamuffins themselves)

She stays her pint of Fosters halfway to her lips

Her bag of Walkers cheese and onion remain unrustled

Anderson pounds in

And Ponting  is OUT

Absolutely, undeniably, incontrovertibly OUT

Caught by Strauss in the slips.

Her Majesty is on her feet

And begins to totter towards the steps.

An aide makes a grab for the pint glass and the bag of crisps

But Now she is gaining speed

And vaults the white picket fence

The stewards, suddenly aware of what is happening,

Are caught in a dilemma.

Should they wrestle the intruder to the ground as instructed

Or remove their baseball caps in humble obeisance?

That moment’s hesitation is enough

Her royal highness has evaded the cordon

And has crossed the boundary rope

And is on the hallowed turf

The players, the umpires, the whole crowd stands aghast and instantly silent

She is racing towards the middle

Discarding cardi, blouse and skirt

As she goes

The moment of silence extends second by second

Even Father Time swivels away

Unable to look.

Now she is on the square

The sun glinting off her second-best tiara

And there goes her bra and pants

Although, sensibly, she is keeping on

Her stout brogues

Because there is still some damp on the outfield.

And any dints on the wicket

Will only help Graham Swann

When he wants to make it turn

Later in the innings.

Thirty odd thousand mouths hang open

And, for some reason the electronics

In the Sky cameras have ceased to function

So the world outside misses the spectacle.

In the Test match Special Box

Aggers’ mouth hangs open,

Blowers manages a “My dear old thing”

And Sir Geoffrey has staggered to his feet and is saluting wildly.

Now behind the Monarch comes Prince Phillip

And in an extraordinary display of solidarity

The Admiral of the Fleet Uniform

Joins the other royal garments on the grass

And we are treated

To a display of the Crown Jewels

Undreamt of since the Coronation.

Hand in hand, their Majesties

Vault the stumps

A picture that remains for ever un recorded

By the thousands of photographers

Fingers frozen solid over unclicked shutter buttons

In bemused horror.

Her Majety’s eyes meet those of the recently dismissed and shocked Ponting

But there is no royal clemency there

Her small sneer says it all

“Walk wallaby” and she jerks her thumb towards the pavilion steps

And the dyed in the wool republican

Retreats his eyes wide with new found respect

For the House of Windsor.

Together, the Royal Couple

Have reached the far boundary rope

And are disappearing through the press box.

The equerry briskly removes the royal garments

(outer and under) from the field

As if it were an everyday occurrence.

Ponting continues his sad march to the pavillion

Troubled by conflicting emotions.

The next batsman, Hussey, emerges

Into the profound silence

The only man in the ground

To have missed the whole thing

Because he was busy buckling on his pads

“How’s it playing, Skip?”

His Captain eyes him glassily:

“If only you had balls like that Sheila.”

Hussey shrugs unsure of what that means

Play resumes at 20 for 2

And a subdued crowd

Settles down for the afternoon’s play

Forever unsure of what they have seen.

.

Jobless - The Final Solution

Brilliant news! That kind Mr. Duncan Smith has promised all jobless people a job. That's fantastic. Does it mean reopening coal mines, taking on more staff in Hospitals, the long awaited railway building programme, green energy projects? Or have I misunderstood what the goverment intends when it says that the long term unemployed should "experience of the habits and routines of working life"?

Paul thinksthat it's a result of shutting down the country.

Let me get this right.... The government cuts lots of jobs to save money, they then employ all the jobless people to do the jobs that are now vacant. So those people who had jobs before are now jobless so the governemt cuts lots more jobs in order for there to be jobs for the new jobless. Eventually the whole country is on a massive jobshare scheme in which we all work for, say, a fortnight before moving on. Damn. It might just work.

Elinor thinks there might be a more sinister follow up.

I say "that's OK as long as he is the first one to try it."

Cyber Attack

“There’s something big building just across the channel”
Shall I call out the crews?
“No, not yet. Let’s see if we can guess what they’re going for. Where we should deploy to best effect.” The Wing Commander strains to understand what she is seeing on the screens.
“What do you think? Power stations? Railway network? Water?” The young Flight Lieutenant’s voice quavers in anticipation.
“Oh my God.” The Wing Commander’s fingers tighten on the console edge.
“What? “
“This is big. Could be the whole damn lot. Yes. Scramble all units. Get them all on line now.”
The Flight Lieutenant picks up the phone. “All units. All units scramble.”
One by one screens flicker and faces appear.
“Another one? Already” “ I’d barely dropped off” “How long can they keep this up?” Theweariness in the girls’ voices comes across the speakers.
“This looks big. Better get on station.” The Wing Commander’s voice is firm. Reassuring.
The girls are shrugging off dressing gowns, yawning. Rubbing sleep from their eyes. But already they’re running their fingers across their fighting screens. Calling up defences, setting target sights. Settling down for the long haul

“Here it comes. First wave. Stand by”
Now the girls are working their screens. In their individual command stations situated in bunkers deep underground in strategic points across the country. Fingers crawling here, now there. Stabbing and flicking. Hands brushing off the invaders like flies. Shooing away the danger.
“Look out Monica. Coming at you”
“Behind you, Sandra.”
“Theresa. Snap to it or you’ll be out of it in two minutes.”
Lips are bitten. Cheeks chewed.
Digital tracer streams off into the ether. The staccato burts of code chatter with increasing intensity. And the voices of the girls die away as deep concentration takes over.
The hands on the screens work more urgently. This attack is not going away.
“Another wave coming in, Girls” mutters the Wing Commander under her breath. There’s no time or need for instructions or warnings from her. This is where training and experience count. And not a little luck.
“This is worse than anything we’ve seen so far” whispers the Flight Lieutenant. “How many have we got in reserve?”
“None. They’re all on line. All engaging with the enemy.”
“I’m having trouble here” says Monica in an undertone.
Their voices are all subdued. Barely rising above whispers but there is real tension and sweat begins to form on upper lips.
It is Monica’s voice that rises above the rest.
“I can’t....”
“Sorry Monica, I’m shutting you down. You’re hit.”
“I’m baling out.”
“Too late. You’ve left it too late. It’s a complete shut down.”
Monica’s eyes register a brief moment of horror before her screen goes dead.
The Wing Commander’s fingers rest unsteadily on the button
The Flight Lieutenant turns: “Did you have to,,,?”
For a second, the Flight Lieutenant gazes into the deep well of loneliness that surrounds the business of being an officer in wartime and turns smartly back to her job.
“OK crews. It’s clearing now. You’ve seen them off. You may shut down.”
One by one the girls rise from their screens, wrap their dressing gowns round them and click terminals to standby.
The Flight Lieutenant turns back. “Pilot Officer Monica.... what will happen to her?”
“You’re green, aren’t you?”
“I know I’m Straight out of training college but did you have to...”.
“Of course i did and I’ll do it to anyone else too, And so must you too if you’re in my position.”
The Flight Lieutenant gulps.
“And the training manual will have told you. Complete isolation in her bunker. “
“I know what the book says but what does it actually mean? Complete electromagnetic shielding?”
“It means that there must be absolutely no chance of the worm getting out by inadvertant radio or other transmission. The bunker is sealed. Complete lock down. Absolutely no human contact for the same reason. Continual sweeping for a fortnight. Of course, the best remedy is time. Leave it long anough and any worm will cease to have impact. It should be six months....”
“Six months... in solitary confinement?”
“In effect, yes. But this is war. We are under continual daily attack so we can’t allow anything like that length of time. Weeks perhaps but not months.”
“Even so.... She could go mad. Isolated for that length of time. And won’t she starve?”
We ask them to do a hell of a job. To take big risks and, for some, they have to pay a big price. But the crews are all selected because they’re resourceful and quick thinking. That’s why we only use women on the front line. She should have made sure she stocked up with food and drink. It’s the aircrews own responsibility. And If she hasn’t, if she forgot, it’s too late now.”
There is a long silence in the ops room.
“But If we do our job properly. All of us. Nonone will know what we have done and probably not care either. If we can get through this without the national grid going off line, without all the machinery in the national health service going off line. If we can keep water and sewerage pumping and food arriving at the supermarkets, then that will be a reward in itself. And the odd casualty will go unnoticed.”

What will you do in a Driverless Car?

The question is fascinating even if the answer might be a bit dull. Perhaps some more creative thought should be applied. Cookery, Perhaps? prepare your own dinner as you speed homewards. Apple crumble and custard done to a turn as you step from your vehicle. Your wife opens the door and you say "Dinner is ready" as you carry the steaming dishes in. Of course, there would be no problems with drinking and driving if you were not actually controlling the vehicle so you could already have partaken of an aperitif and have the bottle of chablis nicely chilled and open.

Everything you need to know about the Bronte Sisters

Just click on the link

Treasures of The Anglo-Saxons

As I'm steeping myself in Anglo-Saxon literature at the moment with my attempt to translate and update "The Wanderer" this BBC programme came at a useful time.

The Trucker

Those who have been following my Facebook fan page will know that I have been working on a translation of "The Wander" from Anglo-Saxon. I aim to use it in a longer performance piece about a long distance lorry driver. This is my initial go at the first fourteen lines. Notice that I have tried to keep as closely as possible to the original form of Anglo-Saxon poetry with each line given two alliterative words before a caesura and a third one after.

Sometimes solitary, he finds solace
And redemption on the road, regardless that, sadly,
For many months he must steer
Following freeways, and the frozen highway
In the paths of asylum seekers. The satnav is always in control!

So moaned the driver,mindful of mishap,
Of fierce fatal pile ups and the fate of mates:

Often alone, I had Only myself to share my trouble
Each day-break before dawn. I doubt there is one soul
To whom I dare directly divulge
Those secret thoughts. I think it’s true,
That everyone else expects the attitude,
That you should firmly fasten, your fuel tank of beliefs,
Guard your toolchest of thought, think as you wish.

Field of Fantasy

Sunday 24th January 2010 at 8.00
The Winchester, Poole Hill, Bournemouth, BH2 5PW

Beat Poetry and Jazz Ranting by Peter John Cooper with music by Matt Wilkinson.
"A brilliant poet delivering his poems with tremendous energy"
"...Manic and Majestic"

Featuring the Big Big Number "Field of Fantasy" with the MUD chorus.
Field of Fantasy
“WOW !!!

It was SOMETHING yesterday!

GREAT STUFF

Thank you”

Svetlana (Poet)

From audience feedback forms at previous performances:

.......What did you like best about the work?.....

“Experimental. Confidence of topic – MUD story by Peter Cooper & guitar”.
“Mud, bass ‘beat poet’ grooves”
“The poetry addressed vital issues”
“A brilliant poet delivering his poems with tremendous energy, great backing”
“Mud”
“Never seen anything like it before”
“All of it”
“Peter Cooper’s delivery & subjects – excellent, come back to Bridport!”
“Intriguing how it worked. Liked music with poems”
“Confident, humour, variety of rhythm. Music supported very well”

.......What could be improved?....

“Nothing”
“Hard to imagine”

Little Arthur's History of England

Little Arthur’s History of England

is the name of a popular history from the Victorian Era written by Lady Maria Callcott. Touchingly, it became a favourite of the young men in the trenches of the Great War.


The Play
Little Arthur gazes from his nursery window trying to make sense of the mad world of the grown ups beyond
“Little Arthur’s History of England” starring Trisaha Lewis is a one woman play about the life of a Nanny and her charge in the nursery of a big house during the days and nights of September 1939. Nanny Cummins is more than a little eccentric and is definitely larger than life. During the course of the play we learn of Nanny’s life, disappointments and attitudes to the looming conflict as she reads from the big history book that she keeps on the nursery shelf. From time to time she fortifies herself with a swig from her special medicine bottle that she keeps hidden under her pillow. In the end Nanny knows she cannot keep the truth from her little Arthur and in a dramatic climax we come to understand the secret that Nanny herself has kept hidden all these years...
When it was first performed in Oxford, The Oxford Mail said it was an “An astonishing piece infused with warmth and melancholy”




Trisha Lewis
Trisha is a Bournemouth based actress with an enormous range of professional work to her credit. Trisha is extremely well known for her work in Dorset and the South and over the years has specialised in single-handed portrayals of strong and quirky women such as Joyce Grenfell , Mary Woolstonecraft and Virgina Woolfe.
Reviews of Trisha’s work:
"..Inspirational solo performance..”
“…confident and beautiful acting…”
( Hampshire Chronicle)
“….utterly unforgettable”
(Chester Chronicle)


Spyway Projects(http://www.spyway.co.uk/) is a Dorset based theatre company bringing together writer and director Peter John Cooper, designer Annette Sumption and many other professional musicians, designers and performers. Over the past seventeen years they have produced shows as varied as the world premiere of Bafta winning writer Guy Hibbert’s ‘Tilting Ground’, through Alan Ayckbourne’s ‘Intimate Exchanges’, Neil Simon’s ‘Same Time Next Year’ and the UK Tour of ‘Captain Pugwash and the Monster of Green Island’.



Spyway produces Surprising theatre – emotionally engaging yet thoughtful and thought provoking. The creative impetus coming from writers, new, established and emerging.




Nanny:
Nanny had a peculiar place in the life of the big house. She lived on the Family Side of the Green Baize Door so was set apart from the rest of the staff and could almost be regarded as a member of the family. Nanny could command the butler, cook and housekeeper and accompanied the family on any trip or outing that the children were on. She could even order the car and chauffeur for trips out herself. But this strange place in the hierarchy often meant that Nanny felt isolated and alone. It was not unusual for her to develop strange manners and customs. As she grew older, her foibles and eccentricities would be accepted and tolerated.
Some parts of the character of Nanny Cummins are based on Peter John Cooper’s own mother who was Nanny in several big houses before the Second World War.

Rattle - Community Theatre for Dorset

On Tuesday Tara Dominick asked me to fill in as a guest on her morning show on Hope FM. As this was a Community strand she asked me to talk about theatre from a community perspective. This was a good opportunity for me to try and put my thoughts in some sort of order and we had a jolly pleasant hour or so talking about my favourite subject.
One of my friends missed the show but wanted to hear what I had said. As Hope FM doesn’t have a “listen again” feature I thought I’d try and jot down my thoughts here.
A radio interview is like an argument with a loved one – you can always come up with the perfect rejoinder just as you’re walking away. So if some of this sounds a bit too coherent and too good to be true, it probably is. There’s also quite a lot tacked on at the end that I know we didn’t talk about but which I thought might be worth bunging in as a free extra.

Strange Sea Sighed
Building on the thirty plus years of experience I have had in this field I hope to bring together aspiring and established writers within the area and to facilitate them working within the many disparate communities of Dorset and to reflect the stories that exist within those communities.
Some years ago, when I was Artistic Director of the Oxfordshire Touring Theatre, I developed a new way for working with overlooked communities. We sent writers and actors to live in these communities and listen to and record the stories they had. At first, these would tend to be about the history of the place or group but bit by bit, by gentle prompting we could tease out the real issues and tales that they actually were talking about at that moment. We could turn these into a properly considered play that could be played back to them. And what’s more we could take these plays into other communities as a form of county wide gossip. It was delicious.
Now I’m trying to recreate that idea in Dorset with the Rattle project. I hope I can rattle up a few bones or even dust off some skeletons that might be lurking in various cupboards. Later this month we are presenting “The Strange Sea Sighed” in Swanage. This reflects the weirdness of Swanage back to those who live here or visit here and enables them to see the place we love in a new and unexpected light.

Little Arthur
The word “community” is overused but I believe that we belong to many different communities at once. It may be a group of friends sitting round a table in a pub, it may be an interest group, a geographical group, a hobby group, a religious group, a political party or whatever. My philosophy is based on the idea that stories are what bind these communities together.
Even more interesting is the idea that we belong to several communities at once. They may overlap but quite often we keep these quite separate. They have their own cultures, codes of language and stories. We all know that we switch these cultures and codes continuously between, say, our family, our mates in the pub, our hobby groups.
But we tend not to value these communities and their cultures. Dorset is probably one of the most culturally unaware areas in the United Kingdom. We are a county of incomers as much as we are old families; but our culture is handed down from the histories of communities that we probably do not belong to or relate to. Culturally the county is fragmented into a myriad of many different communities that do not overlap. East and West have separate newspapers, television and radio stations. We do not even have a linking transport infrastructure. What we lack is the ability to gossip and to relay our stories from one community to another.
Through the Rattle project I hope to make people aware of the real stories that glue our many cultures together and to help us to understand where we stand in relation to each other and the world outside. It is a project that will give some sort of reality to new writers who can find juicy big chunks of story to get their teeth into and to get those stories told in a way that is valued by all of us living here.
That means the project has to be professional and able to carry ideas through to an end point. It means that these stories have to be repeated and carried through various communities.
For many years I have been running creative writing workshops, mentoring new writers and trying to encourage established writers to write about the Dorset of here and now. I have been working with poets and developing my own poetry performance skills.
Now is the time to put this all to the test.
I have already found a number of nodal points that are going to give the project an interesting kickstart. The Tank Museum in Bovington is providing a thrilling opening night venue for “Little Arthur’s History of England” on the 3rd of September. I want to work with them and communities like them to make the relationship long term, developing the contemporary reactions to the historical stories that they relate.

Cafe Conversations
One of the problems we have in Dorset is that our creative talent tends to bleed away out of the County. Young people train in Weymouth, Poole and Bournemouth but then find few outlets for their abilities. Even established artists find it difficult to make themselves heard in the County and tend to work anywhere but here. That’s why I want to put those aspiring and established writers together; to strike sparks off each other and, perhaps, find an entirely new voice for Dorset.
I want to develop the Rattle project to the next stage of reality. I need new equipment to draw performers into the fold. I need to be able publicise and run workshops and mentoring sessions. I need to get established writers involved. Above all I must drive onwards to a programme of professionally finished performance that enables the work to be shared and seen.
The first project to operate like this will be called “Cafe Conversations”. Our stable of writers will be encouraged to go and listen to people talking, arguing, joking in cafes and restaurants in some particular environment. They’ll respond to these by producing a number of ten minute two hander plays. We’ll then rehearse these and send them back to the place where they were first heard. And can be played out again to the unsuspecting coffee drinkers.
So would you like to take part? Are you someone who’d like to develop your writing skills for the theatre? Or are you an established writer who would like to work alongside a new writer? Collaborating and mentoring? Would you like to explore the virgin jungle of stories in the communities of Dorset? Contact me: Peter John Cooper on spyway@avnet.co.uk or check out the Spyway website http://www.spyway.co.uk/

Ironic Percussion

Is it possible to have such a thing as ironic percussion? I've just been listening to Leonard Cohen again. The thing I notice after all these years (probably thirty since I heard him last) is the arrangements of the songs. All sorts of interesting little snippets of instruments in the background. On "So Long Marianne", towards the end there is a littlepercussion accompaniment (snare? wash board? tambourine?) and there is a definite sneer in the way it's set against the music. i can't think of another way of describing it. What do you think?

Ave Atque Vale

There comes a time when you begin ticking them off. Those you've seen, those you haven't and, now, those you never will.

I saw Laurence Olivier give a shockingly powerful performance as Shylock on his return from a heart attack. I worked (briefly) with Sir John Gielguid but never saw Dame Peggy Ashcroft and I wish I had. I saw Malcolm Marshall and Andy Roberts and Gordon Greenidge in their savage, graceful pomp but never saw Viv Richards or Ian Botham. I saw Jack and Bobby Charlton work their strange magic but never George Best. (Although I did once meet Gordon Banks). I worked on stage with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre when they were only a jagged footstep away from Martha Graham but never saw the great dancer herself. I saw the Rolling Stones three times in their early days (but there's plenty of time to see them again) but never the Beatles (although I did hear them when they were playing on top of the Apple Building and being filmed for "Let it Be"). I saw the Who and Pink Floyd and even The Grateful Dead (although their all night session bored me to tears). I saw David Bowie when he was a lad called David Jones at a John Peel concert with the Incredible String Band and, I think, Ivor Cutler. I have heard great orchestras and operas. I have seen Michalangelo's David up close and personal and been awestruck by Botticelli's Prima Vera and disappointed by the Mona Lisa. I once listened to Michael Foot in full flow; he was probably past his best but still one of the great orators of the 20century (Ah, how long ago that seems). I was on the march to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square (although I melted away when the fighting got going) and grovelled in the mud of a few festivals but never Glastonbury.

And now: Marcel Marceau. I saw him in London in the sixties when, sadly, I didn't realise his significance. His act contained much that I had seen elsewhere and I was too dull to realise that he had minted most of the coinage. But what came over, more than all the walking-against-the-wind stuff that you see in a thousand shopping centres up and down the country on otherwise breathless summers afternoons, was the sheer humanity of the man shining through his deadpan act. I am proud that I saw him but I can't describe what it was he did. You had to be there... And now you can't.

"Through many countries and over many seas
I have come, Brother, to these melancholy rites,
To show this final honour to the dead,
And speak (to what purpose?) to your silent ashes,
Since now fate takes you, even you, from me.
Oh, Brother, ripped away from me so cruelly,
Now at least take these last offerings, blessed
By the tradition of our parents, gifts to the dead.
Accept, by custom, what a brother's tears drown,
And, for eternity, Brother, 'Hail and Farewell'. "

Catullus

Flexigesis - an explanation

I had an e.mail from Simon Waters pointing out that Flexigesis would be a good target for a Googlewhack. But I'm not sure that it counts if you've made the word up yourself. So in an effort to promote the word for the Oxford English Dictionary here is a definition.

Flexigesis (n) An attempt to explain something that you are unsure of. An explanation of something that changes as you are explaining it. An explanation in which the explanation itself becomes part of the uncertainity.

Uncertainity (n) When things really get out of hand on the explaining front. Makes Heisenberg look like a man with pipe and slippers sitting in an armchair stroking Schroedinger's cat telling his grandchildren what's for supper.

Flexigesis - the poster

Flexigesis

Flexigesis is a multilayered performance piece that has started from a (very long) poem overlayed with a soundscape triggered live by Simon Waters. Simon has developed a continuous track but adds from a battery of specially prepared samples that he has constructed from life as well as electronically. We had a creative day recording sounds in the pouring rain and pounding wind along Swanage seafront. Somewhere in the recordings were some things that Simon could use.

The poem itself is many layered with recurring themes and echoes and free riffs of words by the performer. In performance even the microphone will be treated with effects used in the same way a guitarist in a rock band would.

The whole thing will last about 40 minutes and is guaranteed to blow your mind.

Flexegesis, Flexagesis, Flexigesis

My latest bit of work (a 40 minute performance epic with soundscape by Simon Waters) has been called "Flexegesis" for the last 6 months whilst I've been writing it. A sort of portmanteau of "Flexible" and "Exegesis"However, I find that this coinage crops up on a strange site already. So which variant do I choose - Flexigesis or Flexagesis?

Flexagesis could carry the suggestion of "Flexanimous" (having the power to bend the mind) whilst Flexigesis carries "Exigent" (urgent) and, perhaps, "Exiguous" (extremely small).

Twenty-first Century Banjo

Jimmy was very excited. It was his birthday. And he knew what he was getting as a present. When he was younger, back in the 20th century, he would have hated to know what his presents were before the great day; he loved surprises. But now he was older he had allowed his parents to tell him what he was getting. I n fact, he had chosen what he was to get. And he believed he had chosen well. His parents had allowed him to spend up to five credits and his choice cost just four and a half. That allowed a further half a credit for a couple of Saturn Bars.

He stood for a moment under the infra wash and dried himself quickly in front of the ultra vent. He slipped into his silver suit and ran downstairs. His mother and father were both there smiling broadly. “Happy Birthday, Jimmy” they chorused. And handed him a big card. The card had a 3d picture of the Nostradamus space cruiser on the front. And Jimmy was delighted. He was collecting pictures of space cruisers and the Nostradamus would complete the set. “Sit down, Jimmy, and have your breakfast and then we’ll be off” said his father. “It’s your favourite.” Said his mother and handed him a purple and green capsule. “Thank you, Mum” said Jimmy but he could hardly swallow the pill he was so excited. “Careful, Jimmy, you’ll choke.” She laughed handing him a tube of water. Jimmy chewed as slowly as he could but he hardly tasted the delicious breakfast in his excitement.

“Now, Are you sure you’ve made up your mind?” Said his Father.
“Oh, yes.” Said Jimmy, “I’m certain I j know what I want.”
“Very well, we’d better go or we’ll be late for your appointment.”
“Just let me set the Autovac going.” Said Jimmy’s mother and they headed into the street to climb into the hovercar. They set off for the other side of town down the long, empty boulevards and Jimmy’s heart began to beat in anticipation and, perhaps, just a little apprehension.
“Oh dear, do you think I should have put the autowash on?” Said Jimmy’s mother. There’s a whole pile of silver suits in the wash basket.”
“It’s Jimmy’s day,” laughed his father. “The housework can wait till this afternoon. Besides, you know those new silver suits are coated in Repello-stain and don’t need washing.”
“I know,” grumbled Jimmy’s mother, “But it gives me something to do.”
His father caught Jimmy’s eye in the driving viewer and winked. Jimmy felt very grown up.

At last they pulled up in front of a great shiny plexiglass and steel building with a large flashing red sign that said “United transplants” and underneath in blue neon tubes: “You will – we drill – you thrill.” Jimmy jumped out and rushed up the wide white steps towards the great polished steel doors. Inside the receptionist took Jimmy’s details and they were ushered into a small room at the side of the entrance hall. There were shelves and racks of bottles and flasks of all different colours. At last the door opened and a nurse in a starched white uniform buttoned up to the chin came in. She looked a little severe and Jimmy wondered if this was going to be as easy and painless as promised in the advertising.
“Good morning, young man,” said the nurse, smiling so much and so sweetly that Jimmy felt his fears melt away. “May I ask what you have chosen?”
“The banjo.” Said Jimmy quickly.
“The banjo!” What an excellent choice. “Not very popular but a good investment. You will be the life and soul of any party you go to.”
“Yes,” and I’m having a party tonight.” Said Jimmy.
“If I get the house cleaned in time.” Chimed his mother.
“It’s my birthday, you see,” said Jimmy quickly feeling that perhaps his mother ought to remember that it was his day, not hers.
“And do you have a banjo?” Asked the nurse going over to the shelves and taking down a red bottle.
“We’ve hired one for the week.” Smiled his father.
“Shouldn’t you think of buying one?” Said the nurse smiling back.
“We could never afford the top ups.” He grinned and made a little shrug of his shoulders.
“You wouldn’t want to hinder Jimmy’s musical education, would you? It would be so valuable to him in future life.” Smiled the nurse relentlessly.
“Perhaps we ought to think about it.” Jimmy’s father turned to Jimmy’s mother.
“I need a new Auto-vac first.” She said not smiling as much as the others
“Can we get on?” Said Jimmy just a little impatiently.
“That my boy. Always in a rush.” Grinned his father.
Jimmy’s mother said nothing and the nurse led the way through another door that swished open in front of them and swooshed shut behind.

They were standing in a larger room. Brilliant lights glared down from the ceiling. The walls and floor were shiny white tiles and round the edges of the room there were several gleaming silver and glass machines. Some on wheels, some larger and bolted to the floor. Long pipes and tubes and wires ran between them. In the middle of the room was a large, black chair that had an array of levers and buttons obviously to make it rise and lower and tip and tilt. Directly over the chair was another machine attached to the ceiling and made up of more glass tubes and pipes with a long, narrow drill bit extending down from the centre.

A short round doctor was standing by the chair fiddling with some of the controls. He turned when he heard the swoosh of the door and smiled broadly as they entered.

“Aha.” He smiled. “Welcome in….”
“Jimmy.” Said the nurse.
“Jimmy.” Grinned the doctor. Hop up here on the big chair and we’ll soon have you playing the…”
“Banjo.” Smiled the nurse.
“Banjo.” Went on the doctor. “Is this a permanent installation?”
The nurse shook her head slightly. She made a little face.
“Only temporary? You ought to think about going for permanent. It’ll work out better in the long run. Of course you don’t have to go right up to concert standard but he could make a decent enough living. It’s very economical really.”
“Well, we had been thinking…” said Jimmy’s father.
“No,” said Jimmy’s mother. “Temporary will do.”
“Oh please.” Jimmy turned to his father.
“”No, we’ll do what your mother says.”
“Well, we’ve got a few minutes while the machine warms up.” said the doctor busying himself with the apparatus. “If you want to consider what’s best for the boy.”
“We’ve decided already.” said Jimmy’s mother determinedly.
Jimmy’s father turned to Jimmy and gave him the same little wink that he had done in the hover car. Despite his disappointment Jimmy felt strangely proud and grown up.
“Come on, then.” Said the doctor. “let’s get it over with.”
The nurse helped Jimmy scramble up into the chair. The doctor adjusted the controls so that the chair tilted so that his head was directly under the drilling machine.
“Will it hurt?” said Jimmy slightly worried.
“No, I’ll be fine.” Said the doctor and everyone laughed. “Just keep still and you won’t feel a thing.”
The doctor had clipped the bottle of red liquid into the machine and a high pitched whine came from it as the drill started.
The nurse and Jimmy’s mother and father stood around and smiled encouragingly.
The doctor moved over to a bench at the side of the room, picked up a book and started reading.
“Shouldn’t the doctor be watching?” said Jimmy’s mother.
“Oh no. It’s all automatic from now on.” Said the nurse. We could all go and have a cup of tea if you wanted.
“We’ll stay.” Said Jimmy’s mother firmly.
The silver drill descended lower and lower and began to cut through Jimmy’s skull.
“Are you all right, Jimmy?” said his mother.
“I’m fine. I can’t feel a thing.”
“You see there are no nerve endings in the brain.” Said the nurse comfortingly. “It’s quite without feeling.”

After a few minutes the drill seemed to slow and stop. Liquid moved through glass tubes and then the drill withdrew.
The doctor put down his book.
“There you are. All done.”
Jimmy hopped down from the chair.
“Is that it? Doesn’t it need a plaster or something?” Asked Jimmy’s mother looking worried.
“Don’t fuss.” Said Jimmy’s father.
“You can put a plaster on if you want.” Said the doctor doubtfully. “But it’s probably better not to. It will get stuck in his hair and might hurt when you pull it off. Just hold a hanky over it till it stops oozing.
Jimmy’s father found a big clean white hanky that he folded carefully and gave to Jimmy to hold over the hole in his head.
“Let’s all go home and get ready for the party.” Smiled Jimmy’s father.
“Don’t forget to pay at reception on the way out.” Said the nurse who kept smiling until the door shut behind them.

That evening, Jimmy was almost trembling with excitement. The party was in full swing. All the neighbours from both sides of the street were there as were some of his school chums. The neighbours had glasses of red, green and blue liquid and Jimmy’s friends were all drinking lemonola from squeeze bottles. Jimmy’s father stepped into the middle of the room and clapped his hands. “Attention everybody. Quiet please. It’s time for Jimmy’s birthday present.” He fetched a shiny black case from the side of the room and, laying it on the carpet, he unclipped the brass catches and let it spring open. “Here you are, Jimmy,” he said and he picked up the most beautiful chrome plated five string banjo. Jimmy held it lovingly. It felt so strange. He had never actually held a real banjo before. He had dreamt of this moment. He had imagined how the strings would feel beneath his fingers, how it would feel to be making glorious jangling, crashing banjo music. How his fingers would mover faster and faster as “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” neared its racing breakneck climax. How glorious it would be to hear the applause and shouts of praise. Especially from those of his chums.

His father placed a chair for him to sit on. He flexed his fingers and began to pick.

The neighbours shifted uneasily. Little smiles appeared on the lips of Jimmy’s school chums. Even his mother and father began to look anxiously at each other. Jimmy tried to make the music he had imagined in his dreams but all that was pouring from the banjo was a discordant muddle and jangle of notes. The noise was terrible. An elderly lady from two doors up clapped her hands over her ears. Neighbours put their fingers over their mouths. Jimmy’s chums were laughing openly. Jimmy tried desperately to make the music come but all that happened was that the cacophony grew louder and more awful. Neighbours began pulling on their silver coats and children began to jeer. Jimmy began to feel hot and awkward. He could feel himself going red. Tears began to prickle at his eyes. This was dreadful. This was the twenty-first century. It shouldn’t be possible to feel this amount of shame and humiliation. Not now. Not today. Not on his birthday. Suddenly he threw down the chrome and silver instrument and ran sobbing to his bedroom.

Later his father and mother crept up to see him.
“I rang the transplant place. They were very apologetic, of course. It was an easy mistake to make. The nurse just picked the wrong bottle off the shelf. You can’t really blame her.”
Jimmy’s mother made a little snorting noise.
“We’ll make it up to you somehow. Of course, they wouldn’t give us a refund because they said it would have worked perfectly well if we’d had a saxophone about the house.”
“All I can say is,” said Jimmy’s mother, “That it’s a jolly good job we didn’t go for the permanent option.” And they all laughed.

Donkeys

This is a wasted place, this blasted heath.
Here men have scraped and burnt and dug
For sand and clay and and stone while deep beneath
The ancient, roiling tropic nighttime swamp,
The Habitat of dinosaur and dragonfly,
Is soaked into the yellow sands of time,
The blackened blood from some- prehuman war.
But Now the grotesque scars are soothed and healed
And four brown donkeys work to tame this wilderness
Amidst the autumn warmth of Whin and gorse,
The Home of hare and deer and harrier.
They nod the power into light
And, by their tireless, ceaseless work,
The wilderness creeps out from underneath.

More pictures from Wytch Heath

At the risk of becoming a camera bore, here are some more snaps taken in the chill of a Sunday morning in winter.

Winter Sunrise

For reasons which I shan't go into here, last Sunday the 18th December at five o'clock on a very chilly morning, I found myself wandering about Wytch Heath on the edge of Poole Harbour. I'd been lent a digital camera which I had no idea how to work but I took a few snaps of the sunrise. See what you think.

The Sound of Summer

Those who have been waiting for the first day’s play in the Ashes Test Series against Australia were not disappointed. It was so dramatic I had to keep switching the radio off. For some of us, however, the summer game will never have quite the same resonance since John Arlott handed over his microphone for the last time. For thirty years Arlott’s warm Hampshire burr was the very sound of summer. His commentaries were more than about cricket. They were about the very essence of what it is to be human. One of his favourite quotations: “Who knows of cricket who only cricket know?” But many listeners who remember his sharp, rich and humane words may not have been aware of his other contributions to the worlds of poetry and the anti-apartheid movement. Arlott was an accomplished poet whose work reflected the man. But his lasting legacy was that of the radio producer who discovered, developed and provided work for the young Dylan Thomas. John Arlott and Dylan Thomas were great friends and John realised that he had to do everything in his power to keep the poet functioning even to the extent of loaning him money from his own pocket (and which, he later confirmed, was all paid back).
He was brought up in Basingstoke. The family lived in the gatehouse of the Holy Ghost Chapel (in the graveyard of which the unfortunate May Blunden was buried alive - twice). He attended Fairfields School (since the Basingstoke Drama Centre) and worked as a special constable in the town. He was a great connoisseur of fine wine. He later moved to Alresford and, finally, to Alderney where he died. He was a true liberal (with a small “l”) although he did once stand as a Liberal candidate.
John worked for the sporting boycott of South Africa and was instrumental in bringing the Cape Coloured Cricketer Basil d’Oliveira to England.
John Arlott was the greatest sports broadcaster ever, he was a fine poet and an important contributor to the world as a whole. And although he died in 1991 and his last broadcast was as long ago as 1980 we still miss him .
If you want to hear his voice click here and download the brief audio cliphttp://www.radioacademy.org/halloffame/arlott_j/index.shtml

More Summer Lightning

Whilst I recognised the actual line about Byron in the previous post, I couldn't recall the whole poem. This one is much more the image I was after. Although, who Edward Carpenter was, I quite forgot (I have printed a wickipaedia biography at the end of the poem)

The World-Spirit
By Edward Carpenter (b. 1844)

LIKE soundless summer lightning seen afar,
A halo o’er the grave of all mankind,
O undefinèd dream-embosomed star,
O charm of human love and sorrow twined:


Far, far away beyond the world’s bright streams,
Over the ruined spaces of the lands,
Thy beauty, floating slowly, ever seems
To shine most glorious; then from out our hands

To fade and vanish, evermore to be
Our sorrow, our sweet longing sadly borne,
Our incommunicable mystery
Shrined in the soul’s long night before the morn.

Ah! in the far fled days, how fair the sun
Fell sloping o’er the green flax by the Nile,
Kissed the slow water’s breast, and glancing shone
Where laboured men and maidens, with a smile

Cheating the laggard hours; o’er them the doves
Sailed high in evening blue; the river-wheel
Sang, and was still; and lamps of many loves
Were lit in hearts, long dead to woe or weal.

And, where a shady headland cleaves the light
That like a silver swan floats o’er the deep
Dark purple-stained Aegean, oft the height
Felt from of old some poet-soul upleap,

As in the womb a child before its birth,
Foreboding higher life. Of old, as now,
Smiling the calm sea slept, and woke with mirth
To kiss the strand, and slept again below.

So, from of old, o’er Athens’ god-crowned steep
Or round the shattered bases of great Rome,
Fleeting and passing, as in dreamful sleep,
The shadow-peopled ages go and come:

Sounds of a far-awakened multitude,
With cry of countless voices intertwined,
Harsh strife and stormy roar of battle rude,
Labour and peaceful arts and growth of mind.

And yet, o’er all, the One through many seen,
The phantom Presence moving without fail,
Sweet sense of closelinked life and passion keen
As of the grass waving before the gale.

What art Thou, O that wast and art to be?
Ye forms that once through shady forest-glade
Or golden light-flood wandered lovingly,
What are ye? Nay, though all the past do fade

Ye are not therefore perished, ye whom erst
The eternal Spirit struck with quick desire,
And led and beckoned onward till the first
Slow spark of life became a flaming fire.

Ye are not therefore perished: for behold
To-day ye move about us, and the same
Dark murmur of the past is forward rolled
Another age, and grows with louder fame

Unto the morrow: newer ways are ours,
New thoughts, new fancies, and we deem our lives
New-fashioned in a mould of vaster powers;
But as of old with flesh the spirit strives,

And we but head the strife. Soon shall the song
That rolls all down the ages blend its voice
With our weak utterance and make us strong;
That we, borne forward still, may still rejoice,

Fronting the wave of change. Thou who alone
Changeless remainest, O most mighty Soul,
Hear us before we vanish! O make known
Thyself in us, us in Thy living whole.

Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was a socialist poet, anthologist, and an early homosexual activist.
Born in Brighton, Carpenter attended Trinity College, Cambridge before joining the church as a curate. He was heavily influenced by the minister at his church, the leader of the Christian Socialist movement. Carpenter left the church in 1874 and became a lecturer in astronomy. During this period, he moved to Sheffield to live fairly openly in a same sex relationship with George Merrill. A visit by E.M. Forster to the couple inspired Forster's novel Maurice. Carpenter was also a significant influence on the author D.H. Lawrence.
In 1883, Carpenter joined the Social Democratic Federation, and in 1885 he left to join the Socialist League. After dabbling in the Labour Church movement, and achieving growing acclaim for his Whitman-esque poetry, he became a founder member of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. His pacifism led him to become a vocal opponent of first the Boer War and then the First World War.
In the 1890s, Carpenter began to campaign against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. He strongly believed that sexuality was innate. In 1908, he wrote Intermediate Sex, an important though at the time highly controversial book on the subject.
His groundbreaking 1908 anthology of poems, Iolaus - anthology of friendship was a huge underground success, leading to a more advanced knowledge of homoerotic culture. It went to a second British edition in 1906 and a third edition in 1927. The New York 1917 edition is now available as a free online e-book.
Carpenter was an infuence on photographer Ansel Adams. In his early manhood Adams was... "devoted to the comparative-religious poetry of Edward Carpenter, who had close links with the Theosophical community of Halcyon, in Southern California" (Anne Hammond, Ansel Adams: Equivalent as Expression.).

Summer Lightning (An answer)

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.V. University Journalism.§ 1. Calverley.
THE man in the train has settled habits and views, definite experience of life, its problems and difficulties. The undergraduate changes yearly, and is in the tentative period of youth, though the influence of his school and his restricted atmosphere (in England, at any rate) keep him fairly constant in type. He has much of the freedom of manhood without its responsibilities. For him, life is a comedy, or, at most, a tragi-comedy; he has not begun to understand. He writes, if he writes at all, at leisure, and the product of idle hours beneath the shade, as Horace hints, is not often destined to be remembered beyond the year. Horace, who owed his success largely to a good schoolmaster and the university of Athens, is in tone and form, the ideal poet of university life. He is halfserious, half-sportive, with an exquisite sense of form and metre, and he has more university imitators than a dozen good prose writers can boast. These imitators have a zeal for form due to their reading. The study of the ancient classics gives a sense of conciseness, and a detestation for the mere verbiage which is frequent in ordinary journalism. University journalism thus follows a great tradition, but it does not start a new one.
1
An anarchic age like the present is inclined to underrate the sense of tradition, which does not, perhaps, foster the most seminal minds; but modern masters of prose and verse have mostly been trained in it, and the maxim, “the form, the form alone is eloquent,” is worth remembering. In particular, the sense of comedy which comes from playing at life has found expression in classical parody and light verse. Here, Cambridge can show a long line of masters whom she has trained, from Prior and Praed to Thackeray, Calverley and J. K. Stephen. Oxford, more in touch with the world, has been more serious and more prolific in prophets, but can claim a first-rate professor of the sportive mood in Andrew Lang. Calverley, however, is the leading master and his inimitable short line has had many disciples:

The wit of smooth delicious Matthew Prior,
The rhythmic grace which Hookham Frere displayed,
The summer lightning wreathing Byron’s lyre,
The neat inevitable turns of Praed,
Rhymes to which Hudibras could scarce aspire,
Such metric pranks as Gilbert oft has played,
All these good gifts and others far sublimer
Are found in thee, beloved Cambridge rhymer. 1

Garble from Google

I thought I would make lots of money from this site by having a Google Adsense link on my page. At the beginning of the process I was invited to choose an appropriate language for the wording and I selected "English (UK)". The paragraph that followed contained this sentence: "...you'll finally have a way to both monetise and enhance your content pages."
The split infinitive made me shudder enough but it was the "M" word that had me racing for the Escape Button. I thought the whole point of language was to communicate not to cause choking and nausea. I might try again and select Mandarin Chinese to see if that's any more comprehensible.

Wodehouse

Hacking about in the undergrowth looking for "Summer Lightning" clues, I happened upon this site. No help in my quest but quite a good appreciation of the man and his works.
http://www.pgwodehousebooks.com/aboutus.htm

Summer Lightning

Summer Lightning
Over the summer I have been re-reading some of the great books by P.G. Wodehouse. It is a great pleasure to renew acquaintances with Psmith, Ukridge Wooster and the rest of them. I hadn’t realised that, in the early days, Wodehouse collaborated with George Grossmith; himself the co-author of one of the great comic books of the English language - “The Diary of a Nobody”.
However, one of the titles in the Blandings series has stuck in my mind and has been nagging away like an old tooth. It is “Summer Lightning” and it’s a quotation but I can’t remember from where. It could be A.E. Housman or Rupert Brooke or even Wordsworth but it just won’t come to mind. I’ve scoured all the reference books I can find and I’ve searched the web but drawn a complete blank. There are one or two modern uses of the phrase but they’re obviously long after Wodehouse. So, anyone got any suggestions?

TED

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) 2005 conference in Oxford has just drawn to a close. Did anyone reading this attend? Anything to share?http://www.ted.com/conference/flashpage.cfm?conferenceKey=TG2005

Stay out of the sun

During these long, hot sunny days we don't want to be out in the garden getting burnt and watching the roses wilting under the heat. We want to be inside with the blinds drawn scouring the intenet for excitement. But the heat does turn your thinking processes to "Dead Slow". So for those of you who can’t be bothered trawling the net for anything more titillating, I can recommend the slightly interesting http://www.dullmen.com/home.html. For those of you with a more restless intellectual nature there is http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/ Most of the ideas seem to be a bit old hat but none the less worth exploring. Incidentally, there is meant to be a prize of £1,000 for best new idea here somewhere but I can’t find it.

More Sex , please : we're English speakers

The English language is infinitely variable and adaptable. That’s what makes it so useful for speakers and writers in the twenty-first century when language has to work hard to keep up with an ever changing world. However, there have to be some agreed principles and definitions otherwise there would be an almost instant meltdown of understanding. Communication would no longer be possible as the language became balkanised, just as in the aftermath of the Tower of Babel incident. That’s why old gits like me try to keep some of the old rules alive. Not out of some outmoded colonial or imperial yearning but in the spirit of true universal communication. Let me illustrate: The word “gender” has a particular meaning to us oldies. It is a grammatical term to do with the grouping of nouns and for many languages it prescribes the endings that follow on adjectives. Languages may have two or more genders (French has two, German has three). These genders have little to do with sex. Thus Table in French is feminine, Madchen in German (a little girl) is neuter. Recently, however, the word “gender” has been appropriated for use in place of “sex”. Sex is a good old word and it certainly hasn’t gone out of fashion. Sex is what distinguishes men from women not gender. And yet gender is everywhere. Gender studies, gender awareness, the gender gap. I remember gender studies - hot afternoons in ancient stuffy classrooms wrestling with Latin nouns and adjectives. Lack of gender awareness meant a clip round the ear in Latin translation. It seems to be another example of using a longer, pseudo scientific word when a plain simple one will do perfectly well. So please, for my sake, use the word sex when you mean sex and release me from memories of the gender gap in the Lower Fifth.

Jasper Fforde

I’ve been enjoying reading Jasper Fforde’s novels - The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, and The Well of the Lost Plots. He starts out somewhere East of Michael Moorcock and west of Terry Pratchett but heads south through Lewis Caroll’s tulgey wood with distant views of sixties cult writers like Richard Brautigan. He emerges on the Marlborough Downs somewhere above Swindon from whence the reader can see the plot unfolding through a fog of allusion and obscure references . Probably best appreciated by those who like words and writing but terrific fun. I expect Jasper Fforde is a cult already but I’m always last to catch up with these things. Let me know what you think.

Revenge of the Squish

My family were surprised and horrified when I elected not to go to the first night showing of Star Wars episode XXVllCl. The tickets had been booked months ago and were for the very best Pullman seats with waiter service. (They had no problem finding someone more interesting to accompany them) The fact is: I’m bored with Star Wars. I loved it when it first came out because the whole concept was completely daft. And we love silly stuff. The idea of remaking a Saturday Morning serial for the 1970s when the rest of the world seemed so grim was inspired. We fought enormous duels with our lightsabres during coffee breaks. We were kids again. (Actually those of my generation never grew up in the first place but that’s another story.) The first Star Wars was an adventure yarn, a space western but as the series progressed (or regressed, rather) the idea grew thinner and the scripts clunkier. By episode l there was a distinct sense that George Lucas was beginning to take himself seriously. (There also seems to be a rule that the fatter the CGl budget the thinner the film. cf Troy, Titanic).
Anyway, the Family were happy enough when they got back. I waited up and made them hot drinks after their gruelling night out and they were full of it. So I’m not going to share my thoughts with them at this time. I pass them on to you for your comments. Are my advancing years telling? Have I finally become a curmudgeonly old git? Should I have attended the screening just to be able to discuss the matter fully and in depth from a position of knowledge and authority?

GQT Again

That damn programme keeps nagging away at me like a broken tooth. Can anybody explain this entry I found on Google at the University of Bolton (?) philosophy Research Seminar (??) list for 2001:
December 1st : Dr Nicholas McAdoo: (Open University) “'Gardeners' Question Time' Comes to Königsberg: Kant on Dependent Beauty”

Guardian Short Stories

An old and dear friend of mine has pointed out the work of Dave Egger and the Guardian short story writing competition. Read and enjoy.

Italian Rhyme Schemes

I must be stupid or something. I've been writing libretti and poetry for years and I've never been able to fathom how the great opera librettists of the eighteenth century working with composers like Handel and Mozart could churn out yards of the stuff at the drop of a tricorn hat. It didn't occur to me that there was something specific about the Italian language that made this possible. I found this on several sites (original on Wikipaedia, I think):
"In English, highly repetitive rhyme schemes are unusual. English has more vowel sounds than Italian, for example, meaning that such a scheme would be far more restrictive for an English writer than an Italian one - there are fewer suitable words to match a given pattern. Even such schemes as the terza rima verse form with a rhyme scheme: ("aba bcb cdc ded..."), used by Dante Alighieri to write The Divine Comedy, have been considered too difficult for English."
There you go, the Italian librettists had it easy.

Numbers Stations

There’s been quite a bit of interest lately in the so-called Numbers Stations. These are bizarre transmissions on shortwave radio frequencies mostly consisting of mechanical voices repeating groups of numbers interspersed with odd snatches of tunes and electronic noises. They were noticed during the 1970s and were generally thought to be non-secure transmissions by intelligence agencies to their operatives in the field. Since then the number of Number Stations has increased enormously. Are they hoaxes, radio pirates or, indeed, intelligence traffic? there’s plenty of speculation but the plain fact is that no-one knows but they’re a fertile ground by the paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists. If you want to hear the sort of weirdness that had most of us terrified through the days of the Cold War then listen to some of these sites:
http://home.freeuk.com/spook007/
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/foreign_military_intelligence_agencies/spystatn.html
Or try Google

Puns

I don't want to appear to be giving too many plugs to BBC Radio but as I have more than a passing interest in words and music it's always part of my soundscape. Here's a link to a discussion on the art of the pun:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/wordofmouth.shtml
The presenter is the excellent poet Michael Rosen.

Metaphors

IS THERE a place in the brain where metaphors are understood? A study of patients with localised brain damage suggests there is.

Vilayanur Ramachandran and his colleagues at the University of California at San Diego were intrigued by four patients who were mentally lucid, fluent in English and highly intelligent, but could not understand proverbs.

When one of the patients was asked to explain the adage "all that glitters is not gold", for instance, he completely missed the metaphorical angle, replying that people should be careful when buying jewellery.

All the patients had damage to part of the brain called the left angular gyrus. This lies at the intersection of the brain's temporal, parietal and occipital lobes, which process tactile, auditory and visual information respectively. The findings were presented at a meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society this week in New York.

From issue 2495 of New Scientist magazine, 16 April 2005, page 18

Gardeners' Question Time

I know most people use their Blogs to moan about something or other but I resolved to keep positive and cut out the whingeing. There is something which I feel I have to get off my chest, however: The BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/) is an excellent organisation that produces some very fine and thought-provoking radio programmes including “Thinking Allowed” with Laurie Taylor , “The Material World” ( excruciating puns and quips amid the science and technology) with Quentin Cooper and most of its comedy shows on Radio 4, not to mention Lucie Skeaping on Radio 3. Nevertheless, the charge of dumbing down is proved with such backbone programmes as “Gardeners’ Question Time”. GQT used to be inspirational and aspirational. It dealt with double digging the allotment, top pruning an orchard, clipping the yew hedging. It made use of strong chemicals and back-breaking toil. It wasn’t anything we would engage in but it set a bench mark for all gardeners. It was heroic. “This is what proper gardening is about.” it said. Now what do we get but vine weevils on house plants or pot plants for the patio? It’s all so damned trivial we don’t care any more. And Fred Loads and Bill Sowerbutts and Professor Alan Gemmell are no doubt turning in their double-dug graves.
http://www.tameside.gov.uk/corpgen2/billsower.htm

Welcome To The Future The first story of the Boy from the Year 2000

Jimmy woke up with a start. He lay there with his eyes closed and tried to recall why today was meant to be so special. And then he remembered. It was New Years Day! January the First . It was a New Year, A New Century and a New Millennium. It was the Year Two Thousand. As his eyes flicked open he was already scrambling out of bed. He stopped. And then whooped with delight. Folded neatly over the end of his bed was his new suit. He’d never worn anything like that before but it slipped on easily. It was the most comfortable thing he had ever had to wear. It seemed to be warm yet cool, delightfully soft and of the brightest silver colour he had ever seen.
He rushed to the window and flung back the curtains and gave a little gasp. The cars were all gone and in their places a row of gleaming metallic hovercraft were lined up neatly next to the pavement. Somebody had been busy over night! And as he looked around his jaw dropped even lower. Arching up above the whole town was a great plexiglass dome through which the sun shone brightly and the blue sky and fluffy white clouds rolled by. Through the plexiglass in the far distance where the aerodrome used to be he could see a red plume of fire as a silver cigar shape hurtled upwards. it was followed every few minutes by others until the blue sky was crisscrossed with their white smoke trails. They had started work on the space station already.
Jimmy ran downstairs. His mother and father were already there, both wearing their silver suits. “Morning Jimmy!” boomed his father “Welcome to The Future.” His mother kissed him on the top of his head. “Why, Jimmy, I do believe you’ve grown over night. And if you want to keep on growing you must eat your breakfast.” They laughed and then she motioned him towards the table. Jimmy was a little taken aback to see that all there was on his plate were two pills, one green and one purple. “Is that breakfast?” quavered Jimmy. “If I’ve read the packet correctly, yes. But I suppose it could be supper or Sunday Lunch” They laughed again. Jimmy swallowed the tablets and was astonished to find that they did indeed taste like breakfast. And a very delicious one at that. He closed his eyes and savoured porage with honey, bacon and eggs and waffles all washed down with what seemed to be tropical fruit juice.
Suddenly Jimmy noticed the new computing terminal in the corner of the room. It was a large silver box with red blue and green lights winking on and off. “It will allow us to find out any piece of information that we need including bus time tables and what’s on at the cinema.” Said his Father proudly. “Crumbs” said Jimmy, “That must have cost a pretty penny.” “Not a penny!” Laughed his mother. “Twenty Credits.” You’ll have to get used to the new money but it’s quite simple. A hundred Units to One Credit. All the money in you savings account will have been changed over automatically.”
“Look,” said his father pointing to a large glass plate on the wall, “We’ve even been supplied with a new televisor screen. “Crikey,” said Jimmy, “Can we turn it on?” “We shouldn’t really watch until this evening but I’m sure no-one will mind as today is so special.”
The televisor screen glowed and hummed for a few minutes and then an enormous colour picture nearly three feet across came into focus. It was someone talking. The Prime Minister! And he was talking to them.
“Welcome citizens! Welcome to The Future. As you can see, our operatives have been busy over night. I expect you can understand now why we asked you all to go to bed early last night. There was a lot to do. It’s not quite finished but we’re a good way there.” Jimmy’s parents smiled at each other and nodded.“You’ll be glad to know, however,” the Prime Minister went on “ That as from today, all disease has been eradicated from the world, peace treaties have been signed in all wars and airships and hover trucks are delivering much needed supplies to poor people all over the world. Naturally, today is a holiday for everyone.” Jimmy whooped with joy and his parents smiled and nodded “And all the operatives will be having the rest of the week off for working so hard. As this is The Future there won’t be a great deal of work to do but you will find plenty of money in your bank account even if you are at a bit of a loose end. We have made sure there are a lot of libraries, museums, bathing pools and other leisure activities. I suppose, that there won’t be very much for me to do either as there are no more problems to solve, so join all us politicians by the bandstand in the park and I’ll buy you all an ice cream. Toodle oo.” And the screen went blank. Jimmy smiled. The Twenty first Century was indeed a marvellous place.

Sika Deer Thugs

Once the rutting season is over the stags in the forest have nothing to do but loiter about in groups like gangs of young males on street corners the world over. Last week somebody dumped a Ford Escort in one of the clearings and, although its 4 miles from the nearest road it has gradually been stripped down and broken up. This morning I surprised a group of half-a-dozen stags hanging round the wreck. They were a miserable looking bunch with broken and missing antlers and scruffy coats giving off an altogether shifty and disreputable air. After they had sloped off I wondered what they might have done with the rather nice alloy wheels

Entangled Electrons

For some time I’ve been writing a piece that includes references to developments in particle physics. The trouble is that things move so quickly in the sub-atomic world (Ha ha) that as soon as you begin to get a fuzzy outline of one concept, another one rises up even more bizarre and mind-boggling. This week it’s entangled electrons - an apparent gift for sci-fi writers. Look them up in New Scientist if you don't believe me.

Quatermass

Last night the BBC took the brave step of showing a two hour live remake of the iconic 1950s drama “The Quatermass Experiment”. Apparently, it’s 20 years since the BBC last broadcast a live drama and over that time, television has lost the art of live drama broadcasting and modern audiences miss the immediacy and excitement of this form.
On this occasion the programme makers were able to use 21st century technology with lightweight cameras and lighting while still keeping the majority of the 1950s script with only the minimum of updates. We did indeed get a sense of the tension and excitement with one or two fluffed lines and someone falling over the set. Crucially, this added to the enjoyment rather than detracting from it. If anything, the weak link was the script which, at times, seemed laboured and wooden although it did allow for more expansive and unusual character development than would be accepted by todays writers used to snappy one-liners and stereotype characters. Altogether, a courageous and worthwhile experiment which ought to be developed with new writing.