Cliff Fall - (From Cafe Conversations)

THE MAN

Two teas and a plate of rock buns please.....

The Woman

You nearly pushed me over, you know.

The Man

I know.  Nearly pushed you over.

The Woman

Did you see all the rocks below?

The Man

Must have been, what, hundred feet down.

The Woman

Straight down onto the rocks.

The Man

Did you see the surf?  Crashing over the rocks.

If you’d have survived the fall you would’ve been washed away by the surf.

The Woman

That’s for sure.  And there’s a nasty current there.  You wouldn’t have got me back.

The Man

I’d’ve called the coastguard.

The Woman

They wouldn’t’ve been able to do anything.  Not with that current.

The Man

You’d’ve been well out to sea.  It would’ve been a job for the lifeboat.

The Woman

Would you’ve known what to say?  “I’ve just pushed someone over the cliffs.”?

The Man

Clumsy.

The Woman

Very clumsy.  Still you didn’t.

The Man

What?

The Woman

You didn’t push me over.

The Man

No, I caught you just in time.

The Woman

That was lucky.

The Man

Very lucky.  I could’ve been looking the other way.

The Woman

You were.  That’s why you nearly had me over the edge.

The Man

That’s right.  I was watching that peregrine.  And I just backed into you.

The Woman

That was it.  I was standing on the edge.  On the very brink...

The Man

And I turned to say “Look at that.  Is that a peregrine or a kestrel?”

The Woman

And you just caught me.

The Man

Lucky.  You didn’t tell me what you thought it was.  Peregrine or kestrel.

The Woman

That was because I was nearly halfway down the cliff towards the rocks below.

The Man

So what do you think?

The Woman

What?

The Man

Was it a peregrine or a kestrel?

The Woman

Didn’t get a good enough look.  Mind you, another two seconds and I could have asked it.

The Man

Perhaps I shouldn’t’ve grabbed you, then.

The Woman

It would’ve made a bit of a mess.  I would’ve made a bit of a mess.

The Man

The sea would’ve cleared it up.  A couple of waves and that would be it.

The Woman

You’d have had a lot of questions to answer.

The Man

Like what?

The Woman

Like “why did you push me over the edge of the cliff onto the rocks below”.

The Man

That’s only one question.

The Woman

Well?

The Man

I didn’t push you over.  I was trying to stop you but you missed your footing.  I stood there dumbfounded as you hurtled down the cliff face twisting and turning, bouncing from outcrops like a rag doll until you smashed onto the jagged teeth of the storm lashed rocks below.  I was too horror struck to move.  I knew there was nothing to do.  I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the spot where you had fallen.

The Woman

Pushed more like.  It was a definite shove.

The Man

 Eventually I found the strength to dial the coastguards on my mobile

The Woman

Then what happened?

The Man

Nothing.  I couldn’t get a signal so I had to set off inland leaving the reddened surf to wash the pulp that had been you away.

The Woman

Were you sobbing?

The Man

No.  No.  I was trembling.  With the shock. There may have been tears later.

The Woman

Of the crocodile variety entirely.

The Man

There was a definite prickling behind the eyelids.

The Woman

What happened when the coastguards arrived?

The Man

Oh, they did what they could.  It was all a blur.  The helicopter hovering low over the waves.  The Lifeboat.  I don’t really remember.  And then I was sitting in the coastguard van drinking hot sweet tea out of a thermos.  It tasted metallic.

The Woman

I expect the police would have wanted to ask questions.

The Man

Oh, they were very good.  Very understanding.  The left it for a few days for me to begin to get over the shock and to make the arrangements.

The Woman

Arrangements?

The Man

The funeral.  Of course there would be no grave.  Perhaps a small memorial plaque in the chapel above the cliffs.  Sometimes I return there at this time of year.....  I like to be alone with my thoughts.

The Woman

And the police investigation?

The Man

Inconclusive.  I think they had their suspicions.

The Woman

It was an accident, surely they could see that.

The Man

There was talk in the neighbourhood.  Someone had seen the incident with the washing up gloves.

The Woman

And the shopping trolley?

The Man

Oh, God yes.  The shopping trolley incident.  I couldn’t cover that up.  But there was no actual evidence.  And I wasn’t going to confess.

The Woman

Would you have done?

The Man

In a police state.  In America there would have been extraordinary rendition and unspeakable torture in an eastern European prison camp hidden deep in the forests of Silesia.  I would have cracked. Eventually.  They would have returned me, broken in body and mind to face a lifetime of A-wing confinement and self-reproach.

The Woman

As it was...?

The Man

The Coroner brought in an open verdict and there was shaking of heads in the public gallery.  After that there was no rest.

The Woman

The press...?

The Man

Hounded me unmercifully.  I could have sold my story many times over.  I could have retired to live a life of comparative ease with occasional personal appearances on the Jonathon Ross show.  It would only when I was alone at night in some anonymous hotel room that the memories would have come flooding back.

The Woman

But celebrity of that sort doesn’t last long.

The Man

Thank God.  No, but I still get occasional letters from Phd students researching the great unsolved crimes. 

The Woman

Aha.  Crime!  You let it slip.

The Man

They were students. What could they know?

The Woman

A definite Freudian slip

The Man

And once or twice I’ve been approached for the film rights.

The Woman

So who’s pencilled in for the main part?

The Man

I don’t keep up with the cinema these days.  Barely venture out.  And I don’t have a television.  I like to be alone with my thoughts.  I’ve let my hair and beard grow.  And, I’m afraid to say, my personal hygiene is not what it should be.  My finger nails are so long they curl back and pierce the palms of my hands.  They are my stigmata.  I keep piles of newspapers in the hallway and there is talk that the council will evict me.  Because of the rats.

The Woman

I expect if you had your life over again it would be so different.

The Man

We would have danced and been gay.  Attended parties in the great houses driving home through the darkened lanes in the open top Bentley and picknicked at midnight on the clifftops with the windup gramophone playing charlestons and black bottoms.  The harvest moon would have been big and bright and smiling down on us.  And you would have said...

The Woman

I love you.  I always have loved you and I always will.  We were meant to be.

The Man

The irony is that this is the place, the very place where, in another reality, you plunged to your death.  If I hadn’t caught you just in time.

The Woman

I’m glad you did, though.

The Man

Yes, I’m glad I did.

The Realm of Gold

I had been worried about Chapman for some time.  He had been stuck up that damn mountain for weeks now and there had been no communication.   It wasn’t entriely unusual for him to be out of contact for days on end – his routine of observing all night and sleeping and processing data all day meant that every spare minute was taken up.  But sometimes in the long watches of the night when plates were being exposed he generally still managed to fire off an email or two of inconsequential banter.  Just to let us know that he was still alive.  Then I contacted his department at the University and they hadn’t heard from him either.   What’s more he hadn’t been uploading data to their mainframe for some days.  “Aren’t you worried?”  I asked of some breathless researcher.  “Oh well, you know Chapman” was all she could say and rushed off to deal with some plates that had just arrived from some other observatory in another part of the globe.  The fact is, that I did know Chapman. And I knew what she meant.  I had known him when we were students and we spent hours together in the University observatory watching some planet or other and taking minute observations of some minute oscillation in an effort to detect something or other.  I’m afraid I soon got bored but Chapman grew more and more devoted to his work whilst I would pack up early to get down into the Students Union Bar. After he graduated, Chapman’s career had taken off like a rocket and I was left footslogging round the lower reaches of teaching.  We kept in touch but as Chapman became more and more involved in his work our relatonship dwindled to the email and Facebook variety.  Chapman hadn’t exactly become a recluse or a curmudgeon, in the early days at University he had been quite garrulous at parties and had been known to dance on a table or two at end of term dos but he had become a bit...  well, intense, when it came to astronomy.  He was dedicated and single minded to the extent that he could quite easily forget a student or journalist  who called in for an interview and he’d  wander off leaving his visitor sitting staring at a cup of cold coffee whilst he was happily back at his computer quite oblivious to the bemused  figure sitting silent in his living room.

Chapman had been devoting his time to investigating what happens when galaxies collide.  There was one example of this happening that particularly interested him and he was in the process of writing a very long and detailed paper about it.  Mind you, when galaxies do collide they do it over exceeding long passages of time – so the fact that his paper was taking a decade to appear didn’t seem to bother anyone particularly, certainly not him.  Chapman’s only interest outside of his astronomy was classic literature.  I’m not sure where that came from, he had been keen on physics at school and nothing else and from the moment he first looked through a telescope at University he had become an astronomer.  But in those hours in the observatory whilst the long, long exposures were taking place and he had no immediate data to work with he would settle down with a penguin edition of some Greek text or other for light relief. It may have been a joke but he said that he related to the Greeks because their civilization was happening at just the time his galaxies were beginning their long, slow road accident.

Now he had beetled off to some observatory on a mountain top somewhere in Central America where he worked alone for months at a time.  When he left for this expedition he was tickled by my choice of reading matter that I had found for him – an old volume of a translation of Iliad by his namesake – George Chapman.   On the flyleaf I transcribed the Keats Poem about the book.  He must have read it because, in his dry bantering style, he mentioned that he called the telescope “Homer” – and not as a tribute to the Simpsons either. He referred to the mountain as “Darien” Later he mentioned that he nicknamed his colliding galaxies – “The Realm of Gold” because of their curious hazy yellow colour.  I was pleased that the dedication had obviously given him some amusement.

And now as the weeks swam by and rolled into months and not a word I began to get really worried even if they weren’t concerned about him at the department. From his initial emails I knew he was on his own, literally.  He operated the observatory and telescope on his own and he slept and worked in a small concrete bunkhouse next door.   There was a diesel generator for power and a satellite uplink but apart from his trips down the mountain in an old fourwheel drive every week or so for fuel and provisions he saw no-one.  There was so many possibilities for accidents, falls on the rocky landscape outside, being trapped by the big counterweighted machinery, weather mishaps, accidents in the truck or simple starvation or illness I’m surprised there didn’t seem to be any of the normal academic preoccupation with Health and Safety.

The Easter holidays were looming, I had no committments at home and I felt I owed myself a bit of an adventure – I would get on a plane to Darien or wherever the hell he was and go and rescue him.  And so I did.

I shan’t tell you about the vicissitudes of the journey starting with a tube strike, a go slow by baggage handlers at the airport, Air Traffic control problems and so on and so on.  Suffice it to say that the last straw was that the lone taxi driver from the small town at the foot of the mountain had refused to take me right to the top.  So it was dark when I finally struggled up the rocky path to the observatory.  The white dome loomed above me lit by the intense fire of the stars.  The air was bitterly cold and I regretted the fact that most of my warm clothes were in a suitcase which had probably found its way to Thailand or Fiji. 

I was already shivering and I was getting colder by the minute.  The dome was open so I took it that Chapman was at work.  Obviously there would be no lights on but I could hear no sound of the generator that should be powering the ancilliary equipment.  I felt my way round the dome until I came to the door and pushed it open.  It was stiff as if it had not been used for some time and when it finally gave a little wall of sand had collected at the bottom.  Chapman was sat at the telescope and he had clearly been sat there for a very long time.  In that cold, dry atmosphere his body had begun to mummify.  He was literally frozen stiff.    

In detective stories they talk about the faces of murder victims being frozen into a mask of fear.  At first I thought this was what I was seeing as I sat there shivering trying to decide what to do.  His eyes were wide and his lips drawn back over the teeth in a rictus.   But as I sat there I thought that this wasn’t horror I was looking at but a look of deep astonishment, surprise and, yes, wonder.  I had prepared myself for the possibility of finding Chapman dead and perhaps in a rather unpleasant way but this look ... it unnerved me completely.

Although the generator had run dry, Chapman had been well enough organised to have a few cans of diesel as a reserve and after a few minutes with a torch and a screwdriver I managed to bleed the fuel system and get it running again.  With power and light I began to gather my wits about me.   I found some warm clothes in the bunkhouse and I fired up the computers so that I could contact the Department.  Whoever I spoke to was surprisingly efficient and unfazed as if it was a regular occurrence that lone astronomers starved to death on the tops of mountains.  Perhaps it was. Anyway she was back on the line in a few minutes to say that they had notified the local police and someone would be with me in a couple of hours.

So curiosity made me want to do a little investigating.  I realised at once that murder could be ruled out. It was plain when I passed through the little town at the foot of the mountain that no outsider had been up here and the locals certainly couldn’t be bothered with the long rocky trek. It seemed to me that it was going to be a simple case of heart failure or even starvation.   I wouldn’t put it past him to get so wound up in his work that he forgot to eat. Although I had given up the star-gazing years ago I knew enough from my student days to be able to poke around and try and discover what Chapman had been engaged in and which was so gripping that he had forgotten to keep himself alive.

He had clearly been stacking images to get a better noise reduction. It’s a technique for amplifing a very distant, very faint image by taking a series of exposures over a long period and adding the resulting light images together to get a clearer picture.  But there was something about the way the images were put together that made me stop short.  Chapman had been recording minute shifts in the progress of the collision of The Realm of Gold so that when they images were stacked one on top of the other they became like grating of a cipher. As the sequence of hundreds of separate images progressed it was as though an underlying pattern was emerging.  And I realised that my old friend must have been quite mad at the end.

I don’t know how he managed to doctor the plates but somehow those distant globs of light, those stars and galaxies and fields of dust had clumped into patterns.  Not natural, not random.  They seemed to have a coherence.  It took me the whole three hours till the police arrived to register what I was seeing.   It appeared that those distant points of light were forming themselves into shapes, recognisable coherent shapes.  This whole thing was absurd.  He had gone crazy, that’s for sure.  But had he been crazy before or after those shapes appeared?  They were spelling out words.  The sort of words which, if he hadn’t made them himself, if he hadn’t created them out of his madness, must have shaken Chapman to the very core of his being and left him dumbly staring in wonder and awe.  Staring for so long that he had simply frozen to death.  They said “I’m watching you.”

Oft have I traveled in the realms of gold

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats

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).