Chapter 2 Belief, Bias and Common Humanity. Lies and more lies.

Reality?  Is there such a thing in the Age of Untruth?  Authenticity in Narration

It’s all just stories - none of us knows the truth about anything. But stories are good. They are what we tell ourselves to keep fear at bay, to make sense of our lives, to see things as we want to see them so everything is skewed really. - Stephen Mangan The Times March 5th 2016.

“There’s always a story.  It’s all stories really.  The sun coming up every day is a story.  Everything’s got a story in it.  Change the story, change the world.”  - Terry Pratchett – A Hat Full of Sky.

 Do you sometimes feel that you’ve turned up in life just after the cop cars and the ambulances and the fire engines have just disappeared round the corner, the smashed glass has been swept away and there is nothing left to see? How much of life is lived just out of sight, just round the corner?  It sometimes feels to me as though I’m listening to the world through cotton wool, touching it with boxing gloves.  All I perceive is the shallow and shaky and occasional fleeting moments of experience instead of those big, defining events that everyone else seems to enjoy.

I guess that’s partly my fault.  My young friend Skidmore would sneer at me on his way to the casino or a day out bungee jumping and say  “You live your life second hand.  What do you expect? You only see the world through Facebook and Twitter, through mediated and filtered web sites. If you’ve got  a problem with the world, it’s your fault. You live in a bubble of shared opinion. You only see the world through a tiny knothole of the rotting woodwork of your front door.”

And yes, all sadly true, Skidders, Old Man.   As a writer I need to indulge in the reality of the world around and to provide an all-embracing experience for my audiences.  I want to record and comment on what it is like to be human.  I do it, not by an exact reproduction of the world around, a one to one scale model, but by observing and adapting what I see so that others may see my vision.  To agree or disagree as they see fit.  But at all events I must understand and report with veracity.  What I need is for my audience to trust me, to believe in the world, the ideas I put before them that they are willing to accompany me on my journey and not keep noticing the hollows and blank spaces I have been unable to fill. Where can I find the authentic, real and plausible in this world of the fakery and sham?

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer – Francis Bacon

“Anyway, we don’t do Truth anymore.  Truth is so… last year.”  says Skidmore warming in his opinion.

“What in God’s name “do you even mean when you  ramble on about authenticity and vomit up words  like “reality” or “plausibility”?  “Veracity?”  You make up stories.  You’re a professional liar.  What on earth do you know about truth?  What right do you have to criticise other people for not telling the Truth?”

Good point. I’m not a journalist.  I’m not out to record the details of car crashes or bank robberies.  Not the events themselves at any rate but I do believe I’m trying to capture an authentic human response to what’s going on in the world. 

I am, as I might have said to Skidmore if he’s hung around to listen, an observer. Even if I miss the car crash, somehow, I’ve got to observe the way people react to this sort of event. I’ve got to sniff the air and see which way humanity is heading.  And having got some sense of what’s going on I’ve then got to try to interpret and construct a narrative. Not necessarily about the big events and occurrences but about the little details, the way people react, how they change. 

I realise that as an artist, and more particularly as a playwright, I’m wrestling with two sorts of authenticity.  The authenticity of my response to the world around.  In other words, trying to relay what I see with minimum bullshit.  But I’m also faced with the task of providing an emotionally satisfying and gripping first-hand experience for my audiences that will draw them in and cause them to be engaged in the way that I am.

Before I write poetry or  fiction I need to understand what truth is.

“They’re all liars, cheats and fakes” says Skidmore.  “I wouldn’t vote for any of them”  An all too familiar line and largely accurate.   What is worrying, moreover is that these rogues and charlatans have learnt how to manipulate the press and social media and have discovered that lying and cheating is just as efficacious at moving opinion as a reasoned argument used to be.  But by abjuring from voting Skidmore has let the liars and cheats off the hook.  There is no possibility of the world being any different.   Not all politicians are self-serving and mendacious, but those who are will always have louder voices than those who are not. So, why is it when we seek out people of authenticity to be our representatives in government, do we almost always end up with the self-regarding, bullies, liars and cheats?

The culture of celebrity on television, the celebration of mountebanks by news media provide an ecology in which everyone is fake because we expect nothing else. We have lost trust in politicians and people in authority and thereby we have lost trust in humanity as a whole.  People who appear to be decent enough chaps in the pub we find are working for multinational companies and banking corporations.  They defend what they have to do by saying “We are forced into a course of action by our shareholders.  We are legally obliged to consider the interests of our investors first.”  Those at the bar have an uneasy feeling that this equates to “I was only following orders.” And we all know where that led.  Not only are we uncomfortable with this, it seems to require a form of doublethink way beyond mere hypocrisy.  Can we ever accept a pint from someone like this or trust them to drive our kids to school?

Can I as a playwright do anything to reverse that?  How can I show a more authentic view of humanity that would contribute in some small way to restoring everyone’s faith in the essential goodness of human nature without compromising the truth that people are, indeed, venal, grasping, selfish, prone to violence, self-centred and so on and so forth?

We give out medals for a single act of physical prowess.  How do we reward a lifetime of caring?

"Everything is relative. Stories are being made up all the time - there is no such thing as the truth. You can see how that has filtered its way indirectly into post-truth."  A.C. Grayling

At the same time, this yearning for authentic experience drives the apparent hunger for thrill laden activities and dangerous sports.  I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons that Skidmore spends so much of his time in casinos and bars. Or dangling by his feet from an elastic band over a waterfall. Our quotidian existence is so far from feeling any sort of natural engagement with the world that we must seek out experiences that are near to death. Or bankruptcy. We seek the outlandish, the dangerous, the bitter.  But our search for the authentic experience forces us closer and closer to the inauthentic.  We yearn to hike through authentic countryside, we long to eat authentic Mexican food.  And yet, the closer we get to them the less authentic the experience.  In reality the countryside is cold wet and muddy and entirely mundane. It is a working environment for those who live there and residents experience all sorts of discomforts and disadvantages such as non-existent public transport, thirty miles drives to the local hospital, intermittent phone and broadband and village shops, schools and pubs that close down leaving ghost communities.  The countryside is, frankly, tedious. It is no more than a factory floor with bushes. We do not want the authentic countryside, we want convenient car parks and defined footpaths with the brambles trimmed back.  We need easy access to viewpoints where we can look at the scenery for a few moments and let the dogs run after the sheep before driving back down to the authentic village pub run by a chain from London where we can order Authentic Chipotle straight from the freezer and microwave. We settle for a facsimile of the authentic. 

But there is a dissatisfaction in this clearly hollow view of the world.  It has permeated the whole of 21^st century existence. And the more we are squeezed economically and socially, the more we demand to satisfy this emptiness.

Those who live their lives in extremis, who feel crushed by poverty or by a world they no longer feel part of, will lash out.  They will follow any narrative that offers them a glimmer of hope.  That narrative may be entirely fictitious.,  It may be a fantasy offering a pot of fairy gold at the end of a rainbow, but for those who have nothing it is everything.

An authentic experience is one validated by our senses.  Touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight.  The more senses that are involved the more authentic an experience becomes. It can be brought into even sharper focus by having others experience it with us.  “Did you see that?” we ask and are happy is someone else witnessed it at the same time as we did.  Afterwards, we construct a narrative around the event so that it becomes a reality. It could be an hilarious dinner table story or a heart-stopping drama.  We encompass it and draw delight from the fact that we experienced something truthful at last. But it still doesn’t mean that an experience is true.  Truth, as we are constantly urged to believe, is conditional on context and frames of reference.  It may be possible to say that the authentic experience occurs within space – the here and now while the narrative about it occurs within and over time.  We stand on a clifftop and feel the wind in our face and hear the waves crashing below and smell and taste the salt on the air.  It is the punch in the face, the kick on the shins.  This is a moment of experience.  We need to be absolutely involved in the moment for it to be more than something fleeting and ephemeral. It requires total engagement. And later, the contemplation of that event, the story of that moment, becomes the narrative truth.  We sit in front of a roaring fire and recall that cold, the rain trickling down the back of our necks.  We may laugh about it whatever the shock and discomfort we felt at the time.

But not everyone has the time or the conditioning to go and stand on a clifftop gazing at the ocean waiting for some epiphany of the soul.  And not everyone has the capacity to capture that moment in a form that can be transmitted to others. Sometimes we need an intermediary, a playwright or other artist for instance, to draw our attention to that experience and give us a reason for paying it attention.  If we artists and writers do our job properly we can weave a narrative that carries the audience through the emotional landscape and gives a more accurate, fuller picture of humanity. Fiction or not.

It’s important to be able to understand both the ideas of authenticity of world view and authenticity of experience in order for the playwright to construct a narrative by drawing these two ways of experiencing a moment or an event together. 

Having observed the world and its people the playwright can construct a narrative bringing together elements that would never meet in real life.  Their prime function is to ask the question “What if…?” of the world and the people they observe.  “What if Donald Trump did meet Nelson Mandela?” “What is time travel is possible and we could go back to the beginning of 2016?”  The writer then applies their Imagination.  The creative narrator imagines themselves inside the mind of their character.   She gives it life and credibility and tries to examine what the possible outcome of the question is.  The writer inhabits the multiverse where all outcomes are possible, providing that we apply the rules of humanity and human nature.

John Le Carre, the eminent spy novelist makes a subtle distinction between “authenticity” and “plausibility” meaning, I believe, that merely to present our reality is not enough for a writer.  The world we create may be as far removed from the world we see through our window as we like; what is crucial is that we create a world that is so dense and thought out that the reader or audience never needs to question its veracity.  In just such a way that the work of great scenic designers and directors go unrecognised because they create an all-encompassing  world on the stage of such breadth that we never see round it. By creating such a total world and guiding our audiences through it, we are providing a totally immersive, authentic experience where we can explore issues and ideas that might sit uneasily with our own small experience but which in some way we can describe as True.

Music doesn’t have to be beautiful all the time.    It has to be True. It has to have meaning. It has to articulate something that’s important to be said. -  Natalie Clein Cellist.  BBC Front Row January 12^th 2017

Chapter 1. Belief, bias and common humanity. Blood and Bones. Anger and Frustration.

For me, poetry is the distillation of a moment.  A play is the distillation of a life.

There's a lot of weird stuff about.  It's only to be expected, I suppose.  With seven point odd billion individuals in the world dreaming their dreams and thinking their thoughts, a lot of stuff is bound to come out weird.   How is it that someone can invent a rather gruesome bunch of chemicals, pump it up with carbon dioxide and persuade the rest of the world to drink it?  How can they fry some pink animal derived mush, and persuade us to eat it as if it was food?  Perhaps the really weird thing here is how the rest of us let ourselves be persuaded that these things are good to eat and drink when we have much more palatable things on our kitchen shelves? Such as drain cleaner. And isn’t it interesting that the description I have just given could apply equally to a bottle of Dom Perignon as much as one of coca-cola and to a tartare aller-retour at Heston Blumental’s drive by establishment as to a Macdonald’s burger?

We seem to be living in a world completely out of joint. Trump, Brexit, Putin.  This is the age of irrationality; The Great Endarkenment. Reason and truth no longer have any meaning.   This is the world of hyper reality where we convince ourselves that what we know perfectly well to be Untruth is in fact the Truth. The world is mad and we are all mad in it.  And I'm the worst of the lot. Because I'm a writer working in the world of theatre.  A time waster at a useless piece of frippery that merely adds to the madness because it depends upon people pretending to be someone else uttering words they didn't think up in a stuffy black room that we're all kidding ourselves is the deck of a ship or a ballroom in eighteenth century Vienna or the surface of Mars.

So how does this world madness manifest itself to me sitting at my desk overlooking the bay and distracted by kittens in hats on Facebook? I see people running along the clifftop earphones clamped to their ears completely cut off and unaware of some of the most beautiful sights and sounds in the world. I see it in conspiracy theories about chem. trails and faked moon landings on the internet, in an obtuse willingness to believe the unbelievable and in an urge to take unimportant things far too seriously while there is a disengagement from the things that really are important. I see it in our cowering before self aggrandising slobs who have muscle enough to transform gossip and down-right lies into some sort of ugly narrative for a bleak future in which they become the leaders and priests and only those few will have power to rape and pillage the world with impunity and I ask why we do not rise up to take back the world for ourselves? I see it in a totally bizarre world order that places accumulation of stuff before concern for our neighbour. A world where some are enabled and encouraged to accumulate more and more and more while others are screwed down by a form of austerity not seen for a hundred and fifty years. Where this pursuit of accumulation becomes as mindless as sucking on a mouth ulcer and diverts us from the more interesting things we could be doing with the one precious life we have been granted.  And where this pursuit of greed is being promoted to us as a common good in a relentless propaganda storm from those who already have more than enough. Where what we once all owned is being snatched away and sold off to the highest bidder so that we now have to pay some obscenely adipose feline for what is ours by right while the majority of us sink further and further into poverty. Where the whole fabric of our society is being deliberately ripped apart before our uncomprehending eyes.  And I ask myself how does this all relate to our existence as a story-telling, metaphor using species?  How is it, that the very thing that has made the human species rise up and achieve the possibility of a rich and fulfilled life for us all has been subverted through advertising and propaganda and downright lies into a strangulation of the soul to bring riches beyond comprehension to a very few and misery to so many?

And how is it that the people with the greatest influence in the world are the cheap pulp fiction writers like L. Ron Hubbard who I saw with my own eyes ripping off people in Corfu while he lounged on his motor yacht draped with bikini clad lovelies and Ayn Rand whose laughable, totally daft ideas are yet again echoing down the corridors of the White House and Wall Street and whose books are being promoted to shelves of every Republican politician and industrialist in America and, I bet, on many of the fifth formers at Slough Grammar school.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not for me to quibble about the work of other writers.  We all need to earn a bob or two and I have written a few pulpy pieces in my time and I do feel a warm glow when people say “Your play made me think differently about the world.” Where it all goes tits up is when this sort of fantasy becomes taken for a philosophy and people who should know better take it as some sort of truth.

When you have barricaded the doors and shuttered the windows against the marauding lawless mob and you sit in front of your smoky fire (You have stuffed up the chimney to avoid grenade attacks) with your arsenal of assault rifles and machine pistols What do you think about?  Who is your friend?  Because you will need a friend to talk to at least.  Perhaps you could find someone in another fortress who could trade you a parrot and you could teach that to recite “There is no such thing as society” over and over as you slowly starve to death. If you don't go mad first.

And we still see this facile fifth form fantasy ideology played out in contemporary politics despite the obvious flaws in the thinking. We cannot, in our crowded world, function alone.  The idea of retreating to a small cabin in the woods with a pile of gold and a shotgun to hold the rest of the world at bay would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic. 

This seeping disengagement has caused some of the great human catastrophes of the twentieth century and on into our own, so why is it surprising that we writers should feel we are the ones with a duty to attempt to take back the only thing we still have in common: this language of poetry and metaphor and try and make it a tool for exploring the human experience and place it in a cockpit of the imagination where we can all use it to explore together what it is to be human and how we go about our humanity? In this era of stuff and accumulation of stuff and money for money’s sake and activity for activity’s sake where we yearn to blot out the reality of what is happening in the world with utter mountains of shit and we are so terrified of not having enough we go on accumulating and doing mindlessly until it becomes a habit, a psychosis, it is up to artists to try and cut through this fog of accumulation of junk and try to centre back on people.  Individuals.  Not individuals against the rest of the world- that nasty cut throat world of Ayn Rand or the individuals as mugs to be preyed on that L. Ron Hubbard would have us believe in, but individuals as part of the great interconnected network.  We need to put the spotlight on those individuals and their struggles.  We can use the full force of our imaginations to draw from what we know and place the evidence before our audiences.  We need to help people to speak to people about their hopes and fears, aspirations and disappointments.  We ought to help give a voice to those who are so trodden down by circumstance that they can only lash out in an unreasoned blind fury We need to sweep away all the bullshit of spectacle and superficial soap opera drama and try to explain to the world just what is going on.  We need to use our skills and imaginations to engage our audiences in new worlds of possibilities, new perspectives on this one. Nobody else is going to do it for us.  Not the newspapers or TV.  Not the bizarre world of the internet.  Not even the kittens.  Theatre is fantasy but it is fantasy concerning the real world.

If we writers were as bold as Hubbard and Rand we might be able to help turn the tide against a dreamt up fantasy world order to a more reasoned debate where we seek evidence before we believe and try to accord respect and understanding to our fellow human beings.  Not imposing something that has no basis in the world as it is.

And where once we might have satirised and railed against corrupt and venal governments and officials we now have to take on a great welling black cloud of hate, mistrust, and what I can only describe as a miasma of evil which seems to have no origin but which is suddenly pouring out as if from fissures and cracks in the very normality we see every day and every minute of every day.

Yet I see theatre reduced to an easy spectacle of acrobatics and effects. Somewhere where individuals can be defined only by the issues they represent instead of their inner immutable humanity. It is part of the distraction.  Playwriting has become reduced to the production of endless ten minute pieces for dodgy competitions judged by those who have no idea of what really constitutes theatre.  I see “Theatre makers” lauded who have never had the opportunity to explore and understand the true power of theatre.  The power of theatre that comes down to us in a shaky wavering line from the Greeks of classical antiquity and before that from a deep shamanistic desire to capture the world from our hunter-gatherer forebears.  A theatre that has encompassed Shakepeare, Racine, Behn, Goethe, Ibsen, Chekov. A theatre of Blood and Bones and sinew and Brains.  Big, deep theatre that requires not only an understanding of the world it lives in but, as importantly, a fundamental connection with the craft and skills of the stage and how it is a fundamental coming together of writer, director, technical staff, actor and audience.  It is us speaking together about the world. Theatre is power because it enables us to know things that others do not know and to visit places no one else has been and, because it is fleeting, that knowledge will be between us and no one else. Paradoxically, the illusion of theatre is no illusion. The magic of the theatre is real and enables us to experiment with the very fabric of reality that can only be achieved by those who have committed themselves unequivocally to its dark arts.

As my friend Skidmore would say "If you care that much about it, why don't you get off your arses and do something."

Cirque Berserk at the Peacock Theatre

The last time I saw Martin Burton was forty years ago standing in the High Street Winchester in his Zippo the Clown outfit banging an eight inch nail up his nose.  Since then he has progressed to being an entrepreneur of circus of international standing who can measure himself against the names of Smart, Chipperfield and Mills and if not P.T. Barnum. Which may lead you to suppose he is all about flakey flim flam.   But Martin lives and breathes circus and he has devoted himself to it. He is one of the founders of the Academy of Circus Arts and proud owner of Zippo’s Circus, one of the largest tenting circuses in the country. Now he brings a version of the great tradition to the West End.

Cirque Berserk is Unapologetic circus.  High octane and relentlessly enjoyable.  It is there to remind you, if you have forgotten, just how good circus can be.  There is not a hint of the irony that accompanies some modern circus. There is no bookending with any cod narrative or overblown showmanship, it stands on its own as a marvellous thing that makes even the staidest old watcher’s heart beat a little quicker.  The whole spectacle is put together with the craftsmanship of the West End stage allied with the raw energy and power of a tenting circus.  The music, costume and lighting are of the highest order. The show brings genuine gasps of amazement and whoops of pleasure.

Martin Burton can be justly proud of bringing together such an internationally significant troupe who have developed into a family of individuals who seem to revel in their skills and who delight in sharing them with their audience.

If you want to be philosophic about it, this was a show about pure enjoyment and the pleasure of being alive and if that brings a couple of hours of joy to the lives of those watching then that is all the justification in the world.

New Website

I'll be keeping this blog going for longer pieces of writing but for up to keep up to date with what I'm doing look at my new website www.peterjohncooper.co.uk

Sir Reginald's Christmas Carol

Sir Reginald’s Christmas Carol

You’ll want all day tomorrow, then?” thundered Sir Reginald to his one legged tattooed manservant Phillips.  “So you can get up to some shady dealings with that cut throat crew you roamed the seven seas with on the good ship Nancy?  Spending all day in some shady dock side tavern cooking up your villainies.”

Phillips had despaired of ever getting Sir Reginald to understand that he was given to seasickness and his previous trade had been as a gentleman’s hairdresser in Poole and had never been to sea in his life Not even as far as taking a trip round the Brownsea Island on a motor launch much as less as a pirate.

Clump whirr clump whirr clump whirr.  Phillips continued propelling his master’s bath chair along the cliff top path beneath the pines on this darkening Christmas Eve afternoon.   “”If it’s convenient I would like this evening as well.”

“What!  What!! What!!!”  Sir Reginald was now incandescent with rage.  “The whole of Christmas Day and Christmas Eve.  That’s the sort of anarchy that brought about the downfall of the Empire.  Good God man, have you absolutely no principals at all. I never took a day off in my whole life. We need to fight Communism in all its forms, especially Christmas.”

Phillips, thought that for once in his life he would like to be there when his nephews and nieces were opening their presents and his widowed sister had put a great deal of pressure on him to abandon Sir Reginald for once.

“Perhaps if I am not there, you will not be reminded of Christmas.  I may inadvertently whistle a festive tune.”

“Harrumph.” harrumphed Sir Reginald.

“I will leave everything laid out for you.  There is a fine stilton on the sideboard and vintage port that I have already decanted.”

At the mention of stilton Sir Reginald was somewhat mollified.  He could, perhaps manage an evening and a day with a wheel of Stilton.

“Very well.  But it’ll come off this week’s wages.  I don’t want to be paying to foster your criminal socialist lifestyle.  If I had an ounce of sense I’d report you to the customs and excise forthwith.  I must be going soft.”

As they rounded a corner they came upon a party of small children.  Sir Reginald waved his stick at them.  But instead of fleeing in disorder as they should have done they took the stick waving as some sort of signal and they began to sing.  Their small piping voices filling the afternoon air.

Silent night, holy night

All is calm all is bright

When they had finished Sir Reginald pointed to one of the urchins. His thin clothes were patched and ragged. “You.  Yes, you boy. What have you got to be so cheerful about?”

“Why Sir.” Piped the lad,”It’s Christmas Eve Sir.  We all comes from the orphanage on the other side of town.  Matron can’t afford a turkey nor nuffink but she says if we’re good today we can have spaghetti for dinner tomorrow.  Proper spaghetti out of a tin.  We are collecting for children who are worse off than we are.  Spare us a penny, Sir.”

“A penny!  A penny.  Do you think I’m made of money?”

“Sorry Sir.  We can see you are old and crippled yourself on account of you aving to be pushed about in a bath chair and so on so you must be deserving of charity yourself.”

“Of course I’m deserving.  I didn’t slave away all those years in the service of the king and country to find myself in this state.”

“Well we even’t collected no money as yet but you can share our bag of sweeties that Matron gave us before we come out.”  And so saying a grubby hand holding a paper bag was thrust under Sir Reginald’s nose.  And Sir Reginald, being Sir Reginald took two and popped them in his mouth.  The urchins tumbled past him and made off down the path.  He could hear their voices calling to him in the afternoon air. “A Merry Christmas Sir.” “A merry Christmas.”And “Proper spaghetti from a tin.” Sir Reginald grimaced.  What was this he was sucking?  “A humbug.  Bah.  Christmas.”

And just when he thought he was safe who should encounter on the path but another bath chair going in the contrary direction.  Sir Reginald’s heart sank.  It was the well known suffragist Dame Celia Vole and her constant companion Miss Pymm  a tall angular female of indeterminate years.  She, surprisingly athletic beneath her shapeless grey smock. 

“Out of my way.”  Yelled Sir Reginald.  “My right of way.  Coming through.”

“Good afternoon, Sir Reginald.  And a merry Christmas to you.  Would you like to contribute to the fund for poor refugees?”  and Miss Pymm brandished a tin at him.

“Is that all Christmas has become?  A penny here and a penny there?  You’d bleed me dry if you could.   Christmas has lost all true meaning and just become an excuse for  Money grabbing and swindling.  When will we be able to return to the true spirit of Christmas and leave people like me alone?”

“Come come Sir Reginald.  You know the donation of a small gift would give you a feeling of warm satisfaction.”

“The only thing that would give me any satisfaction would be loading all your refugees into a boat and throwing you in with them and setting you off to sail to somewhere where you can’t bother me any more.”

“It strikes me you have a great deal to learn about Christmas. You must be eligible for a visit from the three spirits.”

“You Madam appear to have gone utterly ga-ga.  I can’t make any sense out of your communistic blathering.”

“ You know, Dickens...  Christmas Carol...”

“I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Surely even you...Three ghosts visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve and teach him a valuable lesson about the season.  ”

“You mean like the damnable interfering Social Services. And who pays for those?  It’s that socialist town council wasting my hard earned money.”

“Never mind.”  Says Dame Cecila Vole. “A Merry Christmas anyway.”

Back at Grand Marine Court, Sir Reginald was preparing for bed.  He had on his long striped nightshirt and his betasselled night cap.  He seemed almost gleeful as he scooped another plateful of the stilton and poured himself a generous measure of the twinkling ruby port wine.  Tonight there was no Phillips to look disapprovingly at his over indulgence.  No, he was content. He settled back in his arm chair and dozed off.  He was rudely shaken awake by a sudden knocking at the door.

“What the Dickens,” he muttered.  Where was Phillips when you needed him?  Nevertheless he turned the handle and there stood a small boy.  He looked suspiciously like the orphan from the West Cliff.  The lad was holding a steaming bowl of spaghetti.  “I am the ghost of Christmas pasta.”  He twirled rapidly with his fork. “long pasta.”

“A ghost eh?  Shouldn’t be allowed. I’ll have the pest control officer here in the morning.”

“I have come to show you your past life and tell you where you went wrong.”

Now the one thing Sir Reginald did not want shown him was his past.  There might be too many questions about his tax affairs and how he came to be awarded quite so many medals and honours for his services to India when the furthest East he ever got was Walthamstow.

“No.  Not interested Sonny.  Sling your hook” and he slammed the door and he settled back in his armchair, his heart hammering with fear that they might at last have caught up with him.

Barely had he closed his eyes when then there was another knock on the door.

“Now what.” He fumed leaping up.  There stood the same urchin as before.  “Persistent little devil aren’t you?”

“Please Sir I am the ghost of Christmas present.”

“You said just now you were the ghost of Christmas past.”

“Cutbacks Sir.  I’m doubling up tonight.  Let me show you what is happening in the Phillips household.”  And there they were apparently hovering in mid air in a modest council flat in Poole.  There propped against the fireplace a wooden leg, sad and forlorn.  The children gathered round the table looking at the frugal meal set before them. Their eyes were tear stained  and their cheeks were hollow from their weeping. “Poor Tiny Tim” said the woman, evidently the Phillips sister.  They all started wailing anew.  “Never mind children” said Phillips, “I’ll buy you a new guinea pig when I can afford it.”

The widow’s lips quivered “That skinflint Master of yours.  If he paid you enough we could have guinea pig every Sunday.”

Phillips, balancing on one leg raised his glass and said “God bless us every one.”

“Damn his eyes, the ungrateful wretch.  I’ll dock him two weeks wages for that.” and he aimed a kick at the ghost of Christmas Present who left as quickly as he had come.

As before he had barely closed his eyes when there came a third knock.

Damn the damnable Communists.  He bellowed and flung the door wide.  “I suppose you’re the third apparition.  Perhaps after you’ve done your party piece you can leave me alone.

“I see the future.  A coffin with your name on it.  And people dancing.  They are dancing on your grave.”

“That’s excellent news.  I’m going to be buried at sea. If that’s all of you perhaps I can get a proper night’s sleep.” And his sleep was indeed long and untroubled.

The next afternoon, when Phillips stumped back in he found his master in surprisingly good spirits.

“Did you have a good day, Sir?”

“No I damn well, did not.  I had the most terrible dreams last night.  I was visited by strange apparitions that showed me scenes from my life in the past and future.  I feel wretched today.”

“I’m sorry to hear that Sir.”

At least what that old trout Vole said has come true.  My dreams have taught me a valuable lesson.”

“Oh, may I enquire what that is?”

“Not to eat so much bloody cheese before I go to bed.”

A Bottle of Bass

Its a cold, wet, windy November afternoon and the light is fading fast.  I nip the top off the Bottle of Bass and pour an inch or two into a glass to sample it. It is bitter and smooth as cream.  And suddenly, exactly like Proust and his madelaine I am transported back in time to a world long gone. Fifty years pass in a moment.  It is another cold wet November afternoon.  I am twelve or thirteen and I am a beater for a big shoot on the estate where we live.  My hands are numb with cold and the rain is trickling down my collar but I am deliriously happy.  Working on the shoot was a great event and with the other twenty or thirty people from the village I feel entirely grown up.  There is no division between the older men and the boys.  We are all paid the same (A good wedge for a day's work).  We all get a brace of pheasants to take home and at dinner time (twelve o'clock) the back of one of the landrovers is opened and there are boxes of sandwiches (thick generous slices of chicken and ham) and crates of pale ale and brown ale. Somebody asks me what I prefer and, not really having tried either, I opt for the pale ale. Yes, that first taste, as bitter smooth as today. We sit on bales on the trailers that are our transport around the Hampshire woodlands and I think "This is the moment.  This is it."

Several lifetimes later, as a vegetarian and against bloodsports I couldn't be further removed from that day. But the bottle of Bass reminds me who I was and I am content with that.

An Acte for the Reliefe of the Poore (1601)

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century a man called Thomas St. Gubbington (Or St Gubbins or Hubbins) printed a series of pamphlets in Ghent concerning the plight of the poor. Whether Queen Elizabeth l was ever aware of these is debatable but her reign marked a series of laws that provided for the relief of the poor and which became the foundation for the welfare state that has continued as a proud part of English society four hundred years later.  These pamphlets have all but disappeared but one or two can be found reproduced on the web.

 

A seer lay down and dreamed and in that dream he went into a strange country and he saw things which were to come in that country.

He walked about the streets of a great city and he saw many great buildings and storehouses and granaries that were full to overflowing.  And many men went about in the streets of that place who had high office and who wore fine raiment and had many servants. He saw also beggars that were lying in the dust and those with raiment that was filthy and torn.  There were many who were sick and who asked for alms but who were turned away.

And he asked of one of those who went about in this city whyfore was it that so many were in want when the granaries and storehouses were full to overflowing. And he said:  “The men who are rich are few and those who are in want are many and if that which is in the storehouses and granaries is shared with the poor then we shall have to give up one portion of our riches and that would be intolerable.”

And the seer asked and said “Is it not your duty to bring succour to those who are in want?”

And the rich man mocked the seer and said: “Whyfore should I give up so much as one groat of my riches? For my riches have been bequeathed to me by my father and my father’s father and are mine by right.  If the poor man want riches then he should labour for them until the sweat runneth from his brow and so should his children and their children’s children even unto the seventh generation and they will not have money enough for them to be called rich because it is not ordained so.  Therefore must I keep my wealth unto my bosom and not let one groat of it slip from me.”

And the seer asked him: “Is there no charity in this city?”

And the rich man answered him saying: “Let he who wanteth of charity provide the charity.  I want for nothing therefore I need it not.”

And again the seer asked him: “Is there no pity in this land?”

And the rich man said: “Pity taketh away from the pride that all men should feel.  Whyfore should I deprive him of pride who has naught else?”

And the seer saw the rich man go in at his door and he saw a poor man afflicted with sores seeking alms at the door in the manner of Lazarus at the door of Dives.

And the rich man sayeth: “Let the poor man be turned away from my door and let my servants beat him with sticks and with cudgels because he is an abomination in my sight.  And I shall stand in an high place and watch as the poor man is beaten until he departeth and goeth privily into a lowly place and it shall bring me joy that the poor man is seen no more

And there shall be no balm for his hurts because the poor man is as a clod under my sandal.”

And the rich man continued to preach; “And all sick men shall likewise be turned away as they have no money wherewith to pay. And they shall lie down with the stones of the street for a pillow because they have nowhere else for a shelter. The rich man shall be exalted and the poor man shall be cast down.  For to he that hath will be given an hundredfold, yea a thousandfold and from the poor man will be taken away the little he hath and shall be given unto the rich man even though the rich man hath not deserved it.  And those that are raised up shall be blessed and those that are cast down shall be cursed.  And those with nowhere to lay their head shall be spat on and derided. And those seeking succour shall be turned away.  And those cursed with demons will rent their garments and run naked as there is no succour for them.  And the laughter in high places will be loud at the plight of those who are cast down and those that are exalted will drink wine and hold council how to diminish those who toil by the sweat of their brow and to take unto themselves more and more of the goodness of the land.

And the rich men will appoint councillors who will speak together with the money lenders and they will make laws so that all this will come to pass and more things.

And the councillors shall decree that the widow be cast down and her children and her children’s children.  And if the widow hath so much as one room in the house more than the one that is needed for her to lie in then it will be taxed even if the widow has no money wherewith to pay.  And the taxes shall be divided among the rich men and the widow shall be sent weeping from her door.  And there shall be no more alms for the poor or succour for sick so that the councillors may wash their hands of them utterly.”

And the seer saw that all this came to pass and a darkness will come upon the land and the people of the land were cursed. And when he awoke he was sore troubled as to what the dream could mean...

The Old School House Boscombe Blue Plaque Ceremony

I originally wrote this in March 2012 as a contribution to the struggle to keep the Old School House Arts Centre in Boscombe from being demolished.  The campaign was partially successful and today a blue plaque was installed to comemorate the work of Sir Percy Florence Shelley (son of the poet Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley of ,Frankensttein, fame) who gave the building to the people of Boscombe.  Percy Florence was a great supporter of the arts  and of theatre in particular.  I have updated the poem tofit a happier time.

Rededication

Let us rededicate this building to the arts

Let us drive out the shadows of utilitarianism

Of Mediocrity, of settling for second best

Let us protest

That this is a place of striving

And creating

And trying for something just out of reach

Because that is what the arts are.

Let us rededicate this building to

Photography

To sculpture

To painting

To poetry

To theatre

To story telling

To writing

To knitting

To singing

To sewing

To dancing

To remembering

What happened here

To thinking of the future

To living in the now

Art is choice because

“Choice defines and expresses individual identity”

What we choose to put in or leave out of an artwork

Is What we choose to put in or leave out of life

Art is movement.

It is the spinning of the potter’s wheel

It is the drawing of the bow across the strings.

It is the dancer pirouetting in the sunset,

It is the painter’s brush

And the mime artist’s hush.

And because it is movement

It is of the moment.

It is ephemeral and gone in an instant

To live on as a memory

And as a moment of change.

Let us rededicate it to children covered in paint

That they may go home gloriously happy

Ignoring their parents’ and carers’ tutting.

To those who have no other voices

That they may sing out loud and be heard

To those who have no other family

That this may be a place where they may sit and spin yarns

Let us remember here

That without arts

We cannot grasp the past

And, by running our finger tips and lips over it,

Understand it and ourselves;

That without arts

We cannot draw the future and try to dance with it

And understand what we and the world could be;

That without arts

We cannot mould the present

And hold it to the light up so that we can say

“That is good”

And when good people

Ask us whether

We would rather have the arts or houses, or the NHS or Social Services

We must answer boldly

“We need both”

Because without arts

There will be no point in having the others

Let us rededicate this building to the arts

Let us drive out the shadows of utilitarianism

Of Mediocrity, of settling for second best

Let us protest

That this is a place of striving

And creating

And trying for something just out of reach

Because that is what life is.

Sir Reginald's Exciting Ride

Sir Reginald is dozing in his bath chair in his garden.  He regards it as his garden because he feels he has the right to it.  After all those rates he has paid to those communists in the Council over the years he feels he deserves it.  As for the other hundred thousand or so rate payers of the Borough they can have their own squalid little parks and gardens if they want, as long as they don’t intrude on his.  Sir Reginald’s Panama is pulled down over his eyes and all that can be seen of his face is an occasional drop of sweat that runs along to one end or other of his well waxed moustaches and falls onto the collar of his linen jacket.  Sir Reginald is uncomfortable in the heat and has already dispatched Phillips his one legged manservant to Grand Marine Court for a whisky and a jug of iced barley water several times that afternoon.  “Chotapeg”. He barks, just as they did in the heady hot afternoons of the Raj. He dreams of the Raj and his service to it although his record shows that he never managed to get any further East than Gravesend.  And quite what he was doing in Gravesend he draws a mental veil over. So he sits uncomfortably in the wicker bath chair and dreams of what might have been.

All is not well with Sir Reginald.  Apart from the heat and the intolerable slowness of Phillips, there are interruptions from the wasps which he detests from the bottom of his soul and from trippers whom he hates even more. “Idle wretches,” he fumes from beneath the Panama. “Spineless sissies. Why aren’t they at work?”  Socialists who undoubtedly spread margarine on their horrid jam sandwiches in their nasty little guest houses with peeling wall-paper and squadrons of wasp cadavers festooning the flypaper that hangs from the naked light bulb in the ceiling.  He shudders.  Holidays?  It would be kinder to let them suffer in their stuffy grimy offices or coal mines or steel foundries or whatever grim workplaces they inhabit all the other weeks of their appalling socialist lives. 

A tall man wearing a splendid beard and a turban wanders along the cliffedge path.  His wife clings to his arm and giggles in mock horror at the precipice below.  She wears a swirling pink sari.  Sir Reginald harrumphs under his hat.  To be fair to him, his harrumph is not racially motivated.  Sir Reginald is scrupulously unbiased in his thinking about his fellow man.  Black, white, pink, brown.  They are all equally loathsome in his sight.  But there is something about this elegant Sikh that makes him even more maudlin about the crumbling empire and the what-might-have-been of the world. He feels that in an entirely just world he would have been promoted to Viceroy or governor of some far-flung outpost at least.  Then there would have been no namby pamby caving in to the nationalists. Under his guidance the Empire would have continued to grow and flourish.  The colonies, Australia and Canada would have been reunited with their rightful masters and America.  Ah America a stupid lost opportunity there. Raving mad George the Third let us all down. Just think if not just half the world was coloured pink on the atlas but three quarters at least.  Most would gladly pay fealty to it.  Us. Me. China, directionless and impoverished would relish a proper management for their tea plantations and whatever else they grew there, certainly and then the rest of Asia, so probably Russia would very soon come knocking at the door.  Africa was ours by right anyway.  We found it. Oh and France.  Stupid stupid King John for letting France go. That would just leave Germany...  Think of the medal tally at the Olympics! Then there would be a search for a leader.  There could only be one.  One with vision.  An Alexander the Great.  He can hear the growing roar of the crowd as he rides triumphantly in his chariot through the great capital cities of the now great again Empire.  He holds his hand aloft to acknowledge the crowd’s acclamation.  “Sir!  Sir!! Sir Reginald.”  He is galloping onwards, faster and faster.  The chariot wheels rumbling over the vast arenas and maidans where his subjects are gathered in durbar. “Sir!  Sir!”  In his reverie The Empire is back! A sudden breeze lifts his Panama from his head and whirls it away.  A figure in a turban surrounded by gaudy coloured silks is standing beside the path to one side of his chariot. A figure with a brown face.  “Out of my way you Nincompoop.  Can’t you see I am conquering the world? What are you doing here? Mind out of the way.” 

“But Sir.  Look where you are headed”

And indeed, Sir Reginald’s bath chair is now headed down the slope across the greensward towards the cliff edge.

“Phillips!” In the space of a few seconds Sir Reginald’s emotions has gone from maudlin sentimentality, to proud fantasy to abject terror.  Sir Reginald does not do emotion very well.  “Phillips you utter dunderheaded, misbegotten, treacherous... fool.” Sir Reginald whimpers.

Phillips is stumping down the incline as fast as his wooden leg will carry him. Chotapeg and jug carefully balanced on a silver salver. Clump, clump, clump a clumpity clumpity clump. His tattooed arms reach out for the bath chair handles but his good leg catches in a molehill and he cartwheels away. He executes a perfect full twisting somersault with pike and lands on his good leg and with the salver still carefully poised.

“No time for your stupid circus stunts you abject wretch.” roars Sir Reginald, his voice returning to its default setting. But by now the chariot is well ahead of Phillips. Sir Reginald grimaces as he watches his doom approaching. He tries to remember the prayers his Nanny taught him kneeling by his bedside.  “Dear God.  I fervently believe, something.  Something. Damn it, who was it who was meant to be my saviour.  Well he damn well needs to get saving me.  And quickly, Jesus Christ, that was the fellow.  Jesus Christ Save Me!” At that moment a figure appears as if from nowhere.  It is the gentleman with the turban.  He catches the side of the bath chair which rears up like a dinosaur from a swamp. “Careful, you fool, you’ll have me over.”  And indeed the bath chair is skilfully manouevered off its wheels onto its side where it skids to a stop. 

“You damn blithering idiotic nincompoops.” Whimpers Sir Reginald to no one in particular.

“Here let me examine you, old chap.” Says the gentleman in the turban.

“Unhand me sirrah.” Splutters Sir Reginald.

“Now now.  I am a doctor.  Let me see if anything is broken.”

“A doctor?”

“I have a practice in Harley Street.  No.  Nothing broken.” He hands over his card.  “Come and see me when you’re next in town.”

By now Phillips has arrived and he and the doctor set the bath chair upright and help the occupant back in.

“Blast you Phillips.  Trying to kill me again.  This is the end of it.  You’re fired.  Once and for all. Leaving the brake off.”

But Phillips suddenly produces as if from nowhere a silver salver with a glass on it.

“Chotapeg, Sir.” He says

Sir Reginald drinks the glass down in one.

“I should come and see me about your blood pressure. I have consulting rooms in Bournemouth if you don’t travel.  Drop in any time.  I don’t like the colour of your face.  Not good at all.”

“What!  You don’t like the colour of my face.” splutters Sir Reginald, “I have absolutely no intention...” but the doctor has marched briskly away to take the arm of his wife along the cliff path. Phillips begins to wheel his employer back up towards Grand Marine Court. Sir Reginald’s voice fades into the hot afternoon air.

“Where’s my blasted panama?  If that’s damaged it’ll come out of your wages.  A doctor indeed.  Whatever will they think of next?  I suppose it’s the heat brings them out.  Like wasps.”

Mars Trip Adviser

When was the last time you got back from a holiday on Mars and said “Never again. I should’ve taken more notice of Trip Advisor.  One star is only just up from an asteroid.    And the Grrzztz family would be disappointed if we didn’t renew the booking before we catch the Earthside.”? I mean Mars used to be the hot ticket, the place to go, the hip and happening place in the Solar System when it was first opened up to Earthsiders. We all wanted to be seen there lounging by the canals, see it before it was spoilt by tourism. There were some great sights Olympus Mons rearing its frosted crest against the indigo sky. That was before they put in ski lifts and built KFCs on the flanks. The Gale crater with its uninterrupted views for ninety six miles from rim to rim, before they built rows of hotel domes around the edge like a nasty outbreak of genital warts. And the canals flowing deep and green and wide across the red deserts before the mining waste and chocolate brown slurry outflow.  Bloody Martians, if they want tourists they should look after their planet more.  The visitor does not want to be reminded of their home planet whilst they’re paying top dollar for the Red experience.

And what happened to the welcome at the Spaceport? Originally all part of the experience.  The groups of dancers.  Little green men jiggling their strange assortment of green parts to their strange gonging music and then hanging garlands of moss and algae round your neck.  I mean, the moss had an unpleasant sliminess to it and the smell of the algae.  I say little green men as a generic.  God knows if there was such a thing as a little green woman and how on earth you would tell them apart if there were. Never mind, we knew the whole thing was authentic and it seemed to please the little green creatures who were performing the welcome.  It isn’t like that now.  The streams of tourists are met by a superficial standardised jiggle with the interesting bits covered by aprons and boiler suits.  And the garlands are no more than cheap plastic representations.  I suppose the only bit of authenticity is the smell. The majority of the Martians don’t seem to be as excited as they once were by us tourists and seem to sit or lounge around the spaceport as if they owned the place.  I mean, good God you have to work to get your Trip Adviser stars. Since the mining companies found those huge natural deposits of cocoa below the southern ice caps. They seem to exist on chocolate based confectionary that they consume in those little cafes... what do they call them?  Mars Bars?  Getting above themselves, that’s what I think.

No, Mars is no longer what it once was as a destination so those of us who write about such things have been exploring the less visited parts of the Solar System. 

After a quick tour around the outer reaches of the Kuiper belt and the minor planets I had really had enough.  Take it from me Pluto is an entirely dismal place, nothing but frozen wilderness.  I mean once you’ve seen one methane lake or suffered one carbon dioxide snowstorm then you’ve seen the lot. And given that they’re plunged in darkness for billions of years at a time, the night life is as dismal as any part of Yeovil on a wet Saturday.  It just ain't worth the eighteen year round trip. And it’s all owned by Martians.  What in God’s name are they doing out there?

No, I wanted a planet with a bit of pizzaz.  A bit of get up go without having yet been overwhelmed by overweight and over there Earthies.  That’s why I’ve just got back from Venus. Now, I’m not saying that it’s perfect.  Still a bit primitive but definitely an air of exclusivity.  One seems to be above the rat race.  In fact you are literally for the floating hotels of Venus are great multicoloured blimps hanging in the dense carbon-dioxide atmosphere far above the surface which is hot enough to melt lead.  And I mean that literally.  I mean it is literally hot enough to melt lead.  The scientists say it is caused by the sort of runaway greenhouse effect that we’re running into on earth.  But, as with everything Earthside we are centuries behind these pacemakers.  The blimp hotels are all owned and run by Earthsiders though so we have the best of both worlds, clean towels and linen as well as the deliciously hot Venusian atmosphere.  These great ships are more like enormous clouds, up to five miles across so plenty of room to avoid that execrable family from Swindon with the kids who should have been put down for school on Saturn at birth so that they would not be running up and down the aisles of the shuttle demanding space cola.  Or preferably put down altogether.  God, if they are going to be the visitors of the future then this isn’t going to last for long.  Them or the Martians. So book now for Venus.  There ain’t going to be anywhere else to go.

Thanks for the call but I'm sorry to say I won't be voting for you.

We may not see eye to eye but we are together in this thing and we have to rub along somehow because, I reckon we need each other.  I mean, I know you are a big shot in the city with a pink striped shirt and gold cufflinks and I’m only a poet with funny glasses and a little beard .  I know you’re busy making a lot of money for the country, I appreciate that, I really do.  Maybe I’m there to do some of the things that you haven’t got time for.  Like trying to get a handle on some of those big questions such as what are we all doing here and why.     But give me a couple of hours to notice the waves and the wind and the grass blowing on the cliff-top the way you don’t have time to do and I’ll happily share it with you in some sort of entertaining poem.  Money is of little interest to me so I suppose I am just as much a misfit as you are in the general run of things.  Me, for my blindness to wealth, you for your need to acquire more and more beyond satisfying any rational want. I’ve always thought that must be a terrible affliction.  I have a sort of inkling what it’s like because I like to collect sea shells and fossils. Perhaps this mania for collecting is some sort of substitute for the funny, knockabout, not-having-anything-much childhood that makes people grow up to be useful and productive members of society as my Mum would have put it.   

I had a wonderful life as a kid and it gave me the confidence to set off on my own as a writer.  You must have missed out a lot.  Bundled off to prep school at the age of eight and being bullied by the bigger kids.  I know that’s all part of life and it makes a man of you but I bet  sometimes you wonder if things would have been just a little bit better if you’d had a more normal life with a Mum and Dad.  Or even two Mums or Two Dads. Or if there was just someone who cared.  Either way I feel sorry for what the lack of human love must have done for you.  No wonder you don’t believe in society- you’ve never known it.  Unless we talk about THAT society.  That substitute for love you had to endure. You know that dog eat dog group of rejected misfits like you where the guys thought up ridiculous steel edged visions of the world based on your fifth form economics and reading trashy American pulp fantasy novels by Ayn Rand and drinking yourself stupid and throwing food around.  

No, because, you see, we both belong to a community that’s bigger than that and includes all the misfits and poets like you and me but also all the shirkers and slackers and sick people and those who can’t cope one way or another and those who weren’t blessed with the wits that you and I have.  And all the honest, decent folk who try hard to support you by making the stuff you need and who buy and sell and keep you in business.   Maybe we could liken it to a raft that we’re all clinging to and all doing our best to get this thing to land somewhere.  Or is that a bit of a facile analogy?  Never mind that’s my problem, not yours.  I’ll try to think about a better one.  

But I’m afraid to say that I can’t vote for your harsh, Gradgrind ideology born out of hate and despair in which your love of accumulation is the only way to a future where we must retreat to our own cabin in the woods with a shotgun and a bottle of tequila and keep the threatening hordes at bay. Maybe, if I see a bit less of the naked greed thing and a bit more of the working together... The truth is, we are all in this together and we need to work together not against each other.  And what you do, making money, paying taxes does a brilliant job helping the needy, the sick and the disabled and those who are escaping tyranny and poverty. Thanks for your efforts and I’ll try to keep the poetry going in return.