Poetry, Procrastination and Pampas Grass

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I am now on a 62 day activity streak. I know this because WP tells me so. To get this one I have had to log in and procrastinate for two months. It doesn’t rank up there with the Nobel Peace Prize, Oxford Professor of Poetry, or a Blue Peter Badge.

The Oxford professorship is still in my mind from a conversation I had with Julia recently. I can’t remember how I started on the train of thought but she asked me what I was thinking about, as she sometimes does. The honest answer, much of the time is “absolutely nothing”, but I try to make something up. If she can be bothered to ask, I really ought to make the attempt to be interesting.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A couple of days ago I was honestly able to answer “I was just thinking that I’m glad I never applied to be Oxford professor of Poetry. It’s too political.”

You also need to be good at poetry, but I never let that sort of thing intrude into my thoughts.

To Julia’s credit, she didn’t miss a beat, just asked me more about it. From there we got onto the subject of Simon Armitage’s haircut. It’s not so bad at the moment but a few years ago it looked like a cross between a mop and a desperate cry for help in the midst of a mid-life crisis. I’m clearly not one to talk as both my hairstyles are questionable (billiard ball or “rough sleeper” being the two options), but it was very noticeable. Even Julia noticed it, and she is usually quite accepting of hirsute horror shows.

Thinking about it, I should probably have made something up along the lines of “How lucky I am to be married to you dear.” but I missed my chance and only just realised.

Here’s a link to Simon Armitage’s poem Chainsaw versus the Pampas Grass.  The commentary accompanying the poem says the poem is about overkill. That commentary is clearly written by someone who has never had to manage pampas grass in a garden. The last one I removed needed a hedge trimmer and an axe. The hole it left looked like the garden had been the victim of shellfire.

 

 

A Good Start to the Day

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Poppy

Compared to Nottingham, Peterborough is a joy to drive around. It is smaller, to be fair, and the road system is newer. The roads were built to serve the new townships and industrial areas as they6 were built as part of the expansion plan for the city. Nottingham’s roads are simply an attempt to impose order on a sprawling built-up area that already existed. It’s even better during the school holidays when traffic is lighter.

There were roadworks on the way – they are filling in an underpass, using 418 cubic metres of cement (192m lorry loads) and topping it off with  18 cubic meters of what they describe as “grout”, though I don’t suppose it is the same stuff they use to fill the gaps between bathroom tiles.

Poppy and chamomile

They have removed 35 trees as part of the process (I didn’t know there were 34 trees there, and can’t see where they have gone from) and will replace them with 49 new trees. These must be very small trees.

Anyway, all this is just to say, I took Julia and my sister to the station this morning. They are going to an art exhibition in Nottingham, to see the Monet exhibit, though “exhibition” may not be the right word.

Meanwhile, I have been to the pharmacy and laid down drafts for five poems (which I managed to remember before they faded away), so I am feeling quite pleased with myself.

I am now going to have a cup of tea and watch a little TV whilst a fan blows cool air over me. I shouldn’t really watch Tv in the morning, but Julia is not here to talk to and I am fed up of typing.

 

Wild flowers

Another Day, Another Poem

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My apologies, I have been a bit erratic and those of you who notice such things may have registered my absence for part of the week. It is simply a case of me using my time unwisely. I have caught up with some of it but have decided to let slide.

My apologies, too, for two poems in two days. There’s something tedious about poets publishing their own poetry in quantity, but these two fit together so I thought I’d do them both.

In the meantime, I have had a poem accepted, submitted a few more and had a piece used in a local newsletter. It was based on Major Becher. I have written about him before in several places. I really should go back and make a correction – his son was not killed in a plane crash, but in  an Italian bombing raid. Same result, but different details.

I said, in a previous post, I was going to publish my other, unsuccessful, nomination for the anthology. In a number of ways I prefer this one and would be interested in hearing what people think.

It is 105 words and it is complete. That as i keep saying to people. is the beauty of writing poetry compared to novels.

Autodidact with Knife and Fork

Workmen drag temporary traffic lights into place as their companions spray bright colours on the road. An old lady stoops suddenly, pulls a plastic bag from her pocket, picks up the mess her ancient dachshund made. A scowling mother with a double buggy, swerves around the crouching woman, forcing a teenager to jump aside. He almost drops his phone. A shopkeeper and a builder stand outside a shop, point to a green vee on the wall, discuss the leaking gutter. 

as a child
Breughel’s busy peasants
lived on my place mat
the things my father taught me
over Sunday lunch

For those of you who like context, I “wrote” most of it whilst I was in a queue caused by roadworks where Edwards Lane and Mansfield Road meet outside the Sherwood Manor pub. Sometimes poems just come to me.  The people were all people I saw that day, though not all while i was waiting – the men looking at the shop cropped up later. I missed out the blind man who got mixed up in it all as it was too complicated to explain how he swerved round the lady with the dog and thus showed he had more sight than his white stick suggested. Sometimes less is more. One day I might give him a poem of his own.

It’s a very different process to the previous poem, which was much more engineered and less spontaneous.

It was accepted by Ribbons, first time out, though there was a heavy edit – the final two lines (31 words) were removed and the story of the mats was contained in the rewritten tanka.

Again, no photo. I really am falling down on the job.

A Poem and a Commentary

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That is the haibun that I mentioned yesterday. It’s 98 words, which is why I don’t mind describing myself as a poet, but hesitate to claim to be a writer.

I’ve just been reading a book on writing poetry.  It is very scornful about Japanese forms, and about tanka in particular. And about the sad old men, he says, that write them. I checked the internet but, so far, have been unable to find evidence of the book’s author setting the world of poetry aflame. This is so often the case.

There is an expression that those who can, do, and those that can’t teach. Or criticise. But teachers and critics both have important places in the world, and both have sets of skills related to the job. People who write books about how to write poetry (and I have read a few now) seldom have much to offer. In the old days you could at least have given the book to charity or used it as emergency toilet paper, but in the digital age these satisfactions are no longer available.

Anyway, the poem – first published in Blithe Spirit, the journal of the British Haiku Society, in 2025 and then anthologised in Contemporary Haibun 21.

Living Art

In the lull between lunch and the afternoon shoppers, one cup of coffee is all it takes to secure two hours of peace. The cafe does not do “cheerful” but you can’t have everything for this price. For happiness and choice you need the more modern American-style coffee shops. Here the choice is limited to “with” and “without” milk. Sometimes I imagine myself in one of Hopper’s paintings, or stare at Rodin’s Thinker on another table. Today, sagging in in summer heat, Dali comes to mind.

bitter coffee
and the radio news
—rehearsing for The Scream

 

Tomorrow, I will publish the other poem that was nominated for the anthology. I actually think it was better than this one, and would be interested in what people think.

For people who like to know a bit more, the idea came whilst I was reading about the life of Edward Hopper. The idea of the half-empty cafe came from Nighthawks and the coffee cam from some tanka i had written on the subject after submitting some tanka written around a theme. I can’t remember the theme. In my hands it became about disappointment, though it may have been something more cheerful originally. I imagined myself in a typical English cafe, rather than an American diner, re-used the coffee/disappointment motif, and thought of Dali’s melting clocks. It was July and heat was on my mind. From there I added a bit more art and that was it.

I had previously submitted it to another magazine. The original version had a different title, a different haiku and 31 more words.  It also only mentioned Hopper. I took out about 60 words, replaced them with 30 different ones and added the extra artists.

Looking at it now, I don’t know how I thought the original version was good enough to submit, but that’s the way it happens. That’s why poems need time to mature. However, if you don’t send them out, you don’t always have the urge to improve.

No photos today. Can’t think of anything suitable to use.

That Whisper in my Ear

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Yesterday I received my copy of Contemporary Haibun 21. I may have mentioned a few months ago that I wanted to buy a poetry book from the USA but didn’t want to pay $30 for postage on top of the $30 cost of the book.

My Orange Parker Pen

However, I checked an old email account and found an email with the offer of a $10 discount on the book, because I am in it. Vanity got the better of me, and despite the combined costs being enough to buy two takeaway meals for the two of us, I gritted my teeth and paid the price.

It is “an annual anthology of English-language haibun (and haiga) gleaned from the best practitioners from around the world”. (Haiga are pictures paired up with a haiku for those of you who are lost in the sea of foreign words that begin with hai).

It’s not a bad thing to be in, but when I look, I can’t help thinking about the people who are in it three times where I am only in it once. Are they three times better than me?  How much better do I need to become? Three of them are editors who have been very active in rejecting me over the years. They are also editors of the anthology, so it makes it miraculous that I actually made the cut. One of them seems far too enthusiastic in rejecting me when I submit to the journal where he is a newly appointed editor. He’s new to this job, but I wonder if his zeal will be reflected in the selections next year. If it is, I may be able to save a lot of money.

Two pens – one made by my wife

On the other hand, if they left out the last 50 pages, which are reprints of articles I have already read, it might have been cheaper to print and post.

Tricky.

How much do I crave publication? How much is it worth? Is it worth worrying about when a significant number of the editors are generally not keen on my work? Why does something I should be happy about become a matter for deep thought and depression? If I were Roman general I would have someone next to me whispering in my ear to bring me down to earth, but I don’t, and I can do it all by myself.

Night Falls

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I just wrote a political manifesto, but as Julia pointed out, my plan for making sweeping changes to the way the country is run is impractical as we don’t have capital punishment or guns. And merely shooting the makers of reality TV programmes won’t immediately make the participants and viewers go out and take up education again.

She’s probably right, after all, in the USA they have lots of guns and capital punishment and their current political system has chosen to attack education rather than roll it out for everyone.

I’ll leave politics to other people.

Damsel Fly – Wilford

Instead, I will devote my thoughts to haircuts. My hair looks neatest when it is in a waste basket, and my head looks best when emulating a billiard ball. It is a tidy style to maintain with my excellent head shaver. Unfortunately, I don’t always keep it shaved. My recent experiences with the sun stopped me shaving for a bit, as my head was sore for a while. It was also dry, which is exacerbated by electric shaving.

Yes, I can moisturise, but I hate the idea of having small bits of passing debris  taking up residence on my head.

So, I now have hair. It has gone through the phase where it sticks out and makes me look astonished, and has become long enough to lay down and look like very short hair. Well, it does in patches. That’s the problem with being bald. It’s not the lack of flowing manly locks that worries me, or the visible manifestation of old age, it’s the untidy nature of partial coverage of the scalp. It’s untidy. Shaving tends to even things out and looks smarter.

Insects on Thistles

It is just unfortunate that a shaved head and the attendant folds of flesh at the top of my neck tend to make me look like prison officer from one of the less liberal countries of the world. Allied to a small, indistinct photograph (like the one of my driving license) I begin to look less like I’m involved in law enforcement and more like I’m involved in organised crime. I just don’t have the boyish good looks of a romantic hero.

And so, ruminating on what my life might have been if I had charm, good cheekbones and a cheery demeanour, I will go back to plotting world domination by means of light verse.

It’s likely to be an uphill struggle.

Marmalade Hoverfly

Marmalade Hoverfly

 

 

Conservatory – the Final Fix

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Just after Christmas we had our new conservatory roof fitted. I nearly cried. It was the most I’d ever paid for something, and I hadn’t been expecting to pay that much so soon on maintaining the new place. But at least we had a waterproof conservatory. The temporary repair/bodge we had had done by our first builder (estimated to give us two or three years based on the last time he had done it), proved to be as good as the rest of his work.

Allium Flower

Unfortunately, one of the new panels, by March, had condensation in it. Julia immediately set to work on getting it replaced. It took around two months for them to come out and see it and another two months to actually get the part and fit it (which took about 20 minutes once they actually arrived). I am now worried that we have spent a large sum of money on something that is going to be a problem for the rest of our lives, though I’m hoping that I’m wrong.

They are nice people, and the standards of workmanship, when they actually turn up, seem to be good. Part of the delay is because it’s a family business and one of the parents is ill. I sympathise.  But having said that, I can’t bring myself to leave a review of their work.

Garden Flowers

I don’t want to be overly critical of the work, which is generally good, but I don’t want to be responsible for someone else spending a lot of money and getting similarly slow service (seven months and many missed appointments to get it properly finished). It is a modern dilemma.

In the old days, word of mouth, delivered face to face, was useful. But written words, constrained by a word limit, aren’t quite the same, and can come back to haunt you. Criticism on review sites always seems harsher, and good feedback often seems too good to be true.

Flower competition – Flintham Show

A Quiet Revolution

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We now have Andy Burnham as Prime Minister. He got off to a bad start with me when he promised a “circuit-breaker moment”. I’m guessing he’s not big on electrical work as the last time we had a circuit-breaker moment at home the freezer went off and the lights went out. Readers of a certain age may remember previous Labour governments where the lights (literally) went out and, in the Winter of Discontent, no bins were collected and people could not be buried.

As I’m not a great believer in party politics, I have to point out that the Conservative government also had trouble keeping the lights on.

I’m just saying that Burnham needs to look at getting a new speech writer. He needs all the help he can get as this is the man who came fourth in a leadership to Ed Milliband and lost his next one to Jeremy Corbyn. Ed Miliband, for those who don’t know, is to charisma what I am to the fitness industry. And Jeremy Corbyn makes me look positively modern in outlook. It’s a shame really, I like Corbyn because he has principles, despite it being an archaic and inconvenient concept.

He comes from a time when you could tell the difference between Conservatives and Labour. Now the only real difference is the cost of their suits, and as we saw when news about Starmer’s wardrobe surfaced, even that isn’t a sure-fire way to tell the difference these days.

I generally try to avoid politics, but sometimes I think I need to lay down a marker so a future student of politics can see what the man in the street really thinks of the clowns in power. Last time a man rose to power, wearing a big smile and promising a new style of politics it was Tony Blair. He’s a man who has, at times, been one of the most popular Prime Ministers we ever had, and also one of the least popular.  If you are bothered you can make your own mind up. I will merely say that in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn, I do not feel that Tony Blair is weighed down by principles.

No political pictures, as I don’t have any suitable ones and, to be honest, it’s a busy day. One look at Mallard and the world seems a better place.

Garibaldi – Biscuits, Brass Medals and Ballarat

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Garibaldi medallet – obverse

I’ve just been reading this post. Paol Soren is writing about place names around Ballarat, which he illustrates with photographs, including one showing a road sign saying Garibaldi. That was all I needed to reprint an article I wrote for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. I’m very lazy that way.

The first time I ever heard of Garibaldi was when I read Wind in the Willows around 60 years ago, and Mole, on revisiting his old home, was said to have a bust of him in his garden. In his lifetime, he was quite a famous personality. When he visited the UK in 1864, he was not allowed out of the capital, being regarded as a dangerous radical. The workers of Nottingham gave him an illuminated scroll, but they had to go to London to see him, as he was denied permission to visit Nottingham.

This is the smallest medallion in my collection, but one of the bigger figures from history. His home city was Nice At the time of his birth it was part of France, having been annexed by the French Republic in 1792 after 400 years as a possession of the Duchy of Savoy. It reverted to “Italy” in 1815, becoming part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, before being returned to France as payment for the help of Napoleon III in helping to unify Italy.

Garibaldi medallet – reverse

Garibaldi was a leading figure in Italian unification. He fled after being condemned to death for his part in an abortive revolt in 1834 and spent 14 years abroad, fighting two wars in South America, before his return to Italy with his famous Red Shirts.
Traditional stories say the red shirts were meant for Argentinian butchers, but there is no evidence of Argentinian butchers ever wearing red shirts. It is possible that they were modelled on the red flannel shirts Garibaldi saw New York firemen wearing. What is more certain is that Nottingham Forest adopted Garibaldi Red as their club colour in 1865, and still use the colour, (and Garibaldi name), to this day. One of their old nicknames was The Garibaldi and the fan organisation set up in 2016 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the club is Forza Garibaldi. There was also an amateur football club called Nottingham Garibaldi and the name lives on today in Garibaldi School in Forest Town (named after a nearby plantation). For a time, red shirts became a popular fashion item in Europe and America.

Garibaldi medallet compared to a penny for size comparison

The medallion is 14mm in diameter and made of brass. They are sometimes found on watch chains, worn as fobs or charms, which is why most of them are pierced.

The Obverse design features a left-facing bust of Garibaldi with the words “Garibaldi ne a Nice le 4 Juillet 1807” (Garibaldi, born in Nice 3 July 1807) and the reverse has “Independence / Italienne/· + · ” within a wreath of laurels.
If you are wondering about the biscuits, yes Garibaldi Biscuits are named after him. They were launched in 1861 by Peek Frean’s, and although there were stories about them being based on the hard tack and wild berries eaten by the Red Shirts, it seems simply to have been a commercial decision to link the new biscuit to a commercially popular personality.
The famous Garibaldi biscuit

Summary of a Day Where Not Much Happened

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(Wrote this yesterday and forgot to post it).

It’s just coming up to 11.00 and I have been up for three hours or thereabouts. I’m retired, I don’t need to work things out to the minute.

In that time I have read blogs, commented, replied to comments and finished off a post which I then posted without tags or a title. I’ve also had breakfast (fruit and porridge), prepared by Julia, I just needed to eat it.

And that’s it. A pathetically small amount of activity for three hours. I’ve not sorted out a delivery that needs sorting, I’ve not replied to an NHS email (the crisp reply I wrote as a first attempt was judged to be in need of work by Julia). I am therefore going to waste twenty minutes being effusive and apologetic for something that isn’t my fault and ten minutes showing Julia how  I have done what she says. Then, of course, I am going to send my original version.

Actually, I just remembered. I have put in the TESCO order. I have established, with forensic precision, who is at fault for us running out of Weetabix. I have cleaned my teeth extensively. It seems to take longer these days. Fewer teeth but more hiding places for strawberry seeds. We are having raspberries next week – it will be worse. I have cleared out some  emails. I have wondered about the meaning of life. I have tided away a few things I left out last night. I have researched a new email system, as I am getting fed up with BT and their regular outages. And their unhelpful customer service “bot”. I’m sure they do it deliberately as they want to get rid of all their old email customers.

And so, I drift, in my unfocused manner, back to the things I haven’t done. I might have to write a list. Or I may drift on, do a bit, make lunch and snooze in front of the TV.

I am retired, and I don’t have to work all day.