Monthly Archives: November 2020

Buried Amongst Kings

If you go to Westminster Abbey you can walk on the graves of many famous figures from history, but there is one grave you can’t walk on, which is strange, because nobody actually knows who is buried there.

I had thought of writing a piece on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior for today, but I just had this sent and it does it better than me, so here is the link. There are more details here.

What it doesn’t seem to mention is that the interment took place in the presence of approximately 100 women who had lost their husband and all their sons in the war. This wasn’t all the women who had lost their husband and all their sons in the war, just the ones who accepted the invitation.

The railway carriage that brought the coffin to Westminster Abbey is preserved and was also used to bring home the bodies of Captain Fryatt and Nurse Edith Cavell. I mentioned them in a post a while ago.

The reason people needed a focus for their grief was due to the unusual nature of the war, where the same few miles of ground were fought over time and time again. Even if a soldier was buried properly, and there are many tales of bravery associated with soldiers giving their comrades a decent burial, it was quite likely that the site would be churned up by shelling, or that the paperwork reporting the site would be lost, or that the poor quality dog-tags of the time would not be up to the task of identifying the body a tear or two later.

That is why there are 315,000 names on memorials in France and Belgium commemorating men with no known grave. Many of them do have graves, but they are marked as Known Unto God. There are 212,000 headstones that use those words, chosen by Kipling and used on the headstone of his son John. That leaves 103,000 bodies unaccounted for, and they are currently still being recovered at the rate of approximately 40 a year in France.

Even now there is still a chance of identification – particularly if you are famous. Researchers eventually identified John Kipling’s grave was identified. The Queen Mother laid her bridal wreath on the tomb when she married in 1923, establishing a tradition for all royal brides to do the same. Her brother Fergu s was killed in 1915 and the site of his grave was lost. In 2012 a grave marker was erected in a cemetery – it bears his name and the inscription “Buried near this spot”, as they have been able to identify the cemetery but not the actual grave.

This article gives you some idea of the efforts still going on today.

I always misquote the inscription, and to be honest the misquote fits better as a title – here is the full quote.

They buried him among the kings because he
Had done good toward God and toward
His house

Poppy

Life Intrudes

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It’s our mid-week day off. It’s not quite as important as it used to be when Julia worked weekends and it was the only day where we were able to relax together, but it’s still quite an important day. It’s lie-in day and leisurely fried breakfast day. Sunday, the other day we now have off together, always seems more frantic, as we still consider it laundry day.

I thought I’d get myself an hour of writing in before Julia emerged, like the many headed hydra of adulthood, to remind me that there are jobs to do. We established a few days ago that she doesn’t expect I’ll ever grow up, and doesn’t consider writing to be work, so has redoubled her efforts at being the responsible adult of the household.

You can’t fault her on this, as someone needs to confront the ever-rising tide of anarchy and darkness that besets me, but she needn’t be quite so cheerful as she orders me about.

She seems to forget, I am the paterfamilias of this family and my word is law.

The rot set in when we were discussing the marriage service. My mother told her to ensure the word “obey” was taken out.

“I like it,” I said, “and it’s traditional.”

“I’m not promising to obey you.” she said. And she never has.

I just noticed that as paterfamilias, I’m entitled to sell my children into slavery. I don’t suppose they would have taken any notice (they too have no respect for their paterfamilias) but it would have been one way of reducing the food bills in their teenage years.

So, there I was, sneaking downstairs to write…

I turned the computer on with some trepidation (which is another story) and checked my emails. No acceptances, no job offers from the National Press but, on the plus side, Trump has not deployed the Nuclear Option in his efforts to cling to power and a vaccine against Covid seems like a reasonable hope.

We’ll call that an average day.

I then turned to the ASDA grocery order which needs doing before 10.00 today (edit: 20.00 or 10pm), and found that they have released slots until Christmas. This involved booking slots and ordering food six weeks in advance. As if I know what I want six weeks in advance. I have enough trouble shopping a week in advance, which is why last night say me, once again, peeling carrots to get the black bits off. This is always irritating as it takes more time and, I believe, removes the nutrients, which are concentrated under the skin.

That polished off the next hour (you have to order a few things to confirm the slot, which all takes time). Julia is now downstairs in full Porlock mode, rattling round the kitchen and preventing me concentrating.

She has also decreed that today will start with bran flakes and be followed by me working hard at decluttering. So, no lie-in, no peace, no leisurely breakfast and no epic haibun.

If I knew the way to write the sound of a really big sigh I would write it now…

A Limerick for Lavinia

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In a moment of optimism I said, a few days ago, that I would write a poem about Lavinia’s plague of voles. So I had a look at the rhyming dictionary and the list of poetic forms and, to be honest, recoiled in horror. I was thinking of including daffodils but several of the rhymes I was offered (Battle of Bunker Hill and oral contraceptive pill) betrayed a basic lack of understanding about the sort of poems that might include daffodils. Wordsworth never had these problems.

You may recall my discussion about krumholz as a rhyme for vole a couple of days ago.

Well, there is one poetic form I can think of that can accommodate all sorts of poetic horrors (no, not the clerihew, things aren’t that bad) – it’s the limerick – the world’s favourite poem.

An Oregon farmer named Ross
suffered fires, tempests and frost
plus a great plague of voles
all digging their holes
till the cats came to show them who’s boss

For other works in this series see here, here, here and here. And here. Oh, and here. I didn’t realise I’d done so many. I certainly didn’t realise that some of them were so excruciating. I may have to do a collected limericks post, and add some about Boris. I just need a rhyme for farce…

Just in case you get confused, there are two about the well known Mainer, to accommodate both ways of saying scone – the one that rhymes with gone, and the wrong one.

Taking Stock

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The blog has become boring. This is, unfortunately, a case of art mirroring life, as my life is also very boring at the moment. I don’t want to die, so I’m staying inside. And because I’m staying inside I’m not out looking at birds and trees and burgers. Or, of course, improving my mind in a museum.

As I said to Dame Judi Dench when she popped round for tea and cakes yesterday afternoon, something has got to change. By the way, if you ever have her round for tea, watch the Battenburg. She has what used to be called a healthy appetite and she’d had three slices before I’d finished pouring the tea (we were using the Crown Derby because we had company). I was lucky I wasn’t just left with crumbs. I suppose with the entertainment industry being shut down she’s feeling the pinch and has to eat when she can. Thinking back, perhaps we should have had sandwiches too, and offered a doggy bag.

It could have been worse, I mean, I wouldn’t want to get between Timothy West and his dinner. I’ve seen some of the things they eat on Great Canal Journeys (though I’m not sure the Rochdale Canal really qualifies) and they seem to eat well. I’ve been to a rugby league match at Rochdale when Nottingham Outlaws were in the cup, and played in a dismal cement enclosure. We ended up with a punctured ball when it hit the perimeter fence and spike went through the ball.

I recounted this to Dame Judi, but it seems she doesn’t follow Rugby League. Probably not enough Battenberg involved.

Next time I’m going to invite Dame Maggie Smith. She’s quite thin and I can’t see the Battenberg being in much danger from her.

Anyway, that’s the first post from my new and interesting life. Not sure how I’m going to cap that as the letter from Kylie Minogue’s lawyers was quite definite about the 200 metre rule, which will make the tea drinking almost impossible. On the other hand it will keep the Battenberg safe. Swings and Roundabouts…

(Note: No, none of it is true. It’s just the lockdown talking. I’m sure Dame Judi has impeccable etiquette when it comes to eating cake.)

In Trouble Again

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As I dropped Julia off at work this morning she asked what my plans were for the rest of the day. I told her that I intended doing mainly housework and perhaps a little light writing. So I did some shopping, went to the pharmacy and did the washing up. Then went to the pharmacy again. I could tell you why but I imagine you can fill in most of the details from previous posts.

It’s fair to say that, on account of the lack of decluttering, I’m not her favourite husband at the moment.

She does not seem to be impressed by my reorganised haibun storage, or that I have my submissions planned until next Spring. Some people are never satisfied.

Then I remembered her birthday is approaching. Fast. And I have not bought anything yet. That’s my next job as soon as I finish this. It’s going to be jewellery again. I don’t think boooks would be appreciated at the moment and she has enough painting supplies for some time to come.

I offered to buy her a nice new chimney stack (the builder says he is coming “soon”) but she didn’t fall for it.

I’m fairly sure that jeweller’s shops are classed as non-essential, even though they are vitally important to people like me at the moment. I’m told that stationery shops are now essential, as students need places to buy paper, and presents for a wife’s birthday are at least as important as that. Well, they are to me.

Expanding my Mind

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I’ve just been reading Readly. It’s £7.99 a month, allows me access to hundreds of magazines and I resisted it when I first heard of it, but when you think of the cost of magazines it isn’t that bad. I feel guilty every now and then when I have a months where I don’t use it much, but generally I get much more than I would if I was still buying paper magazines, with all their environmental costs.

The selection changes, so you can’t always get what you want. On the other hand you don’t find yourself paying £4 for a magazine that really only contains two articles you want, and finding that neither were as good as you hoped.

Last night I was able to read two writing magazines, bookmark and article in a collectors’ magazine, find some new information on Commander Frank Brock, the fireworks man, and read two good articles in the Times Literary Supplement, which enabled me to take my mind for a walk (as the advert for the TLS says, assuming I can be so crass as to call anything associated with the TLS an “advert”.

There’s a very good article on the meeting of Sassoon and Owen in Craiglockhart Hospital in 1918, though that’s a subject which has, to be honest, been done to death. There’s also an excellent book review by Rory Stewart. The book in question is a biography of Boris Johnson and Stewart’s review is a masterpiece. I don’t think he likes Boris. It was a sad day for British politics when Boris beat him to the leadership.

Which all goes to prove that it’s dangerous for me to have time on my hands.

Counting Blessings and Locking Down

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I just had a message from LinkedIn asking if I know Julia Wilson and telling me that “You and Julia have 1 mutual connection in common.”

This is wonderful news. After half a lifetime of marriage and two kids, you might start to look at your partner and wonder what you have in common. I’m sure Julia does. I am not the man she married, and even I don’t know when I changed. Actually, I’m literally not the man she married as most of me is less than 10 years old. I don’t think I need to add more.

Now we know – we have a mutual connection in common on LinkedIn and a chance to be sarcastic about social media and the possibilities of having a mutual connection that we don’t have in common. When I see things like that I always suspect the writer was being paid by the word. I saw another thing I hate earlier today. I was reading a publisher’s blurb that told me the poet in question wrote very unique poems.

Well, for one thing, if they weren’t unique that would be plagiarism, not poetry. And once you are unique, how can you be more unique than that?

LinkedIn, for those of you that don’t know is a social media site where you go to lie about your CV and, supposedly, to find new jobs. I’ve been on it a few years and so far no new job has been offered. I can’t get on it at the moment to alter my profile because, like WordPress, it’s part of the international robot techno-conspiracy to refuse me service due to the inadequacy of my computer equipment.

Catch-22 in action – I can’t replace my computer equipment because I don’t have a proper job, and I can’t get a proper job because I need a better computer.

That’s not quite true, of course. In reality, I can’t get a proper job because I’m close to retirement age, have no qualifications and, quite frankly, have a bad attitude. After years of self-employment I find I don’t like bosses, don’t like co-workers and don’t really care for customers much. I do, however, like being paid regularly, and that tends to keep me in line.

Anyway, it’s possible that there is no better job and, to be fair, there probably aren’t any better bosses and co-workers around, particularly in jobs which allow me to mess about with coins and medals all day.

And now that I’m being paid by the government to have a month off I really can’t see much of a downside to being employed.

Adventures with a Rhyming Dictionary

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I’ve just been looking up words that rhyme with vole. I already had hole, sole, soul, mole and ball in mind.

I was surprised, on checking an on-line rhyming dictionary, to find krumholz in it. One, because I’ve only just learnt the word and two, because I would never pronounce it to rhyme with vole. I always thought anything Germanic ending in -z had a ts sound at the end, and pronounce krumholz to rhyme with waltz. It’s not been a major issue because I’ve only ever read the word until now. This is the first time I’ve written it and I’ve never said it out loud.

They are trees on mountains which have grown up stunted by the weather. I first saw the word in a poetry magazine a couple of months ago.

I never thought I would ever need to use the word, as my life, generally, doesn’t take me up any mountains.

Another quick look suggets azoles (anti-fungal drugs), polls (which might be a bit too topical for Americans at the moment), and rissoles. The last one is, I admit, close to a word I was thinking of using. Actually, so is the first one.

I do like fumarole (a vent in or near a volcano from which hot gases, especially steam, are emitted) , but it may be a bit dramatic for a short poem about cute, furry animals.

Talking about cute furry animals, what do you think about mink? Apart from them being vicious predators of water voles they are, it seems, a reservoir of infection for COVID 19.

I was even more surprised to see that Denmark is still farming mink for furs. The official line always seems to be that Scandinavia is wonderful and the world would be so much better if we all embraced Scandinavian values like hygge, and, it seems, fur farming.

I’ve just spent an interesting ten minutes reading about eugenics, racism and various other things in Scandinavia. I think I might pass on the Scandinavian lifestyle. It’s amazing how we always think our own countries are doing badly, but I feel quite good about the UK after reading about Scandinavia.

Kharma

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For years Julia has been asking me not to put tin lids into the washing up bowl, and I have been replying that the chances of cutting yourself are (a) very small and (b) even smaller than that unless you are a complete idiot.

We had our latest round of conversation on the topic only last week, as part of a larger conversation about dangerous things she conceals in the washing up water.

After that I suppose it was inevitable that I should stick my hand in the washing up bowl last night and catch myself on the lid of the bean can I had removed at lunchtime. The wound in my finger eventually stopped bleeding, but started again when I caught it on the edge of a box of pills whilst trying to get my Warfarin out. Yes, Warfarin, the pills that allow me to bleed more freely.

There are several levels of irony here, and possibly a whiff of kharma.

By the time I got to work today we were be in lockdown. I had checked the ebay results and knew that I was going to work after dropping Julia off, as I already had six parcels to pack. The doors were locked and the lights were off and nobody tried the door, which was a relief as I wasn’t in the mood for telling people to bugger off . Well, I was, but not in a polite and professional manner.

One person rang to see if £20 notes with the AK47 prefix was worth anything to us. They aren’t. Collectors don’t want the and the novelty prefix market never really developed, despite the reports of the tabloids.

Someone rang with a”rare” Peter rabbit 50p. He wasn’t surprised to find that it wasn’t.

One person rang to see if £20 notes with the AK47 prefix was worth anything to us. judging from the accent it was the same person or a close relative checking to see if I’d changed my mind.

Then somebody rang to see if we were open. There had to be one…

I am not convinced that this lockdown is going to be as effective as the last one. People aren’t treating it as seriously, and small businesses can’t afford another month of being closed, particularly this close to Christmas.

We will just have to wait and see.

The Abandoned Haibun

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A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
PAUL VALERY

This is the post that gave me the thoughts and the photographs for the haibun I recently provided the link to.

It was originally about the passing of the old families and the way the houses have become country parks and similar things. The editor preferred it as a haibun about a place, and I preferred to be published, so it’s now shorter and it’s about a pond. It is more in the haiku tradition in this form, stressing nature and lightness, where the original was less light and more about humans.

However, they were only words and there are plenty more where they came from. I am already at work on a new version of the original piece, which will be back, and will feature a lake when it next appears. It will also be longer, though It will probably remain unpublishable It will live again in hope if not in print. I was going to make a clever point about haibun, matter and anti-matter at this point but I googled “matter” to check my accuracy and now realise I’m a lot less clever than I thought. Same goes for my witty linking of quark the particle and quark the cheese – I didn’t realise that cheese could be so complicated. I’ve given it up as a bad job.

Sometimes you have to know when enough is enough. It is probably better to leave you with a vision of purple rhododendrons and thoughts of voles, than it is to make a bad joke about cheese.

In the haiku, I note the mention of history is slightly discordant now that the main focus has moved away from. If I’d thought about it longer I may well have altered that too.

As the opening quote suggests, we just keep working on things until we decide to leave them. Time to leave this one and move on to the next imperfect work.

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm