Mick Canning's Blog, page 39
October 30, 2017
Sometimes I sits and thinks…
On Sunday mornings I work. But since there are no buses on Sunday at the time I have to leave, it means I have to walk all the way.
I don’t mind, though.
After a couple of uninteresting miles along streets of houses and shops, my route goes across common land and thence through farmland and woodland for another three or four miles.
As I walk, I inevitably find myself thinking about what I’m busy writing at the moment, and just as inevitably ideas come.
This always happens when I walk, but on Sundays my thoughts tend to be about poems. I’ve got into the habit of that, although I’ve no idea why.
But it means I usually have another page or two of notes in a notebook by the time I reach my workplace – a long outcrop of rock at the edge of woodland, since you ask.
After I finish work, I can get a bus part of the way home if I choose to, but only if I wait for over an hour and a half. If I do, then I can spend a while in the pub by the bus stop and have a beer and contemplate life, or something like that.
Sometimes I does and sometimes I doesn’t.
Yesterday, the clocks went back, to officially tell us that summer is over and winter is well on the way. Inevitably, then, yesterday turned into a perfect autumn day. So I decided to walk home. After I had been walking for half an hour, I stopped and sat in a small drift of dry leaves, my back against a tree, eating my sandwiches.
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Overhead, a pair of buzzards were circling high up and calling to each other. The sun was out, and in my small area of beech woodland the leaves were turning orange and yellow. The sky was blue, and in the sunshine it was still warm. It was perfect, and I sat with my back against the tree for some while after I had finished eating, just thinking and enjoying life.
Soon, it will get much colder. There will be rain.
But yesterday was just as perfect as it could have been.
October 25, 2017
Refuge
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The first time she ever set eyes on the sea,
She was forty seven.
It was a long road there.
She set off with little enough,
And arrived with much less.
She had a home, once.
A house,
In a well-to-do area of the city.
Life was good.
But fear came,
In the form of bullets, shells and bombs.
Once, gas.
Her house is rubble, now.
Memories and possessions buried,
Alongside her husband.
Alongside her daughter.
Alongside her middle son.
Her hands are scarred from the digging.
For weeks,
Her palms were raw and bloody,
from blocks of masonry,
Too large to move.
Dust and tears.
The pain came later.
It was bad enough to lose her home,
But when you’re caught in the cross-fire,
And the food runs out,
What else can you do?
Her eldest son paid for the crossing,
With borrowed money.
Somewhere,
He is ‘paying off’ the loan.
A bonded labourer.
A slave.
Her youngest son was washed away.
The dinghy was too small,
The passengers too many.
Fear.
You could smell it,
Alongside the despair.
The panic.
There were fewer of them when the sun rose.
There is shelter here,
Of a sort.
But when the wind blows she shivers,
Drawing near the oil drum blaze.
There is food,
Once a day.
Of a sort.
There was a welcome.
She soon learns what sort.
Now, she walks down to the sea.
She wonders whether she should,
Whether she should just,
Just, slip under,
The waves.
October 22, 2017
The Enduring Lie of A Golden Age
It seems that huge numbers of people have an impression that there was a ‘Golden Age’ at some previous point of their, or some other, society.
They may not define it in those words, or even acknowledge it as such, but it seems to be very common for people to yearn for another time. Sometimes, this is nostalgia – for the days of their youth – but frequently it is for some far-off time that they feel to be somehow better than the time they live in.
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Fantasy books frequently encourage this sort of thinking. Regardless of the actual storyline, the heroes and villains and cast of other odd characters tend to run around and fight and go on quests and sit around in quaint thatched inns quaffing head-splitting alcoholic drinks and everyone is jolly and no one ever dies of dysentery or bubonic plague in misery and agony and squalor.
The Lord of the Rings is a fine example of this. It is a favourite of mine, but it is very noticeable how no one dies of disease, but mostly lives to an exceedingly old age unless chopped into pieces by Orcs.
Hollywood, too, plays its part in this. To take a film at (almost) random, an old version of ‘Robin Hood’ (set in medieval England, remember) depicts a group of merry men dressed in very strange attire living in the depths of a forest and merrily ambushing the Bad King’s men, merrily dining at long tables out beneath the spreading branches of merry oak trees under starry skies and everyone looks clean and clean shaven and everyone is merry, and it never rains.
Pah!
This is meant to be medieval England. Life expectancy at the time was around 30 years. Huge numbers of people died of dysentery, mainly because there was no concept of hygiene. Occasional plagues carried off massive numbers of people, emptying entire towns and villages. There were no antibiotics or anaesthetics. Disease was sent by God and the only way to cure it was considered to be prayer. Or witchcraft. Women routinely died in childbirth, in great pain. The majority of children never reached their teens. Every peasant in every village was effectively a slave under the command of the local lord, who held the power of life and death over them, and might exercise this on a whim at any moment. The threat of famine was ever present.
Pain and misery was a given.
The majority of people lived, too, in a very real terror of the Devil and the threat of eternal damnation.
The list of horrors is almost endless. The phrase ‘life was nasty, brutish and short’ is an apt description of those times. Certainly, I would not wish to live under those conditions.
There are plenty of other ‘Golden Ages’, of course. Almost any time in history can exercise a fascination on us, if certain aspects of it appeal to us and there are things we dislike about the society we live in. And it is natural to yearn for something better; something more than we have.
And this is not to suggest that every age was a living hell for everyone in that society, but that life in most of these times was reasonably decent for the very few on top of the pile, and pretty miserable for the rest. In fact, the measure of how ‘Golden’ an age was, tends to be the conditions of the upper echelons of that society, and perhaps those of a middle class, if such existed.
There is much wrong with our world today. But the huge advances seen over the last hundred years or so, especially in medicine, have meant that our lives have been improved out of all recognition. No longer does surgery equate to filling the patient with a quart of whisky and then sawing off a leg or an arm. No longer do those patients routinely die of infections after surgery, thanks to antibiotics. High blood pressure is controlled, rather than routinely killing. Children usually survive all the diseases of childhood, rather than being most likely to die. Women rarely die in childbirth, and the pain can be somewhat controlled.
Women and children are no longer the legal chattels of men.
Work conditions are hugely improved. Children do not go down mines or work at dangerous looms 14 hours a day. Instead, most receive a proper education. Adults, too, work fewer hours and under far better conditions than previously. When they are too old or frail to work, the state provides a certain amount of dignified support. People do not as a rule die these days of starvation. We do not execute children for stealing sixpence, or poaching rabbits on the Lord’s estate.
In most cases, for most people, today is the Golden Age.
October 13, 2017
Just Look at Ghat!
Ouch! Probably my worst title yet!
I can’t help it…I’ve not been well…
…well, only a cold, but you know what we men are like.
In another attempt to feel instantly better, I’ve nipped across to North India (only in my imagination, unfortunately), to picture Kedar Ghat, on the banks of the Ganges, in Varanasi.
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Ghats, a Hindi word, are sets of steps leading down to a river (and also mountain ranges or passes – The eastern and Western Ghats in Central India). It has also come to mean a level place at the edge of a river where Hindus cremate their dead.
In Varanasi, there are between 84 and 87 ghats, depending upon who you get this information from,. The Manikarnika Ghat, or Ghats (possibly this is the origin of the confusion over the number) is the ‘burning ghat’, where cremations are carried out 24 hours a day, all through the year. The source fire there has supposedly been burning for thousands of years, but photography is actively discouraged, hence my only shot is one taken from a distance.
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Of course, the ghats are also used for bathing. Hindus bathe en masse there, as a dip in the Ganges is meant to wash away sins. Important pujas (ceremonies) take place at sunrise and sunset. Boat trips to view the ghats are very popular, and finally much of the city’s laundry gets done at the dhobi ghats (dhobi meaning laundry).
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Namaste!
October 11, 2017
Southern India (3)
It’s been a busy week again. I don’t seem to have managed to write anything, take any photographs, or even think about drawing or painting.
The news? I try to avoid it.
And to top it all, I have a cold and I feel bleurgh.
It’s at times like this I usually travel somewhere exotic in my head.
So, a few more photographs from Southern India, then.
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Ganesh Temple, Kodaikanal. Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of prosperity, is one of the most popular gods in the Hindu pantheon and worshipped widely throughout India. This shrine is by the lake in Kodaikanal, a hill-station in the Palani Hills northwest of Madurai.
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View of the lake at Kodaikanal. Besides the better known hill stations of Northern India, there are quite a number further south, of which Kodaikanal is just one example, although unique in having been originally started by American missionaries in the 1840’s.
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Raj-era bungalows in Kodaikanal. These are on a ‘prime-site’ location overlooking the lake.
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Madurai skyline. The Sri Meenakshi Temple complex, dedicated to Shiva and his wife, Sati, dominates the skyline of the old city. Often called ‘The Heart of Tamil Country’, Madurai attracts up to 10,000 pildrims and tourists on any one day. This picture was taken from the Rooftop Restaurant Terrace at the Hotel Supreme, where we sat with a beer and watched a long procession of tourists wander across the roof to take the same shot.
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Entrance to the Sri Meenakshi Temple complex, Madurai. 12 huge gopuram towers, each between 45 and 50 metres in height, are carved in highly elaborate designs featuring gods, people, animals and mythical creatures which are then brightly painted. The whole effect is more like an enormous and eccentricly iced cake, or at least plaster-work. The whole of the temple seethes with pilgrims, tourists, trinket sellers and guides. And touts, who basically cover the last two categories.
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Carved statue of Nataraja, Madurai Temple complex. I am unfamiliar with this particular god, but I like the carving!
October 7, 2017
Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside!
A standalone excerpt from a work in process – a series of linked poems with the overarching title Breeze.
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You see, I never do things by halves. Unfinished novels, short stories and poems, too.
I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day.
On the late season sea-front we press our hats to our heads,
And shout to make ourselves heard.
The rain stings faces, and dribbles miserably down necks
It hoses noisily up and down abandoned streets,
As we struggle to stay on our feet between the chip shop and the variety theatre.
‘Shall we go for a drink?’
‘What? I can’t hear you!’
‘I said…’
Cables beat maniacally, ringingly,
Against rusting and white paint chipped flagpoles.
Piles of deckchairs like collapsed marionettes shift uneasily
On the shingle among the lolly sticks and sweet wrappers,
The bladdery seaweed and the old egg sacs,
Beneath the rounded overhang of the promenade;
Their fabric thrumming and whirring
And flapping.
The weather forecast said a thirty percent chance of rain.
An empty drinks can follows us noisily across the road.
‘That’s better.’
‘Gosh, that wind’s strong today!’
‘It’s almost like winter.’
‘What’ll you have?’
‘Better make it a strong one!’
‘Yeah. Make that two.’
Leaning on the bar, waiting for the drinks.
Staring gloomily out of the window.
Darting gulls,
Silver light,
Drinking silently,
Glancing at each other.
‘Tell you what. Why don’t we just go home?’
October 5, 2017
Bloody Weather
Yesterday I sat down to work on a section of my novel which is set in a hot, dry place. Outside, however, the skies were grey and the wind was blowing. It was becoming cooler. Autumn leaves drifted down. Everywhere was damp. Everywhere was muddy. Unsurprisingly, the writing refused to happen.
Fortunately, I have an unfinished short story set in a leaden, windy, wet and muddy environment – Britain – so I wrote a few hundred words on that. My hero was a bit wet and cold and windswept, but what the heck!
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I know a few hundred words isn’t much, but it’s more than I’ve managed for a while. Partly, because I’ve been unusually busy, and partly because I’ve felt a bit down.
But as a bit of a progress report on my forthcoming short story collection, A Dozen Destinies, a few more of the stories went out to beta readers yesterday, so I haven’t yet given up on the possibility of having it ready for the beginning of December. I’ve settled on a cover picture (big reveal to come!) and decided to release it as an Amazon Print on Demand and Kindle ebook only.
Last year, I spent a lot of time looking at other outlets for Making Friends with the Crocodile, as well as releasing it on Amazon, and I eventually used Kobo (ebook) and Pothi (POD in India), but neither of them justified the effort. So this time I’ll keep it simple.
Goodness me, I don’t know how any of you manage to contain your excitement.
And today it’s grey and windy and wet. And there is a real bite to the wind.
Oh well. ‘It was a dark and soggy night…’
October 3, 2017
A Short History of Blogging – reblogged!
Here’s a post from a couple of years ago which might be of interest if you haven’t read it before. (I would say that, wouldn’t I?)
Blogging has always been about self-promotion. The first known blogs were on cave walls, although they were pretty crude, to be honest, and it is often really difficult to make out what the bloggers were on about. There is speculation, indeed, that to refer to them as ‘blogs’ might be a little misleading. The fact that they tend to be short and that it is very hard to make out what they mean, leads some experts to assume that they were an early form of Twitter. And then the fact that they frequently depict crude human figures, especially exaggeratedly female ones, and various animals, suggest that even in these early times, social media were largely the preserve of the young person.
‘Share if you think these babes are hot.’
By the time of the rise of the first true civilisations in Egypt, they were beginning to get the hang of it. They have left massive numbers of inscriptions all over walls and columns and pretty well anything else that they could get a hammer and chisel near.
‘Amenhotep snubbed in Big Brother Pyramid game – LOL’
Some even see the Rosetta Stone as a forerunner of Google, but others don’t.
The first English blogger was The Venerable Bede. His blog is one of the main sources of our knowledge of Saxon times, which is a bit of a bugger really, when you consider how reliable social media are today as a source of modern history. He probably missed out most of the good stuff. But he blogged in Old English, anyway, which no one can understand nowadays so it probably doesn’t matter.
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Leonardo da Vinci did a wicked selfie, but would probably be criticised nowadays for how few he produced. To be anyone on social media, it is probably necessary to post a minimum of twenty selfies in any twenty four hour period, but Leo was never up to that. But most of his blogs were all about what would then be science fiction and art and politics…so he’d have fitted in quite well with today’s bloggers really.
Samuel Pepys’ diaries are, of course, just the notes he took for his blogs. They are a mix of politics and news and what his family were up to, and his ‘conquests’ of various ladies. Wisely, he wrote most of this in shorthand and, even more wisely, put the more salacious bits in code. Nowadays, it is unnecessary to use code, since language is now changing so fast that no one can understand anything that was written more than six months ago anyway.
The Puritans thought blogging might be fun so they banned it, along with just about everything else, except breathing and praying. Well, praying, anyway.
A little later, newspapers were invented. These were not really blogs, since they were filled with news, rather than self-promotion, and it took a number of years before newspaper owners and editors realised that. Once they did, however, they worked very hard to make up for lost time, and now there are very few newspapers in the world that print mainly news.
And quite a lot that do not print any news at all.
In fact, they tend to be full of primitive opinion and often depict crude human figures, especially exaggeratedly female ones, and various animals.
And thus life turns full circle.
Photo credit (picture 1): jmarconi via VisualHunt.com / CC BY
Photo credit (picture 2): PMillera4 via Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-ND
September 30, 2017
The Praising Purple Prose Poem
My humble, grovelling apologies for my lamentable lack of activity recently. Busy, busy, busy…and so little time. And at my age, too. Shouldn’t be allowed. So I’ll just pop up one of my dubious poems (that’s dubious as in merit, rather than taste) as a peace offering, and I’ll try and catch up with a few of the blogs I follow…tomorrow.
I’m a bit tired now…
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The Praising Purple Prose Poem
Purple prose that nobody wants,
Can find a home
In my poem.
These offcuts and discarded words,
Too rich for others to use,
Are just what I need for my poem.
Here on the dusty floor,
This is Just what I was looking for,
For my poem.
I’m collecting it up,
If you’re throwing it out,
And I’m slotting it into
My poem.
Give it to me,
I can put it just there
Between those two lines,
Of my poem.
Too rich for their taste?
Well, it won’t go to waste,
In my poem.
Since that flowery tone,
Is just like my own,
In my poem.
Alliterative, flowery, rollicking lines,
The sort that Dylan Thomas would write;
I’ll give them a home,
In my poem.
Be gentle with me, dear reader.
September 14, 2017
A Poem – Moon
Moon
With the click of the door closing,
The laughter and the clink of glasses
Has faded,
Evaporated,
and left…
…nothing.
I face the shadowed lawn,
In tidal grey and scattered silver.
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Pulling my collar up, and,
Pushing my hands down,
Deep into my pockets,
I crunch down the driveway
As if crushing ice cubes beneath my feet,
Until I reach the street, long emptied and dark,
And now shuttered.
And stop.
Around me,
A sharp silence swirls
Like my misty breath;
A press of ghosts at an invisible bar.
Then looking up,
Through frosted glasses,
I see a perfect slice of lemon moon
In a cold, gin-clear sky.
And I laugh.
I will be away all next week, but I’ll reply to any comments before then and, of course, when I return.
