David Hadley's Blog, page 200

The Secrets of a Woman

She knew all the secrets of what it meant to be a woman. She knew them all a long time before I ever could untangle what it meant to be a man.

So, that one summer morning, while there was still dew wet on the grass she took me by the hand to show me all the things she had found out.

We walked down by the river, the day waking up around us, as she told me what she knew and I had yet to find out.

She knew all about those secret places that belong only to women and what could be found there. She knew what secrets could be unfolded and opened, even by the tentative fingers of those too young to become lovers. She took me down the sloping riverbank under the tree that dipped its branches into the river and gave me all her secrets to unwrap, to touch and to hold.

She taught me about kisses, and the way that lips can keep secrets and how those same lips can tell the fingers where to touch and explain to the hands how to hold and how to let go.

She taught me about the warm. She taught me about the dark and she taught me about so much about all her secrets before she turned in my arms to discover and unwrap those few simple secrets that were mine.

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Young Love's First Audit

When you are young and in love and you have a box full of invoices to share between you, it feels as though there can be no end to the good times. There is nothing quite as exciting to a young man as seeing a sexy young girl running her fingers through his cashbook, or for a young girl to witness the first bloom of manly pride when a young man achieves his first trial balance.

Then there are the days of filing when it seems that a single filing cabinet can contain the hopes, dreams and memos of all that young love can offer.

Even then, there is always the hesitation and uncertainty of a couple as they finally build up the courage to undertake their first audit together. Some times, they will experiment, or maybe they'll prefer the woman taking the lead and the man using the calculator as in the normal way these things are done. Sometimes they are too scared that they could be doing it wrong, or that they will not be able to come to a mutually-satisfying balance.

However, once they have their pencils sharpened and they sit down at the desk, ready to begin, then all the nerves and the worries fade into nothingness as he watches her slowly… sexily… sensuously… opening the ledger.

Shakespeare and Advertising

'How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the Cornish pasties of this world! / Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,'

Of course, nowadays, Shakespearean scholars are slowly coming to acknowledge the commercial basis for much of the bard's work, especially the plays. The above quotation for Honest Rosencrantz's 'Real Meat' Cornish Pasties is but one example along with, of course, the famous further quote from the same play extolling the virtues of Guildenstern's Pencils, the 2B in particular.

Obviously, back in those days there was no Arts Council, or any such diversion of taxpayers' money into what the great and good of the arts world thought ordinary folk ought to be made to like – or, at least - pay for. Instead, there were such things as patronage, Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis poem, for example, was dedicated to a patron: the Earl of Southampton, and used by the Earl as advertisements for a dating agency he had set up to enable the sons and daughters of the Elizabethan gentry to meet each other.

However, Shakespeare's plays were a different matter.

In later years, Shakespeare and his company of players were paid a certain amount of money for some of their plays by royalty: both Queen Elizabeth I and, later, James I. Unfortunately, this was not enough to even cover the costs of staging a play, especially with the price of theatrical doublets. Therefore, like modern commercial TV, Shakespeare used both commercials and sponsorship to provide the money necessary to get his plays on stage.

One of the earliest of Shakespeare's successful in-play adverts was the line: 'what light though yonder window breaks? It must be a Capulet's candle to shine so brightly.' in Romeo and Juliet.

Shakespeare's use of advertising in his plays reached its artistic peak in his play dedicated to Macbeth's Original Scotch Broth. From its list of the famous secret ingredients, herbs and spices hinted at as the witches prepare a cauldron of the broth, right through to what many playgoers regarded as the advertising slogan of the year:

'Is this a soup spoon I see before me. All the better for a spoonful of Macbeth's Original Scotch Broth – the taste thee'll never forget, even when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane!'

Towards the end of Shakespeare's writing career, The Tempest was sponsored initially by a company producing what they called 'the most powerful laxative powders' then on the market, with the advertising slogan:

Enough to cause a Tempest in your closet.

So successful was this commercial link up it enabled William Shakespeare to retire to a house in the country soon afterwards and live a life of comparative luxury right up to his death in 1616.

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Donkey Festival

Well, once. But that was only because I was cleaning it - washing it - and it… sort of… went off in my hand. I don't usually…. Well, y'know, I suppose not more than… ooh, well… once an hour. Oh, all right, twice an hour… at least. That is, until it gets too sore.

I suppose you think…?

Well, I suppose we all have to think occasionally. No matter how little we like to do it. I mean - to be honest - would they have invented television otherwise? Still, as they say - 'There's many a donkey in a field full of donkeys on donkey audit day at the Donkey Festival'.

However, at least I'm normal. I'm not one of those perverts who wears a suit and tie. I mean, dressing up like that in public. It's no wonder people point and stare. I mean, well, it's not normal, is it? I suppose if you work in a bank, or something equally sordid, but not a normal job, not a real job.

Me? Well, I like to wear raspberries, in the summer especially. Well, at least I did until the problem with the wasps on the top deck of the bus. Although, I did keep the ticket, as a sort of memento. After all, it is not often you are offered so many Maltesers by complete strangers.

Pithy, Apt and Erudite... or Not

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Well, there you go. Or, on the other hand there you stay, unless, well, you have found some sort of state of existence that exists between movement and stasis, which would I would presume be a bit of a bugger to maintain, especially with all that excess strain on the upper thigh muscles, to say nothing of the problems of maintaining the necessary close contact between yourself and your sandwich of choice.

Still, as they say, you can't butter Rome in a day. Or – for that matter count your chickens without recourse to some sort of numbering system.

So, here we are then. I suppose you are expecting something, if not quite pithy, apt and erudite about one of the subjects of the moment, something at least mildly diverting which doesn't bang on too much about the penguins, or mention cheese in a way the author finds - for some odd reason – quite humorous.

You never know with him though, do you?

It has been known for him to witter away for a whole blog post about nothing in particular without coming to much of a conclusion and/or point. Sometimes he's even been known to just stop right in the middle of a....

The Times of Legends and Accountancy

So let us take arms against this sea of invoices and take all these memos of the seven kingdoms into our stationery cupboard of destiny. I have seen how the Management Accountants are massing on the borders of, this, our fair land, on their mighty auditing steeds ready to sweep down across the plains and murder, rape, pillage and fully-audit all the villages and hamlets that lie open and defenceless against them.

Once, under the last kings, this was a mighty land with some of the most tightly-audited villages and hamlets with a taxation structure that meant all the castles of the land had accountancy departments that were feared in all the surrounding kingdoms.

There were times when the invoicing procedures of this kingdom struck fear into the kings of the surrounding lands, who knew they did not have the cash reserves that could withstand a siege by some of this land's most feared Knights of the Audit, some of whom had been training on their calculators and before they could even walk, let alone reconcile a cash book.

Then though came the dark days, the dark years, when the land was captured and taken over by the Dark Wizards of Financial Services who cast their dread spells upon the land and laid waste to all the taxation regulations that the kingdom had built up over the centuries, until even the very petty cash boxes were ripped asunder and left empty and desolate on the deserts of what had been a once proud Balance of Trade.

[And then came the Dark Knights of the VAT and the evil mages and wizards of the Inland Revenue to bring the dark times upon these once-fair lands and our world would never be the same again.

Not Enough Time

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Whenever I thought about such things, she was the one I thought about. We had not known each other for that long, but it seemed that we knew more about each other than anyone else I'd ever known. I can remember her sitting in some café with me, looking at me over the top of her coffee cup as we told each other our stories.

I remember thinking then that I would never, ever, meet anyone who understood me the way that she did. I remember how she laughed and looked away from me as she put her cup down as if she was already imagining some route that she would take which would take her away from me.

I knew that she wanted to be somewhere else, that that place, that town, was not the place for her. She seemed out of place there, as though she was some great actress and that town was some small provincial theatre that had a stage too small for her.

I knew that I was not enough, either, back then I did not know who I was or what I wanted to be. I had no life, except a small pointless day-to-day existence. She knew that I was on the verge of making some kind of breakthrough, of becoming the sort of person I was capable of becoming, of who I ought to be. She was already there, fully-formed and ready to take on the world, while I was still struggling to break out of my chrysalis.

She was ready to take flight, and we both knew that life is so very short and that she had no time to wait for me.

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Envy

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[….]

'Are you going to tell me?' Julia said as the song ended.

'Tell you what?'

'Why you aren't going to the lectures? Why you act so pissed off all the time? Why you don't make me laugh like you used to?' She knelt up on the bed, looking at me. The light of the desk lamp behind her made her blonde hair a pale halo around her head, her face in deep shadow.

I sighed and sat up slightly. 'All right...' I paused for a moment of thought. 'It is the contrast, the difference, the gap. In my tutorial group, we all sit in this small room around a table talking quietly about rages, angers, passion, despair, love and confusion. Then after an hour of this we pick up our books, put away our pens and walk away for a cup of coffee....' I paused again and took a long drink of my wine, holding my hand up as Julia opened her mouth to speak.

'Then, I come back here to Alison. I think about food, whether or not I need a shower and if we have enough dirty washing to go to the launderette. Now, I find myself thinking of The Wasteland as I watch the tumble-dryer, and thinking of sweat-stained shirts in the tutorials. But neither of them seems to be of any help, of any use. I can connect nothing with nothing. The shirts will only get dirty again, and what real use is the other stuff?' I took the cigarette from between Julia's fingers. She sat with her head down, deep in thought. I laughed as I lit the cigarette. She looked up at me, slightly puzzled.

'It's a silly thing, I know. I thought I was too old for any of this teenage-angst stuff, walking through the rain in a too-long second-hand overcoat, raging at the cold indifferent moon and moaning in existential despair.'

Julia shifted slightly and I could see her eyes as she looked at me. 'It doesn't sound silly to me,' she said. 'I get upset by things like social injustice, inequality, the Tories winning the election again, university underfunding and the poverty of students, and things like sexism and racism, but I've never felt so... so lost as that.'

I reached out and took her hand in mine. I shook my head slowly. 'It's not that bad, honestly. It just gets like that sometimes.' I smiled, squeezing Julia's fingers. 'Anyway, it will soon be Christmas; perhaps I just need a holiday.'

Julia turned, and moved back to sit beside me. I let go of her hand, but she picked my hand up and held it in both of hers, resting in her lap. 'You will come back though, won't you, after Christmas?' Julia looked down at my hand and stroked her thumb across the back of it.

'Of course,' I said. I still felt, despite everything, that this was my last chance. My last chance to find some sort of life for myself, some sort of meaning, nothing else had worked for me. Nowhere felt like home any longer. If I gave up, I would have to go back to my parents' house. I would have to face my sister's confirming sneer, my mother's reproach, but most of all I would have to stand face to face with my father.

'Good luck, son,' he had said with a shy, almost proud, smile. 'I wish I could've had a chance like this. There's always been so much I wanted to know, to learn, I envy you.' I felt the rough skin of my father's hand as he held mine, tight, for a moment. He winked and then smiled at me. The sound of my sister's car horn jerked me into movement and I let go of his hand. As we drove away, I looked back to see them both, my mother and father with their arms around each other, waving.

Until that point, I had never felt my father needed to know anything. He was a man who could fix anything with a short, sharp intake of breath, a shake of the head and a screwdriver. He had a screwdriver with a shining shaft and a worn, sweat-stained wooden handle, far older than me, and probably of far more use.

I had no use for those screwdrivers, but I felt I could use some of my father's envy. The envy that had so surprised me. I could envy Julia and her belief in the rightness of her socialism and feminism. I could envy Guy's desire for the music, noise and crowds of a good party. I could envy Ron's desire for a good degree to get him a good job, and his easy social manner. I could envy Margot's arrogant disregard of those around her. I could envy my sister's tabloid certainties, her desire for the money, expensive clothes and jewellery that spelled success for her. I could even envy Alison's ironic distancing of herself, turning away from the university life she no longer felt she needed. There was also my parents' stable, happy contentment with each other, which I could envy too.

I could use some envy, but only if I could feel it like the solid, purposeful weight of that screwdriver. But, I had no strength for envy. Strong emotion feels out of place with me, fraudulent in some way; I am not built for such things. At that moment, I couldn't even feel the true weight of my own doubts about the value of what I was doing at the university. They seemed airy, light and insubstantial. As I had said to Julia when I tried to put them into words, they seemed silly, adolescent even. I was getting very tired of words.

'Do I dare eat a peach?' I said.

'What?' Julia said sleepily, letting go of my hand to stroke her hair back from her eyes.

'Oh, nothing,' I said. 'Do you want a cigarette?'

[….]

[Extract from Hanging Around Until]

The End of the Chapter

She saw. That was enough. Now she understood. She closed the door. She walked away. She closed that chapter on her life with that closing door.

She walked for a while, for hours. She walked along down by the river with the autumn wind blowing her red-gold hair around her face as it blew the red-gold fallen leaves up around her feet with each step. The sky was grey and moody with heavy clouds threatening rainstorms that never came.

She would have liked the rain, would have liked its cold stinging drops thrown against her bare face by the wind. She would have liked to feel washed clean by it all. She would have liked a storm to wash away the visions of what lay beyond that door.

She stood for a while, watching the river, swollen with autumn rains, tumbling on down between its banks. She would have – if she'd ever really though about it – expected her thoughts to be tumbling and troubled like that heavy river, but they were not. She felt as calm as a lazy summer afternoon when even the river feels slow and placid.

When she got back to the house that was her happy home until she opened that door, she did not need to open that door again. It was already open and the room beyond was full of an absence that she knew she was already getting used to.

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Monday Poem: One Breath

One Breath

All there is, is all there could be
enclosed all within this one breath
that takes a lifetime to exhale
and is all over in an eye-blink
then lost on breezes that blow us
away into forgotten dust.

All moving with the flowing winds
and chasing on along the breezes
that take the seeds of starting life
all falling down to waiting ground
and ready to begin to grow
out from this dust we leave behind.