Tales From The Crypt - Wednesday 29th June 2022

Started the day in the usual way talking with someone special relatively far away (there are no long distances in the UK!)

Before starting work my senses were assaulted by Liz Truss's latest outpourings. It makes me wonder: does she have a problem whereby her mouth utters things before her brain has time to consider the subject, or, alternatively, is she just rather dense?

Work will consume most of the day as I am very busy for the foreseeable future.  Mind you, what is foreseeable? In truth, only the moment that is now.  You can plan for the future. We all do.  Whether any of it comes to pass and whether you see the next day dawn is entirely out of your control. Control is an illusion. It's all about probability and taking the steps that make the desired future more likely. 

I have noticed that I've been putting on weight for the past 6 months or so, and there are probably several reasons for this. This subject was brought sharply into focus today when one of the carers remarked that she'd not noticed my chest before.  I said I was developing breasts/man boobs and might need some advice on choosing a bra. The other carer present took the tone lower 😀 Humour aside, it did remind me I should do something about it.

It's been a while since I've posted a poem here and the one below is this week's choice from Clive James's anthology (mentioned here many times before). I'm coming to the end of the book and we are in the 20th century. I have to admit I've not been that interested in Seamus Heaney's poems, though I know he is highly regarded and a winner of the Nobel prize for Literature, mainly because they generally haven't engaged me. 'Shore Woman', the poem below, has phrases that resonate in my mind, despite some of the cobblers about fishing etc. Some of the phrases, such as 'White pocks/Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster' remind me of Ulysses, when Stephen is walking on Sandymount Strand, contemplating philosophical views on reality. I also love the final line.

(Most of the poems by Heaney that I recall reading are about animals/wildlife, which is not a poetic subject that interests me much. Nature is to be experienced. Not only that, I am not a big fan of anthropomorphism. So there!)

Shore Woman

I have crossed the dunes with their whistling bent

Where dry loose sand was riddling round the air

And I'm walking the firm margin. White pocks

Of cockle, blanched roofs of clam and oyster

Hoard the moonlight, woven and unwoven

Off the bay. At the far rocks

Comes and goes.

A pale sud comes and goes.

 

Under boards the mackerel slapped to death

Yet we still took them in at every cast,

Stiff flails of cold convulsed with their first breath.

My line plumbed certainly the undertow,

Loaded against me once I went to draw

And flashed and fattened up towards the light.

He was all business in the stern. I called:

"This is so easy that it's hardly right,"

But he unhooked and coped with frantic fish

Without speaking. Then suddenly it lulled,

We'd crossed where they were running, the line rose

Like a let-down and I was conscious

How far we'd drifted out beyond the head.

"Count them up at your end", was all he said

Before I saw the porpoises' thick backs

Cartwheeling like the flywheels of the tide,

Soapy and shining. To have seen a hill

Splitting the water could not have numbed me

more

 Than the close irruption of that school, 

Tight viscous muscle, hooped from tail to snout,

Each one revealed complete as it bowled out

And under.

They will attack a boat.

I knew it and I asked John to put in

But he would not, declared it was a yarn

My people had been fooled by far too long

And he would prove it now and settle it.

Maybe he shrank when those thick slimy backs

Propelled towards us: I lay and screamed

Under splashed brine in an open rocking boat

Feeling each dunt and slither through the timber,

Sick at their huge pleasures in the water.

 

I sometimes walk this strand for thanksgiving

Or maybe it's to get away from him

Skittering his spit across the stove. Here

Is the taste of safety, the shelving sand

Harbours no worse than razor shell or crab -

Though my father recalls carcasses of whales

Collapsed and gasping, right up to the dunes.

But to-night such moving, sinewed life patrols

The blacker fathoms out beyond the head.

Astray upon a detritus of shells,

 

Between parched dunes and salivating wave

I claim rights on this fallow avenue,

A membrane between moonlight and my shadow.

[Please note, the formatting has gone a bit awry in places. Blame Blogger. I haven't time to fiddle with the HTML, yet.]

I cooked dinner for son #1 and I (son #2 is eating over the internet with his gf) and watched the end of a documentary on BBC Four about the building of the loop on the Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog railway. It was fascinating to see places I've walked and travelled around as they used to be.

Eventually, son #1 joined me, but only after I'd finished eating. I was heading up for an exciting call with Q. Speke to me!

Magazine / 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' / 'Real Life'

[[Not sure where this sprang from (I haven't listened to any Magazine in a while), but it is a great song!]]