Child asleep by water

Child, snub nosed,

hands lightly clenched,
asleep in the grass,

by slow moving water.
Patchwork between her
and the earth.

Hair like damp, soft, feathers.
Perfect half-moon cuticles.
A finger ready to rise,
summon her slaves 
when she wakes.
Fleshy creases of shoulder
and elbow,
Long eyelash fronds delicately
rest.

She dreams of.......what?
Harmony,abundance,bliss.

(Words and picture by J. Taylor from an original
photograph by Claire Hutchings Dunigan)

The cycle begins again

I was woken this morning by the tractor passing my window
as ploughing started, so close that I could wave to the farmer.
Timed my dressing, to save both our blushes, with his
disappearance over the horizon and had bra and top on
just as the cab reappeared and grew steadily bigger.
Waited for it to diminish again before taking off my pyjama
bottoms and getting into my pants.
On his third pass I was decent.

Back and forth in great diagonal sweeps with a devoted
entourage of gulls, rising, falling, systematically
"field walking" with finds consumed and unrecorded.
Furrows, deep brown, contrast with the green and
baulks almost invisible as every foot is used, scattering
indolent gulls who move no further than absolutely
necessary so as not to miss a morsel.

The field has lain fallow since my arrival but this morning's
activity is encouraging.
If he's ploughing then there has been no change of land use.
For at least another season our solitude is safe and I can
watch the cycle of the farming year from start to finish
With the job done in less than two hours he makes his
final pass, glances, and waves an "au revoir".

Death in the morning

The battle was played out on my window pane.
As the crane fly struggled desperately,
its wings invisible in their impotent beating,
the spider continued spinning relentlessly and
amputated two of the fly's legs.
The end of the second leg freed the fly.
Denuded, it limped on to an adjacent pane and
rested.
Spider sated herself and stored the surplus,
delicately arranging the long spindly feast into a
compact, concertinaed, easily stored package.

The modified cranefly waited for death in the sun,
four legs gracefully splayed.
It's abdomen an unadorned, flared column,
fatally silhouetted.
Spider didn't keep the kill for future enjoyment,
as breakfast was taken early and replete,
she retired to a quiet corner of her web
amongst the ivy, abdomen faintly throbbing.

A passing bird,vied with its kind, and ate
the rest of the fly, an unexpected snack.

Recording

It's a long time since I've waited in a queue
for artistic reasons I mean.
Ahead of us are young women, with fluorescent hair,
apparent old hands at this radio recording game
and determined nothing and no one will be allowed
to get in front of them.
Then two Americans who communicate monosyllabically,
without looking at each other and while reading.
That's obviously where we failed - no books to while away
the time, or a kindle like the young woman just behind us.
As the temperature dropped her decision not to wear a coat
and to sit on her cardigan looked less and less wise.
But she bore up.
Another family arrived,the mother glamorous but outgoing
and unexpectedly, because my son is also outgoing, we struck
up a rapport.
Passersby stared, tried to make sense of this expanding line
outside the BBC, and other ticket holders hailed us and vowed
to return later.

Book less, I passed the time people-watching, speculating on
the ebb and flow of guests arriving and leaving The Langham.
There was a frisson of raised hackles when three other women
arrived and instantly queue jumped, talking animatedly to
the three at the head of the line.
Kindle girl, indignant summoned a security guard who,
wimpishly, ducked out of the challenge.
So she tackled them herself, to no avail.

Eventually, there was movement and our tickets were stamped.
Inside we passed through the scanners,men removing their belts
and praying their trousers wouldn't fall down.
Interestingly, women were presumed not to wear belts,
probably on the assumption that those with suspenders
were out of date.
Once through security we were shepherded to the bar.
We snapped up the seats by the door.
Apparently, this is essential in order to get a head start
when the stream is unleashed into the studio.

The feral nature of the audience became overt as
the crowd around the door became denser and
people tried various ploys to bag an advantage.
The unholy scrum as the word came that we could
go to the studio was the epitome of "everyone for
themselves" and a stumble at that point would have
meant a severe trampling.
How naive of me to imagine a modicum of civilised behaviour
would prevail within the hallowed portals.
Half the stalls seat were already occupied as we entered the
theatre and occasioned puzzlement but was explained
when we realised that this was the end of the series and that
these were family and friends, plus VIPs.

A radio recording seemed to me rather like a public
rehearsal or read through, in format, except this was the finished
performance.
The setting is quite informal with the cast casually dressed, although
the female members were more chic than their male counterparts,
and simply sitting on chairs between trips to the microphone.
The fluidity of this had elements of the dance.
Microphones suspended above our heads could pick up
laughter, applause,(wanted) coughs and mutters (unwanted)
so we had to be both spontaneous and yet careful.

At the end of each session the producer bounced onto the stage for
the re-takes.
My heart went out to Richard Johnson, who probable had most re-takes
to do and one, to his great exasperation, three or four times over.
We willed him to get to the end of his speech ( he had quite complex syntax)
and when he finally did, amongst the cheers, I let out an emphatic "Yes!"
which will probably be edited out.

In the middle of the stage, on a stand, perched what I can only
describe as a smooth coconut shaped item with a green light on top.
The actors have to wait for the green light before commencing
their re-takes and the wait sometimes seemed interminable.
We had to remember to laugh, clap, cheer in the right places,
each time.

How different in so many respects from conventional theatre
and yet there are similarities such as the evocation of the story
in the mind's eye.
The imagination compensates for the limitations of the stage or
in this case a total lack of physical setting.
It has completely changed my listening habit as it is now enlivened
by remembrance of what listeners don't see or aren't aware of.

And I had to remember to laugh, not because it wasn't funny,
but I was so engrossed in the mechanics of the action that it almost
took precedence.
I'd love to go again but next time my Dorothy L Sayers will go with me
as will some extra protection against the scrummage.

Three weeks in

The hardest part of winding down is not to go too far so that the brain
becomes moribund, the adrenalin levels drop too low,
the synaptic gills close and filter nothing.
I am struggling to maintain a balance and accept that I
don't have to do everything with in a restricted
time frame.

There is time to consider,
no deadline to meet (as yet) but I still feel pressure,
probably of my own making;
that not enough is produced in the time I have (for whom?);
not enough artistry, creativity, revealed in the hours available.
It is as if I am still constrained by the greater demands
of the work place and its insistence on subordinated self-expression,
which had to be crammed, concentrated into snatched moments.

These moments are in danger of expanding to a degree where their bounds
could become invisible, non-existent and therefore perilous.

Evenings with satellite food channels

Commence with the culinary excess that is "Man v Food"
Impellingly repellent.
Twenty million calories smothered in gunge
In peculiar combinations -meat with grapefruit conserve
Wrapped in bread.

Then to Ina in the Hamptons
And her Jeffrey.
She's independent,apparently,but so down home.
The concept of "back to basics" enshrined in processed
This and ready made that.
Make it for yourself dear-and if
Jeffrey doesn't like then....
More for you!
Harking back to Europe,
Shabby chic that wouldn't dare be.

Assume nothing, take nothing as read,
From an audience that needs an ad break
Every ten minutes
And smile at all costs.
Why are there no brown eggs in America?
And an electric squeezer for the juice of half a lemon?
How back to basics is that?

My god! the man's not due back 'til tomorrow
Yet he hangs like an omnipresent master.
He's a patterned sweater wearing,
Grizzle haired,
Teddy bear of a man
Who comes home now and again.

Ina's cuisine is slightly less
Overblown, less smothering,
Just as calorie, cholesterol laden
And I shouldn't watch, especially
At this time of night.
It makes me hungry and I'm
Trying to be good.

They keep guffawing at each other,
She's actually said "My purpose in life is to
Make you a good dinner" and
"I do love our weekends together".
Does she go into a cupboard from Monday to Friday?
Was Sunday dinner filmed on Monday because of Jeffrey's schedule?
A chimera like their whole relationship?

I'm gritting my teeth not to succumb and go to the fridge.
I should switch off and do something more useful instead -
Like sleep!

Next up -
Dypso drifts around The Med,
Pickled in claret and merlot.
I can't be bothered.

Tonight it's the woman with the
Curly fingers and that damned perpetual smile and
She has pink spatulas.
This is another supposed option to fast food,
She makes the sauce after serving the dish,
Surely it's getting cold so is it fast food per se?

From the semi-sublime to the nearly ridiculous.
"4 Ingredients" from Oz.
This is cooking through white tombstone teeth.
Smile after smile.
Open a can of this (boiled condensed milk),
Buy a ready made that.
Serve it up to four captive guests who will
"Ooh" and "Aah" to the camera.
It's really all about the sea and surf setting,
A cheats dinner party,
Okker food.

Now back home for Nigella.
All this contrived domesticity,
Barefooted (but no Contessa).
No bed hair or naked face (although the
Pretence is there).
"Ugly duckling" children who
Mustn't upstage her.

Why does she never splash herself
While wearing crisp summer linen?
The pretentiousness of pulling a
Large mixer from a holdall,
Just can't be without her
Culinary status symbols.
I refuse to believe she does the washing up.
Domestic goddess to skivvy?
Impossible.

Everything has to be a seductive,
Quasi-orgasmic experience,
Trying to be ordinary but would be
Horrified to be defined as such.
And do the friends mind being used as
Stooges, foils, accessories?
Wearing less distinct clothing,being colourless,
So as not to draw the focus away from
"The Star".
Patronising didactism demonstrating
Pallid parcels,
Rice based,vapid,
High class nursery food.

Prissy, flirtatiousness,
While friend is consigned to
Bathing the children,
Putting them to bed,
Prior to the grownup food.
Ostensibly, South Indian, but never
Tainted by peasant fingers.
This is playing at "roughing it".

Unpromising Day

As they often do, days start out uncertain, anxious, full of foreboding.
Today, the arrival of the post woman only increased
that sense of dread I've relearned, too quickly.
Fatal brown envelope lay in my hand between junk and my railcard.
Daughter-in-law opened the envelope.
I saw the tremor of her fingers as she tried to tear along the fold.
As usual my role is that of "sure and stedfast" rock,
but I'm struggling to fulfill it.

We waded through the jargon, the welter of figures that
seem randomly plucked, to the nub.
They accept my son is ill, that he needs space,
may eventually be well again.
But for now, he doesn't have to endlessly recount the horrors,
push down the nausea, justify himself to ignorant pen pushers.
I sagged onto her shoulder, shouted, silently,
"Thank You" to the sky.

The whole day changed.

Son appeared, zombie like,
and took a while to assimilate the news.
The weight gradually lifted as the import filtered through
clogged synapses.
Now, I could enjoy, really enjoy just standing, watching,
Red Admirals, delicate proboscis probing each sac of the buddleia,
Dragonflies, whisking the air, and pick lavender and bay.

Cloudscapes change from louring to sunlight and at last I can feel
a sense of genuine happiness,or rather contentment.
Not quite the same thing.

That night, while three fifths of the family were out,
I sat outside with a wee libation, and sang, realising that there
was no other human near enough to hear me.
The only accompaniment was the trickle of circulating water,
in the pond and trees silent after the wind dropped,
Inky black sky, punctured by pin pricks, with no orange, city glare.
I switched off the lights and sat in real darkness.
Moths, who had cavorted around the lamps, were disorientated
and threw themselves against the glass.

Apart from a sleeping young boy, I was alone,
liberated rather than scared.

Photogragh by J.Taylor

Settling in

The days are flying at the speed of the Tornadoes zooming over the house.
We all appear to be in our separate zones but we are actually
collaborating and creating at the same time.

Grandson number 2 after eleven weeks holiday decided to produce
his "other washing and mending" from The Great Wen that is his suitcase.
"Nan, I love you, do you love me?"
"Yes James, what do you want and how much will it cost?"
"Not money, I didn't call you Grand mama Dearest, did I?"
"True my dear so what is it?"
"This seam in my trousers needs mending and can you repair the slit in my
brassard which got accidentally caught with scissors - not by me I hasten to add....."
"Oh and also, sew on my badges in this order? I'd do them myself
but got to fly-Xbox game to play...."
Some things never change.

Forty eight hours before he goes back to boarding school we start
a massive clear out/clean up and he suddenly remembers a host of items
he aught to take back with him that amnesia has hidden.
He produces three packs of decrepit emergency rations,
from a long ago cadet camping expedition, so far out of their sell by date
that not even the most dedicated eco-warrior would touch them.

The rain is rattling a staccato tattoo on the roof of the conservatory and I think Autumn approacheth.
I live in a house, now, with four rock guitar fanatics so as I walk through
to my room Grandson number 1 stands in his boxers on the stairs,
playing his bass along to some vibrating cacophony while a projected,
animated idol struts across an expanse of wall.
Grandson 2, slender, long legged, as hairless as his brother is hirsute,
plays a lead guitar while Grandson 3 runs his fingers along an instrument
known as the "cigar box" but which resembles an oriental instrument
played with a bow.
Their father sings and plays all their instruments and the house shudders.
Fortunately, no one overlooks or hears us, except the quails
who sometimes craik an accompaniment.

They groan at my musical taste but tolerate it and show me
spontaneous kindnesses such as making me a step to ease my entry
and exit from the house or taking my coat,without being asked,
and hang it up.
They even accompanied me to the dentist with relatively good grace
and "tweeted" while I endured the excruciating scream of the sonic devil in my mouth.

Sunset, after the first week.

Deep orange above the horizon,
Striated through with brown.
Azure melting into navy
As the sun recedes.

Lights flicker at points
Across the vista.
Grouse or quail craik in
The undergrowth.

Dark,sharp, shapes stark
Against the dying sky.
Sun flames linger in a
Gloria of cloud.

(photogragh by Jennifer Taylor)

Internal worlds

I've posted this week's comment to another blogger's post, after drafting and proof reading the few lines at least five times, before hitting the "post" button, this time without typos, in my usual trepidation.
I become a gibbering idiot at the thought he might read it (how immature of me) and think me an illiterate, which he obviously isn't.

Such talent. The pictures and erudition prove that, along with the ability to not only observe but make connections of a global and more local nature.

(I'm finding myself in the midst of an internal trio again - the other two as yet blurred and ill defined. Foils to me or vice versa?)
I share my passion with an invisible cast of thousands. Those who don't appreciate or share said passion can be disregarded with impunity.
The real power of fantasy is the omnipresence and omnipotence - of being the omniscient narrator moving the pieces at will.
The problem for me seems to be that the characters play scenes on a screen immediately behind my forehead and won't stop unless I write down what I see and what they say.
Only then will they move on. My omnipotence is undermined by the power of the characters to act independently- apparently.
I feel I am "the puppet". When I try to manipulate them or the storyline it doesn't work.

Well, the characters are in a new setting and like me are having to attune themselves to it.
It will take me ages, I think, to lose the conditioning, to realise that time is more flexible.
The danger will be in forgetting, or not being able to let go.
That a) some semblance of discipline is necessary and b) it is no longer as rigid or unrelenting.
Managing the new environments, new routines and re-learning the strategies of communal living is the most challenging. ( Dealing with the old anxieties when the postie appears has reasserted itself,unfortunately)

At the moment I am learning to cope with living in a one-storey building with odd steps, climbing in/out of a new bath; remembering to lock toilet doors, where locks exist, etc.etc.
All the new patterns and I haven't even considered the outside!

The skies really are high and wide in Norfolk and the bands of weather are equally wide.
My brain is trying to break out of its cocoon-one part is freeing itself, alongside other parts that still plough along in seventeen year old furrows.
That's done with but I know myself well enough not to be fooled that it won't nudge me from time to time, or refuse to relinquish its vice-like grip.
After all, part of that furrow is Me. The perseverance, the strait way, the caution.
To jettison it all completely would be false and a pretence.

Now I have access to extended facilities, shared equipment, that offer more opportunities for artistic and other development.
Of course, it also means compromised privacy - I can get it if/when I need but it's not total as when one lives alone.
There is also, still, the sense of time needing to be managed quite tightly- that will take longer to loosen its grip.

More shorts

1) Hand Skin (Old)

Noticing that the folds create new landscapes,
Flesh thinning like the bones,
so that loose creases concertina,deepen,convolute,collapse,
interrrupted by purple pools and a navy delta of bloody tributaries,
a boney sierra covered by a delicate web of thinning epidermis.

2) Hand Skin (Young)

Swollen,plump, taut-
heavily blood fed epidermis,
smooth virgin territory,
unworn,unworked,unblemished
bloody tributaries, subterranean.

3) Face Skin (Old)

Alternately worked by a thousand diets,
stretched, flaccid,
soft crepuscularity,
wind, sun flensed,crevices deepened
by reduced collegan under the jaw,
around eye sockets.
Proportions altered by lengthening pinna and drooping lobes.

4) Face Skin (Young)

Unadventured
cradling bone structure snugly,
super collegened, inexperienced,
punctuated by pustules, sebum soaked,
hormonal dynamo in hyperdrive,
overloading regenerative balance.

Young skin, cool as cotton in summer heat,
refreshing, reassuring.
Old skin, cool as a shroud in summer heat,
shrinking, warning.

Balance

Balance is the key
Perfect and all is peace and harmony,
Off kilter, by the merest micron,
Result- chaos.
In spiritual terms,
the Fulcrum hangs at Golgotha.