Posted on by Graham Dukes · 2 Comments

All around the Wrekin

They used to say – and perhaps they still do – that when you tackle something in a roundabout manner you are going “all around the Wrekin.”  Somehow, it seems to be happening to me all the time nowadays, in one way or another, indoors and out, talking or acting, and I simply can’t help it. Take what happened just this Saturday morning……

Shortly after nine o’clock I am up in our windowless loft, still in my dressing gown, searching with a torch for our reserve stock of toilet rolls.   Why the cleaners chose to put them up here of all places, goodness alone knows, but we did ask them to tidy up the bathroom, I suppose. And we did order another big boxful of the things from the shop yesterday, but with guests coming this evening we need to be sure. I go on hunting.  Need a new battery in this torch, I can see.

The front-door bell rings  

All right, whoever you are. I’m coming down right away. Better get this blessed loft ladder fixed soon – don’t feel steady on it, and in any case I suppose I shouldn’t have gone up here on slippers. No, Martha, I haven’t found the toilet rolls. And yes, there is indeed someone at the front door – I’ve heard them ring and I’m coming down.  Careful, lad, I say to myself, one step at a time and hold on tight.  Have to contact the carpenter down the road about this ladder when I get a moment; pretty reasonable, he is, but he doesn’t like people troubling him on a Saturday – I guess he goes to the races like people do.

Ring!  Ring!

Patience, please. This is a pretty big house as they go, and I’m still only as far as the bathroom.  Still, I really am on my way down to you. Just a few steps to the main staircase. You can’t do it fast on slippers, you know, and dressing gowns weren’t made for athletic performance  either.

Ring! Ring! Ring!

No Martha, don’t get up for goodness sake – I’m nearly there.  Mr. Impatient, whoever he is, will have to wait just a jiffy longer. Maybe it’s a couple of those insistent missionary people with the shiny shoes. Only ten steps more down to the hall.  Have to switch off the burglar alarm so that it doesn’t scream at me.  Right!  Now where did we put the key last night when we came back from the theatre?   Got it!  All ready to open up.  So, what’s that car driving away?  And there’s some sort of a note stuck in the letterbox. Let me just adjust my glasses. What do they mean – Was here with toilet rolls, but no-one home.

No Martha, I was just a couple of seconds too late.  No, I don’t remember why we didn’t order the toilet rolls before Friday.  All I need to do now is to have a shower and get shaved and dressed, and if you want I can bring you some coffee and toast and the newspaper. Then I can get the bus into the village and collect the stuff, and if need be I can catch a taxi back, all in good time…promise……

 

Photo credit: The Wrekin, by Chris Bayley, 28.02.2006 [reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic licence.]

Posted on by Alan West · 3 Comments

Renaissance man

 

 

The Tankerton bus drew up. The passenger door opened and the bus settled down with an emphatic hiss. No one left and no one came. It was high summer. The driver shut off his engine, opened the half-door of his cab and emerged into the sunshine. Pausing in the doorway, he yawned and stretched, and extended his arms and legs into all four corners of the door.

For a fleeting moment I see him as l’uomo vitruviano, a living example of the Leonardo anatomical drawing designed to illustrate the architectural qualities of the perfect male body. Before I have time to acknowledge him as a fellow Renaissance man, I notice he is a little on the tubby side, his shirt needs tucking in. We nod at each other, though he is probably unaware that he is witness to the first day of my New Life. Squinting at him in the afternoon sun we share a moment of silence.  I’m happy and, in my mind at least, I embrace him and I embrace the newness of the afternoon.

My wife and I are sitting outside The Plough at Stalisfield Green. We have come here on our bicycles from our temporary home on the Kent Downs expecting to find our local pub to be open on a summer afternoon. It isn’t. We can wait an hour or so, or we could cycle on to The Bowl.

On the way here, we cycle past carefully tended fields, rolling, rich agricultural land. We come across a half-hidden sign to an overgrown public footpath and follow it into a dappled wood. Disappointingly (for those of us who like to be hit in the face by our metaphors) there are no divergent paths here – this is the path less travelled – so we wheel our bikes on through the ancient wood, stopping to admire a beech tree that is quite possibly 350 years old.

Kent is called the Garden of England for a reason. You could throw seeds of almost anything into the earth round here and you’d end up with a crop. Much of the land is given over to wheat or barley, but we pass other fields with black cows and black sheep in them, and black hens pecking around their feet. In Stalisfield you can keep any kind of animal, as long as it’s black. In an unkempt field nearby, in deliberate contradiction, a troupe of white geese march towards us along the line of the hedge. Rabbits in a scrubby hollow scatter as we approach. Dogs bark at us from the safety of their cottage gates and, if they could, they’d grab their leads and join us. Stretched out below us are orchards and vineyards and fields of herbs. Along the narrow lanes, pheasant and partridge scatter as we approach and when cornered, they wind themselves up like clockwork birds for a noisy take-off. The fields beyond roll on down towards Faversham and Whitstable and, to the east, in the haze, to Herne Bay and Margate.  To the north, in the distant estuary, there is the London array, a massive offshore wind farm, its sails unmoved by the languid afternoon.

West London in early August can be sticky but it feels entirely different here. The air is clear and clean. The noise of the aircraft that skimmed the rooftops of our Kew home and interrupted my sleep for 32 years at 5:15 am is felt here only only as a far-off rumble. Vapour trails mark out this time, and this place, in an otherwise timeless sky. This is the Thanet sky that inspired Turner, “The loveliest in all Europe,” he said. Here there are extravagant, piled up banks of cloud that echo the shape of the land, daubed onto a boundless blue sky.

A few weeks later, we will find ourselves under Turner’s sky again, in the Margate gallery that bears his name, standing in front of an unmade bed – that unmade bed – “My Bed” by Tracey Emin, who hails from these parts. My wife voices the statutory “you call that Art!” response of somebody who knows what she likes – and it isn’t ashtrays and used condoms.

But I feel rather like the small boy in the crowd who can see the point. I want to see art in terms of metaphor, so I am wondering whether it is true that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life?”  Is this really all about sex and death? It seems to me that Emin is cleverly saying that Art is Life, Life is Art. The metaphor and the thing are one and the same.

Back at the pub, the bus driver has been stretched out on the grass basking in the sunshine but it is now his time to depart. We untether our bikes from the antique ploughs half-buried in the green. We too have decided to move on. This, after all, is our temporary home while we wait for our new house in Canterbury to be finished. Like the Tankerton bus, we are stopping here, but not for long.

 

 

I should credit Edward Thomas for references (and ideas) borrowed from his poem “Adlestrop”. It describes a “day of heat”, a tranquil day in June 1914 just before the outbreak of WW1. Some say that the waiting express train that draws up ‘unwontedly’ is a metaphor for the industrial war machine; at rest in a transcendent moment of calm, before the hell of WW1 breaks loose.

His friend, Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” also referenced is said to have influenced Thomas’s decision to enlist in the infantry, even though Frost had urged Thomas to join him in the USA. Thomas was killed in action on 9th April 1917 at the Battle of Arras.

See also: Wikipedia – Life imitating art 

 

 

Posted on by Graham Dukes · 1 Comment

Of words and their worth

At least seventy years have gone by since I first discovered the delight of playing with language.  The place was a sandy beach in Wales where, as a schoolboy on holiday, I chanced upon an old man – a native of the place, I believe – who sat there in the August sunshine reading poems aloud and musing on them for whoever chose to listen. As I came by, he was just declaiming the closing lines of William Wordsworth’s “Daffodils”:

“…and then my heart with pleasure fills

and dances with the daffodils…”

He paused, and I heard him remark, almost to himself, that here was a poet whose very name defined a proper approach to his art – forever fondling words, and recognising their worth.

In later life I have been fortunate to encounter – in person or in writing – many another connoisseur of fine words. The late Ivor Brown set a memorable example with his little books, each treating the reader to a display of good words, too many of which (hebetude?  ganderglas? minikin?) had been cast carelessly aside by a hard-nosed society. In more recent years we have enjoyed Robert Macfarlane’s fine assembly of rich terms from the countryside, some fading, many now forgotten. For my part I have followed one of Ivor Brown’ trails, seeking out good words, particularly those with richness of tone and some subtlety of meaning, that have undeservedly been misappropriated and sometimes consigned to the shadows, if not to the sewers.

Just take, if you will, the word euphoria. I acknowledge its use to denote a sense of well-being, but even the Oxford dictionary raises a warning finger, reminding me that the mood in question is likely to reflect over-confidence or over-optimism.  Yet could a term such as euphoria not have served some more exalted purpose? When I close my eyes and roll the word around on my tongue it suggests ghostly whispering (“He was awakened by the sound of euphoria, echoing all around, as the moonlight played on his bedroom wall.”).

There are plenty of other words the very sound of which seems to carry with it some inbuilt meaning. Ingot is a splendid surviving example, clearly referring to a weighty body of precious metal. But consider then the term vomit; merely uttering it elicits only nausea and disgust. Yet here is a term, very close in structure to ingot, that could well denote a small metal object – perhaps a tiny coin (“1000 vomits = 1 ingot”). Too many other innocent terms have for that matter been similarly besmirched by an association with ill-health. Might one not expect to gaze upon acres of dyslalia flowers blossoming on every hillside in the spring, rather than encountering the term as denoting a tragically inborn defect of speech? Or take jaundice, unhappily applied to a pathological yellowing of bodily tissues, associated with a sick liver. This is a term that could better have served the noble languages of architecture or homely comfort along with terrace and valance. If I ever get to building a cathedral it will boast a fine chancel with multiple jaundices, to which folk will flock in admiration.

Some paired letters have an elegance all their own, ennobling the words in which they occur, a notable example being tw at the start of a word. Twine is far more distinguished than mere string, and twilight is the most romantic time of day, while twang echoes in its very soul the tones of string music. One would wish to speak equally well of twitter, gently portraying the innocent chatter of tiny birds; alas, we have all experienced the downfall of twitter, today merely denoting a gossip corner on the internet. No, we should cherish “tw” and I assure you that I have been building a little stock of new terms, built around it and available on request for appropriate usage.

We must also beware of discarding meaningful old words and replacing them with mere noises. Why did the honest old term wireless, favoured by our fathers, give way – perhaps under transatlantic influence – to the meaningless radio? And should the internet – the name of which carries neither music nor meaning – not from the outset have been termed the ethernet?

It is no doubt too late to recover some of the graceful words that we have lost, but there are many that we still need to cherish and use well, cautiously adapting them where necessary to meet changing times. They are the daffodils of a language and, like Wordsworth, we may, as we write, even find ways to dance a little with them.

 

References:

Brown I (1944): Ivor Brown’s Book of Words. Jonathan Cape, London

Macfarlane R (2015): Landmarks.  Hamish Hamilton, London.

Posted on by Neil Taylor · 1 Comment

Don’t ask

 

I walk the streets most days. It’s not because I’m currently homeless (that may come). No, it’s just that I daren’t take the car to go shopping or deliver my son to school in case there’s no parking space left in my road by the time I get back.

Out on the streets, I’m constantly greeting and then re-greeting local people I know who are also building up their daily steps on their smart phones. These days, I give these neighbourhood acquaintances a quick smile and a rather old-fashioned ‘Good morning!’ and walk on. They seem happy enough. None of us is looking for a conversation.

This is not entirely the case with complete strangers, with whom I increasingly find myself having brief, but sometimes quite disconcerting, exchanges. The other day, I was half way home from the shops weighed down by a heavy bag of food, when I almost trod on an elderly man sitting on the pavement at my feet. He was in a tight, foetal huddle, his head buried between his knees. I navigated my way round him and continued on my way, glancing back every few yards to see if he was alive or dead. As I went on I began to feel guilty that I hadn’t asked if he needed help. By the time I was home I was feeling wretched, so I dumped my shopping and ran back the quarter of a mile to where I had seen him. I turned the last corner and there he was, up on his feet and jauntily striding towards me, seemingly as right as rain.  It felt awkward to turn round there in front of him, so I continued walking, a bit out of breath. My back was aching after that heavy bag I’d been carrying and I had my left arm behind me, rubbing the base of my spine. Our eyes met as we passed. ‘You ok?’ I asked, ‘Oh yes, certainly!’ He beamed at me, then added, ‘Sorry to be staring at you.’ ‘No problem,’ I replied, but he went on, ‘I thought you might be an old soldier.’ ‘Gosh. Why?’ ‘You seemed to have only one arm.’ He strode on, leaving me non-plussed.

Even more disconcerting are the occasions when people stop me in the street and ask for directions.  It’s nice finally to be doing something useful for the community, and there was a time when I would even approach people who looked as if they might be lost, and ask them if they needed help. However, it’s better not to ask. Why? Because I prove to be no help at all. ‘Oh dear, I am sorry, but I don’t know that street,’ I tell them. ‘You’d better ask someone else.’ However, a few yards on I suddenly realise that I do know that street, after all. But they’re already out of sight, heading in the wrong direction. I wander off, guilty and disconsolate.

Last week a young man was approaching me down a long suburban road. I could see him coming some way off, and as he got nearer it was clear he was limping and weary. When he got to me he halted and asked where he could get something to eat, a sandwich, perhaps or even just a bag of crisps. I had to think quite hard before I remembered there was a café about a mile away. I gave him complicated directions and he limped off. After a few minutes I stopped in my tracks. I had suddenly remembered that there was a lonely convenience store just round the next corner. Too late.

Next day a woman stopped me as I hurried my son to school, asking where she could find the address which she read out from a scrap of paper in her hand. It didn’t ring any bell. I googled it on my phone. It took ages to get a signal but when I finally located the address it looked to be quite close, but back down  the road from which she’d come. She turned round and set off, and we raced to school. For some reason, the incident preyed on my mind all day and in the evening I looked the address up again. The result was horrifying. Maybe I’d misheard her, or maybe the scale of the map was wildly different from what I had imagined. Either way, the road I’d googled was in the next borough, a good 6 or 7 miles away.

The cumulative effect of these humiliating blunders has been to make me determined neither an asker nor an asked to be. But yesterday something very different happened.  Something rather wonderful. I came out of the local park to find a woman standing in front of a sign on the wall and looking about her in some distress. I hesitated, of course, but then I plunged in and asked, ‘Can I help?’ ‘I’m so upset,’ she replied. ‘Well, yes, I can see that. What’s the matter?’ ‘Some tourists just asked me the way to Hogarth’s House…’ ‘Go on.’ ‘And I told them it was that way.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘ But this sign says it’s the other way.’

Did I feel as sympathetic, inside, as I seemed to be, on the outside? Or did I feel relief, with just a touch of schadenfreude?

No real need to ask.

Posted on by Graham Dukes · 2 Comments

The Man From the Ministry

Graham Dukes falls back on a long-dead poet to get him out of a tight spot…

Let us get this straight. I am a Doctor of Medicine, with several framed diplomas on my wall to prove it. Unlike most medical doctors however, I decided at the start that I never wanted to make diagnoses, prescribe drugs or wear a white coat. I would serve my calling in other ways, hopefully with honour. So it was that, after spending an alternative period in the practice of Law, I chose to be employed in succession by two industrial corporations, one Ministry of Health, and several public international agencies. I became, to borrow a phrase coined sixty years ago by William H. Whyte, an “Organization Man”. A rewarding calling, but one demanding understanding, tact and sometimes (especially where the media are concerned) a morsel of cunning.

Society, after all, nurtures various (mutually incompatible) visions of the Organization Man. For some he is a mere cog in a vast, mindless machine, within which he ultimately serves merely as decoration. An opposing view is that, behind the scenes, he is in fact engineering the entire show. Whatever his perceived situation, it is widely believed that his insight into what Authority is thinking could provide fodder for juicy headlines or for timely hints to investors. To that end, the Organization Man shall be prodded and squeezed at certain unguarded moments. And what better unguarded moment than the climax of a cocktail party?

Nowadays, if I accept an invitation to cocktails I do so in my personal capacity, hoping to sip the Cointreau and sample the shrimps; but as an Organization Man I know what else to expect. Around nine fifteen, by which time certain folk may expect me to be gently inebriated, I find myself being shunted into a quiet corner where words are whispered urgently into my ear:

“Good to see you again, old fellow. I was just wondering – and of course this is just between you and me – what are your people thinking about the Dutifox scandal?”

I have probably no idea what Dutifox is, nor where scandal lies, but I shall not betray my Organization nor yet jeopardize my reputation for having access to juicy tales.

“Well, frankly,” I murmur, “The Old Guard prefers to keep some things under its hat for a while – I’m sure you understand.”

That is innocent enough, but also sufficient to send him off scribbling a headline on his iPad – “MINISTRY GAGS SPOKESMAN ON DUTIFOX SCANDAL”.

With that, I sneak back to my shrimps. On the way I am detained just for a moment by a dimpled young lady whom I recognize as a columnist from The Weekly. She begins:

“Is it true that your Minister is thinking of…?”

I interrupt her, hastily plucking the mobile from my pocket and pressing various buttons. “Really sorry, but I have this urgent matter to deal with. Ring me next week if you want.”

Narrow shave, that. Next week she will have other concerns and other victims.

Twenty minutes later, sitting and sipping the last of my Cointreau, I find myself surrounded by a small circle in which the Medicloud investments are the subject of a loud discussion that is clearly intended primarily for my ears.

“They should never have let the Moldavians in on the deal,” says the one.

“But they do know this drug market backwards,” declares another.

“Government must act urgently – the share price is collapsing,” pleads a third.

Then a fourth voice emerges, uncomfortably close to my right ear:

“Medicloud does look pretty shaky, though I wonder whether the Ministry can handle it,” it says. “Still, our friend from the Department here…” – and with this I receive a nudge in my ribs – “…is no doubt better informed than any of us.”

Suddenly, eight eyes are focussed on me. It must feel like this to face a firing squad. Just for a moment I hesitate; this is all too familiar ground. What will The Minister think of me tomorrow, whatever I say now? Then inspiration comes to my rescue. I stand up and seize on a faint memory from my law years. “Gentlemen” I declaim. “Before speculating in such matters, wise men recall the words of Horace: Quid sit futurum cras fuge quaerere, et quem Fors dierum cumque dabit lucro appone.”

I smile, bow, and then slip out hastily by the nearest exit, though not without hearing one of them remark, “What on Earth was he talking about?”

And, just in case I’ve bamboozled my reader too, that quote from Horace (roughly) translates to: “Cease to inquire what the future has in store, and take as a gift whatever the day brings forth. ”

The Organization Man, Whyte, W.H. (1956): University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA.

 

 

 

Posted on by Graham Dukes · 3 Comments

The Eureka trail

 

Eureka? Wasn’t that Archimedes’ cry of triumph, two-and-a-half millennia ago, when he jumped out of his hot bath in Syracuse to proclaim to all around that he had hit on the principle of specific gravity? Quite. Since then, the term has been sadly devalued, having been imposed on any number of real or supposed novelties, ranging from steam pumps to Greek eating places. But, as any perspicacious reader of the daily papers may recall, the term Eureka has in recent years acquired yet another – if somewhat shadowy – connotation. Let me try to explain.

It was a London tabloid that first touched cautiously on the matter some ten years ago. Someone, somewhere, had somehow invented something, and had termed it Eureka. It appeared to be momentous, for it was already the subject of urgent consultations that were proceeding behind tightly closed doors in Washington, Moscow and Brussels. No-one appeared at all anxious to talk, let alone to explain things, even when the other tabloids dispatched their craftiest news hunters into the dark corners of politics, science and economics to find out what might be going on. Their harvest was bleak, and the story duly faded. It faded, yet only to be revived on various subsequent occasions when the media seemed to perceive the lingering scent of a genuine something that deserved to be tracked down – but what? From time to time, even the more sedate media, while confirming and refuting nothing, were tempted onto what was now being termed the Eureka Trail, pontificating sufficiently around the matter to assure readers that their subscriptions had not been paid in vain.

The modest trail that I myself have followed takes the story rather further back in time. The year was 1948, and in our last year at Grammar School we were treated to a course on the History of Civilisation, for which purpose the Governors had in their wisdom engaged the services of one Haldemar Grocock, M.Sc., a weighty and jolly figure with a straw hat on his head in the summer and a year-round twinkle in his eye. Over the months he conducted us from Archimedes to Hero of Alexandria, to Isaac Newton, to George Stephenson and to Huxley. But it was his very last lesson that I recall so vividly, for there he took a look ahead. We had already experienced the days of The Atomic Bomb and we had been conducted on excursions to view the room-sized and overheated computer (the “electronic brain”, they called it) that steered early Radar. And yet, maintained Haldemar, we still had far to go. One day, he promised, and certainly within our lifetimes, science would deliver the ultimate discovery that would change the world, and life upon it, forever. “I cannot tell you more,” he added, “but on that day the world will with Archimedes cry ‘Eureka’.” We wondered.

Some of us, meeting in coffee bars in later years, wondered still, as we speculated on the miracle that was yet to be.  A device that would enable pedestrians to fly? A ballpoint that would flow forever? A module that would feed an entire battery of knowledge directly into the brain, rendering academic training obsolete?  No, even that would not shake the world. But now sixty more years have passed, we have lived and presumably we have learnt. So can we today perhaps better conceive in which direction a fresh Eureka is destined to take us?

Space Travel is an ongoing wonder, but it leaves our daily lives unaltered, and will no doubt continue to do so unless it should pave the way to mass interplanetary migration when the Earth becomes too hot or too crowded for comfort. The Environment is calling loudly for correction, but no single invention is likely to put it to rights. The same might be said when we consider the ever-demanding field of ill-health. And even among those of us who are approaching their tenth decade, there are folk who consider that life has already provided them with sufficient goodness, and who would contemptuously set aside even an Eternal Life Pill if such were on offer.

And so, you ask me, do I myself know what to look forward to when the new Eureka emerges? Of course I do. Only a little while ago, the ghost of old Haldemar Grocock visited me in the twilight and whispered the secret into my ear. I had indeed intended to complete this present script by conveying to you this ultimate truth. Alas, only last night, in my mind’s eye, I perceived Haldemar’s ghost once more, and this time he was shaking his head vigorously at me. You will therefore have to wait a little longer. But I should add that, even as Haldemar shook his head, there was still a twinkle in his eye.

Photo: Archimedes’ Eureka Moment. Statue by Thomas W. Dagnall at Manchester University UMIST, Altrincham Street, Manchester, GB.

Posted on by Graham Dukes · 3 Comments

Daydreaming

Do you daydream? I suspect you do, just now and again. Many of the people whom I know seem to meet with the temptation once in a long while, though they don’t all admit to it, let alone confess that they ever give way to it. But me – if truth be told, I must be some sort of a peculiar record holder. The plain fact is that for most of my eighty-odd years I have daydreamed, regularly, intensely, and with the greatest enjoyment. Not that I have anything against day-to-day reality – life has so far been very good to me – but just as some persons periodically light up their pipes in order to float away in clouds of tobacco smoke, apparently feeling all the better for it for a while afterwards, so I can lean back on a cushion or even up against a pillar on an overcrowded bus and slip away for a little while into a world of my very own. I can be back in a flash when I need to be, wide awake and refreshed, and no-one will realise that in my thoughts I have been so far away, in a world that I made just for myself.

I can still pinpoint the moment when it all began. I was in elementary school when it happened, building much of my view of the world on the late Arthur Mee’s Children’s Newspaper. There came a day when that venerable journal reported that a new island had just popped up out of the sea, somewhere (I believe) in the Arctic Ocean. That set me thinking. And when, later that week, a none-too-fascinating geography teacher had the class pondering on the endless emptiness of the South Pacific I readily put two and two together. If a new stretch of land were to pop up down there, might it not be vastly bigger than the one in the north? I pictured it clearly in my mind’s eye – a tremendous expanse of new untrodden land, with hills and valleys, all empty except for the occasional stranded whale or a long sunken galleon, a land just waiting to be sensibly and sympathetically developed. In a Latin lesson that came a little later I named my new land Respublica; and from then on there was no stopping me.

In my imagination time was not of the essence: less than anxious to see myself traipsing forever across sandy wastes, it took me only a matter of weeks to leap over Respublica’s initial decades so as to position myself in a land that had already found its feet; a land with prairies and jungles, snowy mountains and sandy beaches, newly populated by pleasant people of whom I was one.

My role? Now that is where the joy of my daydreaming really comes in. When I dream at night I am no more than a mere observer of the passing show; there may be demons there, driving me to despair, or dancing girls to delight me – I just have to accept whatever the night brings. But in my daydreams I am firmly in charge, in any situation that I choose to make my own. So what was I to do in Respublica? Politics are not in my line, nor do I see myself meddling with sports, wielding police powers, or engaging in Big Business, but if one seeks to mould society to one’s liking there are alternatives in plenty to be exploited. For a while, cherishing journalistic ambitions, I chose to be Editor-in- Chief of the respectable and highly influential Respublica Post; in thundering editorials I wielded the power of the pen, dictating the direction in which the country must move. Tiring finally of that, I spent a while managing the environment, building a population of spectacular but friendly wild animals and a flora to delight the eye of any beholder.

Just now and again, Respublica has faded for a time from my view. At one point I found myself cultivating an alternative daydream set in a medieval environment where a dictator, a bishop, a level-headed housewife and a remarkably intelligent horse struggled to co-exist. But these were mere passing fancies, and I was soon back, savouring the virtues of Respublica.

In more recent years I confess to succumbing to a longstanding fascination with trains, leading me in my daydream to assume the challenge of developing and directing Respublica’s National Railways which. I assure you, are quite the best in the world. And so, dear reader, should you ever find yourself wondering about the cost of a first class return ticket from Pacifica to Journeyman Road, all you need to do is to ask me. Come up close when you see me leaning against a pillar or a pillow with my eyes closed, then whisper your enquiry into my ear, I promise you a quick reply. Unless, that is, I have moved on to yet another Chapter in my daydream.

Illustration: New Harmony, Indiana as envisaged by Robert Owen, an engraving by F. Bate, London 1838.  Wikimedia Commons.

 

Posted on by Alan West

In this moment

 

Silence heard

through the din of crickets

 

the serene broken

only by the unseen.

 

A metallic flash

the kingfisher’s splash

 

into the green.

Paradise.

 

I have been here

all my  life,

 

waiting for this

moment.

 

For Derek Walcott (d. 17th March 2017). His Midsummer, Tobago inspired this poem.

Posted on by Alan West

The Great Pears Soap Disaster

It is one of those small comforts of the morning bath routine. The merest sniff has the power to transport me back to my childhood. A gentle, vaguely biscuity smell like the soft, warm aroma of the linen cupboard; the comforting concave oval shape with indents into which you can fit the old worn bar (waste not, want not!). Yes, I am talking about Pears Transparent Soap.

This particular brand is 200 years old, as the newly reworded carton reminds me. In fact the soap is 220 years old. First formulated in 1789, it was the world’s first registered brand and therefore is the world’s oldest continuously existing brand.

Transparent it still is. It used to claim to be hypoallergenic and non-comedogenic, natural and original. Don’t look for these strap-lines on the new carton. They have disappeared; discretely and without fanfare. It is surely a wise move for the owner of a 200 year brand not to trumpet the words, “new, improved formula” on a product that is not only much loved but is used by people whose skin does not respond well to harsher soaps.

The Great Pears Soap Disaster :: spot the imposter
Pears Transparent Soap :: Before and After

The list of ingredients, which once read like a cargo on John Masefield’s Quinquireme of Nineveh – a treasure house of exotic sounding ingredients sourced from the far reaches of the British Empire, now includes PEG 4, BHT, CI 12940 and CI 47005 (respectively a dispersant, antioxidant and colour additives). Then there’s the new smell. Biscuits and linen replaced with a whiff that to my untutored nose is just too strong, redolent of pine disinfectant and the hospital waiting room. Other noses might detect a herbal note – perhaps not unpleasant – but just not the proper familiar Pears smell.

My wife and I both suffer from sensitive skin. My wife is allergic to PEG8 and its close relatives, so PEG4 is a no-no. Ah well, that’s goodbye then to Pears Soap after 100 bath years of use in this household?

Not being one to take these things lying down, I called the 0800 customer service number on the box. Disconnected.  Undeterred, I googled the name on the box, CERT Brands in Rotherham and found a telephone number where, I reasoned, I might be able to talk to a brand manager. I spoke with a nice lady, the receptionist. No, she said, nobody else had complained so far. She made careful, precise notes of my comments. Yes, yes, somebody would call me back shortly.

A month later, I am still waiting.

Let’s face it, when you are a busy, important brand manager (I mean, the manager of an important brand), the last thing you want to do is talk to a disgruntled consumer. That’s what you have receptionists for.

Am I really the only consumer to have noticed? Not according to the author of Wikipedia’s entry on Pears Soap:  “In 2009 the formula was changed to take out the peanut oil that it contained and adding other ingredients like more glycerin. This unfortunately completely changed the smell and texture of the soap, making it unrecognizable from the original product.”

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the concave shape of the soap is [presumably, was] formed by shrinkage while the soap is drying, and is not due to deliberate moulding. To quote Wikipedia again, “Recent changes to quality of ingredients used in the manufacturing process have resulted in a noticeably different shape (flatter rather than concave) and difference in scent.”

So, is there a lesson in here for much loved 200 year old brand managers (I mean the managers of much loved 200 year old brands)? It should be that you tinker with your brand at your peril. My experience thus far tells me that there is little chance that this message is going to get through. The only real sanction we consumers have at our disposal is to vote with our feet (and hands and faces) and stop using it. If too many did that, it might finish what others have already started and kill off the brand completely.

After 200 years that would be much more than a great pity, it would be a disaster.

Posted on by Alan West

Regret

As a youth, you were beautiful

you didn’t need a mirror to tell you that

you didn’t need to transcend

I did that for you.

 

Your earlier face, that asymmetric face

was the one I knew best;

with the nose offset,

thanks to the playing field.

 

Then the glass came between us

between me and you

there was something on the other side

I couldn’t see beyond.

 

When the time came, when your turn came

and you found me again, questioning

I couldn’t reflect you back

I couldn’t be flawless.

 

When age, that cruellest vicissitude

found you,  and took you away

leaving only a framed emptiness,

I had to find a braver face.

Posted on by Graham Dukes

Am I bothered?

Does everyone else of my age repeatedly get quizzed on how it feels to grow old? That’s my experience, unless I’m imagining things. “Grandpa, what’s it like to be eighty-seven?” Some things the little darlings can perfectly well see for themselves; they know that I tend to wobble just a trifle as I walk; they realise that now and again I have to hunt for a word, or ask them to pick up something from the floor, so that I don’t have to bend down. Actually, I myself am repeatedly surprised at how little the process of living life seems to have changed me over the years. In plenty of matters, I still think and act and enjoy things much the same as I did when I was thirty. I really don’t dwell on what is supposed to be my decline. And yet…

One change that I do ponder on is when it comes to distinguishing between those things that I absolutely need to do, and the lesser things that are just not worthwhile. I can draw a line between the two as well as ever I did; the only new thing is that nowadays I am faced with an intermediate group, comprising the things that do need doing, but with which I simply cannot be bothered. There you have it. What is bothersomeness? Have I, in my latter years, actually developed an ability to define necessity more precisely, or am I merely advancing an excuse for downright laziness?

I ran into the issue quite acutely the other afternoon when I was watching TV from a comfortable armchair. The channel to which the thing was tuned had spent half the afternoon showing its audience how cleverly some people contrive to slide on skis down slippery slopes and then go on to glide bird-like through the air until they land on other slopes far below. Clever it is, I have no doubt, and maybe graceful as well, but when three such skiers have flown past the camera I am satisfied; I have seen enough; I do not need to know which of them has performed best or why or how. I merely thank the heavens that I have never been expected to engage in such antics myself, and I am sure that I do not need to see any more of them for the moment. But only minutes later, the same TV channel demands my attention for a world speed chess championship. Here I am a little less clueless, for thirty years ago I myself did indeed play chess, relishing particularly those long intervals when one could meditate at ease on one’s next few moves. But here on TV there are no such moments for contemplation; one sees only champions challenging other champions at breakneck speed, moving the pieces around twenty times faster than I ever thought to do myself. Even on the screen I cannot keep up with it; indeed, I cannot even be bothered to try. Nor, for that matter, can I be bothered to rise from my armchair, hunt for the remote, and switch the thing off.

That is how many a day goes by, whatever I may be doing. Take books: years ago, I read the first half of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. People have told me what happens in the book after that, so need I ever read the rest of it? And, having once been to the Last Night of the Proms, and heard the whole audience bawling out “Jerusalem”, need I really go to another and hear them do it all over again? Such experiences I have set aside without any sense of regret.

All the same, I am beginning to worry just a little about how life will be if more things become too bothersome to tackle. Here and there, people will no doubt prod me into action – the taxman is particularly good at that. But what if, in the absence of prodding, I reach a point in my life at which I can no longer be bothered to take a bath, or to eat, or even to get out of bed in the morning? Ultimately, I suppose, they will simply have to put up a tombstone for me, and call in old Ephraim the stonemason to engrave my epitaph. “He could no longer be bothered” would seem about right. Provided that Ephraim, who is at least my age, can be bothered to hammer it all out, I suppose.

 

Illustration: “You are old, Father William,” the young man said…”

Father William balances an eel on his nose, Sir John Tenniel, 1865