Thu, Mar 26th 2009, 10:15
David Morley at Warwick Univeristy has done some great podcasts for writers. I've just been watching his one about poetry and written a poem as a result. Here it is. It's called Leaf
Leaf
Broad leaf
On a sea of breezes
Pitched against brothers
Hitched and tugged and torn
Lime, then grass, then ocean green
Brushing ropy veins upon xylem thorn.
Spring is sudden with unfurling budding
Summer follows, the spectrum flapping
Autumn then, full of sail and swash.
At last the mast is splitting, giving.
A pyre smokes auburn into ash.
Then the lonely season
The last
Before
Leaf.
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Tue, Jul 21st 2009, 12:32
A while ago Amazon had a competition to answer the question - What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch? The winners got to go to London to see one of the hand crafted Tales of Beedle the Bard.
I didn't win. And so I shouldn't. I'm in my thirties for God's sake. I do hope the grand finalists where children or I'd be very upset. Of course, I didn't write my entry, as being a Muggle I don't know much about the wizarding world (apart from a few obscure books handed down from my Great-Great Grandfather Alexander McLeod, who I believe was a dragon handler at the Royal Wizarding Zoological Gardens of Edinburgh). Anyway... I found this poem inside a book at the local library...
Here is the text laid out in easy-read format:
Quidditch is Not the Only Game!
By the venerable Sir Runcible Spoon
Written in 1949, Hogsmeade
Quidditch is not the only game of note!
Though ‘tis most favoured by popular vote.
There are many great sports and activities
Like Beat the Boggart and Horntail Squeeze,
There’s Hippogriff Racing, and Water Snitch,
Even Roll the Auror, and Hunt the Witch.
Parlour games are good when the weather’s foul
Basilisks and Ladders, Pin the Beak on the Owl.
In old times the grand game was Goblin Ball,
A quite cruel affair, with no rules at all.
But myself, I favour Olympian sport:
Vanishing Discus, Javelin by Thought.
But if you favour games set on the pitch
Well you simply can’t beat it… Quidditch.
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Thu, Sep 10th 2009, 09:18
It's time to break free of the constraints of the modern world. Leave your home behind and go anywhere. Live anywhere. Sleep anywhere. Yes, camping is a world of freedom where the only boundaries to unconfined joy are your imagination.
Except for the rain of course. And the paltry washing facilities on site. And the fact that it's impossible to gets your clothes dry once they're wet. And the snoring from the next tent. And the forty lads having a party just along the way. Not to mention the toilet block where you can have a shower in a cubicle next to someone having a poo.
I really do try to like camping. There are times when I almost convince myself it's fun. It feels a bit like hiding. The bouncy blow up mattress seems cosy at first. The gadgets are appealing - special fork spoon knife things, gas burners, torches, Swiss Army knives. I tried to like it when I camped my way around New Zealand with my wife in the southern hemisphere summer of 2004 (which was the same temperature as our northern hemisphere winter). I tried to like it again this summer when we went to Cornwall. Sometimes I succeeded in liking it. But mostly... I failed.
Camping is rubbish for the simple logic in my mind that going on a holiday should be more luxurious than the place you call home. If I leave my home for a week or two weeks to pamper myself I shouldn't have to downsize my living accomodation by a factor of 500 so that I can barely stand up, have to share my living space with a legion of spiders, and be caught between temperature extremes so pernicious that I need to bring half of my wardrobe to cope.
Camping might be made more inviting if it wasn't for campsites themselves. I will say that Sennen Cove campsite was very nice on this most recent trip, but even there they only had one washing machine for an entire campsite which required a dawn raid by my wife and I at opening time to secure our slot. There they had also recognised that showers and toilets should not be housed in the same room. It's fine in your own house to have a room where the shower and the toilet are together, but that's because you don't expect someone to come in and relieve themselves while you're working up a lather (or maybe you do, you filthy grotesque).
The other problem with camping is rain. I am a fair weather camper. It's not that I mind rain particularly. I used to like walking in the rain when I was a teenager, mooning about feeling moody. I enjoyed the rain when I sat in some hot springs pools in Hamner Springs. I remember being quite excited about the lashings of rain that accompanied a spectacular storm in France. However, rain + tent = misery. It's a simple and fixed equation.
There's no roaring fire to warm yourself by. There's no central heating to flush the water from your clothes. There's no escape from the dreary, dreary pitter patter that is amplified into a incesant motorised thudding on the canvas. In New Zealand they did at least have the decency to admit that their weather was as bad as ours, and so many campsites have drying rooms where you can hang up your clothes and expect them to dry out in reasonable time. In the UK campsites are generally very basic in my experience, begrudging any optional extra they can provide. They would rather the wet clothes clung to your skin until you are converted by some strange osmosis into part human, part salamander.
So what's the first thing we did on returning from our camping holiday this year? We went to Thomson and booked a holiday to Kefalonia for next year. And no, we won't be camping... although I did camp in Greece many moons ago. Now they have the weather for camping!
Here's a poem I wrote on hoilday all about camping which I think demonstrates my conflicted views on the matter...
CAMPSITE
Regimented tents
Relaxed
Flap
Pitter patter rain
Inside a cloud
Hot-water-bottle dog
Swelter sun stifle
Warm beer
Barbecues
Pegs poles zip ziiiip
Guy ropes (why Guy?)
Caravans
Sharabangs
Multiroom, caterpillar, dome,
Even mushroom-shaped sometime homes
Motorhome
Soft air-filled blow up bed refilled with a whine
Coleman equipped
Sunloungers Superfluous
Moving on
Hot cell showers
Chemical unpleasant stench
Big skies
(Un)Satisfied
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Tue, Feb 16th 2010, 10:13
Sludge red leaves, not yet soil, tarnish the ground.
Here a slip of silver, a quiver of birch,
Last season’s swish and swash still has shape
But soon the drape will rot to rib.
Wet clay will crack and
Spring will knock the winter back.
Stratford upon Avon, 16 Feb 2010
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