Rhetorical Question?

Here's one. Because we allowed the USA to pinch our place in the World Cup (as it has in the world), we now have to beat Germany, Argentina and Portugal to get to the final in a competition where France and Italy go out shockingly early. When has that ever happened?

I'll tell you when, Mr Rhetoric. 1966.

The one team we didn't beat then and the world said we needed to to really prove our case (flash in the golden pan winners 1958, 1962 and 1970) was Brazil, whom we will doubtless keep waiting in the rain this year before beating them 1-0. Just to put 1970 straight.

That's the way I'd write it anyway.

My New Elizabethan World Cup Sonnets 3. V Slovenia

The lazy lion lumbers into life
To cuff aside the mouse of fate, then roars
It to the corner’s sanctuary and strikes!
And strives - and fails - to pin its tiny paws.
The beast its leader ‘knows’ is in the field
And taking chances – one – and missing five,
A cat among the pigeons, roaring ‘Yield!'
'Fierce England, Fabio-faced, is still alive!’
The might and mane – a little balding, true -
Of Rooney moves in for the ruthless kill,
Our winter king, asleep since March (and June?)
To chew the post, and limp off, looking ill.
And so our doppelganger, Germany,
The old invasion game, then home for tea.

New Elizabethan Sonnets 2 v Algeria

“Inglorious and goalless Ing-ger-land”
The mourning papers Nayed in ‘66
In hopeless headlines that, like Ferdinand,
Stood not the test of time – but stand for this.
A team without a heart, a head, a smile,
A hurst, a moore, a charlton or a ball,
A drab grey outfit, no nobby yet no style,
The walk-on-waters sinking in the pool.
A sponsor-burdened team who could not play
A season with this globe like Germany
Because ‘our’ ball is some fat cat’s, and so are they
And paid each draw more than my salary.
We grub all week for victory’s floodlight
To stare down a black hole of endless night.



Note. Apparently we're not playing very well because the 'boys' are bored. They need more freedom.

They don't need more freedom. They need to grow up and start earning their celebrity lifestyles by winning a trophy for a change instead of going on a jolly and getting knocked out in the quarters and expecting us all to carry on cheering !

The Tony Hancock School of Football Management

I am posting this response from John H Davies (to my World Cup sonnet no 1) in full. John is remarkable man in many ways. I will list only four. He is convinced the 1958 England team would have won the World Cup but for the Munich air disaster (plausible enough) and believes the 1970 team - Charlton plus Mullery, before Ramsey took Charlton off and we never qualified again for the rest of the Seventies - was atually better than the 1966 one and would have beaten Brazil in the much predicted Final. As a nineteen year old, he was present at Wembley when we actually won the World Cup. He saw George Best in his pomp (ie his shins kicked to blue murder by 60s centre halves but still getting through and scoring). And he is a Manchester United fan who actually comes from Manchester. Here are his thoughts on the present England World Cup hopefuls...

"Thanks for the sonnet. Now Capello knows what it is like to have an interest in England's football team. Dragon-faced? Yes, I like that image. It is accurate and well-observed. However, he remains a Tommy Cooper look-alike, and the buffoonery that surrounds him may eventually be revealed to be of his own creation. Rio Ferdinand has been injured for two seasons. Why take him? Ledley King must have been a sop to political correctness for the inclusion of the chronically disabled. Why take him? John Terry seems to be as tactically and spacially confused as he is morally confused. No doubt he is quick at getting his kit off but he is slow on the turn and on the sprint, an ageing thug, a shadow of his former self, worn down by years of self-indulgence and belief in the hype and flattery of the John Motsons of this world, starry-eyed fat boys who were never able to do it themselves, but who revelled in fame-by-association and were, therefore, obliged to continue the cant well beyond Terry's sell-by date. Carragher, slower than a journey through the traffic lights in King's Lynn. Reliant on the scything tackle, the outstretched arm, the push in the back, but unable to deploy any of these normal Premiership devices in the absence of Premiership referees. Johnson, a man who runs forward very fast but who cannot run back to defend, who always stands in the wrong place and who is always totally unaware of the presence of the winger when a ball is crossed over his head from the other wing. Green, a goalie who can't catch. Heskey, a striker who can't strike. A damp match of a man, tried time and again but who refuses to ignite, but who is chosen time and again and again and....Lennon and Wrong-Phillips, both flatterers to deceive. Milner, a one-paced work-horse who has been unable to train for three days because of a bout of ague, chosen to mark the American's key player, Donovan. Lampard, scorer of thousands of goals in the Premiership where everyone and anyone can score (apart from Heskey), but who can't shoot for toffee in international matches, linked again with Gerrard, whose face has the tortured look of a man who has sold his soul and skills to the devil of Liverpool and who last season suddenly realised it, when every human being in the world - in the igloos of the Arctic, in the mud huts of Pygmyland , in the yurts of Mongolia and Thornham - knows that they cannot play together. Every mother in the world must have said at some time "You mustn't play with him. He'll end up getting you in trouble!". So why doesn't Capello say it? Capello's is the "Tony Hancock school of football management" - he who cannot head is picked as centre-half, he who is weediest is picked as mid-field enforcer, he who cannot catch becomes goalie, he who cannot shoot becomes Heskey. And Rooney is tired and frustrated and lonely and, sorry to say it, ineffectual. So Copello is Tommy Cooper after all, a Steve Mclaren without and umbrella, a Graham Taylor without a turnip. The USA, a team comprising of rejects from Watford and West Brom, journeymen from Fulham and American Soccer! leagues, and a star player who was dropped from the Everton team after a brief loan spell, were too good for us for long periods of the game. Oh dear oh dear oh dear! Roll on the next game. You have my full permission to turn this into a poem. Name it In Memoriam, or Lament For Alf And The Boys Of Sixty-six. Bobby Charlton was at yesterday's match. Why didn't Capello bring him on?"

More responses like this please. Let's live while we can.

My New Elizabethan World Cup Sonnets 1. v USA

By a spooky mis-chance, though I watched all four on TV I managed to be out of the room for all four goals previous to the first England game. Not having HD, I didn't miss -


And so the first two goals I do not miss
In this World Cup both come from Eng-ger-land,
The first from Gerard, like a lover's kiss
Sudden, sweet - the second, Green's self-fumbling hand.
The night was African but winter chill,
The kind we like to get our kit on for,
And get our balls across, and shoot to kill
As Stevie did, and then that Green barn door.
The date was set as Lady Luck's perfume
Filled all our heads, our white knight stormed the keep
Capello's dragon-face burst open in a plume
Of wizard glee, our Green knight...made her weep.
At least we scored, that grey suit seems to say
Slumped, solo, on Green's dirty sheet next day.

My World Cup Dream

I mean - literally - the dream I woke up with this morning. I was on the touchline for the US game and Beckham was there in an enormous othopaedic boot. It was about a foot high. When I queried his presence in that condition, he grinned cheerfully and said in that boyish twang,'I've been selected for senior field duties. Anything to help out.'
'What - you're actually playing - but you're injured?'
'Yes.' said Emeritus Golden Balls,' with a likeable shrug.
'But that's incredible!'
What didn't seem incredible - in the dream - was that I was also about to go on as sub. No, I'm not injured - well, that football-related injury down a railway embankment en route to a Bristol City game which left put me out for the rest of the 2008 season still troubles me - but I'm 53 and have no experience of football above a village green standard.
And it seemed perfectly natural when Beckham long-balled me soon after from midfield with an inch-perfect assist which I scuffed-tripped over past the keeper with all the grace and assurance (don't knock it - it works) of an accidental Crouch deflection. In most dreams, especially mine, the ball just won't go in. This did. It was wonderful.
Back to reality. I woke to a newspaper picture of a third choice English captain who can't speak and a singularly ugly and unprepossessing team in grey Marks and Spencers drill looking very ordinary there (with the exception of Rooney, already booked in a friendly for swearing at the ref, who looks like a potato but who in form, a genuine great and the heart and lungs of the side ) among the galaticos of Brazil, Spain and (maybe) Argentina.

Ah yes,but it's chilly in South Africa this time. For once, we have the weather on our side. And a fierce Italian manager who can out-think tricksy Latin tacticians because he is one. And a dead ball specialist who can come on for 'senior field duties'. (No, that was just the dream.) If only we had a few foreign players as well, we might still do it...

I worked out that we probably need to get past Serbia in the Last 16, France in the quarters and Italy in the semis (the newspaper says Brazil) to lose to Spain in the final. We can't meet Portugal until the final this time and I don't think they'll get there anyway, or possibly even out of a group containing Brazil and Ivory Coast. Simple as that.

And then I really woke up?

June 2006 v Portugal

Er Indoors had gone to Barcelona so not only did I have nothing to distract myself from forty years of hurt, I also had to cook my own meals!
I went for a 36 mile cycle ride– a 5 hour pub crawl either side of a pub lunch - to ‘take my mind off it’. Apart from a team weakness on the left side (the feminine side?) that cried out like a lost childhood for Ryan Giggs, this surely was the best England side - since 1998… 1996… nay, that Mullery-graced 1970 team that was even better than 1966...
I cooked dinner. In stages. I ate my veg in the doorway so I could keep an eye on the meat between eyefuls of Ronaldino, Rooney and red wine. ‘We can win this. Beckham don’t get sent off. Rooney don’t get crocked…’
Something exploded in the kitchen. I swear left the boys for no more than a second. By the time I came back, Rooney was injured, Beckham sent off...
No. The other way round.
Another ‘last chance’ of seeing 1966 come to the finest generation of English footballers for a generation - in the bin with my dinner.
And we all know -deep down - it's all going to happen again.

It's Got To Be (The Real) Gordon

Remember that New Labour May in 1997? Oh what bliss in that dawn to be alive. To be ten (as our daughter is in the picas and I was in terms of political naivety ) was very heaven. So where are we, exactly 13 years later?

Well the polling booth pictured has long since moved, replaced by a tick box jury. And the last two elections I've found it hard to summon up any interest at all let alone the enthusisam I felt for Obama's historic marathon to the White House. And to complicate matters further the Labour condidate for North West Norfolk has mixed his manifesto up with the BNP's and called his party leader the worst PM in history so it's all a bit weird.

But suddenly it does seem to matter. Not just because it's close but because it's got real.

Accepting that we all see the narative we want, in football as in elections, and in my case through rose-tinted specs, I have been struck by the contrast in energy projected by David and Gordon so far this week. David is buzzing round all over the surface of the country like a blue arsed fly with his sleeves neatly rolled up for the camera 'ready to clear up the mess' (oh please!) while Gordon's lumbering volcanic energy seems to have come from a sudden deep taproot in the man himself, the social justice socialism of his chapel soul, born of hurt and humiliation and some healthy self-accusation. The former is much nearer to the media witch Blair, the latter more like Old Labour.

In that long lost May of 1997, I fancy both flash and reality were at work but I reckon, back against the wall and at media bay, this at last is the real Gordon, warts and all.

I'd like to see him elected as such and governing like it too.

Burkes, Bantams and Ballast

I see from my drive across Norfolk to its fine city capital yesterday that once again large empty fields (some of them full of impressive bulls) are declaring their timeless political allegiance for the Conservative Party. I didn't catch their bullish candidate's name - Oxy Moron was it? - but he's pledging himself as he has since the Normans ( Tebbit, La Mont, St John Stevas) for conserves that change. Or is it change that conserves?

'Change that ye may conserve' as some Burke once said.

But what's this - an energetic young puppy is bouncing onto the scene as I cross North Norfolk. The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England. Will he turn the tables of government or just knock them over?

Only in the fine old city itself do some Labour posters appear. Old Labour as in poor old Labour.

A funny thing happened on our way to in the city centre. Cockerels crowing and sheep bleating. There was a mini farmyard outside the forum. Is it another media circus carefully upsetting Gordon's campaign? Infamy! The media have all got it in for me.

So if I was interviewing the three candidates for the job, who would get it? Certainly not someone whose central defining slogan sinks millions of pounds on a slogan that conveys the inability to think in a straight line and whose concepts of change and conservation don't add up. Can this Tory team think? Will the detail of 'Honest' George Osborne's gambler budget add up any more than that slogan?

So you're faced with someone who has energy and enthusiasm and youth and may well be a big hit when he gets his feet on the ground and his hands on the wheel. Young Nick. Or the old guy who everyone is jeering at but who kept us afloat when the waters got really choppy. A man carrying a bit more substance than is strictly healthy but what labouring been-there battleship doesn't?

To My Beloved Godson On His Marriage

The last time we shared a church occasion,
You were naked and a little bit sloshed,
And had to be carried home by a woman
And fed through a dummy and washed.
Remember your wife is not your mother!
And you will have saddened, stunned and shocked her,
If you mix up your mate with your madonna
Your angel or nurse, she’s only your doctor.
I’ve little knowledge of the married state,
Your funky uncle only married once
And stayed so through the good times and the great
But here for what it’s worth is my advice:
When Love makes an offer you can’t refuse
Embrace it thorn and rose, win as you lose.


Chris and Tanya's big big day April 10. And I mean big. Let them church bells ring out. She's a doctor, his mother's a nurse. As long as he doesn't go into teaching everything should be hunky dory. Seriously though, they're young, they're brilliant, they're utterly head over heels and life stretches before them like a highway of diamonds. Nice day for a...Welsh wedding.

Let The Good Times Roll

Standing behind the Wedlock goal,
watching the barcodes in soft yellow in the rain
like they don’t want to get their kit dirty
against our red-blooded last-ditch knights
(until we let them back in at 2-1)
my daughter said it was the best game
of football she'd ever seen –
all four goals right in our faces,
smell of the turf, rage of the crowd,
ever-changing, undetached narrative
and the world at stake along the white line
for 90 minutes. Can't beat it.
Then alone by an internet radio for Barnsley,
hearing an early lead crumble to 2-1
and then surge to 5-2, the wish to be there
almost as strong as the old dread
that returns – albeit briefly - at 5-3,
I think ‘we’re staying up then’.
And now behind the goal at Peterborough, from top
to bottom in one week, on terraces
built fifty years before the Taylor report
and a thousand years before civilisation,
remembering nine bleak years in the small time,
recovering from the optical illusion of Maynard
in long shorts and socks rolled up in the warm up
as the red tights of a Prem primadonna,
watching a grey game burst into brief red life,
the players larger than life and closer than TV,
as Clarkson nods, winks and ghost-smiles at Hartley
and points at a spot the Posh can’t see
I say to the stranger next to me: ‘Clarkson to score!’
and he does, like it’s my birthday (which it is)
and like we’re too good for places like this (which we aren’t yet)
and start to dream again.












I thought this was the Atyeo?

Real Wife

We're not the teen-dream lovers of the songs
And films n’ soaps n’ mills n' boons n’ ads,
The 'hunters' living with their mums and dads,
The twenty-something dramas, dinging-dongs,
The sizzling catalogues of straps and thongs,
The Darcys, Juliets and golden lads
In modern strip from tales in which the cads
Are forty odd like us and cause all wrongs.

Our story didn't end like these above
In frozen celebrations, wedding-deaths;
We've raised a daughter into Now and Next,
We're grown ups grown together, more or less,
Our romance is a realistic text:
A dangerous, married, grail-quest of true love.















This was for an anniversary a few years ago. We've clocked up thirty years since and we're fifty somethings in this picture though forty something in the poem. I always visualise the Norwich City kit in line 7 (because of the golden lads). But for fidelity through better and worse, Ashton Gate is more like it. I shared a long Indian train journey with a Sikh once who told me that you don't get married on your wedding day - it takes at least ten years. We're getting there.

Breathless on a peak in Venezuela

To our daughter on her 23rd Birthday
and her imminent departure for Venezuela


So once again, my love, we have to let you go,
Our Spanish sunshine woman, our child of English snow.

The rosebud has to petal, the flower has to bloom,
The young heart has to open and love must let you go.

In realms of gold or breathless on a peak in Venezuela
May that flower of peace you chase within you grow.

These hands that used to be your anchor, wave you farewell now:
Love’s imprint travels with you, and everywhere you go.

O parent, what a burden a beloved child is on the heart:
What chords and strings are plucked, what music wherever she goes.


Dec 28 2009

Note: a bit late posting this but I've been closeted in a room with Oscar Wilde (writing a 100 page study guide on the Canterville Ghost) all day every day since. Our daughter is still in Venezuela, the next beach from Norfolk albeit over thousands of miles of Atlantic and Caribbean water. On the phone her voice sounds simultaneously far away and shockingly close.

Pearly Gates

Thirty years ago, a boy and a girl
Put their No’s to the grindstone, their Yes to the world.

Thirty years ago, two lovers’ true minds
Got some grit in their oyster and started a pearl.

Thirty long years with ‘the right bloody woman’
Hatching a love-shelled and rock steady girl.

Thirty years gone, two half-hearts gambled
A whole heart for love and lost a half-world.

Glimpsed through that dazzle of church wedding glass,
Seen face to face now - the sun’s winter pearl.


Dec 1 2009



My Uncle Riley famously greeted his sixtieth wedding anniversary with 'Aye, sixty years with the wrong bloody woman.' I do not envy him his marriage but I do envy his laconic power.

Intertextual note: I read Shakespeare's sonnet 'Let Me Not To The Marriage Of True (Two?) Minds/ Admit Impediments' at our wedding reception and meant it.
My playout features Shelley's rendering the Corinthian spirit of (formerly Saul and later St) Paul as sourced via the Stones's greatest hits LP 'Through The Past Darkly'. (1969) Even the devil (now Sir) Jagger knew his Bible in those days.

Beardo!

An Ode To Danny Haynes

D aring runs into dangerous areas, deft passes
A ttacking balls aiming for the top where the Premiership class is.
N ew boy coming fast out of the blocks in a reconditioned team,
N ew ambition and nous re-igniting the old big City dream.
Y oung, gifted and laughing at risk

H ell forward leathering the ball here, held back at Ipswich,
A ngular artistry, a Giggs on grass, identical scars above each eye,
Y ES-yelling walker in da Ashton park, Danny never-say-die,
N ever underestimates the need to nail his place in the side,
E very Friday’s an audition for a part in his favourite film:
S torming through the opposition like a red sail on the Caribbean.


Notes during recent matches at 'Fortress Ashton' I have been carrying a thumb injury. This is partly the reason why during the Scunthorpe home draw I have misfired texts as follows:

'cuntsthorpe are bringing on a bus!" to the editor of a large international publishing company instead of to my mate 'cabby'

'peedo' (as the crowd was yelling in wild abandon at the time) to the head of a Welsh secondary school, instead of to my mate Tom.

The other reasons for the mistake - drunkenness, schoolboy excitement/terror and the sheer amount of noise and jostling in the East End - did not make the cold Monday morning retractions and apologies any easier!

Here, though, as published in the Middlesbrough programme earlier this season, is a 'text' suitable for anyone who receives it - especially anyone cheered by the young hero's match settling goal for City last night.

Good day Sunshine

June and sunny. So unless you're reading Summer Moonshine by PG Wodehouse (in which case go back to it immediately) get your old copy of Sergeant Pepper out, put Side 2 on the turntable (if you don't know what a turntable is, stop reading now, there's no hope for you) and read this extract from my forthcoming novel Rubber Soul.

Lennon-McCartney wrote some of the most revolutionary music ever written. And the happiest. And, with Harrison, the loveliest. Love songs. They all believed in it, devoutly composed in it, still do on the quiet, the two that are left. Love as a political liberation (“say the word and you’ll be free”), love as personal revelation (“the movement you need is on your shoulder”) love as a mystical force (“with our love we could save the world”.) Pope John-Paul-George, the accidental divines. John’s direct hits, Paul’s plucked heartstrings, George’s blaze of inner Light worried from dark grumbles. Ringo’s floor spot at the steelworker’s social that was good enough to join the band.

They did not set out to be Shakespeare. But then neither did Shakespeare. They set out with a popular instrument in their hands, to make great popular culture for their own time. But Beatle Studies will replace Shakespeare as the definitive English heritage–high art for generations of school children. Shakespeare will move upstairs into Chaucer’s position as the Father of English Literature (and finally stop tormenting fourteen year olds who can hardly read modern pidgin with his sophisticated Elizabethan verse.) And Chaucer will move further upstairs to become the timeless classic of an earlier civilisation and language, like Homer. And Homer will stay where he is, like God.

They set out to be the toppermost of the poppermost. And they were. They made peerless end of the pier entertainment for their peers.

Yet there is a hole at the heart of even the happiest Beatles record. In the end, it was the bullet hole that found Lennon’s heart. And it was there long before that. It was there on I Am The Walrus, the B side of a McCartney carol John’s raspberrying backing vocal and rhythm helped rasp into irresistibility on 8 December 1967. It was there through all the late head-down Lennon B sides – Rain, Revolution, Don’t Let Me Down, Come Together – as obscure as any Beatle millions seller could be. It was even there at the ultimate orgasm: that windblown peak of the Summer of Love, the climax of their great signature album, which ends… after all the fuss …in a crescendo of nothing. A space ship storming an Albert Hall sized Black Hole. A hole. It was there at the end; it was there at the beginning.

It was always there.

The Return Of King Arthur (Again)

No, I'm not referring to the druid John Rothwell (goddess bless him) but to the original May King. I'm teaching a children's reading workshop on him at the Writeaway Conference Something Old Something New at the University of London on 22 May. King Arthur for the 21st century.. So Poem of the Month on the main website is The May King. This chimes pleasantly with my sight today, in a rare break from the PC, through a proper window, of my first swallow of the year. Add this to my first ear full of cuckoo a week ago and I think we can with cautious optimism begin to talk about the onset of summer. Let's hope it lasts a bit longer than it did last year. Meanwhile, here on the sister site blog, and staying with the original May King, or his Queen anyway, here's an old favourite of mine from Coming Home - Lady Guinevere.

Lady Guinevere (c. 13th century

Belle ami, si est de nous, ne vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous.

Let them play at boyish games round
A table. Though walled up, bound,
In an unpublished garden, stone
Tower with window, all alone,
This court still revolves around me.
I twist them all round my pretty
Little finger, a studded ring:
The champion knight, the poor king,
Modred, Gawain, my Lancelot.
It’s the only power I know.
He comes through enchanted forests,
Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;
From slaying giants, big bad knights:
Barons with feudal appetites;
Impossible quests for Our Lady,
Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;
Obsessed so with courtly sin and
Confession – Indulgence’s twin;
Greets Artos, old friend – clash of mail
(So grieved his crown still lacks a graal,
So tedious!) He comes to me
Who waits… and do not wait to see
The object of his worship pass,
Wasted, into this looking glass,
Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he
Choose to deny himself – and me.

I have a heart, self-determined
Core of I Am, God-underpinned,
Won on the Cross, for me. It can
Choose a beloved, a ‘husband’
The church would make him. But marriage
On earth’s not as it is (a rich
Royal land transaction) as one
With my Lancelot – in heaven.

Dave and Helen's Wedding

“The best wedding since ours, “ I say, and I mean it.
Even a breakdown and a lift home on a truck with an AA angel
Called Dave (was it you I wonder?) could not stop us.
A union of high theatre and real marriage.
Out of a cloudy April, a sudden brilliant summer
Falls straight from heaven onto Bishamption
And lasts all day and all starry evening,
(For one day only!)
The perfect lighting for the tulip-brilliant dresses
And beautiful costumes of all these people
Who have made up your amazing elusive life.
The high church vicar who started in the army
And then went into marketing and then found the church
(Cheerfully counting out fivers into his pocket from yours
Just before the holy starts rolling)
And now combines high humour with pointed, solemn
Endearingly detailed interpretations of the stage set.
Then the casually tip-top professional music concert as you exit
Into the vestry to sign the papers; then the Irish jig
That had us crazily clapping you out of church,
The sense of an entire village (with a Jane Austen church at the heart)
Revolving around your modern love story and its happy ending,
The sixth formers handing out canapés and smiling
Like these first sixth formers, your peers, I’m meeting again
From my first school at the other side of a dead career.
Your lucky streak continuing like the complete croupier you once were
To include every aspect of the meal and venue
And indeed half of Worcestershire by the time it ended;
The brilliant soul band with 1930s mikes and Aretha-red suits.
Even as I use my index finger as a temporary hinge
In a slammed door jamb of pain beyond pain (or any sensation
For the following days) I can’t help laughing.
We all got married with you two, those words come true
And everything with them, when the bride and groom mean them.

Everything organised to perfection to appear effortless,
Like the best poetry.

Even the accidental riverboat sailing under Eckingham Bridge
And over its brilliant sun-painted reflection
Joined in: its shining swan-white prow and name:
Welded Bliss. I gave my heart
- We all did – to the bride, but, ludicrously,
It was the groom I actually dance with.

All of us are dancing with both of you now
I think we may be dancing forever.

29 March 2009

On His Birthday

“You cannot live in the present.
At least, not in Wales.” RST

“The rhymer in the long-tongued room
Who tolls his birthday bell
Toils towards the ambush of his wounds.” DT

All those years ago, I was in a tatty Welsh classroom
Studying Poem On His Birthday by Dylan Thomas
And now here I am in a tatty Norfolk classroom
Teaching Poem On His Birthday by Dylan Thomas
(Same textbook, newer edition). I’ve got nowhere
Very slowly and now the clock on the wall (essentially
The same wall) ticks up thirty nine instead of seventeen
As I fidget and fill in time as artfully as possible -
Subconsciously still waiting for teacher to come.
A big-hearted girl in year 8 has just tidied up
My slagheap of a desk because she “couldn’t stand it anymore”
And Caroline next door has crammed my pigeonhole
With a big red balloon and put HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Over the staffroom noticeboard. When I slip home
For lunch, I’ll get all my cards, a request to record
My not-so-slim-as-it-used-to-be volume onto tape for America
And the annual rejection from a Welsh publisher.
Then I’ll ease on the moccasins Melanie bought me
Which make me feel like a New Man. But I’m not.
I’m an Old Man, a Boy, enjoying his birthday
Up the Mountain, playing truant from everything
With my dog, Tan, running at my heels.

March 29 1995

Notes: Moccasins? That's so last decade darling.


A Good Friday

Blood-orange sun lazing down into the sea,
Full moon ghosting up the other side of the sky.
All down the sun-slackened tarmac to the woods,
Finches fleece hedgerows like there’s no yesterday
And no tomorrow. Round the graveyard walls
Like over-bred mothers, the fields have ploughed
Through yet another winter, lie back in the sun.
Mozart plays somewhere on a holiday radio,
Notes a tossed incense of joy so alive
It is almost beyond living. The sky
Is full of larks and I’m full of Real Ale
And full of myself anyway: it’s my birthday.
At the foot of a wall of crumbing stone -
A Victorian relic of ivy and railings -
D-A-D stands over a grave in flowers.
“Look, love, I chuckle, they’ve left out the E.”
This tickles my daughter as much as me
And we splutter until I am out of breath…
I am about to meditate on mutability
When her miniature copy of my hand
Hoists me homeward, impatient, a daffodil chill
On the air. Her face is a tiny March leaf,
Her "snuggle-riding" featherweight on my back
Fresh as the daisy that hasn't quite sprung,
A summer in bud. I'm the finished version.
I guess they'll be carving my dates clear as Spring
On one of these stones eventually (paying
The sextons double because of the chalk)
But all in good time. Carpe Diem.
Days like these are worth dying for.

Sedgeford, March 29 1991.

Notes: I was 35, then 39 and now I'm 53. The daughter described is now 22. We change, we stay the same. It's brilliantly sunny here. Happy birthday everybody!

A Reader's Letter

I've recently received this from one of the fifty people who attended the launch of River Deep Mountain High in February 2008. It's the most economically expressed and still among the most comprehensive comments I've had.

"I have had a conscience about failing to write to you before this about your book that we all greatly enjoyed reading, though the bureaucratic jungle that enveloped the aspirations of your youth were horrifying to read of, despite the lightness of your touch. Your fame has spread to Cyprus..."

All right, I've left the Cyprus bit in just to show off but I am genuinely and deeply gratified (and humbled) by the care and attention of the previous sentence. It's worth all the writing when someone reads this receptively. Why isn't this woman running the education ministry? Ah? she failed the entrance exam - she got far too many marks...

Gareth Calway (And All His) Works Social

My works Christmas social/office party has been arranged to coincide with my wife's. She is joining dozens of colleagues in a swanky hotel near Norwich for a seasonal lunch. I and all my staff will be calling in - toil permitting - at the Gin Trap in Ringstead for a club sandwich and a pint of Wherry. "Table for one, please landlord."

Happy Christmas everyone!

God bless America!

How blue can we get? Blue as a Virginian sky, blue as an Ohio dawn, blue as a Florida sea board, blue as a Democrat dream ticket, blue as a black man in the White House.

Well I woke up this morning and there was a man with a brain on his way to the Oval office in January. First time in a while.

I never felt more like singing the blues.

God bless America.

Perspectives on Literary and Linguistic Theory

Link here for a copy of my extension area of Hodder Education's living literature A level teaching resources. The deal is, you pay Hodder a modest sum on behalf of your school and your A level students (and, for my section, star spangled mega bright AEA = A++ A levels students) can then teach themselves a way into fabulous pass grades.  However, as they don't seem to be available through such official channels, the link above will take you to a copy of my AEA area of the text. I am more than happy to rescind this link as soon as an official one is functioning. Shame for all that good work to lie fallow.

http://www.alevel-english.co.uk

Well, here's how it starts-

In this unit the focus is on extending and enriching your understanding of theories that have developed around language and literature. For this purpose the unit has been split into two sections: Literary Theory and Linguistic Theory.
The Literary Theory section introduces some of the main schools of thought on how literature can be read from different perspectives, for example placing the writer, the text or the writer at the centre of the reading. You will be encouraged to test out each theory for yourself and to apply it to a varied selection of texts and extracts.
The Linguistic Theory section offers valuable insights into such linguistic greats as Bernstein, Orwell, Whorf, Chomsky, Labov and Halliday, providing access to extracts from their work and interesting ideas to put their theories to the test.
Your will have the opportunity to practise the following skills:
experimenting with reading literary texts using different critical theories
analysing complex linguistic theories
investigating the structure of language at lexical, syntactic and text level
describing language using different linguistic theories
challenging your own perceptions of language and its relation to society
This unit will stimulate you to think in new and refreshing ways about the texts you are studying in you English Language or English Language and Literature courses and it may prove a useful resource in preparation for undergraduate study.
If you enjoy thinking outside the box, this is the unit for you.
Note: Please come back to this area of the website in September 2008 for the full unit (including interactive activities). Perspectives on Literary and Linguistic Theory
In this unit the focus is on extending and enriching your understanding of theories that have developed around language and literature. For this purpose the unit has been split into two sections: Literary Theory and Linguistic Theory.
The Literary Theory section introduces some of the main schools of thought on how literature can be read from different perspectives, for example placing the writer, the text or the writer at the centre of the reading. You will be encouraged to test out each theory for yourself and to apply it to a varied selection of texts and extracts.
The Linguistic Theory section offers valuable insights into such linguistic greats as Bernstein, Orwell, Whorf, Chomsky, Labov and Halliday, providing access to extracts from their work and interesting ideas to put their theories to the test.
Your will have the opportunity to practise the following skills:
experimenting with reading literary texts using different critical theories
analysing complex linguistic theories
investigating the structure of language at lexical, syntactic and text level
describing language using different linguistic theories
challenging your own perceptions of language and its relation to society
This unit will stimulate you to think in new and refreshing ways about the texts you are studying in you English Language or English Language and Literature courses and it may prove a useful resource in preparation for undergraduate study.
If you enjoy thinking outside the box, this is the unit for you.

National Poetry Day 2008 (Work)

Worksong


Through broken dreams
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high
The alarm clock aubade.

Delirium of wavelengths,
The hour of our reckoning cometh nigh,
Coercion of tuning.

Now switched on to the Voice,
The ever ready Voice
Of Dawn Greenwich:
I'm afraid we can't play your request.
We've chosen another for you.
Going to work,
Don't wanna go…
Ah well,
TEA BREAK SOON.

A path through the woods,
A forest of nerves
In my finger tips.

We're still so close
(Correlation Street)
But it's just a walk into work
Work work...
Ah well
TEA BREAK SOON.

And it's-
Hello until five o' clock
And squeezed humour grease
Embrocates the blisters.
TEA BREAK SOON.
Take a walk on the wild side
With the mowing machine.

I like grass.
I don't like cutting it.
Is this all right Jack?
TEA BREAK SOON.

Bloody rain
Arms the grass against us,
Blades that attack
Our mowing machine.

I like rain
And I like wet grass.
I don't like cutting it.
Is this all right Jack?
TEA BREAK SOON.

The fence is broken down again
And to that place a story appertains
-The cows have escaped and now we must catch them.

I like cows
Living in fields.
I don't like mending fences.
TEA BREAK SOON.

Is this all right, Jack?
TEA BREAK SOON.
And do you like me Jack?
TEA BREAK SOON.
And do you love your fellow man, Jack?

And is it TEA BREAK SOON Jack?
And how do I switch off
This machine Jack?
Jack? jack? jack?
Jackjackjackjackjackjackjackjackjackjack

Summer 1973


Note: this is the earliest poem I have kept/not lost. It records a holiday job working for Monmouthshire (or was it Gwent?) County Council maintaining the lawns of Torfaen across its schools, 'settlements' and council properties. Ah! the scent of fresh cut grass, the thrill of the scythe through the nettled wilderness, getting the hang of the hook, the chug chug chugging of the mechanical mower (rendered here in the repetition of my instructor and workmate's name, Jack. ) Jack did the Mirror crossword, I did the Sun, during the (many and welcome) rain breaks. I made the tea also, which they thought was putting me in my place but it was my favourite bit of the day. Poor old Jack, he's in his nineties now probably. We'd book overtime on every day except Friday and spend Friday 12 noon to 4 pm - well 2.25 anyway but once 4pm - in one of the Pontypool pubs. (12 noon to 4 pm were the opening hours in Wales in those days, quite liberal for the era.) The nightmare job was Snatchwood Junior School built on a mound whose every inch was infested with ants. It took all day - four of us - and the ants got well and truly in your pants and bit everything they found there. 'Cynddylan' Jones - my name for him - worked the tractor and apparently always considered himself a bit above and apart from the rest of us once he'd got that post. The young and perpetually fraught foreman always thought I was too clever by half for the humble position I held (well, I was: I was a Grammar schoolboy doing A levels ) and spent any time he was present putting me in my place. That and warning (rather longingly) during school postings, like at Twmpath Sec Mod, that 'these girls'll ave your trousers off I if we dont watch it.' The older guys would exchange an old fashioned look when he did so. Percy on the other hand - a maverick under-foreman who often operated with a separate team of breakways including me- won my respect with his wit, his subversiveness and his ability to irritate Brian even more than I did. Whenever I smell cut grass, even to this day, I am right back in that 1973 summer between the lower and upper sixth, with a head full of the songs and poems 'alluded' to (sub-Eliot fashion) in this poem. Wordsworth, Tennyson's Sir Galahad, Sergeant Pepper, Supertramp, Genesis, Lou Reed - they're all there, man. All in all, it was one of the best holiday jobs I ever had. It was also my last summer at home - by the next summer, a huge gulf had slammed down between me and everything in that valley, notably the family and the home (in Groveside Villas) that they'd sold within a year of me leaving. And my A levels were done and my schooldays over. So it's a poem that suspends in time a valedictory summer I was never to regain. I'm still rather pleased with the way I captured some of my 'green' (and wet behind the ears) hippy protest against the machine in the refrains and the ending. And there are a couple of signs too that the boy who wrote it was a bit too clever for his own good.

Anyway, happy poetry day eveybody. I wish you joy in your work, whatever it is