An aye for an eye…

Cat on a hot new roof: Pixel checks it over!

Writers remember everything… especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.
    Art consists of the persistence of memory.
— Stephen King: Misery

I have written on here before about the NHS at its worst (for me). But on Saturday I experienced it at its very best. Before I tell you how, I need to take a few steps back, and tell you the why.

Last Tuesday, after six weeks of seemingly continuous rain, my kitchen and bathroom roof was replaced (very loudly); and I finally removed the bucket and pan from under the spot where all the water had collected in the roof void and made its way through. Then, when the scaffolding was dismantled on Wednesday afternoon, I went and sat outside with my cat Pixel amongst the cement dust and general mess, and reflected on how we’d muddled our way through from the morning I slept in; Storm Floris found the weaknesses in the old roof; and I woke up to an inch of water soaked into the kitchen floormats and collected in poor Pixel’s food-bowls, as well as splashed up the walls and kitchen door (where the weak spot was). It could have been worse, I suppose. But it felt like a disaster… — an expensive disaster.

Left under a photograph on Substack…

Poem for Michael Young

We leave our little red hearts behind:
but isn’t that being just a little unkind… –
shouldn’t we say what moved us that way:
a “Beautiful!!!” or a simple “Grade A”…?

I’ve got to think of my future…

The wait will soon be over…

Twenty two years ago, a truly talented wise man — one of a trio, fortuitously — recommended a record, “an LP”, that he said helped explain where his own startlingly original, beautiful, frequently funky yet immeasurably moving music had come from. Having sat rapt in attention on the front row of the circle at Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre, elbows on the balcony, my head in my hands, soaking that music up for the first of many times when hours seemed like days, felt like seconds, I had to find this source at all costs… — hoping it would help unlock something… — and it turned out (rather proptitiously, and much to my surprise) that someone who lived near my mum and dad was actually selling a copy. (I think they call this synchronicity.)

It’s a mono record from around the time I was learning to talk, with only a foreign language with lots of accents printed outside and inside; oh, and therefore quite rare… — especially in the UK. However, this appears to be how the world crawls forward meaningfully: one astounding coincidence at a time. Oh, and therefore, the first time I had ever worked abroad, it had been in the city where the wise man was born and grew up with the best friend who now played drums with him (the second wise man): right around the time the band was getting together (with the third wise man) and my son was learning to talk. The city is called Västerås; the first wise man Esbjörn; and his band — which you may have heard, heard of (I do hope so) — was the Esbjörn Svensson Trio.

If knowledge could be set up against mortality…

Bridge 142, Shropshire Union Canal © 2000 Simon Crosbie

for Rosie: Simon’s song
(in memory of Simon Crosbie: 25 December 1966 to 24 April 2025)

    there are no words that you can say
    no pill to take the pain away
    when you are raggedly ripped in two
    there is no healing superglue

more than just each partner’s brother
once we were there for the other
much more than just so simply there
yet tighter than a braided wire

we were as close as lovers once
yet did not do those things they do
except those kisses on the cheek
pinched in jest for being unique

    there are no words that you can say
    no pill to take the pain away
    when you are raggedly ripped in two
    there is no healing superglue

you are the loveliest man I’ve met
the brightest and most gifted too
so full of love and honesty
that sharing time and space with you

have always been my greatest joys
that knowing smile, that gorgeous voice
so dapper and so full of zest
genius at its very best

    there are no words that you can say
    no pill to take the pain away
    when you are raggedly ripped in two
    there is no healing superglue

the plans we’d made, the things we’d do
the sprawling journeys we’d relive
the craic and music shared once more
the mutual pleasure they would give

I missed you when you were alive
do not know what I’ll do in death
would sadly swap lives to survive
would gladly take your final breath

    there are no words that you can say
    no pill to take the pain away
    when you are raggedly ripped in two
    there’s nothing else that you can do
        but weep…

The old man and the tarn…

For Paul Besley… — inspired by him, his writing, and a recent visit to Eel Tarn.

As the Sun also rises, so the Moon rests. Its waning glow, low in the mauve sky as it drew the Man here, has departed. But he still feeds off its allure as his pulse climbs, and he pauses, breathing hard, summoning support, as well as the air he so craves. He moves on to meet the dawn, pushing his body well beyond the valley-bound limits it frequently fights to meet. This race was too urgent to refuse, and all obstacles must be overcome, or sidelined.

Few creatures stir so early, the young calves so puzzled by his appearance that they cannot label him good nor bad, so regard him as both. Finally, they return to their cud-chewing amongst the muddy grass. Even after such a long absence of rain, some becks still happily feed the ground. The Man tracks this one eagerly; then turns from it to face down the radiant horizon.

I’m definitely amazed…!

I picked up the book in the image — a book I had been anticipating for weeks — and was crying by page 2: recognizing elements of both myself and my son in the first wonderful description of John’s autistic offspring James (the principal character); then, a few pages later, in John himself — although, as I wrote to my son, “the tables are turned with us, I think: me, the autistic father; you, the mega-talented [one]”. Autism can be, and frequently is, a family trait: inherited — at least partially, in my case, I am pretty sure — from my amazing dad. How much of it I have passed on myself I am not at all sure. Plus… it really doesn’t matter. What I do know is that my son truly is multi-gifted, musically (and technically): probably with the encouragement of a whole bucketful of helpful genes from my erstwhile concert-pianist mum, and a few random droplets from me.

And so is James: incredibly talented! (And, like my son, plays the bass southpaw, despite being right-handed.) Many people who are autistic have a ‘superpower’ (or defiantly and knowingly claim that autism itself is their superpower): and his includes in-depth knowledge of huge swathes of rock/pop music; the ability to perform that music to a very high standard indeed, singing, or playing different instruments; as well as absolute, or perfect, pitch.

James, though, struggles to communicate: he “has experiences that he cannot express in words”.

Would in thy palm dissolve…

Conditionality
Provoked by yet another hospital visit — this one more promising than most… — and therefore composed over a watchful, thoughtful night.

…but be sure
I will from henceforth rather be myself,
Mighty and to be fear’d, than my condition,
Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down…
— Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I

Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
— Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

smooth is a soft word; soft is not — it speaks
of a lover’s leaving: the latch that drops,
catches and calls; a lapse of the caution
that pulled the stillness of the prior world closed

closed is not ever close — bodies touching
may hold unknowable souls, or stories
consciously untold; can cling to silence
fashioned from flints of fear, pointed with pain

pain is anything and everything we
wish it were not — the short sharpness of a
cat’s playful claw; the ceaseless cremation —
deep within its eye — of stars undying

undying is not living, nor is it
the phoenix’ echoed resurrection — mere
hope-filled fancy for a latch that never
lifts nor falls; for a blade pared soft and smooth

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…

The ballad of Woodhouse Colliery

the siren blasts pre-dawn today
wakes the locals at five-thirty
it is time it screams for the chosen few
to get down deep and come up dirty

what we do is what our grandas did
it made some sense back then
when our father was nobbut a gangly kid
but (umm) have you seen the papers

our houses cost nearly nothing we’re told
too small too cramped so old and cold
yet there are some who fail to afford them
so they go and do what their grandas did
when their father was nobbut a kid

but not to power a nation this time
this time they’re making nowt
unless you consider the world’s biggest hole
the country’s nuclear dustbin
an achievement of sorts
rather than an act of futility
a great big hole of nothingness
devoid of all utility

they are scouring the planet’s intestines
not producing the value of old
as they know it’s only shit they shovel
not exhuming a dark form of gold

what we do is what our grandas did
it made some sense back then
when our father was nobbut a gangly kid
but (umm) have you seen the papers

dig it big enough they say
and all Sellafield will fit
but what will they do with the great big hole
where that festering factory used to sit

they’ll build a mountain of excrement
unneeded to the sky
and add another Wainwright
where the fulmars used to fly

In our arts we find our bliss…

I have a cat

I have a cat who comes to me

but not into my arms

she comes instead for blessings

and to bring me magic charms

by way of spoken greetings

and of softly-called farewells

by means of gentle emphasis

her love for me compels

requitement immaterial

plus all her wonted wares

the milk and meat and kibble

the warm and cushioned chairs

the window seats and hammocks

plus all I can conceive

the toys that deck the carpet

and the doors that help her leave

to go beyond my knowledge

into worlds she cannot share

I have a cat that comes to me

who lives her days elsewhere

yet dreams upon the sheepskin rug

below my restless head

and often will call down for me

if I am late for bed

I have a cat who comes to me

whose courage is so strong

yet sometimes longs for company

when everything goes wrong

I have a cat who comes to me

it doesn’t matter

when

or where

how frequently

or even for how long

I have a cat who comes to me

and there I end my song

Postscritch: The railway kitten…

When writing about my first (that wasn’t my parents’) cat, Jay, I forgot — goodness knows how: as my jaw still bounces off my slippers thinking about it! — his most astonishing exploit.

Home at the time of his adoption was just around a mile’s walk from Darwen station, which had regular and frequent direct trains to Manchester: a place I used to visit a great deal, mainly for the culture — especially the Hallé orchestra at the Free Trade Hall — although shopping at the Arndale Centre (in the days before the devastating 1996 IRA bomb) and for pre-loved clothes (the city has a wonderful student-based and therefore youth-friendly economic sector); exploring the architectural Wow! that is the Central Library; playing backgammon in hidden pubs off Deansgate of an evening; snaffling cask ales and late-night vegetarian takeaways — particularly after experiencing The Smiths launch Meat is Murder… — were all great motivations for being there: and it is for these (and many other wonderful contributing enticements) that Manchester became the first city (of — and still to this day — a very select handful) that I fell in love with (and eventually worked in).

Listen to the waves against the rocks…

It was the top of page 212 that unlocked the floodgates I had been blinking back all day:

For people who are in continual pain, the relationship with bodily risk is different. Pain is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to limit your time with pain, not encourage it.
    For people who live with fatigue, the relationship with effort is different. Exhaustion is not a healthful by-product of healthy exertion or impressive effort: it is a constant companion. You want to preserve yourself from fatigue, not encourage it.
— Polly Atkin: Some of Us Just Fall

Anyone — and it probably is a one (so thank you, dear reader!) — who has followed this blog over the last eleven years or so (even when it has vanished into the haze of forgetfulness, or weirdly veered down the path less travelled by) will understand my cathartic tears: disability, along with (for me) its constituents pain, fatigue (sans sleep), and an overwhelming desire to walk (when I shouldn’t), are the chief characters found amongst the subplots cunningly pushed through these pages, as they are throughout my life. Since three other motorists did their best to render me immobile (or worse), and (much later) my heart suddenly stopped (ostensibly because of a drug I was taking to alleviate one of the main aspects of the disability caused by those earlier collisions, but actually caused by a congenital genetic mutation), disability and illness have become intertwined both in my life and in my mind (although possibly in different ways). They have also become my necessary guides (although possibly not always in a good way).

A lymerical ballad…?

Written in Dove Cottage…
…in the time it took me to climb the café stairs!

There once was a chap called Will,
who struggled to stay very still;
    He wandered as only
    He could… – very lonely:
Down dale, ’round lake, and uphill!

Let slip the dog afar…

I posted the following on Instagram late last night:

Any human being that can write such a sentence as that below – especially in the context it bookends… – is a saint: of emotion; of love; of wordsmithery; of so many things that are so vitally important to me. And yet it is just one of thousands that move in the same way: a quality of writing so rarely encountered; a quality of life, a quality of love… ditto.

“I walked for hours in the forest that night though I don’t remember the trees.”

Thank you @paulbesleywrite for the read of the year; maybe even the decade. Still got some way to go (after over a hundred pages, tonight); but feel that I am on the journey with you.

It was yet another sentence in his book, The Search, yet another situation, yet another way of defusing a tightly-packed grenade of emotion carefully, thoughtfully, differently, vividly, and never over-statedly, never explosively. Even the sharpest, toughest, most brutal events are gently smuggled into your brain, and only then do they suddenly evolve from pocket-sized Rembrandt etchings seen in near darkness to the most audacious, brightly-lit, multi-hued Jackson Pollock and Van Gogh canvases.

A Tale of Two Kitties…

A rather camera-shy Petronius the Arbiter

The first cat is the steepest…

I was outside Darwen rather than Damascus: however, the conversion took place just as abruptly, with only a few seconds warning. One moment I was being asked…

– How would you feel about looking after Jay for a while?

[All of my friend’s cats – and horses – were named after birds: Blackbird – ‘Blackie’ for short – a rook-coloured bruiser wearing white gloves (probably concealing knuckle-dusters); and big bullying brother to Kestrel – a beautiful, mournful tabby, with the same gleaming toes; and currently Jay – who, not being a blood relative, was beaten up by both of them almost daily, and therefore frequently went missing for days, and always came home injured. Why Kestrel didn’t also fly away – without the “coming home” bit, of course… – I shall never know for certain. Timidity is one possibility; but likely also some warped form of sibling loyalty.]

Can I take your postcode, please…?

Exactly ten thousand days ago today, driving home on a gently warm afternoon in the middle of September 1996, I was on the receiving end of the first of three serious road traffic collisions (RTCs) that wrote-off the succession of vehicles I was driving and increasingly damaged my neck: leading, ten years later – despite hundreds of physiotherapy sessions, and many, various minor operations – to major, and extended, surgery: when my cervical spine was stabilized from the front with four surprisingly lengthy screws and a sizable titanium plate. (My neck was so badly deformed – like the poor cars before it – that a bespoke mechanical replacement for one of my cervical disks had to be forgone; and the two vertebrae surrounding it were instead fused together.) I have not seen my shoulders since.

Unless a man starts afresh about things…

Loweswater at dawn, frozen in time

My first walk of the new year: and to a location now – as it will be forever – so very near to the centre of my heart and melded so very closely with my mind. Yet, on Saturday, it was clothed so tightly in frost, and held so singularly still, that its icebound enchantment freshly conjured even more enthralling memories to be layered, interlaced, with those soothing ones already possessed. Not just visual – such as the moon-glinted mint-white of the fields below fells of dry-cured bacon; and audible – the rushing becks, the joyful birds; but also, of course, sensual – the ice tightening my face like Botox; the frozen, sogged soil crunching beneath my boots, spongily, surprisingly, bearing my weight… – along with the absolute astonishing absence of Aeolus or his team of Anemoi: their breaths apparently held abnormally tightly, or at least currently (although Eurus would soon awaken: his lazy easterly breeze drawing disappointing clouds to mask the valley from the sun – whose rise I had come to witness, of course… – as well as stinging my eyes on my return…). The place looked and felt new-made: its birth accompanied by nature’s gently twinkling fanfarades!

Farewell, my Little Man…

And so succeeded.
For Felix, with immense gratitude and love…
– we shall not look upon your like again.

Like Jesus, he came down to Earth
for just a few years, and just a few days:
his message unique – delivered in mirth –
that all you need is fluff. Oh! Let us praise

the wonder that was sent to us here:
a cat full of sympathy, caring, and fun;
a creature packed so full of love there was no fear:
just a healthy appetite for life and joy, for air and sun.

He shared his heart, though, far too intensely:
his lives thus counting down as each year passed.
He hid the hurt, of course, that burned immensely,
deep inside; the joy he brought unto the last

so very much more than anyone could ever bring again.
Like Jesus, he came down to us to take away our pain.

And pay no worship to the garish sun…

before the dawn
with thanks… to Barbara Aves (13 March 1936 to 21 December 2020)

the daws drive dark before the dawn;
gather for the final roost
     before the sun has chance to rise… –
no light today; just shadow… –
     mere shadow without end;
     sad margins robbed of symmetry.

     the daws I see
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
               rise:
          solemn airs
               gnarled within the gloom;
          carefree graces
               wrenched without the light.

     so many vanquished stars;
     so many stolen nightfalls;
          from nowhere –
          out of nowhere –
     the clouds I see
          astray, mislaid;
          minor keys unturned.

the silences, eclipses,
the nothings and the nowheres,
the shadows we are made of,
the dark we are afraid of… –
     all shaped the same
     but never visible… –
     as
the daws drive dark before the final dawn.

A long December…

It may be down to the fact that I’m listening to – no: immersed in – Counting Crows a lot, at the moment (a very extended moment that has been absorbing me for many, many days): but there seems to be a preternaturally large number of black birds flecking, piercing, spiralling, twisting and weaving the air, at the moment. (That phrase again.)

The weight of this sad time we must obey…

I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the house-top.
– Psalm 102:7

It may have happened a million times. Or it may have happened just this once. Not that it matters. Not to me. Not really. But to the birds, almost certainly. Preeminently the lone shadow which still sings… – Shakespeare’s “substance of a grief” made manifest.