Thursday 31 December 2020

THE ROMAN SANDAL, LIZARD PENINSULA, CORNWALL...

 The Roman Sandal, Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall…



The military might of Legions,

The unlimited marching,

Purging,

Surging;

The insensitive force,

The abominable course

Of power, strength and organisation.

Leaving behind carnage,

No real peace…

Yet buildings and roads,

A sense of purpose?


The military boot of Legions,

The hobnails of Centurions,

Legionaries,

Auxiliaries;

The impassive force,

The irrepressible wars

Of slavery, death and invasion.

Leaving behind luggage,

One lone sandal…

A legacy, an epitaph,

An impression to impose?



Pete Ray


Just along the coast path, towards Lizard Point, there is a rocky outcrop, which looks remarkably like a Roman soldier’s sandal… 






 

Wednesday 30 December 2020

THE LIZARD, CORNWALL...

 The Lizard, Cornwall: Time’s Mists Taking…



Seiners, their

Nets drying against 

Barely whitewashed cottage walls,

Slipped hurriedly into grey waters,

For the catch.

Hatches fastened from driving Peninsula rain.


Seiners, their

Nets surrounding shoals,

Warily shifted into sea mists,

Slipping sadly into vintage sepia’s

Surreality glum.

Numbed souls rendered silent and arcane.


Seiners, their

Nets surviving still,

Surely vanished into death,

Will slip unnoticeably through the murk

Of timeless scorn.  

Mourning their lost heritage for commercial gain…



Pete Ray


Cornish seiners might still have been out there, for all the lack of visibility around The Lizard on that day. 


I felt that maybe their souls were taking to the sea still and fishing pilchards for their industrious wives to salt and pack. 



In sepia, of course…

Tuesday 29 December 2020

ROPES IN PADSTOW MUD...

 Ropes In Padstow Mud…



Once ropes like those held luggers fast,

Or barques, laden with Canadian timber,

 Or drifters, returned with herring caught;

But now such ropes lie in glistening mud, cast

Into the undulating slime of time’s slumber:

Some hung with green weed, oddly distraught…


And Padstow’s slick low-tide rivulets stream

Through thick, mired gullies which lure and gleam…



Pete Ray


Padstow.




Ropes in mud.




Later submerged in high-tide sea…

Monday 28 December 2020

THE MORNING STAR OF PADSTOW...

 The Morning Star of Padstow…



Such slow progress

Was achieved through Padstow’s

Narrow streets and alleyways

 By the sanitary cart, daily seen rattling 

On uneven cobbles and spilling 

Excrement, its stench filling

Nostrils already strained

By fish and smoke and the filthy water, drained

Along mucky gutters of cluttered, smutty lanes;

Even the horse hung its head in apparent distress…


Such a vile process

Thus aggrieved the Padstow

Tenants and troubled residents

For the gimballed barrel was seen swinging

On an axle and slewing

Faeces, its stink spewing

Onto wheels already stained

By urine and muck and with damp sand ingrained

From regular scavenging trips on Cornish lanes;

And even the horse drooped its head at the abhorrent cess…


Pete Ray


Based upon a report about a typhoid epidemic in Padstow, 1876, it appeared that ‘The Morning Star’ collected pails of ‘waste’ from outside homes and emptied the stinking contents into a gimballed barrel, meaning that the filthy container was able to rotate about a single axis.


Disinfectants were apparently provided but there is little evidence that they were either used, or even successful…


The ‘scavenger’ would then lead both horse and cart to the countryside where the contents of his collection would be used agriculturally.


The accompanying image is startling…


Great job for someone with a peg on his nose, I guess…

Sunday 27 December 2020

KARNAK: IMPRESSON, DEPRESSION...

 Karnak: Impression, Depression…



Such an impression:

Eyeing the beautiful images rising on pillars

To Amun-Ra,

Shielding them

From the gleam,

The beam, the dream;

Electron burns atop the obelisk,

Piercing the sky

To announce a death,

Ultimately taking away the breath.


And my father’s chisel worked that granite,

In the searing heat;

The sheer heat…


Coughed dust,

From toil

And ragged breath:

Arthritic fingers,

Swollen joints,

Distorted death...


Such a depression:

Scorning the piled waste, rising on sand.

To Amun-Ra?

Screening eyes

From the head,

The dead, the dread;

Stone cover atop the grave,

Deterring the jackal,

To protect desiccation,

Ultimately preparing it for purification. 


And my father’s chisel worked the desert

In my weeping hand;

The dry sand…


Coughed dust,

My toil

And rapid breath:

Youthful fingers,

Inherited joints,

Engineered death…



Pete Ray


A youth using his father’s chisel to dig a desert grave for his parent, to be covered by stone, in an attempt to prevent jackals from scavenging flesh. 


The Temple of Karnak has a fine obelisk and mighty pillars, chiselled by hand. 




The monuments made an impression, as the boy made a depression in the sand. 


The youth will take his father’s place and die young too.


It’s what they did…








Saturday 26 December 2020

Boxing Day When I Was Young, Shard End, Birmingham…

 Boxing Day When I Was Young, Shard End, Birmingham…


I lived in a council house in Shard End, Birmingham from the age of nearly seven, following the previous six years living with my maternal grandmother in Ward End. The Shard End Estate was on the eastern edge of the city, close to Yorks Wood, formerly Kingshurst Wood, where Scouts, Guides, Cubs and Brownies would camp in those days, until sadly, much of it was built upon.


THE HOUSE IN SHARD END, Boxing Day in 1969...

Boxing Day was when my parents hosted members of the family for a salad tea, trifle, Christmas cake, dates, figs, beer, port, wine and sherry. And cups of tea… Games were played too, which made the evening something to savour for me, my parents’ only child. The ring-board game, previously written about, was the main feature running through the evening, culminating in the ‘Bummer Cup’ being awarded to the winner, that is, my father… 


MY PARENTS ON THEIR GOLDEN WEDDING ANNIVERSARY....

However, I was pleased to be allowed to set up a game which involved using newspaper and magazine advertisements, whereby I would cut out the brand names and from the images, or ‘catchphrases’, the guests would have to guess what the products were. In those days, alcohol and tobacco adverts abounded and there were so many to choose from. Most of the ones I chose were fairly evident, such as ‘Do ‘ave a…’ (Dubonnet), or ‘…washes whiter…’ (Persil) but it was brilliant to find a more obscure item, such as for Marlboro cigarettes, which would puzzle many family members. To guess the brand just from the packet, was sometimes Gaulois, sorry galling, especially for non-smokers…





Ashtrays were actually placed about the house for that day of the year, for various uncles smoked, leaving the house smelling rather rotten on the 27th December. My father had given up smoking in the early 1950s when his insurance agency  job paid too poorly for his income to be wasted on purchasing paper tubes of pungent leaves to stick in his gob and set fire to. This meant that he could suck in the smoke, which could kill. I often wondered why smokers didn’t stand in their sheds, set fire to them and inhale the smoke, then die quickly and save themselves the burdens of wasting money and suffering ill health later in life… 



Anyhow, back to Boxing Day…


'Consequences’ was always a favourite… All that was needed were a bunch of pencils and sheets of paper. We sat around and began by writing a man’s name on our sheets, then ‘met’ and subsequently hid our choices by folding over the top bit of the paper to keep the name secret. Then we passed our sheets to the person next to us, whereupon that person wrote a woman’s name, followed by ‘at’. The ritual continued through ‘he said’, then ‘she said’, then finally, ‘the consequence was’… 


MODERN EXAMPLE...

Clearly, my mum Marj and her sisters Ivy and Ghreta would play the game innocently and that certainly increased the hilarity when the finished sheets were read out. My mum might use my father’s name, so ‘Vic Ray’ could end up meeting the next person’s ‘Jane with the over-shoulder boulder holders’ (my cousin Steve actually used those words); AT Ivy’s suggestion ‘The Fox and Goose’. Uncle Jack might suggest that HE SAID: “I like your cream buns…” then Ghreta might suggest that SHE SAID: “How’s your belly for spots?” And the CONSEQUENCE by Auntie Iris might be: “Two weeks in Intensive Care…” 


Thus the storylines read out by us all were toxic mixes of the naivety and the risqué which contained more and more representations of ‘double entendre’ as the night wore on… Loved it.


The night ended with a card game, known to us as ‘Newmarket’, based on betting on horses, I guess. Four cards from another pack, usually the Jack of Diamonds, the Queen of Hearts, the King of Clubs and the Ace of Spades, were positioned on the coffee table and we all placed a halfpenny on a card (horse) of our choice, plus a penny in the ‘kitty’ in the middle of them.


SOMEONE WOULD WIN WITH THE QUEEN OF HEARTS... 

Once all monies had been paid, the game was played out. In turn, we were dealt to but there was also a spare, ‘dummy’ hand, which the person dealt to first could choose to pick up instead of the one he/she had been dealt. Obviously, if the player had one or more of the four cards (horses) with money on them in the dealt hand, he/she would keep it, but if not, the spare hand could be used instead. If the player wanted to keep the hand dealt, someone else could ‘buy’ the dummy hand for a penny, which was added to the kitty.


The game began with the dealt-to person playing the lowest black card in his/her hand, say the 5 of Clubs, then whoever had the 6, then the 7 and so on, would play them and of course, if you held the King, your hopes were raised… Once you played a card which corresponded to one of the four ‘horses’ in the middle, you collected your winnings from the duplicate card. Then the Ace was played by someone and that player could then place down their lowest red card and the process began again and again, until someone had put down all of their cards and claimed the kitty. 


Obviously, sometimes, money would not be retrieved from one or more of the cards in the middle, making the reward a little more interesting… 


Eventually, one of the four cards in the middle was turned over, so that more money was placed on the other three. Then two were turned over, then three, usually leaving the King of Clubs, upon which quite a number of coins piled up. Whether it was because I was the youngest player and the adults wanted me to win, I am unsure to this day but I often won that last prize on the King of Clubs, which became one of my favourite playing cards, along with the Queen of Spades. Well, she had a sad look on her face. Probably because she was married to a rake (an immoral chap)…  


ME WITH AUNTIE IVY, HER HUSBAND JACK, ONE OF THEIR TWIN SONS DEREK & HIS WIFE NADINE...

Interestingly though, Ghreta and husband Doug, Steve’s parents lived in a bought semi-detached house in Sheldon, whilst Ivy and Jack lived first in Sheldon, then Solihull, then even the precious Knowle, all three bought homes and yet, during ‘Newmarket’, their competitiveness showed, even when losing out on a couple of pennies… Odd that.


MUM & ME A LONG TIME AGO.
ONE COULD DESCRIBE HER AS 'QUIET & SHY', LIKELY WHERE I ACQUIRED THOSE ATTRIBUTES...

And thus Boxing Day ended after midnight, with cigar smoke enveloping the lingering cigarette smoke, as my joy at being out of father’s glare for most of the evening began to wane. 


I loved mum’s salads with the remarkable pickled onions jarred by a person on my father’s insurance round, plus mum’s home-made trifle and Christmas cake. 


I loved Boxing Day too, even though at bedtime it galled me to see my self-satisfied father replace the ‘Bummer Cup’, won for the rings game, in the china cabinet where it lived, year after year, after year… 


 




   




   


 

Thursday 24 December 2020

THE CHRISTMAS GIFT THEY DIDN'T WANT...

 It was 1962-63 I reckon. I had never bought my parents a Christmas present with my own meagre savings before. I was around 12 years old. In Aston Cross, Birmingham, walking from bus-stop to school, I had spotted a bunch of six liqueur-type glasses on a bridge-like holding frame. It appealed to me. I saved up to buy it. I was desperate for my parents to open the present on Christmas morning. 

My dad liked a tot of whiskey at Christmas, whereas my mum drank alcohol not at all.

I hadn’t thought of that…


The Gift They Didn’t Want


The candle bridge brought out each December

Sends a shiver through me

Without fail;

It nestles amongst fake pine greenery

Across a shelf, above the fire.

And I remember. I remember

A distressing Christmas tale.


The glass bridge bought early one December,

Early 1960s, pleased me,

Without doubt;

It nestled in a china cabinet, permanently,

On a shelf, beneath a plate.

And I remembered. I remembered

What failure was all about.


Spied in a fancy goods store

Near the brewery at old Aston Cross,

It attracted my attention

In a chaotic window display

Amongst other cheap and nasty dross.

I saved some shillings and heavy pence,

I checked that it was still there each day

But I told no-one of my intention…


It was cheap. I know that now.

The ‘gold’ on the bridge soon flaked.

But I had wrapped it with care 

And for my parents’ acceptance I ached…


Their faces, however, said it all, I know that now:

Mild frowns, occasional nods and incomprehension.

I was unable to speak. I felt quite deflated

And the gift was treated with slight reprehension…


It was given away many years ago

But the hurt remained deep inside;

An idea, a thought, an acquisition,

Which was too easily cast aside… 


Pete Ray