Poetry, please - day three

Malham Cove, copyright Clive Thorley

Simon Armitage's book Walking Home: travels with a troubadour on the Pennine Way is an account of his journey along this footpath, which he funds by performing poetry readings in odd places in return for donations. After a reading in Malham, he finds his audience have left him £86.96, two corn plasters and a leaflet explaining how to put someone in the recovery position.

The poem below is in Walking Home and also in  his collection Book of Matches. In the unlikely event that Mr Armitage reads this blog, I hope he will excuse my reproducing it here:

I feel I am at the end of my tether
and I don't want to go on any longer.
Not like those climbers on Malham Cove -
dipping backwards for their bags of powder,
reaching upwards for the next hairline fracture,
hauling themselves from my binoculars.

And without enlargement they take on the scale
of last night's stars in Malham Tarn,
inching upstream as the universe tilted, mirrored
till we burst their colours with a fistful of cinders.

I follow a line
from the base to the summit, waiting
for something to give, to lose its footing,
for signs of life on other planets.

Second poem of the day

'The dropping of the daylight in the West'*

Further to being nominated to cite my favourite poems (see yesterday's post), I choose 'My Last Duchess' by Robert Browning. I won't reproduce it here: it's on the long side and easily found if you have a mind to look.

This is another poem I was introduced to at school under the broad topic of 'poems about people', would you believe. It will be familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in poetry, and some might say it's rather a corny choice, but I really like it. I'm a sucker for a good monologue anyway, but this one is just so sinister. It gives me chills every time I read it:

I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.

* Photo John Lindsay via morguefile.com

Poetry, please

My friend Tricia has nominated me on Face Book to name my favourite poems on four consecutive days, beginning today. This is quite a challenge for me, because poems are not my go-to art form, despite the best efforts of Mrs Morley, the teacher tasked with tutoring me in English Lit at senior school. It is, however, an appropriate challenge, not least because Tricia's husband Will is one of my son's godparents and they gave him The Walker Book of Poetry for Children as a gift to mark the occasion. Inside is inscribed a quote from one of the poems in the book, which  I choose as my favourite for today. It's by Walter de la Mare.

Me
As long as I live
I shall always be
My Self - and no other,
Just me.

Like a tree -
Willow, elder,
Aspen, thorn,
Or cypress forlorn.

Like a flower,
For its hour - 

Primrose, or pink,
Or violet -
Sunned by the sun,
And with dewdrops wet.

Always just me.
Till the day come on
When I leave this body,
It's all then done,
And the spirit within it
Is gone.

Thumbing through this lovely book to find this poem, I was reminded of an occasion when my son was at primary school and he was asked to take his favourite poem into class. He chose one from the same book. It's called 'Oodles of Noodles' by Lucia and James L. Hymes, Jr:

I love noodles. Give me oodles.
Make a mound up to the sun.
Noodles are my favorite foodles.
I eat noodles by the ton.

It's daft, I know, but it earned him a star from his teacher.

Currant affairs

There is a part of me that wishes we hadn't been quite so efficient in our netting of the currant bushes at the allotment.

I like a fruit crumble as much as the next woman, but you can have too much of a good thing. There is an entire drawer in my freezer now filled with boxes of blackcurrants nestling in sugar, in anticipation of tarts and cheesecake; I have jars of jams and jellies lined up on my shelves; I have made cordial (which, incidentally, has given me an  insight into why Ribena is so expensive); and I am mid-way through making a vat of blackcurrant vinegar.  There is the gentle drip-drip-drip of the jelly bag in the front room and the bloop-bloop-bloop of wine fermenting under the stairs. Think of a way to process a currant and I've probably done it.

It looks as though the three or four pounds I still have in the colander will be the last for this year, however. I shall have cleared the fruity decks in time for the courgettes, which are already starting to make their presence felt.

A multi-faith day

Yesterday I went to our local Buddhist centre, the Nagarjuna Kadampa Meditation Centre, for its annual World Peace Fete. I have watched this event grow over the years and it is the most extraordinary thing, with short meditation sessions in the temple while outside there is a music tent, children's activities, fabulous food and loads of tempting stalls with crystals and incense as far as the eye - and nose - can see/sense. Naturally, I came away with a bundle of joss sticks and a singing bowl, but I resisted the lure of the paneer curry in anticipation of the second engagement of the day, of which more below. It was, as you might expect, a beautiful, tranquil way to while away a sunny day.

I've been to the centre many times for weekend and day courses, for evening meditations and wonderful meals. If you are anywhere near, I really recommend it. You don't have to be a Buddhist (I'm not).

Tearing myself away from the offer of a holistic massage, I went instead to St Michael & All Angels Church in Great Oakley, which is a tiny stone building in the grounds of the local manor estate. I was there to hear the Camerata Singers summer concert. This is the choir of which I was a member for a while and it was great to see some familiar faces. They sang an impressively varied programme on the loose theme of the Grand Tour, with guest appearances from an accordionist and a musical duo on violin and recorder. As always, the interval was enhanced by a choice of delicious cakes, hence my abstention earlier.

Then it was home for a tasty spaghetti carbonara and a session of putting the world to rights with number one son: all in all, a splendid day.

Busy, busy, busy

Celebrate the Small Things  is a blog hop. Visit Lexa's Blog for the rules, and then post every Friday about something you're grateful  for that week. Originated by VikLit) and co-hosted by L.G. Keltner @ Writing Off The Edge and Tonja Drecker @ Kidbits Blog  
Here are my celebrations for this Friday:
1. Aircon - I covered a yoga session in a gym this morning, and it was lovely to be able to work in a cool room.
2. The England women's football team, who really showed the men how it should be done.
3. Another busy week on the work front - which means I can't write any more today. Must dash!
Have a good weekend, folks.

An English obsession

If, like me, you're older than you like to think you are, you might remember the summer of 1976, when the weather went a bit bonkers in Britain and for 12 consecutive days the temperature reached 32 Celsius somewhere in the country. It was the summer of the Great Drought.

Whitby's whale bone arch

This was the year in which I took my O-levels and after each one I came home and burned the associated school books. It never occurred to me that I might need them for a resit, and I certainly had no intention of taking A-levels. I hated school and I was off!

And off I went - all the way to Yorkshire, where my friend Steph and I worked in the West Bank Restaurant in Robin Hoods Bay, perched at the top of the village, for the whole summer. We lived in and worked all day, six days a week, with Saturdays off. Saturday was changeover day for visitors, so it was quiet. We would catch the bus into Whitby or Scarborough to spend our hard-earned money. Weekday evenings would be spent in the pub (we had no problem getting served: different times!), flirting with strangers (again, different times), and then we'd stagger back up the 1-in-4 hill home to bed.

A decade later, and with a new name

The restaurant was run by an American called Taylor, which at the time struck us as a very odd first name), and his wife Mickey, who was proper Yorkshire. She had been named after a racehorse, Mickey Finn, which had won the St Ledger. Just in case people thought this was an odd name for a girl, she had been given the second name of Stephanie. Given what some folk call their children these days, Mickey seems quite sane.

Eventually, the government decided something should be done about the weird weather and appointed Denis Howell as Minister of Drought. Sure enough, that solved the problem and three days later the heatwave ended in torrential rain and even hail in some places. Pity, really, because it was Bank Holiday Monday.