PUBLISHING THE DEAD

I’m splashing about in Kindle Direct Publishing, making a mess, trying to keep it light and dismissing stress – don’t think I’ve used any real swear words, yet. Doing April-poem-a-day this year sent me down this path; I sat up one sleepless night with the idea of settling the best of my old previously published poems in a book.

These poems are set in their decades, the 60s being full of childish memories and teenage troubles with a hint of the history of the time. The collection is thick with memoir but there are oddities thrown in; it’s a bit like a packed suitcase where other minds might boggle at the mix. In the 70s and 80s innocence meets up with experience and discovery, and the 90s are steeped in those nasty political upheavals. My intention was to paint a picture with old published poems so there has been a lot of dragging in and chucking out. I think these poems should live together, forever, and hope readers will feel the same.

Some of these poems were written almost thirty years ago, when I was an energetic and wild woman – impulsive. I’m a different being now and most of my recent work doesn’t blend into this picture. If I don’t allow them space in the light they might languish in a document deep in a file system forever. There’s just something about swimming in nostalgia; here I am writing thirty years ago about the previous thirty years, loving the images and characters. That carnival is well and truly over and all the songs sung, but selective memory is a fantasy in itself. The dating of these poems (in this setting) relates to the time in the poem not the time of writing, except when it does.

Of course I forgot to include the copyright notice in the first attempt, and made such a mess of the paperback process that I decided to make a few changes. It’s good to have a little space to see how a project works out before seriously advertising the product; I nipped away one and added four re-formatted poems...and changed the cover. I know poetry won’t pay the rent but the poems are better out than in, lying around like old sloths, and, I seem to be in tidying mode which, apparently, has me re-writing, re-formatting/structuring old work...and it is interesting fun. I have achieved something and think that satisfaction will be guaranteed.

...and here is the link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071NPRZP8

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THOSE WERE THE DAYS (my friend)

I lived deep in a community when I was a child. Everyone knew who did what, when, where and gossiped it behind closed doors or into ears behind a flat hand. The tyrant grandmother had lived there from before the builders left; she knew all and everything. None of that mattered to me – my life skipped rope, threw two balls against any wall and delved into the RSD.

The RSD had been an internment camp during the war and even though it had gates, they’d been pried open long enough for grass to grow and an invitation thrown out. It was heaven. We spent whole days in there, often without lunch, and would come home filthy and starving at tea-time. The choice of adventure might lie with the froggy-pond, the Monkey-puzzle tree, the old house, the burn, the rope swing or little brick houses/kennels that we called the Zig-zags (because of the roofs). When there were no boys with us, we girls brushed them out and played house; we built armchairs with loose bricks and served up a dinner of wild strawberries or brambles on leaves.

My grandchildren and their like will never have this kind of experience. Camping with their father, and days in the big parks might echo remnants but could never leave the same impression.

People only stayed indoors when it rained. In the late 50s early 60s there was no day-time television except for a lunch-time programme and the news. On warm evenings my mother would put a pillow out on the window ledge of the front room, and watch us play a game of Rounders in the street. She spoke to every passer-by. I don’t remember anyone on our small street having a car so we had an empty road to play in and hardly ever had to move…except for the ice-cream van. Oh, the games we played in that street: Kick the Can and Olevio were different versions of Hide and Seek. One version was played in the dark with torches to root us out of the huge back gardens – spooky; they still had bomb-shelters up the middle. Sometimes the younger adults would join us and the oldies hung out of the windows.

Those were the days of long, hot summers when the tar of the roads and pavements melted and spoiled our white ankle socks. I wore Clark’s sandals and home-made cotton dresses that appeared years later in patchwork quilts. All the boys wore short trousers until they went to the big school after the eleven-plus. Dirt loved us and scabby knees were compulsory. Time stood still but it must have been moving because here I am – heading for sixty and wondering where it’s all gone.

All the paddling in burns, catching minnows and firing stones at water-rats, has made me the individual I am. We also caught bees, tadpoles, newts and frogs. I am ashamed to say that we tortured the bees in cans of water and cooked them on fires; we pulled the wings and legs off Daddy-long-legs…and my brother once deep-fried a newt in my mother’s chip pan. Of course I shopped him and he got thumped after Mum threw the whole pan out in the bin!

On Saturdays our street gang would go to the ABC Minors in Shawlands, and the big kids would look after the little ones – this was a twenty-minute bus ride away. During school holidays we’d go swimming, again in the same group, and the big kids taught us to swim. These big kids would maybe be about twelve, and there were only two of them – in charge of six or seven others at varying ages; that wouldn’t be allowed now.

Thinking of this reminds me of that movie Stand by Me where the boys go in search of a boy’s body; it’s from a Stephen King story that completely captures what it was like to be a kid in those (safe) days. Those days are long gone.

WHAT HAVE I DONE LATELY?

Joined the gym. Honest to God, I did! Last Sunday I experienced my induction and made a pile of promises. I was supposed to take part in an exercise class on Wednesday but my grandchildren dragged me around Balloch park instead, which did the job. But, if I had written my status on Facebook on Thursday it would’ve read: Many Kit-Kats later, I remembered that healthy eating was supposed to be on the menu from this week.

I’d already warned my grandchildren that if they felt an earthquake then that would be me in the gym.

‘I never heard an earthquake, Granny,’ my granddaughter said, during our tour of the park.

‘That’s because I haven’t been back yet. Keep your ears open.’

Maybe I’ll go tomorrow. I told Carrie about it on the phone today and she said she’d text me. We’ll see. Meanwhile, two Magnum ice-lollies later, I’m thinking of popping out to the shop for chocolate.

I have been good though, on the writing side of life, and worked very hard on poems for the Scotia Poet Laureate competition at the end of the month…and there is also the Poetry Scotland event at Callander the weekend after. Looking forward to stewing myself in all that lovely poetry – well I hope it’ll be GOOD rather than lovely.

Still gripped in the arms of audio books and am presently diving into the cannon of Orson Scott Card; some of his work is brilliant, and so addictive that I just move on to the next book in the series; I’m on the last one of the Enderverse series – fantastic stories.

It’s so hard to believe that we’re racing towards the end of another year – and I still haven’t got carpet laid in the hall! Time doesn’t wait for old women – it just belts along and doesn’t care if we catch up or not.

I also cut my hair – actually made a right mess of it; it’s not as easy to cut decent chunks off long hair as it is to crop or style. It reached my bum but now that I’ve cut about eight inches off, it seems even thicker and unmanageable. Think I’ll just go the whole hog and cut it into a bob. Another we’ll see.

TRUTH & FICTION

Aye, the years are fair drawing in; I’ve been thinking about dying, and how it could come all too soon. Really, I have pondered on the fact that my family are not long-lived and I might only have a very small amount of time left to do the things I want to do. Hopefully I will be the exception and will bang on ‘til I’m a centurion. Mostly, I want to see my grandchildren grow up but the fact is, that the longer I live the more likely it’ll be that I’ll lose a child and I definitely don’t want that.

So, to be that selfish I will have to be tough enough to keep going through the loss of my friends and writing buddies, and whatever the barmy politicians drag us into – the way they’re going the western world could be wiped out this decade!

Someone recently asked, why do you write? I said I wanted to entertain my future progeny with true stories, and strangers with my fiction and poetry. It’s so easy, these days, to communicate and spread our personal history; we can tell the stories that would have died with us.

When I was a child I loved to sit and listen to the adults talking, gossiping and telling tales of old childhoods; my children had only a little time to spend on that because technology was interfering; my grandchildren won’t have a minute to allow old tales to sink into their memory. I hope there will be at least one amongst those future grandchildren, however great, who will be a reader and perhaps a writer, but interested in what has gone before.

I have experienced a lot in my life, and the horror is hysterical in its own way – I will make it attractive and someone will read it, I’m sure. But, I’m having fun learning how to show them how it was for me…of course, I’ll fictionalise the sexy bits so they won’t know what’s true to me or someone else. Ordinary life will be straight and true.

EATING THAT FISH

The idea was to invite those who eat fish over to mine; I would cook number-three grandson’s catch and serve it up. So, the menu was:

Sea trout – cooked with lemon

Chips

Tomato ketchup

followed by

Marshmallows for pudding

I travelled across town by bus to pick up the three youngest and bounciest of my son’s children, and took them to the park for an hour – hoping to run the little devils calm. It didn’t work. Enthusiastically independent, they soon had me exhausted – it’s taken me all evening to get over it all!

The fish was lovely but they didn’t eat it because it was a real live (dead) animal and not covered in batter or breadcrumbs. An experiment gone wrong; they’re too young for real life.

What a great idea to have marshmallows for pudding – one half of the table racing the other to see how many we could eat.

I am so glad to be back in my hermit status; the flat has been trembling at the memory of their visit and things are almost back to normal.

When I returned them to their happy and relaxed parents, Bingo was laughing at the thought of me being in her shoes…and that was only with three of them and only for four hours! Oooh, I feel so old.

The Fisherman

Number 3 grandson caught his first fish - it's big enough to make his father jealous... and, it will be moving to a freezer near me verrrry soon!

I've given myself a deadline for the 1st of March to begin my healthy eating lifestyle, again. Out goes all the chocolate and in with all the fish, meat and eggs and green veg I can muster. Sad, but inevitable :(

I LOVE MY CAR

HOWZ IT ALL GOING THEN?

Sleep; what is that – a novel I read years ago? Oh, sleeeeep, where you close your eyes and drift off into some other world for seven or eight hours – not in this life I don’t. I would pay fortunes (if I had any) to experience unconsciousness for more than an hour at a time. My friend, Sylvia mentioned on the phone yesterday that there is a version of Nightal (don’t know if I’ve spelled that right) that works like a dream, even on the usually impervious. It’s supposed to be natural drugs: not real serious drugs – I thought drugs were natural. Well anyway, I might try it if she can find out the right colour for me.

 

My two weeks holiday is almost up; back to work on Monday, full of my usual bounce and enthusiasm. Actually I’ll be glad to get back to work; I’ve got a blanket to crochet for my new great-niece, and one to finish for my daughter Amazon’s boyfriend. I push these blankets on everyone and the big/young people like them especially for their hangovers, especially in winter when they’re mooning around the house, or mooching from neighbours. Actually, she’s been going out with him for over two years now, so I’ll have to give him a name; he works in a bank but I don’t think Banker would suit him, but he’s a DJ too, so DJ it is. Welcome to my blog, DJ.

 

Where was I? Oh yes, sleep. I lay down about half-past twelve, because I seemed to be tired, as you do. One hour later I’m still trying to fall off to sleep. So I gave up and made a cup of tea, opened the laptop and suddenly a section of the novel appeared in my head…but I still quickly checked email and Litopia for conversation. Nothing doing, I delved into the novel and wrote almost a thousand words. by half-past two I was nodding and congratulating myself, talking into the room. Then I lay down again but not a lot happened so I’m going to sack the hell out of that manager who runs the Land of Nod.

 

Half-past nine, text messages from Amazon. Nine-forty-five phone call from Musician. Isn’t everything in the world about how we get the loan of a fiver to bloody Musician? But I got up and actually wrote more lovely words (well that remains to be seen) before I had breakfast at eleven. I like it when a plan comes together – what plan? That’s why I’m having so much trouble with this bloody novel; I haven’t planned it out and don’t know what happens at the end – writing by the seat of my pants here, as usual.

 

So yeah, things are going good.

OLD WORDS

No it's not that I don't like him; the main problem I have with my son is the way he just blasts out his thoughts and visions as if he's got a court order stating he's right in fact. I know you're going to grab me for using the 'don't like' words so on you go -.in fact I'll take a leaf out of his book and imagine that you couldn't possibly understand what I'm on about. Oooh, he makes me want to slap him. Does he think I'm from another planet or something? That I haven't been changed and battered through the years from dealing with men and teenagers?

'Don't you dare,' I said to him. 'Don't you steal any more years from me. I've been there and know what's going on in your head - Christ you haven't even reached the half-way mark and you think you're magnificent with all your projections about what your kids will and won't do because of the way you've brought them up. Reality will bash your face in pretty soon my boy, God help you.'

 

I can't repeat what he said in return because the keyboard is littered with flipped letters, so I have to be careful - speak slowly. I need to calm down. I'll have a chocolate brazil nut and try to change the subject that's racing around my head.

No, it doesn't matter what I do, I can't make it go away, and I'm so tired because of my eyes, and the sneezing - you wouldn't think that sneezing would take so much out of you, would you? I wish I could lie down but I'd have a stroke if I did that. I should know better than to let it get to me. I hate arguing - that's the people-pleaser in me.

How do you help a thirty-something man? Probably by lethal injection.

 

No, I'm not condoning the murder of sons but it does feel good to grate my teeth at the thought; feel them bite into each other as I vent my rage at his stupid words - not at him, just the words. Oooh, the words will kill me one of these days if I don't get a grip. I already know all of this. Why does it reach down there and pull at my guts? I thought all that passion was gone. Oh God, is there more to come? Will I be dragged back into that world of strife and tension when his children start acting up? Am I losing my mind again?

 

No, I won't go there; I'm going to give myself a right seeing-to...Oh I can feel my teeth starting to grind again. Stop it! I'm going to get dressed and walk up the road...

Yes, that's it, walk the good walk - eat some brazils and smile at strangers. Yes, walk and forget about the future - it's not here yet, is it?

A DAY OF RAINBOWS

'Asthma never goes away,' I told him, 'Not if you don't use the medication to fight it - fresh air isn't going to do it Musician.'

 

I switched off from his ideas, not wanting to hear the feeble answers for neglect. Thank God the doctor gave him a bollicking, and kept him in; that was a first, along with the canula in his hand; that little tap on his blood. He complained about it, and the time we'd had to wait. I shouldn't still have to be this mother, to a thirty year old man. Why don't I have a son who can cope with his own small space in the world? Another fault of mine, I supposed.

 

Now I had to pick up more medication for him from ward 20, on my way to work. He was knackered, he said, and sleeping the whole incident off because they'd woke him every half hour to take his blood pressure, then took him for a chest x-ray at 5am! Not once did he ask how I was, driving home at 3am last night.

 

And down came the rain - in torrents, behind the sun. I had to switch the wipers to insane! Motorways are dangerous places when there's water thrown about but driving over fly-overs through rainbows is worth every moment of near-death collision. They arrived in front of me, one after another, strong bands of colour being born right before my eyes; I'd never seen anything like it in this city before. God was making me jump through hoops - well, drive, but still an effort.

 

Everywhere I turned, a rainbow waited for me - even as I parked at the hospital. This is a sign, I thought. I'm too good to go on strike, to refuse to be a mother to my son, even if he was fifty! So maybe this is his turning point too; it might be his day, his epiphany - even if he is sound asleep in his dusty flat with his loose-haired cat.

EXCUSES

You might wonder why all the snipes at teenagers – even my daughter tells me to get over it, that I can’t tar them all with the same brush and all that cliché, but I still think of them as stupid, dumb and dangerous-to-know. The thought that my beautiful grandchildren will be going there fills me with dread.

Number one son was the teenager from hell, so he started it. We lived in an area of Newcastle that was taken over by underclass hoodlums; these dregs of society had received disturbance money to leave their council properties during renovations. Their revolting offspring tormented and burgled the hell out of us; I think I had six burglaries in three years.

It got to the stage that before I went out I’d separate the computer: the screen went in the bath with towels and dressing gown draped over it; the keyboard in my knicker drawer; and printer behind the sofa. The little brats would be hanging around in the street so I’d slip out the back door and bash round the shops in a sweat, desperate to get home. They actually kicked doors in, in broad daylight; they’d belt through the houses and be out with arms full of electrical goods within minutes. If no-one had seen them they’d return for more…and if all was still quiet they’d send in the smaller kids for the smaller stuff!

And then there were the friends of my teenager, who wanted him to come out to play in the street riots. I told them to go away, that he was grounded. They sat on the wall outside and didn’t move. Of course I was incensed – the crazy woman who probably made the situation worse; I chucked my son’s clothes out of the window, hoping that this would stop him from running off with the rabble: it didn’t. His friends picked them up for him.

What do you do when your child seems to be taken-over by a cult? You’re helpless; left with insane choices. I had fantasies of murdering them; I had this image in my head of a brightly washed Sunday morning, quiet streets littered with the dead bodies of these teenagers, the silk of their Shell-suits flashing in the sun – I had poisoned their drugs or household food or doorstep milk…there were several scenarios.

I was a wreck for years then when my son was seventeen one of the older gangsters tried to kill him. They wrecked my flat, but that’s a whole other story.

So am I excused?

F-F-F-FOURTEEN

When my daughter was fourteen I tried to kill her with an umbrella but my sisters-in-law stopped me. I had a good excuse - murder was definitely called for…if I’d had a blog then I wouldn’t have given her the name Amazon: I hated her for the best part of ten months!

That morning my sister-in-law called me; her daughter, Lindy, was staying over,

‘Where’s Amazon?’ she said.

‘In bed. They haven’t surfaced yet,’ I told her. It was about 9am.

‘Oh I think you should check on them.’ She said she would wait while I did. So I put the phone down and went to sneak a peak at them. EMPTY! They must’ve climbed out of the window. I rushed back into the living room and picked up the phone.

‘How did you know?’

‘Because Lindy was brought home by the police at five in the morning. She’d been caught talking to some boys in a stolen car.’

‘Where’s Amazon?’

‘No idea.’

So that’s why the umbrella. We searched all day and didn’t see her till after seven. As she walked into the flat her aunts had to create a circle around her to keep me from killing her; she hadn’t listened to me for months.

I wouldn’t have dared do anything like that when I was her age; the only thing that went out of our windows was ice skates; my brother and I dropped them out so that we could LIE to our mother, saying that we were going to a friend’s house. The final destination was ice skating on Queen’s Park pond.

Of course we got caught. An aunt, who lived miles away in Cumbernauld, had decided on that very day to visit. There she was, sitting on the bus that passed the park, staring out of the window, looking at us circling the bumpy ice in full view of anyone from the main road – which was miles from our house. What are the chances of that eh?

Grounded: not murdered, obviously.

My oldest grandson is fourteen and is still lovely but I don’t live with him so maybe he isn’t so lovely to his parents. There was some dissension a while ago; I pray that these little members of my family can communicate properly when the mad time arrives – I wouldn’t want to go through that again…even though I’m removed from responsibility by being grand.

OFF MY SOFA

This was the walk up the old military road into the hills above Helensburgh. Number-one-son wanted to show me a tiny loch but there wasn't time to go that far - not sure I'm fit to go that far!

All the way along the path this burn wore its way through the rocks, destoying the path here.

It was a day of tremendous showers; driving up, the hills were blanketed with clouds of rain, and then we were in it and it was like nothing you've ever seen - the power of those rain pellets was astounding...and then we were out of it, in a flash.


The skies were brilliant for camera-work but I only had my phone - it did pretty well I think.


According to TocToc, we were approaching a dam; he suddenly caught sight of a bright green patch in the landscape ahead of us (not so obvious here) and shouted, 'A dam, it's a dam!'


Look at all this walking I did!


I turned to see where I'd come from - I walked all the way up this path; you can't even see the car, sitting at the gate!

CAMPING

Beautiful Loch Lomond; one day soon I will get myself into the routine of a regular walk around my loch. This was taken while I waited to pick the campers up...and they were only about ten minutes late - which is something.


Comedian, BlackBob and ToughGuy set out on an adventure the other weekend.


TocToc is camera-shy and therefore invisible; before I included this bit of information it might have appeared that the kids had gone camping by themselves - now wouldn't that be interesting!


TocToc demands that all his children carry their own load - ToughGuy's bag was heavier than him; he kept falling over! On the way back his bag had been incorporated into the others because the food had been eaten. He was knackered - he's only six...and he didn't complain once - well not while I was there. I dropped them off and picked them up. I've also promised to go camping and fishing with them sometime in the summer - don't hold your breath boys.