spider poem

back again
that spider
... still
... poised
under my close inspection
she shifts her feet a little


-dedicated to the late great Ivor Cutler, without whom... etc.

a story my mum used to tell

Here's a story that my Mum liked to tell.

Mum was born and bred in North East Derbyshire and spent her brief teaching career at Parkhouse Primary School in Pilsley as the reception teacher. Her former pupils will be approaching their sixties at the time of writing. North East Derbyshire is a semi rural ex-mining community, and while I wouldn't describe it as rough by any stretch of the imagination, the pit villages are still very working class and can be quite insular.

My Mum used to claim that this was an actual anecdote related to her by a school secretary and not urban legend. I'm not so sure, but I hope she was right.

An Oxbridge graduate had a job interview at a remote primary school in a North Derbyshire pit village. Having been given directions and a map scrawled on a rough piece of paper it took him a while to find the venue but he still managed to turn up on time.

The Headmaster was late, however, and in his nervous state the interviewee screwed the directions up. When the Head finally arrived, the graduate was awkwardly aware that while one hand was being crushed in a manly grip, the other hand was clutching a tatty scrap of paper.

Nervously he asked "Where's the bin?"


To which the Head boomed "Bin for a shite, but it's nowt to do wi' thee!"

synchronicity

Listening to the wind picking up outside my window reminds me of a synchronous event that occured to me in my teenage years.

I had bought the Jammy Smears album by the Scottish humourist Ivor Cutler after a shopping trip to Sheffield. Half-way through one of the album's sides one of his Glasgow Dreamer stories started: "The sky grew black and white, the wind whistled under the door. 'Let us go for a walk' said father..." the harmonium Ivor played adding to the dour atmosphere of the story.

On this occasion, however, from the very first syllable of Ivor's voice, a violent storm blew up. Standing, staring out of the window, I was quite impressed with the added effects provided by nature outside - trees bent double, leaves shredded from their twigs, the sky turning black and white just as in the story. It didn't really strike me as strange until the storm died out a minute or two later, just as the track finished with the words "...it was all part of going for a walk."

Seconds later it was a normal peaceful cloudy day outside.

It's not the only time this has happened to me.

On the train travelling down to London ten or so years later, I was listening to a Kraftwerk tape on my sony walkman. I had just finished listening to one side (I forget the album) and as the train waited it's five or so minutes at Leicester station, I fast-forwarded the tape, turned it over and hit the play button for the other side, Trans-Europe Express.

The train lurched and started moving at the precise moment the first notes of 'Europe Endless' hit my ear drums. As the train gathered momentum it appeared that the music followed suit and picked up speed - all rather marvellous as I sat there with my head resting on the window, watching the landscape speed by.

It wasn't until the music wound down and the train slowed for Loughborough that I noticed anything peculiar. When the train stopped within a second or two of the music I was almost laughing out loud from the synchronicity.

I remembered the Ivor Cutler event years before and reflected on my old record player and my suspicions that it was haunted, but more of that another time...

places i have fallen from in my dreams

When I was a teenager, I used to have recurring nightmares about being buried alive. My English teacher, who was a bit of a sadist, once recommended I read an Edgar Allen Poe short story about a premature internment.

I never did, and evetually these dreams wore off. I occasionally dream about my body mutating or re-morphing in some way - tubes growing from my shoulders, my face shrivelling, that sort of thing, but by far and away the most common recurring dream that I have involves me being somewhere high up and either falling off or dropping something valuable (like a daughter) over the edge.

So far I have fallen from the following places (that I can remember):

• Blackpool Tower
• Aukland Space Needle
• Beachy Head
• Eiffel Tower
• Grand Canyon
• B52 Bomb bay doors
• Texryte House (Southgate Road, London, N1)
• Various non-existent places
• Berlin Fernsehturm
• Helicopter over Vietnam
• Helicopter over Derbyshire
• World Trade Center
• Cliff in Swiss Alps (on skis)
• Ski Lifts / Cable Cars
• Ships / Car Ferries
• Platform 1, Chesterfield Train Station
• Unidentified London Underground platforms.

In real life, I nearly jumped off a very large cliff on a mountain in North Wales when the part of the mountain I was on was covered in low cloud. I was undertaking my field mapping project at the time as part of my degree and after jumping down a few short four or five foot drops on my route across some outcrops, I automatically thought the next ledge would present a similar leap.

I changed my mind at the very last moment when I realised that I really couldn't see where I was jumping to. I sat down to write in my field notebook for a while instead. When the weather cleared and I peered over the edge at a long sheer drop, I felt my heart leap into my throat.
Then there was another time in a disused copper mine beneath Alderley Edge scanning the ground for samples for the Museum I was working in, where I discovered at the last moment that I had been walking backwards to the brink of a mineshaft.

hospital funnies

My Dad used to work in a large NHS hospital in a non-medical job that involved meeting with and talking to a lot of the patients and staff. Occasionally he would come home and tell us the odd thing that someone had said that had tickled his sense of humour.

My late Mum, made a record of them after a while, and this is a slightly modified version of her list:

• a man said he'd had a hysterectomy (he'd had an ileostomy and colostomy)
• a man said he'd been fitted with a cafeteria (catheter)
• a little boy said he had drawn Moses and the Ten Commandos
• "my little boy has been circumscribed"
• man said: "I am going downstairs for a scampi" (a scan)
• a three year old girl drawing Mr Men responded to my Dad's questioning with "You know who you are, don't you?" .... "Mr Nosey"
• a small boy looked my Dad up and down, then said "My! You're a big lad!"
• "Yours must be a soul destroying job!"

things i think about lying awake at night

the cat asleep on the kitchen chair downstairs
the wind whistling through the grass on the moor
that dark pond I glimpsed through the trees
the centre of the earth
blue whales on the move
those distant fireworks
..far off
..in the middle of nowhere
..last new year
my devoted squadron of 10.000 female kamikaze pilots
the owl sanctuary and how I’m glad I don’t live next to it at this hour.

new blog

my website has had it, so I have started this general "me" blog.

I am struggling to think of a good name for it at the moment. Currently, I am calling it "phase 1" because this is euphemism for something I always build into any personal projects.

I guess I should start some kind of Blue Peter style competition to think one up, but I don't think I have anything cool I could give away as a prize.

Anyhow, I will be re-posting some archive website material here over the next few days or so and I will start blogging in earnest at the same time hopefully.

So consider this blog officially open. Back to Blue Peter: I am now smashing a bottle of milk against the computer screen champagne/ship stylee.