Gem Or Ashtray? (A-B)

My 7" singles are out of the garage and in the living room. There are plenty here that I never listen to. The charity shop awaits. It's time to play Hidden Gem Or Future Ashtray?


ABC: That Was Then But This Is Now. Hidden gem. I'm surprised. Since ABC reformed for the Mums and Dads circuit (and recorded a pretty passable Christmas song), Radio 2 has rediscovered the singles from Lexicon of Love, which will never have the freshness and serious/joke tension that they did the first time round. No one ever plays this, which has a punch to it, and isn't taking the piss.

Airport Girl: The Foolishness That We Create. Overlong twee indie. Ashtr... no, wait, it's a hidden gem. Saved by a cracking B-side "Striking out on your own" (which I can't find on Youtube).

American TV Cops: Atrocity Girl. I saw them live, aeons ago at the Princess Charlotte in Leicester, and it's a great title. Then I barely played it. Turns out it's a pop-punk gem. Best line: "The party's over, your boyfriend's dead." I can't find a video for it, so here's the song that the title refers to.

Aswad: Ways Of The Lord. Which are straight and narrow, apparently. Grit your teeth through the preaching and you'll find, as usual with Aswad, a pop-reggae gem. The dub version with fewer lyrics is better still.

Bearsuit: Drinkink. They made a great record called Hey Charlie, Hey Chuck. I think it was great anyway. John Peel played it so often when I was driving over to visit the future Mrs H that I probably just have happy associations with it. Anyway back in the early noughties (i.e. in the final days when music was hard to access) they didn't have it in Selectadisc, so I bought one of their other records instead, and it just gives me a headache. Ashtray.

Beautiful South: Song for Whoever. I never saw the Housemartins live, but did see the BS at their second or third gig when they were still raggedy and indie. They used a huge PA which collapsed and could have killed someone if the audience hadn't dived for cover. Innocent days. The meta-pop thing was interesting for five minutes, but now it's just annoying, and the BS went onto far worse things - particularly the interchangeable female singers, directly contradicting the stern message of this song. Prejudices about the BS aside, will the record be saved by the B-side? On musical terms it's a good track but the lyrics are another critique of songwriting. Can't be doing. Ashtray.

B-Movie: The Soldier Stood Alone. The single before Remembrance Day. This is nearly as good. Gem.

The Siren - a Legend of the APEs story

I was up before the Germans. In trainers and a glorified string vest (fully breathable, seasonally adjustable, £159.99) I ran three laps of the complex, timing myself. Thirty minutes and a bit, which at my usual pace added up to something over six kilometres. I run at at eight minute mile pace, not bad for my age but a full minute slower than my peak a quarter of a century ago. Back then, I cared little for running; it was too easy, and to run at speed made me look unattractively keen. I mused upon what I might once have been capable of, had I put the hours in...

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Ten Years White

(what we did on our holidays, August 2016)

I sit on and touch hot earth

Brush grass from the stone

Leave flowers, promise more

Across Helredale the North Sea waits

Gravediggers joke and make clay piles

White ghosts of rain on Europoort

Thirty thousand tons twist stiffly to dock

Wader bills of windmills spin, evenly

Moderating the east wind

Gusting across the continent

Flat factory roofs, canals and estuaries

Ruled straight by dredge and drained by mill

Give way to brown pine, French signs in

Hillside towns empty in daylight, rambling

Like brambles around Schengen

The meltdown factory squats like a great

Multi-legged beast across Saarbrücken. Metre-wide

Pipes jointed and ready to animate

Red walls a scaled thorax, rippling

Decorated steeples, fodder for the machine creature

Basel’s motorway displays its wealth crassly

The city modest in comparison

Where money is made, grey good taste

Signs in spacious font in yellow-lit tunnels

To F, D, CH and I. I follow I.

A tunnel separates German from Italian, then

Lugano, private lakesides, even more flash cars

Terraces made for display are empty

As kettle-air predicts a thunderstorm

In the night, explosions. Rain drums on the roof.

The Mediterranean shines. Nice burns and grieves.

Deep cut valleys now one-way streets

I shut my window to windscreen-cleaners

A flick of the wiper, a curse in English

I park and shelter in an air-conditioned waiting room

I love the sound of an engine, although my ears ring

And I fear for my hearing. Against the ferry’s funnel

I doze in its shade. If you like, reliving the prenatal

Not that anyone believes that any more

I am surrounded by a pink sleeping bag and conversation

My daughter and I in goggles, face down in

Rena Majori bay, as clear as lemonade

Fish dimensioned like fine-toothed combs

Green over seaweed, sandy over sand

It takes time to see they are transparent

Pine needles mute footsteps. The canopy fends off

The sun. At six, it’s already too hot to be running

But we do, anyway. An empty beach awaits

The crowds. Tables line a wall. A generator hums

A drinks-seller brushes red dust from his van

Is Aruntas, risotto sand, pebbles in 1:20 scale

Kites, parasols and nods of recognition (not to us)

A shoal of silver somethings, black-eyed, shimmering

A wave in still sea, like curtains separating us

The shallow from the deep

Braided head, face heavy with foundation

Jolted glance at the sound of a male voice

Betrays the display of confidence

Factor eight at most spread over bare arms

And hands that have never held a steering wheel

Ever louder as night wears on, Oristano is on holiday

Here, daring all to hush them. An old man does

And they do. At three in the morning a shout: Marco!

To someone’s delight, Marco throws the first punch

And pulls up a tent in frustration. Mary is Assumed.

Mary, prone and mediaeval, decorates the church

Of Castelsardo. Wires go to the ceiling and I fear

She may be assumed theatrically. In a transept, fires of Hell

Engulf a soul like red ribbons around a cake. The dead

Of world wars, here like everywhere, share surnames

I am wearing the shirt I had on when my daughter was born

There are pictures to prove it, and they are her

Favourites of me, ragged and long-haired, holding her, 

Taken by her exhausted mother through tears

Propped up on pillows in a high hospital cot

We are boating on the Ardèche, as busy as a motorway

She wants another picture, me in the shirt

Her beside me, both of us grinning in the sun

Taken by her mother, through splashes. She thinks

With growing sophistication, that it would be cute

A money-off deal: all-day hire of a canoe, plus barrel, oars

And a lift to and from the river. We have capsized

And I can’t see. I yell her name. Her mother finds her

Afloat, carries her to shore. This is the last time

I will wear the shirt. Irony frightens me

From here to home, a pleasant anticlimax. Longer on

Kilometres than drama, and I’m glad of that

No need to make anything up. Home to find

Eldest is well, home is standing, old cat is ailing

Ten years white, the van will be green next year

When Caroline Changed Her Name

Dawn lies in the bed where they spent their last night

No stranger to regrets, this one is a keeper, concerning

The morning when she packed his bag and sent him on his way

Just go, she said, without a smile, and now he’s gone

Trawling paid, then, if you were careful what you spent

Give him this, he never was one that she had to rob

Of his wages at the quayside as some wives did

When the boat disappeared in a swell, he left her in credit, just

And then, nothing changes. She was alone anyway

She looks after everything the way she always did

Money still comes in, for a while. But they’ll stop it

And when they do, she’s not a hope to fight them on her own

A drink with the girls proves too much. Alone on the sea front

Mirror ball flashes on the pier, like a lighthouse beam

Brief anonymity, lemonade and barley wine

Lead to unexpected smiles, a dance and then a pull

She sends Caroline, nine, off to school with a kiss

Pleats ironed, blazer frayed, face scrubbed of tears

In half-light, told not to tell, she didn’t see at first

A familiar shape in bed. A gasp of joy, then stamping rage

Thirty-one is too young to be wearing widow’s weeds

And too old to be choosy - isn’t that what they’d be saying?

Instead of glancing at her, furtively, and clicking tongues

And walking on, hands clasping the handles of shopping baskets

Half an hour of make-up, nails red, feet squeezed into

Unyielding patent leather. A skirt - not too long, eh

Men, polite or leering, greeted with the same smile

Marooned on the front desk, she is the face of the company

The girls in the canteen don’t ask, if she doesn’t want to tell

Listening to them while they smoke is better than the radio

Caroline is a worry - quiet, still reading picture books

She sees out seven months, then hands in her notice apologetically

The money made sees them through the hottest ever summer

She hides at the beach or on a coach, not at home

From the news. When the boat is declared lost

She wishes Caroline would cry, or let on that she understands

The new man, to whom Caroline now speaks sometimes

Proves a stayer. He has a mother and a sister too

Both so respectable that they don’t have to show it

Sharing a semi and a car, grandmother and aunt in waiting

The wedding is on Christmas Eve, Registry Office only

Drinks with the mother and the sister, no other family

In attendance. Late husband’s relations informed

One reply: Whatever they say, I wish you well. No clue as from whom

With inevitable pregnancy, another issue: Caroline and he or she

Cannot have different names. A long evening explaining

Registry Office once again. With folded arms, Caroline

Won’t sign. No need. The school receives the new name anyway

A Small Decision (sample)

I remember the moor, no longer in bloom but still having a residual vibrancy from the late-morning sunlight refracting through dew on brown autumn heather. There were still cows out on the lower fields, taking what for them would be last meals of fresh grass before death or winter hay.

I had half a second’s warning. Behind a blind summit was a dip just deep enough to hide a crashed car - or to hide a sheep, which is what they had hit before turning over. A white Escort, an ancient Mark Two, was on its side, one door half off. The body of the sheep lay on the verge, ten yards in front of the car. A man lay between the car and the sheep, on the road itself. He could have been sleeping in the sun. It is possible that he was still alive when we passed. I think I saw a woman still in the car, but that might be because I know she was there.

...

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Sea Glass

(Seaham beach, March 2016)

One day it will all be like this

Worn down, opalescent

Indistinct, collectable remains

Stone, shell, glass, china, brick

Rust and plastic

Nestling in sand, clay, coal

Preserved in coarse conglomerate

One piece, held up to the greying sky

Kidney-shaped, pink and smooth

Framed by small fingers, face proudly

Turned to the wind. Our girl

Keeps it safe

Wrapped in orange polythene

To be displayed or used, later lost

By things that are extruded hot

Will our civilisation be known

One in millions fossilised, the rest

Broken up and recycled

Except plastic

Sculpted by erosion, melted

Reformed by continental drift

Waves break on groynes, sending up spray

Blown ashore, it rains down

She squeals and scampers. Distracted

By piddock holes and green glass, I say

Don’t get cold

She pulls her hood up, it blows off

She slides on her knees in pebbles, laughs

And tongues a loose tooth

My Swimming Days - The Book

A year of stories from this blog, tidied into book form, printed on delicious paper and covered in the picture to the left of this babble.

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MY SWIMMING DAYS