Five years ago it felt like the world had momentarily stopped spinning. The nightly Covid bulletins aside, everything seemed preternaturally silent. Planes stayed on the ground. Traffic halted. And without the usual din of everday life (and later the weekly clap for carers) we began to notice sounds that had always been there but were drowned out by human activity.
I don’t miss the pandemic. But I do miss properly listening to nature. So it gave me great pleasure to dig out this symphony of sounds I recorded in my back garden during lockdown.
Midnight strikes on the memorial clock A flame throwing dragon is guarding the flock While a gunpowder fog glistens and glosses The uniform slates and the uniform mosses.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
A window on North Street turned aquarium green Where a Six Nations turf war bled out on the screen And all the beers downed are now suds on the glass As a solider called Taffy’s kicked out on his arse.
The Castle Hotel on a Saturday night. Over the top lads. One hell of a fight. Jones is shot through, guts spilled at ten paces One hundred years from the pals without faces.
Retching and heaving by the stone-carved platoon Blood at the feet of the boys gone too soon.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
Nisha, meanwhile, she will not remember This hen night scene from sometime in… November? And is missing in action out in no man’s land Too many Jägerbombs, four in each hand.
At the sound of a whistle, she went over the top And is now taking cover in Lloyd Morgan’s shop Pinned down on East Street by the rat a tat tat Of a security shutter and the hiss of a cat.
And sniping from windows and ricochet words The bayonet beaks of the flesh-eating birds A battle dress ribbon, a medal for valour An ecstasy of fumbling*, no masks boys it’s Calor.
For God and for Country. Lest we forget.
By dawn the guns are silent And a smoke of red kites rises above the carrion As an Ivor Williams trailer bleats past Welsh lambs for the slaughter.
These lines were written laying in bed next to an Evans in my hotel room after watching the poet, Atilla the Stockbroker, perform in Rhayader’s wonderful Lost Arc arts venue.
*The expression “an ecastasy of fumbling” is lifted directly from the war poet Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. I thank him, Atilla and my constant muse, Dylan Thomas, for the inspiration and my poetry teacher, Pele Cox, for her gentle and expert encouragement.
The memorial clock tower Rhayader from my bedroom above Ty Morgan’s cafe. It was erected by subscription in 1924 for the men of the area who lost their lives in the Great War. The names of those who died in WW2 were added later. The Castle Hotel’s “aquarium” disco is round the corner in North Street. The Calor gas sign close to where Nisha took shelter is just to the right in East Street.
Tradition has it that when you retire from or leave the BBC your colleagues produce a light-hearted video to mark the occasion. And so it was when I left BBC Pebble Mill’s Midlands Today in 1995. Watch out for wonderful performances from the late greats John Yates and Alan Towers and a cameo by Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage.
It’s more than two years since my mother, Sheila Hartman, was attacked by another resident as she lay in bed at her care home, Ridgeway Lodge in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Sheila – mum – was beaten around her head and body with the curved end of a wooden walking stick by 92 year old Eunice Clarke who was also living with dementia.
Although sometimes the wheels of justice turn frustratingly slowly I have no complaints about the thoroughness of the inquest. It examined more than a thousand pages of care records which showed care home staff knew about Eunice’s verbal and physical aggression but that managers failed to act on the information and put a proper care plan in place for her. A plan that would recognise and manage the risk she posed to herself, staff and other residents, Sheila included.
To say it was an accident waiting to happen would be wrong. It was no accident. It was the consequence of appallingly poor care and I’m now working with the care home operator, HC One, to make sure it never happens again. That would be a positive legacy for both women -victims in different ways of the horrible disease that is dementia.
If you’re interested in hearing more about the case you can listen here to an interview I gave to BBC Three Counties radio after the jury returned their verdict.
One way or another I’ve been writing for a living for more than 40 years – first as a cub newspaper reporter on the Reading Chronicle; then as a journalist and broadcaster for the BBC; and now as a budding poet taught for the past two very intense years by the poetry coach Pele Cox, a former poet in residence at the Tate and the Royal Academy.
With readings from a small selection of my poems, anecdotes about the process of ‘becoming a poet’ and with the help of literary giants such as Dylan Thomas and Michael Donaghy, I’ll be exploring the literal landscape of the Shropshire countryside together with the emotional landscapes of memory and loss.
On the Internet’s slowest-growing satirical show this week… New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, shows British leaders the stylish way to resign.
Rishi Sunak and Nicola Sturgeon get caught in a sex change mix up.
Plus boxing promoter, Don King, signs two total lightweights for a fight he hopes will rival the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila.
And exclusive pictures of Prince Harry’s new book Remaindered with right royal revelations even more mind numbing than Spare.
Your guest newsreader is Peter Scissorhands. First screened on the Big Live Breakfast Burrito – the only way to start your business Thursdays over on LinkedIn Live from 0745 UK time most weeks.
On the Internet’s slowest-growing satirical show this week… news of new line up for The Grand Tour without Jeremy Clarkson. British politicians do a Donald in an attempt to trump Trump at cards. And how the Bank of England got the wrong King Charles on its new £20 note. Oh and a short item about briefs. Or maybe a brief item about shorts. Whatever.
The second episode of Not the 8.30 News – the internet’s fastest growing and not-at-all derivative satirical current affairs show. With digs this week at the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, the Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, and, for that penalty miss, Harry Kane.
The Big Live Breakfast Burrito is perhaps the weirdest show on the Internet. Hosted on LinkedIn and restreamed live to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter plus a heap of other platforms in theory in should be unwatchable. But somehow its compelling mix of what one viewer called “unstructured nonsense” works. Or at least I think it does. Although I would say that because I’m an occasional contributor! Here I am channelling my inner newsreader and making my first attempt at satire. Let me know what you think. Even if it’s rubbish. It’s the silence that kills you.
We live on the lower slopes of Titterstone Clee Hill in South Shropshire. Our house straddles the ever-shifting boundary (sometimes less than a vegetable patch wide) between what is shrouded in mist or cloud and what is clear. Between the seen and the unseen. Between what is perfectly rendered by the eye and imperfectly remembered by the mind’s eye. This is the space that many of my poems spring from.
Kite
The Hill: you, me, and dad wearing the green jumper that still smells of him.
The kite: an orange lozenge of ripstop nylon skin tight on a wooden cross.
Me: running fast enough to take off but bound by string to earth.
Your laugh sticks in my throat. I cough to clear it but it’s in my head. The kite lifts a little
Then nosedives through its arc and lands with that whipcrack you hear out of sync like summer lighting. One spark and
This whole dark scene Silvers for a second And is gone Blacker than before The thunder.
