Iona, by Martin Needham

  Miss Wood had always had a reservation about her parents' choice of honeymoon venue. She completely appreciated the romance of sailing two-handed around the beautiful scenery in glorious June sunshine in a generously proportioned but yare yacht with those gorgeous deep crimson sails that you see on the old Thames barges. It was also kind of cute to think that she had been rocked into existence on a gentle swell when they dropped anchor in  the blue waters of a secluded white-sanded cove on one of the islands.  However, Iona had had to deal with the consequences of their resulting choice of name for thirty years now. How tiring sometimes were the smirks and smart-aleck quips about her name.

“What’s your name, darling?”

“Iona Wood”

“Does it have many trees?”

“Is it pretty?”

“Is it for sale?”

“Does your undergrowth need thinning?”

Men's chat-up lines could be so tiring, and so immediately off-putting.

Didn't her parents even think about it? Try it out before hand? What was wrong with Ilsa, Alisa or even at a push Skye? Still it could have been worse: she sometimes reflected on the implications of being called Tobermory, Eigg or Muck.

With the onset of dating, Iona began to imagine more seriously the possibility of a name change. Surely Iona Jones wouldn't raise a smirk, or Iona Davies, but what about Iona Gunn?

   Iona began to view not just her name, but the whole issue of fate, in a different way when she met Michael. A few weeks into their relationship he took her to his family’s holiday cottage: an ancient mill house set in five acres of lush deciduous woodland at the bottom of a secluded Cornish coombe. They spent a glorious summer holiday clearing pathways in their private wildlife-packed sanctuary. They sipped champagne in an ice-bucket that floated alongside their feet as they dangled their toes in the old millrace.  They built a fabulous treehouse bedroom that swayed gently as they lay in each others' arms through that first passionate summer.  Wedding plans swiftly followed and she longed  for the moment when someone would ask her name. In her head she rehearsed the conversation as she answered, "Iona Small-Wood". “Is it pretty?” they would ask. And she would say “Yes it's absolutely beautiful"

And so it was.

That sometimes are a nuisance..... by Newena Martin

Two handsome young men came into the Anglo-Welsh Poets' meeting last month at the Loggerheads, at closing time. Both were musicians of some repute in the region. Nearly all the regulars had gone by that time, but the remaining few of us were treated to a dirty ditty, apparently from the West Midlands industrial district, which had been passed down to one of these young men by his father (also a well-known musician) who had grown up in the nether regions of Brum. The ditty was deeply contemptuous of women, and ended with the title of this piece. I am moved to describe us from a more respectful standpoint,that I think I could - if they were capable of taking a respectful standpoint, of course - afford them great pleasure; even ecstasy, enthusiasm and joy, and diminish the obvious boredom and cynicism with which they were afflicted.

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Imagine! You are a knight in shining armour, and you approach the castle wherein the Sleeping Beauty dreams. You are faced with a thorn thicket of a century's growth. Your sword can cut through it, but nonetheless in the process of cutting your face and arms will be severely scratched, your hair entangled in the briars and your horse bloodied.

You are an inexperienced virgin.

Imagine instead, the power of unseen energy created from love, that folds back the impotent thicket as the Red Sea was parted by Moses. Now you may be no more than gently and erotically brushed  as you pass through this gateway; so much so that you may even wish to linger and not to pass too quickly, lest the delicious sensation be over too soon. You hold your breath and short, heavy gasps escape you. But you cannot hold on to anything indefinitely, and eventually you reach the end of this pathway of primrose dalliance.
     But you don't arrive on a firm shore as Moses did; instead you fly over your horse's head and tumble into a warm and slippery world that is soft and fluid, giving and molding, where you can dive and play as children did in haystacks and piles of cushions.
   No! I hear you cry; it's not like that at all: it's dry and unresponsive and very uncomfortable. Well then: you were too impatient and didn't dally long enough on the primrose path. Or perhaps you are inadequately endowed; in which case I don't know what to suggest. Surgery could be risky, Viagra won't work if there's nothing to work on, and your nerve-endings may have been debollocked by eating and drinking and proprietary chemical products; or alternatively you just waited too long and the Sleeping Beauty woke up alone and boiled a kettle without you.
    Or maybe she's not your shape of Sleeping beauty anyway?

So it's all a question of how you perceive it and how you approach it, and also finding the right match; for the Kama Sutra tells us we are of three matching kinds and do have a suitable partner somewhere.
   So next time you approach the castle,stand up in your stirrups and offer a prayer, and then proceed with awareness and sensitivity on this wondrous journey. Pray that it be granted to you to have found a perfect match (for that truly is a gift of the Goddess to be treasured): a whole world; a field you will be able to plough and seed and harvest for ever, and which will become ever more fertile and productive of pleasure as you honour it with the energy of your love.

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                                            Afterplay

Yes! We need afterplay as well as foreplay!

The muck and brass of industrialism and technology's over-intellectually-focused mindpower are light years away from the spiritual energy of love.

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas to all our readers and authors!

Patrol, by Pat Edwards

The unmarked car moved slowly up the road, occasionally exposed by the flashes and streaks of multi-coloured  lights and illuminations. It drove to the end of the road, completed a very neat and quick manoeuvre in order to turn around,  before coming to a halt outside one particularly brightly-lit house on the terrace.

With just a knowing look to one another, the officers got out of the car, donned their headgear and proceeded towards the front door of number sixteen. The female officer pressed the door bell long and hard, and both officers scrutinised the street for signs of movement. There was none, save the intermittent and persistent flashing of lights everywhere. After what seemed an age, a teenage boy came to the door. “Alright?” he grunted with that tell-tale chin jerk perfected by the young. “Are your parents in?” asked the male officer. “Yeah, I'm pretty sure one of 'em's in” he responded, shouting for his siblings to fetch Mum or Dad, whichever they could locate. There was a slightly awkward silence as the two officers and the boy stood in the doorway, the boy inept at small talk and the officers unwilling to disclose their business with anyone but the boy's parents.

The male officer pulled what looked like some sort of meter reader from his jacket pocket, stepped back a little way into the front garden, and began adjusting the settings on the device. It began to buzz gently and emit other purring electronic sounds. The female officer shifted nervously. The boy strained to try to get a look at the gadget.

The boy's mother appeared from down the hallway, slightly irked at being disturbed and by the fact not one of her children seemed able to deal with whatever it was. “Can I help?” she asked. The officers clearly felt instinctively that the message they had to deliver would be better heard by both adults in the household. “Is your husband at home?” enquired the female officer. Now the woman of the house was even more irritated and, with a look of disdain, shouted up the stairs for her husband to come. She folded her arms sternly and remarked “Why you feel the need to disturb the pair of us beats me” before shouting her husband again, this time louder. He came running down the stairs. “Alright, alright, where's the fire?”

By the time the man arrived, the boy had removed himself from the scene, anticipating that his presence was no longer required. “So, what's this about?” said the man. The two officers eyed one another cautiously, as if knowing all too well what a shock this was going to be, and just how annoyed the couple were likely to get. The male officer initiated proceedings. “Are you aware that you are in contravention of the Illuminated Christmas Decorations Act 2015, sub-section D1 Domestic and Small Business, paragraph 7 Roofs, Gardens and Front Windows?”

At this the couple first looked utterly flummoxed, but this quickly turned to amusement and then to raucous laughter. “Ha ha, very funny. So which one of our neighbours has set you up to this then?” asked the man. “It'll be Gail and Frank, I'll bet you” grinned his wife. But the officers did not flinch and looked straight back at the couple without changing their serious expressions. “I'm afraid we often get this reaction Sir” said the woman officer. Her colleague continued “most households seem to be very unfamiliar with the legislation. It came onto the statute books earlier this year but I fear many home owners either claim to have had no warning or to have never heard of it. Of course, ignorance is no excuse and we are duty-bound to exercise our right to issue fines in accordance with our meter readings.”

“Your what?” laughed the woman. The male officer once again engaged his device which whirred and clicked until he was able to turn it for them to see. “Your Christmas lights are showing a reading of 118.6 and this is a category F breach of the code, which carries a £35 fine per twenty units and...” The officer was forced to trail off by howls of laughter from the pair, whose three children had all come to the door to find out what on earth was causing such a commotion.

“What's so funny Dad?” yelled one. “Why all the hilarity?” shouted the next. “Come on, let us in on the joke” urged the last. “These two pranksters are trying to tell us our Christmas lights are breaking some law or other and blah, blah something about breaching codes and being fined” explained Dad. With considerable difficulty, the female officer tried to get a word in edgeways, until finally she was able to make herself heard. “This really is no laughing matter, Sir. This is absolutely a very real and serious affair and something that we would ask you to attend to with immediate effect. You can escape the higher tariff fine if you are able to turn off the lights now, this very minute, or you can decide to continue displaying your lights after the cool-off period of one hour and incur the maximum penalty.”

The family looked at one another with an array of expressions ranging from amusement to anguish, and gave out feeble grunts and murmurs of disbelief mixed with mild panic. They were totally at a loss as to whether or not they had just been transported to another dimension, where reality was merging with fiction and everything they held dear was slipping away. The looks on the faces of the two officers and the device pointing out their transgression in cold, blue digital numbers, was just enough to convince them this was really happening.

The man walked slowly back into the depths of the house whilst the others stood in silence. Suddenly, all the bulbs, all the tubes of colour and sparkle ceased. The roof, the trees in the garden, the window frames and eaves fell into darkness and the male officer printed off an invoice from his device and presented it to the family. The door closed and the two officers returned to their car and drove slowly away.

A Sort of Wisdom, by Catherine Redfern

  

It was not until this April afternoon as she was driving home from the second visit to the specialist that Anna realised old age could be completely sidestepped.  As casually as she pulled down the sun visor to shut out the bright glare, death was leaning forward into the present and was about to shutter out the rest of her life.

She'd arrived home and done the usual things: kicked off her shoes, made a cup of coffee, hesitated at the stereo. She chose Bach and the taut control of Glen Gould.  She sat with her favourite chair tilted back and watched the swaying branches of the mulberry tree.  The tree was one of the reasons they had bought this little Victorian Gothic house, had gone well beyond what they had worked out was the maximum they could afford.  Each autumn, as they squelched their way to the arched front door, Bob would say: “You realise we are treading on ten thousand pounds worth of fruit that we don’t even use.”    Like cantering horses at the circus that appear to move to the rhythm of the music, the green branches drifted and danced, interweaving with the counterpoint of Bach’s fugue.

Of course she was numbed.  That must be so or how could she be sitting here so calmly.  Or was it that, far from being numbed, her mind was racing, cunningly refusing to focus, and thus allowing her time. She even flicked through the evening paper.  There was a last minute ad for the coach trip to Brussels that Molly and she had talked of going on. After looking in her diary Molly had had to back out:” Wouldn’t you know!  There’s the school “Hamlet”.  Tommy’s the father’s ghost. Damn! Damn!  All mothers go to heaven, Anna, - even I will.”   Anna had no doubt of it, if there were a heaven.

   Not now.  This was not the moment to consider an after life, continuance in some form.  If she hadn’t been able to contemplate it for Bob, she was surely not now going to demand it for herself.  They had talked of it in his last weeks, and she had been fastidiously honest saying that she felt we live on only in the memories of those that had loved us.  Bob had smiled “A good place to live on, Anna.  If the memories are happy ones”

     “Do you doubt it?”

     “No, but perhaps they could be richer.” He had taken her hand:” Opportunities missed, things not said…”  His hand so thin, skin sunken between the bones.

     “The memories are rich, Bob.  How could they not be?  And perhaps there is more that memory.  What you’ve given me - tolerance, music, a way of looking at life – what I’ve become: a grafting of some sort.”

Later, when the leukaemia had  triumphed, and the hospital had ceased giving transfusions, Bob had said: “Memories won't be enough, Anna.  You must marry again.  Someone else should know the love that you have given me.”  Anna had held his weak body and they had wept quietly together.

She had not married again.  There had been one or two encounters, brief, tentative.  She accepted that the flesh is strong, but loneliness of body was more easily assuaged than loneliness of heart. At forty-five she felt no more than a shell, hollow, faded, full of the echoes of what had been.  How could she take when she had nothing to give?  And lately the niggling pain had started, becoming more intrusive, until she had made the appointment to see her doctor.

The phone rang.  It was Molly. “How did it go, Anna?”

     “Okay.  I have to go back in a fortnight.”  It would be Molly that she would turn to.  But not yet.  For Molly’s sake and her own she must absorb it herself first.

    “How are things with you, Molly?”

      “Don’t ask!  We could have bumped into each other at the General.  I’ve spent most of the day in A and E with Tommy.  He’s broken his ankle in a rugby match!”

  “Oh, poor boy! I’m sorry!  Oh dear!  What about Hamlet?

    “Alright, I think. The ghost is supposed to thump about isn’t it? Tommy says he’s just got one of the props ahead of time. So, you see, if we’d gone ahead with the Brussels plan I would have had to pull out.  I’ll be ferrying Tommy everywhere for weeks.”

   “I see there are still seats.”

   “Don’t tempt me.  You could still go though, Anna.  Why don’t you? In celebration of no bad news.  You were worried, weren’t you?”

And half an hour later it was settled. She had rung the coach company, a small local firm,

 given her Visa details, and was told to be at the Market Square next morning at 11.30.  It was flight of course, a false escape, an unreadiness to sit quietly and face facts, make plans.  She knew that, but she sensed too that to succumb to these few days of evasion could be a sort of wisdom

The coach left on time.  Anna sat behind Jack, the driver, who was eating wine gums, sometimes pressing in three at a time.  Wine Gum Jack.  He was keen, anxious, that they should all enjoy themselves.  Already, down the M1, lurching nonchalantly between lanes, he was laying before them the pleasures to come.

       “The trip to the battlefield is on Wednesday, folks.” This “folks” surprised Anna at first, but between announcements the menace of silence was staved off by his Country and Western tapes.

Molly and she had not planned to go on the various trips that were part of this package holiday.  It was still a bargain to be taken door to door and stay in a good hotel in the centre of the city. They had planned to wander about, window shop, visit some of the museums and art galleries, sit in cafes and eat calorie-laden cakes

          “And then, on Thursday  …” He seemed aware of the dichotomy of inviting his flock to enjoy their holiday while visiting scenes of carnage.  He stressed that it is all in the past - terrible, of course, we must never forget. No, we must never forget.

            His voice kept breaking in,, interrupting Anna’s thoughts, but feeding them too. As events recede into the past they are less painful.  It was this that Anna had resented:  Time, the great healer, muffling intensity with its scar tissue.  Well, Time was about to veer to its other pole: Time, the implacable destroyer.

And now the ferry.  A quiet crossing.  The sea was still; so calm that fog drifted over it. Engines quietened and speed slackened. The grey-white sea was segmented by three white rails and a seagull drifted by, a grey-white echo that slipped into the mist.  Muted, silent colours.  It seemed strange that calm can generate danger.  In this fog someone could slip into the leaden water unseen.  Perhaps a head might be turned a moment in idle enquiry at the sound.  Nothing more.  Anna thought of Auden’s lines on the Bruegel painting:

                                        “how everything turns away
                          Quite leisurely from disaster"

                      

She had always liked this poem, written in the contemplation of art, the poet acknowledging the voice of the painter.

                        “About suffering they were never wrong,

                          The Old Masters:  how well they understood

                           It’s human position: how it takes place

                           While someone else is eating, or opening a window or just
                          Walking dully along"
                         

  She would go and see “The Fall of  Icarus” while she was in Brussels. It might help her to accept this truth of the human condition: that suffering takes place while other lives go on. It must be so: the world cannot take on the burden of everyone’s pain.  It is universal, and it is solitary.

                            

     Anna went down below and sat at the  bar sipping her Chardonnay, thinking back.  Had she, had Bob, been uncaring in the face of human suffering?  Unexpectedly, inconveniently, the memory of a quarrel that they'd had came into her mind.  Serious in that they  had gone to bed in anger, something they had vowed never to do. And yet the quarrel's origin was so trivial.  They'd been watching the 10 o'clock news waiting for the Monty Python that was to follow.  An earthquake in Sarawak.  800 dead, more tremors expected.  She had ridiculed Bob for asking where Sarawak was. Was it in India he'd asked. “That school of yours!  They should have brought you in from the playing fields occasionally”.  He'd got his own back,  asking which way the Pyrenees ran,  Delighted that she'd said “North , south” he shouted in triumph: “Ha, smarty -pants They run east, west.  I just heard a boy of twelve get that right  so you can stop ramming your A Level Geography down my throat”.   The Monty Python was switched off.  With an attempt at casual dignity Anna had said “I don't think I'm in the mood for comedy.”

   A double bed is an  unwilling accomplice to a quarrel. .  They lay turned away from each other , fighting the pull of gravity that the centre of the bed exerted.  The brush of a foot was intrusive, the touch of a thigh, unbearable.   Anna couldn't bring herself to give the caress, or utter the words needed.  Generous, not given to holding grudges, Bob would have pulled her to him  with some murmured nonsense.  But the silence , pregnant at first, lasted too long. It  became drained of possibilities, a void. Bob slipped into sleep and Anna lay alone.

And Sarawak? The images of destruction, the rushing ambulances, the dazed, grief-stricken women rocking back and forth by the rubble of their homes.  As they lay unmoving neither Anna nor Bob gave a thought to the earthquake continuing its destruction..  Auden  was right.  We choose not to see;

     

                             “everything turned away

                   Quite leisurely from disaster:  the ploughman may

                   Have heard the splash,the forsaken cry,

                    But for him it was not an important failure.”

 

And for them the 800 dead was not an important failure. It was the events in their own lives that mattered. Anna sat motionless, absorbed by her flickering thoughts, although aware of the lurching shudder of the ship docking and of passengers moving towards the stair-wells.  Perhaps our humanity is frail, a small candle glow which reaches only those nearest us.  Was that achievement enough?

  Some-one touched her arm.  It was Wine-Gum Jack.  “Are you alright, love? Time to get back in the saddle again.”

  

Something Missing, by Peter Morford

A hacker has drawn this extract from the private memoirs of Mr Cedric Macleod, MBE

People tell me I look much younger than my 50 years, that I have the unmarked face of a man with no worries.

            Not entirely true.  To get where I am today, Chief Executive of the largest Quango in the UK, I have had my share of worries and responsibility.

             I have been criticised for having a serious outlook on life. My answer is to say that life is hard and to make progress is harder still.  I have never understood why so many people take a frivolous view of the world. People say that I never smile in photographs and  I say how inane the grinners at the camera appear to be.  Think of the typical “family” picture; everyone grinning because someone told them to. Even worse is the social picture with all the smilers grasping a drink for support.

I therefore make a point of staring impassively at the camera.

            At University I avoided the drinkers. There is nothing funny about intoxication when it interferes with one’s studies.  The strong work ethic inherited from my father would more than compensate for any intellectual shortcomings and I graduated with a respectable 2.2 in Business Studies.

            On my father’s advice I joined the local Council as a graduate trainee in the Planning Dept.  By 25 I was Senior assistant to the Deputy Director of Social Amenities (Social Interface and Racial Equality Department.)

            Two years and a promotion later my parents said it was time I found a house and a wife. Father said that he would be sad if our family name died out.  It was up to me.

            I looked round my office for a likely female candidate.  The trouble was, they all seemed so silly, giggly, only interested in frivolous things like fashion, TV soaps, dancing and tuneless music.

            Nevertheless, rather at random, I invited Betty for coffee at The Bistro.  She wanted to see a film and I obligingly took her.  It turned out to be a comedy. Betty laughed with delight and explained some of the jokes to me. I might have smiled because she said I looked much better when I relaxed. Smiling doesn’t come naturally to me. Comedians and farcical drama have never amused me. Visual humour of the banana-skin variety leaves me cold. As for puns….

            I tried again. Donna was pretty and, I knew, good at her job.  I took her to see Macbeth and she politely told me afterwards that she had never liked the play at school and liked it less now. Still, Thanks for a lovely evening.

            I considered a few more candidates but all seemed somehow to slip away from me.

            To my parents’ relief I moved to a new job fifty miles away. For the next few months I was so busy reorganising my new department that there was little time for socialising.

            Then I met Jennifer. She was 30, a lawyer, unattached, no children. We both knew this was a trial run when she moved in with me. Unfortunately I soon found that she made light of many things which were serious.  Her clients, for example, seemed to amuse her, particularly a regular burglar who had what she described as wit. She had more sympathy for drunks than seemed reasonable for an upholder of the Law. We both moved on to seek new partners.

            By any normal standards my career has been successful. I have a reasonable income and have invested wisely. I am young enough to have a few more profitable moves in my career. I might, before it is too late, find a woman to help me preserve the family name.

            I am often interviewed by the media.  Last week an impertinent young woman on Newsnight thought she was being clever when she asked me “Mr.Macleod, how do you justify your salary of £500,000?”

            “Five hundred and seventy-five,” I said.

            “Sorry, Five-seven-five… when your Department has recently had its powers and function, even purpose, reduced to practically nothing?”

            I had the answer. “Public authorities must draw on the best talent and pay accordingly.  I could earn considerably more in the private sector but I have a sense of duty.”

            She bowled me a bouncer. “Mr Macleod, you’re well-known for your frequent moves. I see you’ve received golden handshakes from the NHS – twice – several Councils and other Non-Government bodies. I suppose that you’d be prepared to move again for the right golden handshake and more money?”

            “Do you know something I don’t know?” I asked.

            “Only joking,” she said.

            “I never joke.”

            “Think what you’re missing,” she said.

            As I left the studio I reminded myself that I was rich and successful. If people said I lacked a sense of humour, so be it. I was having the last laugh, so to speak.