Happy Christmas everyone!

Blogs, by Peter Shilston

They followed each other's blogs and social media entries, though they had never met and did not even correspond directly. Their works were completely different: he wrote little stories, fantasies for the most part, whereas she wrote about the small incidents of her daily life, in a wry and amusing fashion. He deduced from these that she was a university graduate, young and unmarried, who worked in a college library where there were plenty of old books. She had no idea who he might be, or how old he was. 
   Because of this lack of contact, they built up  imaginary pictures of each other. She saw him as a would-be warrior against the forces of darkness; he saw her engaged in a quiet but unsuccessful search for love. And both were right.
   They might have appeared to be opposites, but in the sight of God they were no more than opposite sides of the same coin: they complemented each other, and together formed a Unity; for in their different ways they were searching for the same thing, which so many philosophers and mystics sought:  the Absolute; the ultimate single Whole that is truth and love and everything.

Just a postcard, by John Roberts

I picked the card up from the doormat. After noticing that the very brief message referred to the picture, I turned it over. Well! I don’t consider myself to be at all prudish, but frankly I was astonished – amazed that it was ever allowed to be printed. I prefer to draw a decent veil over what the couple in the picture were doing. What’s more, the male figure, if you can call him that, was a robot. Why? Who dreams up this sort of thing? Whoever it is must have a very peculiar mentality: that’s all I can say. And who would want to buy it? Personally, I’d be far too embarrassed to take it up to the counter; that’s all I can say.

Anyway, I had another look at the message, to try and work out who’d sent this nasty rubbish. All it said was, “This is you!” in capital letters, followed by an email address which I didn’t recognise.

Now I’m sure you’d agree that the most sensible reaction would be to tear up the card and forget the whole thing. For a moment I did intend to do just that, but instead I decided to reply. I spent quite a bit of time thinking up a really clever put-down response and then sent it. I’m not going to tell you what I wrote, but I still think it was pretty funny.

The result wasn’t what I expected, because that same day I received a follow-up, which said, “If you want to discuss this further, come to the ‘Fox and Grapes’ at 9 next Tuesday”. I could have ignored that, of course, but I knew the pub quite well: it was a quiet place, and it never occurred to me that I might get beaten up or anything like that. Besides, I’d have thought up a few more witty lines in the meantime.

So at 9 prompt I was in the saloon bar. And before I’d had time to look around properly, a voice said, “Hello! I knew you’d come!”

It was Sarah! Well, I was completely flummoxed! I’d presumed the card was from a man; some idiot who thought it was screamingly funny, and I was all prepared to turn the joke back on him with a few well-chosen scathing comments. But it was from a girl! And Sarah! Why, I hardly knew her at all!

So there I was, reduced to silence. Then she said, “I thought that postcard would appeal to your quirky sense of humour. I chose it specially.

“Now that you’re here, shall we go somewhere and do it?”   

Day at the Seaside, by Catherine Redfern

Cold concrete piers
crowded beaches.

Spades spattering sand
frenetic manning of crumbling defences
as tide comes in.

An ice cream dropped.

Seagulls wheeling over cliffs.

Bored donkeys with heads bowed
child screaming as saddle slips sideways
shoulders getting red, and where's the suncream?

Granny's bulk folded into the deckchair
as she knits a cricker sweater for he son.

Water's edge cold.
First smattering of rain.

The Lady of Forgot, by Patty Lafferty

Am I perhaps the Lady of Shalott
Like thousands of other women? No, I'm not
For I'm not cursed like her, I'm just forgot.
For me there is no magic Camelot
For me no compliments from Lancelot
Old age is now my curse, my wretched lot
A twisted wrinkled body's all I've got.

Away those thoughts: a pile of stupid rot!
I've still a brain; I'll mouse the exact spot
Where all the world is googled with a dot;
Cast off sick shadows now: erase the lot!
Block out the negativity, and blot
Those feelings of self-pity; and unknot
My curse; and be the Lady on the Trot. 

(Written by the late Patty Lafferty shortly before her death, after suffering years of increasing disability)

Room Service, by Peter Morford

It was still dark when I woke up and tried to move my legs. My knees hurt but my legs were numb. I knew I was moving my toes but I felt nothing. Remembering what my doctor had said, I rather guiltily uncrossed my ankles without feeling a thing. When I tried to sit up I saw, rather than felt, that her beautiful strong legs were holding me down.
I needed a paracetamol. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, I wriggled and slithered out of bed and limped into the bathroom for the pills. Fully awake now I made coffee and went to sit on the balcony.

In the still air the only sound was the sea lapping the beach 30 metres below me. It was a moonless astronomers’ night. It was nearly 4 o’clock and I could see the first glimmer of the sunrise. The pain was less now as the circulation returned to my legs. It wasn’t deep vein thrombosis after all. I carefully went back to bed and adjusted myself around her.

I lay there thinking about our holiday. After our long flights we had spent Sunday just relaxing on the beach, swimming, sun-bathing and talking. On Monday we’d exploredthe Old Town where we sheltered from the sun in the museum and the art gallery and took a tour round the Castle and Cathedral. That evening we went to a concert. We rented a car for a few days and just drifted around, stopping at places whichlooked interesting. We could be energetic or lazy, people-watching from a pavement café; arguing about the things which interested us; or just reading in comfortable silence. We were,I thought, as compatible as anyone could expect or hope to be.

I must have dozed, for when I woke the sun was well up and I could feel the heat through the open doors. She was already up, presumably in the shower. I noticed how quiet the room was and realised that she wasn’t singing this morning.

I went into the bathroom. She wasn’t there. All her make-up and toiletries were gone. I checked her wardrobe. Empty. Cases gone. But for the state of the bed and a trace of her favourite perfume there was no sign that she had been here at all. There was no message. She had just vanished.

You may imagine how I felt. I called Room Service and asked for Luis, the Night Manager. “Ah good morning Senor Byron. I have a message for you. The courtesy car delivered the young lady at the
airport and she took the 8 o’clock west-bound flight.”
“Thanks, Luis. I’ll check out after breakfast so have my bill ready. Then I want you to give me a different room on Floor 10, facing the sea.”
He said, “I understand Senor. Will you excuse me for a moment – my other phone is ringing.”

After a few seconds he was back again. “Senor – I’ve just heard from my driver at the Airport. He tells me your wife’s plane has been delayed by an hour and will land at 10 o’clock. She should be here by noon.”
“In that case Luis, make sure that you put a bottle of champagne and flowers in our new room for her arrival.”
   I could hear his chuckle. “The usual procedure, Senor?”

Not for the first time I praised the hotel for its friendly service.

Into the Wilderness: a dream; by Peter Shilston

It was a bright sunny afternoon. Gerry was sitting quietly in the park when a young man, a complete stranger, walked up to him.
   "Are you ready to come with us?" he asked.
   "I'm waiting for my girlfriend", said Gerry.
   "She's with us. You'll meet her if you come with us. Are you ready?"
   "All right", said Gerry, at a loss for anything else to say.
   Immediately, everything went black. He felt that he had left the ground and was being sucked through a tight tube. When he opened his eyes, he was still in a park, but a different one, with trees and flowers that he could not recognise or name. A group of people stood around him. Their skins were somewhat darker than his, and they were dressed in white tunics.
   "Is this him?" one of them asked.
   "Yes: I chose him". Gerry recognised Anna, his girlfriend.
   "Will he do?"
   "He'll have to!"
   Gerry looked around. Behind him, where in his town there had been a railway station, there loomed an enormous building. It reminded Gerry of a French chateau, though it was built in an architectural style unknown to him.
   "Are we going there?" he asked.
   "Not yet. First you must enter the wilderness".
   Gerry wondered what could have happened. Was this time travel, a dimension-shift or a parallel universe? Or was it all just a dream? At any event, there seemed little option but to go along with what was required of him.  

A Counterblast to Lord Rochester, by Freda Cook

A Pox on Rochester, the Bore! 

All that one does is stuff in more

purple words relentlessly.

He’s hounded by Necessity,

it seems. Kindlier Nature culled,

he plies his vigorous Pen; is pulled

to slap his parts on the Page so fast

you’d think his Time and not his Whore

had come - if she did. I’d cast

some doubt on that; our Peer is more

concerned with loucher takes on Lust.

Ah well, it happens when Love’s gone bust.

Admire the Poet? His work is slick,

but, basically, the man’s a Prick.

Metamorphosis, by Patty Lafferty

Butterfly:
strange, and it might be true
as you fly over
rosemary, and forget-me-not blue
that you vaguely recall
your grub-life grief
laboriously
crawling on a dangerous leaf?

Do you remember, then 
freedom from the soil?
your joyful flight from the
wearisome toil?
Then from chrysalis limbo
cocooned against strife
do you know you've transmuted to
etherial life?

Maybe like you I 
will one day have wings
and shed my old body and its
arrows and slings.
Will I
rise up anew; fly 
higher than the sky?
Where gravity is no more;
and know the answer to: why?


(Patty Lafferty died yesterday at the age of 87, having been disabled for many years. This poem is one of the last she wrote, and reflects her increasing disability. I publish it in her memory) 

Two Coffees, by Sandie Zand

Way back, when it mattered, I'd said: "There's only one rule and that is there are no rules."

You laughed. “You can’t do that,” you said. “Can’t say there aren’t rules and make that a rule – it’s a contradiction.”

“Okay,” I said. “Call it a guideline then. No rules, that’s the guideline. Agreed?”

“Yeah, cool,” you said. You laughed again, you sounded full, and I knew I had you.

You were making coffee. Instant. You didn’t drink the proper stuff back then. Even with coffee, you wouldn’t follow the rules; you’d pour hot water into the cups then sprinkle granules on the surface where they’d float in belligerent denial of purpose. You had to stir it for ages before they dissolved.

Now you’re making coffee again, in the espresso maker we bought last June, and you hand me mine – black, just as it comes. Into yours, you shake sugar from the bag, not caring whether you get one measure or five, and you stir the sticky brew with an egg spoon for ages.

“I was wondering,” you say, “what the guideline would be for seeing other people.”

The coffee burns my top lip, hits the roof of my mouth and burns that too. I swear, jerk the cup away, hot liquid curls over the edge and spills onto my shirt.

“I mean theoretically,” you say, “you know.”

“Why ask me?” I dab at the spill with a tea-towel, but it’s seeped right through and is clinging fast. I go to the sink, dampen a cloth and press the stain gently, glad to have my back to you. I wait for you to speak.

“Well, as guardian of guidelines,” you say. “I mean they are always yours, right? So I thought, well, you might have... you know... one in reserve…”

You move forward and peer over my shoulder.

“Rub soap on it,” you suggest.

“It’s silk,” I say, “dry-clean only.”

“They always put that, just covering their backs, it needs soap.”

You do the laundry with the same reckless will with which you sweeten your coffee. I had to make it a guideline in the end – after the first couple of months of sludge-grey whites – that we each take care of our own clothes.

“So…” You drain your cup in one mouthful, swallow it down on the pause. “What say you?”

“I suppose it’s a case of to thine own self be true,” I say.

“That’s the guideline?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay,” you say. “Cool. It was just theoretical, just curiosity, you know.”

You put down your empty cup.

I stand by the sink, a circle of damp encroaching on my chest.

And I wait for you to leave.

Battersea Fields, by Freda Cook

Do not forget me, Battersea fields,
in the park where grass
was ankle high and seed heads
crushed in the hand
sweetened the morning air
heavy with fat smells
from candle works,
where each green blade
seemed softer under fingers
than fine lawns did years on
at the north end of the staling city.

Do not forget me, Battersea streets,
whose gutters were cobbled,
grouted with gravel, dust
where summer-sole shoes
curved over their hunch, bent
unsteady ankles as mud
from the ‘mere slipped underfoot
and matchbox boats in rain
swirled slowly by sweet wrappers
down drains through whose wide grids
slopped childhood lives.

So, I can turn to the place
where, if I am not wiser now,
I still feel strong,
the last of your grass in my hands,
your cobbles under my feet.

Mist, by Peter Morford

If you can reasonably see the view for half a mile – that’s mist. If you can’t see that far, it’s fog. If you’re choking, it’s smog. If you’re wearing a face mask, it’s Tokyo, Beijing, Los Angeles or London’s South Circular Road.
It’s all very well for Keats to praise the mists of autumn. Wordsworth loitering on misty Westminster Bridge at dead of night could be lonely as a cloud while the city slept. But I’m pretty sure that neither of them was ever stuck on the M1 for three hours while the police cleared up the wreckage. Half a mile visibility is all right if you’re walking a docile horse but at 60 you never see the road signs in time. As any HGV or white-van driver will tell you, fog and mist are bad news if you have a schedule to follow.
Fog was Dickens’ inspiration and he dreamt up ever more nasty deeds for his inventions.

Sorry.
I’ve just realised I’ve already broken my NY resolution circa 2001. Look on the bright side, I told myself, see the good things amid the aggravations of life.

Start again.
Mists and mellow fruitfulness. How true. Use a little imagination. It’s a few minutes before sunrise. The tide is creeping into the estuary. By hazy light you can just see the small boats leaning over in the mud and, beyond them, the outline of a fishing boat, shored up by timbers because a hermit lives there. Look again and you’ll just see the dark shapes of other craft. It is quiet enough for you to hear the tiny sounds. A frog below your window, distant birdsong, the lapping of the gentle waves; the tick of the clock in your holiday rental. It’s already getting warmer and you know that soon the sun will burn off the mist and the old boathouse will be visible again. A van will be there and several men will emerge to unlock the great doors and begin another day’s work of hacking, bashing and burning a hulk into many tons of scrap metal.
If you head for the hills there are better mists to enjoy. It’s just hazy enough on the track to dampen your coat and smear your glasses. It’s not cold on this October day and you know that in perhaps half an hour it will clear and you will reach the top and enjoy the view as you eat your picnic.
In the valley, hundreds of feet below, there is a blur of trapped mist. We cannot see the village in its wrapping. The people down there cannot see us. It gives all of us a sense of being in a special place as we start the descent.

Police Report on a Double Death, by Jan Rees

(From the office of Chief of Police Andrei Ivanovich Krupsky: St. Petersburg; May 15th 1897)

The case of Alexei Pavlovich Tikhonov, following the discovery of the two bodies, has awakened much interest throughout the city. Although not all the facts have yet been ascertained,enough has been discovered for most of the story to be constructed.
    Tikhonov was a middle-aged scholarly bachelor, and most of his immediate circle were people like himself. His life had hitherto been blameless: the only one of his acquaintances known to the police was his disreputable schoolfriend Ketsbaia the Tatar, who was suspected of being a receiver of stolen goods. But Tikhonov's quiet life was to be overturned by Yelena Borisovna Chetskaya.
   She is described as being young, vivacious, friendly and very pretty. She remains something of a mystery, in that the police have been unable to trace a single relative of hers. It has been suggested that she was, as the old saying goes, "no better than she should be", but no firm evidence on that point has yet come to light. Why she was attracted to Tikhonov is not at all clear (it could hardly have been for his money, for he had little), but there is no doubt that he quickly became besotted with her. Rather than take her back to his sparse bachelor apartment, he installed her in an expensive hotel, where they lived together for several weeks. He bought her clothes and jewels, and accompanied her to the theatre and other public events attended by the cream of society.
   Tikhonov's limited finances were soon exhausted. He sold such of his possessions as were of any value, but then had to turn to other methods of raising money. His old friend professor Razminsky has reported that several rare old manuscripts are missing from his collection, so it seems likely that Tikhonov stole them and then sold them on through Ketsbaia. He may have committed other thefts as well. But he must have known that his crimes would be discovered before long, and he would face exposure and punishment. He therefore obtained a measure of poison, and on the third of June poured it into glasses of wine, which he and Yelena then drank.
   Tikhonov's suicide is readily explicable, but, why he should murder Yelena is harder to understand. It was not only pointlessly cruel, but goes entirely against what we know of his character. It is better to think that the two of them, having briefly found happiness in each other's company, resolved to depart this life together.

Assurbanipal, by Peter Shilston

(Written after a visit to the Assyrian exhibition at the British Museum)

Behold: the king!
I am Assur-bani-pal: mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria.
The king is the representative on earth of the gods. The duty of the king is to restore the earth to perfection, as it was created by the gods at the beginning of time.
Accordingly, I have rebuilt the shrines and temples, with proper reverence.
I have brought together in my libraries the books of the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians; the tales of their storytellers and poets, and the wisdom of their astrologers.
My soldiers are as numerous as the sands of the desert. With them I have crushed those impious wretches who rebelled against the will of the gods: I have destroyed their kings and nobles, scattered their peoples and laid waste their cities. 
I have slain lions without number, for they symbolise chaos and disorder.
And I have commanded my builders and sculptors to record my deeds in stone, that they may be remembered for ever.
Behold me: the king!

Foretelling of a Death, by Pauline Fisk.

(This is a republication of another story by our late founder, Pauline Fisk)

............................................................................................................ 

On the day he was to die, Robert the Canadian told the truth once, though not to himself, lied five times, as discovered afterwards, bought a swim, took a shave and shampooed his hair.

It was in the Quarry Pool, on his sixteenth lap, that he joked aloud about his dicky heart.  That was his truth, not that he recognized it as such. Later, in the castle garden, he told the old lie about the sea-going yacht.  He had a nautical air. The dog woman, whom he often talked to, never questioned him.  Neither did the beggar on Pride Hill who was used to Robert striding past, crisp in plaid shirt, polished boots, woollen walking socks and combed-back thick white hair, dispensing coins because a rich man like him, with a house on leafy Kingsland Road – lie number two – liked to give to those less fortunate than himself

Lie number three had its moment in the Loggerheads that night, sitting in Poets’ Corner watching Pete the Painter sketching. He was off to Manchester next day, Robert said. Lecturing. Pete - who often disappeared himself - never thought to question the Canadian’s movements. The man came and went.  He had a farm in the Scottish Lowlands, which he talked about with fondness, and did so again tonight, lie number four.  Sometime he’d take Pete up there, he said, though Pete - who knew the Canadian as a man of his word - knew too [by what reason he couldn’t explain] that he wouldn’t do it.  It took one to know one when it came to the fantastical. Perhaps that was it.

Pete went home, door locked, ‘Do Not Disturb’ note sellotaped to knocker on the off-chance that nocturnal friends came visiting.  The Loggerheads closed its curtains. Its last drinkers took the hint, leaving only ghosts to haunt the staircases, or so the Landlady said, drinks in hands, hopes jangling in their pockets, a remembrance of bygone days when the pub had housed a brothel. 

The streets of Shrewsbury after midnight are like a millpond sea without boats.  Only the latest of night prowlers would have witnessed the last walk of Robert the Canadian down St Mary’s Water Lane and under the English Bridge, following the river, though not home to Kingsland Road as was his proud boast.

It was in the Quarry Park that he was found. Who knows why a man would choose one particular bench to die on over any other?  In the morning his body was stone cold.  A rough sleeper with polished boots - and nobody had known it.  The dog lady hadn’t had a clue. The Loggerheads lady, so attuned to lost souls, never caught a whiff of his. The swimming pool attendant – where, as often as he could, he went to keep himself neat and tidy - never would have put him in the category of the man who begged on the street. It came as a shock.

Robert the Canadian kept his secret to the end. It was his only treasure in this sad old world. He wasn’t even Canadian.  That was his fifth lie.  This is a true story. I have not made it up..

Spinning My Spinning Top Tale, by Georgia Kelly

To write about what one knows is a dangerous game

Each syllable the click of a gun.

It’s a Russian roulette

learning how to encapsulate

a hundred thousand

thoughts, looks, words

phrases, actions, consequences

into the space of an innocently clean page;

a tumble of speech

thrown up, spat out.

One wrong move and I’ve captured it all wrong

the game is over

in the flick of a wrist

I am branded a liar

a weaver of untruths.

To be able to know is to write, they say.

Ask the neatly balanced equations

toy soldiers in formation.

Ask the tidy lines of sums

as black and white as a chessboard.

Then tell it to my page:

a patchwork of scribbles

messy with hyperbolic phrases.

So I give you, ladies and gentlemen,

my spinning top tale.

Flight, by Catherine Redfern

("Most of man's ills come from his inability to sit quietly in a room"  -  Blaise Pascal)

But, Blaise, your countrymen ignored you.
Look: look at the balloon.
That was the beginning:
man getting above himself

Balloon, bi-plane, channel hops,
aces high, slaughter figures rising.

And a second time: dog-fights, night raids,
the East End flattened, Dresden demolished;
but all quite neatly finished
in a distant land,
the quiet tea ceremony shattered
with some new equipment.

And still the restlessness.
How can a room 
contain this flight,
this longing for the stars,
this race to be the first?
The Moon was the glowing prize, 
now Mars is in his sights.

Blaise, you are quite alone
in that quiet room.
Man has been chasing other worlds,
but soon enough
- surely soon enough? -
he wil return.
This little Earth,
suffering and sickly,
needs his cherishing.

Sweet Auburn, by Peter Morford

A visitor seeing Auburn for the first time would see it as a bit of authentic English history.
Come to Auburn and enjoy its Englishness. Take a seat under one of the protected oaks and admire the 800 year old church with its faded sign inviting you to support their repairs fund. There’s a Tudor pub, a cafe calling itself "The Old Smithy", and the cottages have wild life gardens and hanging baskets. Gnarled Wisterias reach the thatched roofs. All in all, you might think it’s an idyllic place to live.
   Opposite the church is Mr Seth’s farm gate. Mr Seth is a relic of his own ancestry. His farm, or rather small-holding, is just productive for his ageing family’s needs. They have a cow for her fresh un-adulterated milk. They eat their lamb and wear their wool, home-spun by Mrs Seth. They have just enough land to produce all the fruit and vegetables they need. The pigsty and hen-run provide the rest of their diet. He nurses his old Massey-Ferguson tractor because it’s his only vehicle and is cheap to run on red diesel. They even have a little surplus to sell to the just-surviving village shop.
   Sometimes, more for sport, Mr Seth will shoot a few pigeons or rabbits. Recently he shot a drone which had been annoying him. So be not misled by the apparent tranquillity! 
   Next to the church is the 18th century rectory, built for a large family, but recently the vicar and his small family hadlived in just three rooms, leaving the rest to nature. Before it could fall down through neglect, the Church Commissioners found a hedge fund manager who was used to London prices and knew a bargain when he saw one. “For the price of my three roomed flat in Canary Wharf I can live in the country,” he told his accountant.
   The new owner extended it and generally concealed all the original features. He built a four-car garage for their son’s Lamborghini, his wife’s purple Range Rover and the orange Humvee he’s always wanted for himself. A pair of Harley-Davidsons had their own space. He replaced the low garden wall with railings and a security gate. And now what do we see? An extended old vicarage, renamed Hedgefund House. It is protected by powered iron gates and conspicuous security devices. When they have a party the favoured guests land their helicopters on the back lawn.
  The neighbours object to the noise. But the Hedges have their problems too. Unpleasant country smells waft over from the Seth’s farm. A tycoon needs his rest without the disturbance of those strident bells counting out the quarters. Mr Hedge, in the spirit of being a decent chap, got himself on to the Parish Council, the better to make his protests. Old Seth turned up at the PC meetings to fight his case. “Get they foreigners out,” became the slogan 
of Sweet Auburn: loveliest village of the plain.