Poetry, by John Garland

 As I lay in the darkness I tried reciting a certain poem to myself. I felt it was important: if I completed my recitation, something of great importance would follow. It was an awkward sort of poem, full of strange words and unusual turns of phrase, but the real problem was that my attention kept wandering and I found myself thinking of something else entirely, and I had to start again. Eventually, after much concentration, I managed to recite the entire poem without a break, though it didn't hold a great deal of meaning for me. I then waited for developments. But nothing happened; nothing whatsoever.

Perhaps it was the wrong poem?

Scratch, by Graham Attenborough

 Scratch

It’s the loneliness that gets you.

The mundane silence of the company you keep,

the monotony of your own repeated sighing in unlit streets.

And the scratch of the match repeats,

over and over,

lighting up darkness briefly.

Graham Attenborough 1959-2021

R.I.P.

The fame of Ray Sweet, by Peter Morford

 He could plant a tree faster than anyone else without appearing to hurry. He would dig the hole, ease the sapling into place, heel it in, stake and enclose it in the time that most planters would need to barely scrape the dirt. Turfing, he would cut a perfect oblong, gently slide the levelled blade and up would come a turf as precisely shaped as a brick, ready for stacking and, later, for warming the hamlet’s cottages.

On a late summer’s day in 1970 Ray loaded his trailer and, just as he was thinking of stopping for the day, decided he’d cut one or two more turves. His spade struck something hard. He knew it wasn’t a rock. He shifted the cut but the blade still stopped only an inch or two below the surface. He dug carefully around until he exposed the end of a log. Instinctively, Ray knew what it was.

He dug carefully round it. As he expected, the log had been driven at an angle. He started to dig another hole about a yard away –found nothing, Tried again and struck timber. Ray Sweet had found an “X”. He moved 6ft away and found only one pole But he again excavated to reveal the remains of another timber “X”. He looked around and saw nobody. He partly refilled the holes and went home for supper. All he had to do now was to unload his trailer, stack the turves into neat cairns to dry.

   Emma had a nice mutton joint from the butchers, fresh vegetables from the garden and ice cream from the village shop. As it was Friday they would dress up and head for the pub. Emma would join her women friends at their favourite table and the men would roam between table and bar. He collected his beer and Emma’s shandy and joined his friends at the big table where they would talk about farming, football and films on the telly. A coarse joke or two would be told, just too quietly for the coven to overhear. 

“I passed your field this afternoon,” Joe Banks said. “You looked as though you were digging deeper than usual. Treasure hunting?”

Ray said, “I think I’ve found a bit of an old causeway. Two crossed poles.”

“Christian cross?” Joe asked.

“No. An “X” – like Cedric uses when he signs his name.”

Cedric pretended to be insulted. “Cheeky blighter. If you don’t mind, Ray, I’d like to have a look at your field – shall we say 9 o’clock tomorrow?”

He asked his friends not to talk about it yet.

In the morning Ray uncovered the posts and watched his friend trowel the dirt away.

“As I thought, Ray it’s a prehistoric causeway or raised track. This part of Somerset is full of antiquity and legend. Avalon, Camelot, Glastonbury, The Tor; one of King Arthur’s grave; they’re like the day before yesterday compared with this structure. I need to get Flinders.”

The following Monday an excited Professor Flinders declared that this could be a major historical find. Those two crosses indicated the direction of the path and it justified a full investigation. They might even find the planks which rested on the crosses.

“Cover up the holes and the Natural History Department will fence off the site for a major dig,” Flinders said. “I’ll get my students to help. This find won’t make us rich, but you could be famous.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The experts carefully removed what they could. They carbon-dated the timber, they counted the tree-rings and produced a report. Ray Sweet had found the oldest and the longest Early Neolithic causeway in the world. Flinders confidently dated it to 3807 BCE. Acidic peat had protected it for nearly 6,000 years’

“We’ll name this The Sweet Road,” Flinders said to Ray.

That’s what it’s called on the Ordnance Survey Map of the boggy Somerset Levels.

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.

Boris prepares to invade Russia, by Mark Lovett

             The Charge of the Blond Brigade 

“Carrie my love", said Boris, "Now that the COVID scare is starting to fade, how are we going to divert the electorate’s attention away from this scandal-ridden Government of ours? It is a bit too early to play the UFO card and climate change will have to wait until COP26, so howabout a foreign war? Plucky Britain faces the might of - oh, who shall it be? - I know: Russia!"

“Go ahead, mighty Caesar” cried Carrie “just as long as one of my close friends is given a contract for any ammunition you might need.”

  And so it came to pass that HMS Defender, en route to Georgia, came, in the eyes of the Russians, a tad too close to the Crimea. How fortunate it was that the BBC just happened to have a correspondent on board to report on the incident. It brought back memories of another Johnson who, in August 1964 was the beneficiary of an alleged incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. It occurred just after the Republicans had nominated a Super Hawk candidate (Barry Goldwater) for the forthcoming Presidential elections and just before the Democratic Convention when LBJ sought to legitimise his Presidency. How kind of the North Vietnamese to help in that regard.

Back to the Levant. Although much has been made of HMS Defender, little has been made of the Aircraft Carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth in the eastern Mediterranean launching its F 35-Bs in support of US actions against “Islamic State”. That carrier group is remarkably close to the Russian base at Tartus on the Syrian coast. Boris peered at an old Atlas. He remembered a cynical Eton Beak telling him that Britain had not had a good track record in the Crimea and that Arabia had always been a source of conflict, even though Foreign Office panjandrums had always dreamt of desert postings. Also, those Naval Johnnies had pointed out that to sail from one Sea to the other meant transiting the Dardanelles.

 “Good Grief” cried Boris, “my hero, Winston, had a tough call at Gallipoli; I had better not make the same mistake!”

Carrie was aghast at her husband’s reticence. “Remember that Russia was our ally in 1915 and you are part Russian yourself.”

 “Yes, yes”, sputtered Boris, “but you forget that I am part Turkish as well”. He decided to break the habit of a lifetime and embark on some detailed research before he made a decision. He found out that The Ukraine, so long regarded as the heart of Russia had, very briefly, been an independent State after the Russian Revolution. Also, that Stalin had nearly destroyed The Ukraine in the Holodomor famine of the early 1930’s; no wonder the German army were greeted as liberating heroes when they invaded in June 1941.Thus there was no love lost between the two conflicting nationalities. Furthermore, the lack of natural borders made the whole area an irridentist’s dream.

In a rare moment of self-reflection, Boris mused that if he were to make History then knowledge of the great leaders of the past would be a handy aide memoir. Peter the Great saw the importance of the Sea of Azov and the Straights of Kerch, but failed to hang onto them, whilst Catherine the Great did. Thus Putin, in asserting his authority over The Crimea, and the aforementioned Straits, is emulating his forbears.

“Don’t forget Victoria Nuland” whispered Carrie. “She allegedly organised the 2014 coup in Kiev which put a pro-western Government in power; well, she is back in the State Department”. 

“I remember her” cried Boris, “didn’t she teach me IT?”

 “No, that was Jennifer Arcuri” an angry Carrie replied. “Victoria Nuland is a career diplomat, who also just happens to be Ukrainian: (paternal grandfather)”.

“Well, whether it is Victoria or Jennifer I should get on with them as, after all, I am American myself. “Now if there is to be a conflict, I had better read War with Russia by Richard Shirreff. I know the General’s book is meant to be fiction, but whenever has fiction stopped me from making a decision”?

“Come off it, you are a Classicist - Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War would be far more apt” cried Carrie, projecting her inner Amazon.

“True,” replied Boris, “Something about a trap?”

Precept, by Annabelle Jane Palling

 

You do not wait.

You do not want or wonder, or

Conjure the unreal so that it

Blinds and flares and burns what’s here, or

Dwell on dreams too saccharine.

You do not travel back to nestle

In absent hugs you missed at seven, or

Set to rights unsettled scripts, or

Apologise for knives you threw.

You move, because

They say life is short and

You are better than that, and mostly

Because you are afraid

Dream Converstion, by C.Z.F.

 George and I shared a supervisor in the person of the superintelligent and rather alarming Dr. Helen Brayford: she of the short tweed skirt, black tights and piercing gaze. Her husband, an accountant, was self-effacing to the point of complete insignificance.

   "Tell me", I once asked George, "Do you ever feel any sexual desire towards her?"

   He considered, and then replied, "Only to the extent that when she ridicules my work I have a strong desire to spank her!"

   "I wonder if her husband ever does that?" I said.

  "He certainly ought to!" George replied.