Before we mothernaked fall

by Dylan Thomas

Poem “Eleven” in Notebook “Started 23rd August 1933”; dated September 16, 1933
Before we mothernaked fall
Upon the land of gold or oil
Between the raid and the response
Of flesh and bones
Our claim is staked for one and all
Near to the quarry or the well
Before the promises fulfill
And joys are pains.

Then take the gushes or the field
Where all the hidden stones are gold
We have no choice our choice was made
Before our blood
And I will build my liquid world
And you, before the breath is cold
And doom is turned and veins are spilled,
Your solid land.

Back to class for the fourth time

Unlike joining the staff at a local shop, where new assistants tend to pick it up as they go along, the workings at any Odeon cinema could not be passed along by the manager, who would be too busy running the show to teach a new assistant manager what’s what.

Within a week of starting at Romford Odeon I was informed that I would be going up to Birmingham for a six-week induction course.

In a way it would be like going back to school – again!

In 1965 I had left Rhyl Grammar School and started to work part-time on a local newspaper (NOT the Journal) and the following year I had signed up for a year at the local technical college.

On completing a course which involved office practice, commerce, typing, shorthand, and various other useful subjects which I did not think I would be using ever again, I started serious work as a journalist.

Two years later I was back in class, this time at a college in Cardiff, on a block release course, in preparation for taking the exam for the NCTJ National Proficiency Certificate. The course was eight weeks fir the first year and a further eight weeks for the second year before taking the exam.

This time it was for a six-week course in \Birmingham where I would be put up in a good hotel and had a travel warrant each weekend to return home, although a couple of them were for mid-week to compensate for having to work a couple of weekend shifts.

Having only just finished an enforced separation from my darling Muse and the girls I would be away again for six weeks. On the other hand I would be at home two days a week.

Throughout my childhood and teen years, and into the the 70s, I had been aware of the local Odeon cinemas being a very well-run, smart business. On that six-week course I found out why.

Every minute of every day was crammed full of instructions on working out payroll figures; sorting out time schedules for a performance, which even then could include more than one film; ensuring money from the box office matched the tickets issue; checking stock of confectionery against sales from the confectionery; drawing up the weekly rota for staff; keeping an eye on the cleaners to ensure the foyer was gleaming when we opened for the day, and that, under auditorium lighting, the public seating area was clean and smelt fresh.

To ensure that all new assistant managers, who intended to manage their own cinemas, could understand the complete workings of an Odeon we were put through the paces at one of the Birmingham Odeons, carrying out all tasks, from usher to ice-cream sales, box office assistant to serving hot dogs and selling popcorn and other confectionery.

This wasn’t just to let us know what each member of staff did. It was also to make sure we could identify any attempt by staff to cream a bit off the top for themselves.

By the time we finished the course we were expected to be able to identify the slightest hint of an attempt to “fiddle the books”. In fact they were continually training would-be managers who would know the best ways to do a bit of fiddling for themseleves.

I do not believe every single manager fiddled the books.

I got to know many of them during my two years with Rank and the vast majority were decent, honest men and women. I said men and women because I didn’t want to sound mysoginistic, but I never actually met a female manager in those two years, only female local assistant managers.

After six weeks away from my work base I was keen on letting Tony, my boss, know that I was bang up-to-date on operating procedures.

All he said was: “You’ll soon learn how things really work.”

Next time: Into the fray.

Caring for cinema connoisseurs as well as the dirty mac brigade

There were some real blockbuster movies playing in Odeon cinemas in 1975, when I first joined the Rank Organisation as an assistant manager early in that year.

Mind you, there were some real stinkers as well.

This was a time when many cinemas were being turned into multi-screen operations because the days of a full house at the single screen theatres were decreasing rapidly

Screen One, the largest of the screens, would be used for the latest release and if it weas good enough might be retained for three weeks or more.

A really good film might then be moved to Screen Two for another couple of weeks while a new release would be shown in the main theatre.

Screen Three at Romford normally showed lower grade movies, in the 70s films like Confessions of a Window Cleaner might run there for two or three weeks at a time.

The Confessions films centred on a character called Timothy Lea, played by Robin Askwith in all four films: Confessions of a Window Cleaner; a Pop Star; a Driving Instructor ; and finally Confessions From a Holiday Camp.

The story in each film was based on Askwith’s character, Timothy Lea, getting into very precarious situations which usually ended up with him and some buxom wench rolling around on the floor, the bed, in the bathroom; and even in some cases in the great outdoors, with little in the way of clothes.

In the 1970s there were many films like this doing the rounds. Confessions was not as blue as some of the X-rated films around. In fact these days it would be considered very mild, just somewhat smutty.

These sort of films proved popular in the afternoons with what came to be called The Dirty Mac Brigade. I think most of you will understand the reference.

At the same time the 1975 releases included some classics of that time, including Jaws; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Picnic at Hanging Rock; Tommy.

With so many great films about you might have thought a cinema manager, or an assistant, would have seen them and known them off by heart.

Well think agsain.

In a three screen cinema the manager, or an assistant, not only had to be seen almost everywhere in the building he or she would need to keep any eye on the box office to make sure a cashier did not set aside some of the takings for their own benefit; to ensure the ushers and usherettes checked all the tickets; keep an eye on the projection rooms to make sure safety rules were being carried out; checking confectionery sales; and so much more.

The chance of even seeing 10 per cent of a film while it was on was remote.

In fact learning everything you needed to run a cinema could not be passed on by a manager while he or she was managing their own site.

This is why I was sent on a a management course in Birmingham not just for a few days but for six weeks.

I’ll tell you about that next time.

Let’s stay in touch

It’s been a week since I got back to the serious business of giving you something to read on this site and I hope I have succeeded. There are 10 or 11 new posts over the past week and at present I am just writing at random.

If you want to see more posts on specific subjects then please let me know, otherwise I will probably just keep rambling on.

Watch out for new stuff over the next week.

Dodgy lyrics or were these guys trying to play things straight?

I got into a discussion on Twitter the other day about lyrics from pop songs in the late 50s and the 60s. When it got around to lyrics that would be looked on in horror today (although some of the modern rap stuff is very close to the mark)someone referred to Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.

The claim was that it is a classic example of an older man grooming a young girl preparatory to having sex with her.

Now I remember this song coming out in March 1968 and it was a big hit. In fact it became a classic disco number of the time.

The initial Twitter response across the board was to support the accusation and claim that the song should have been banned at the time and should certainly never be played in modern times.

Now people might have a “thing” about 60s pop music and, considering the number of 60s idols who have fallen foul of the law precisely because they got sexually involved with under-age girls, a lot of it may be true. There were some dodgy lyrics out there – but Young Girl is NOT one of them.

I don’t know if you have ever listened to it, and I don’t know, if you did, whether you just liked the music and didn’t listen to the lyrics or listened and didn’t hear anything dodgy.

In fact the singer is not grooming the girl he is warning her off because he knows she is under age, although he didn’t know that when he first met her.

The song is one of those beginning with a chorus and follows it with the first verse of the narrative:

Young girl
Get out of my mind
My love for you is way out of line
Better run, girl
You're much too young girl

Right from the start he is telling the girl to go away and to stop messing with his head because he knows it would be wrong for him to have sex with her. He tells her to run because she is too young.

Now there are some who might suggest his basic urge is to have sex with an under age girl, but that is not what the song says:

With all the charms of a woman
You've kept the secret of your youth
You led me to believe you're old enough
To give me love
And now it hurts to know the truth

There it is – second line – she kept the secret of her youth.

Only now has he discovered her real age and the truth hurts him, possibly because he still loves her but knowing her real age he cannot go back to seeing her as a girl of 17 or 18.

Remember also that this is not a song about a man in his late 20s or his 30s, despite the real age of the singer it was sung on the basis of one teenager to another, even if he was 20 or 21 there is nothing wrong with someone of that age dating a 17-year-old.

Then we come to the second verse:

Beneath your perfume and make-up
You're just a baby in disguise
And though you know that it's wrong to be
Alone with me
That come on look is in your eyes

Now we know what he meant about having the charms of a woman, she was dressed up to the nines with all the appropriate make-up normally associated with a girl in her late teens, or older.

He’s now confronting her about her age and is even suggesting that she still loves him but he is telling her and himself that the situation is wrong.

I am not suggesting that she is doing a Jodie Foster from the film Taxi Driver, or is playing him as Lolita played Humbert Humbert. Maybe she just dressed up to fool the people at the dance hall that she was old enough to be there.

Now we come to verse three:

So hurry home to your mama
I'm sure she wonders where you are
Get out of here before I have the time
To change my mind
Cause I'm afraid we'll go too far

He is telling her to go back to her mother who is probably wondering where she is. He emphasises with his “Get out of here” that he still has feelings for the person he sees but now he knows her real age he has to reject her.

I wonder how many lads out there have met a girl at a disco and believed her to be in his age group.

How many young teenage girls borrowed their mum’s lippie, even borrowed a big sister’s posh dress and headed off to the disco with the intention of just deceiving the bouncers, not meaning to lure an older man into her clutches.

To be honest I believe there are more people around today trying to groom young girls than there were in the 60s when I was a teenager.

I do know that when I raised these points on Twitter my post was liked by more than 200 people at the last count.

Maybe the people complaining about the song Young Girl had got the Gary Puckett song mixed up with a Frank Lynch song with the same title, released in 1967. Now there is a song with dodgy lyrics.

If anyone thinks, after reading this, that I am suggesting young girls in the 60s deliberately led on young men then please be aware, I do not go by stereotypes and I am only defending the singer of this song based on the lyrics by Jerry Fuller.

If you know of any songs with dodgy lyrics let me know. There are probably plenty of them out there. Even Elvis is not above singing songs with suspicious lyrics – have a look at the lyrics of Little Sister.

Farewell Andy – now let’s get back to normal on our TV shows

I’m sorry that Andy Murray got knocked out at Wimbledon today (Friday, 7th July) and I am sure there are thousands of tennis fans who will be crying bucketfuls of tears as the British two-times champion at this London suburb an tennis court bows out half-way through the competition.

Mind you he sometimes seems to be British when he is doing well but was designated Scottish when he lost.

The point is those fans will soon forget their tears as they pick another white-clad player to receive their adoration (until that one also loses).

They don’t even have to be at Wimbledon to watch their idols.

BBC have wall-to-wall coverage not just on BBC1 but also on BBC2.

Even Bargain Hunt fell foul of the tennis fanatics (yes, that is where the word fan came from) on Wednesday.

I don’t mind that they put tennis on all day on BBC2 and wouldn’t mind if they showed matches with some of the stars of the tennis world on BBC1 – but not both channels at the same time.

In fact why can’s they use the channels BBC3 and BBC4 for their daytime live coverage, there is nothing on those channels during the day.

Don’t think I am anti-tennis – in my teens I used to play and a regular opponent was a young lady I was “walking out with”.

Like all things tennis should be offered in moderation.

The same thing applies to all sports.

Please say hello to Horace – a regular visitor to our garden

After the foxes it is time to say hello to Horace.

As far as we know Horace has been bumbling around our garden (front and back) for the last couple of years.

We first put food down for him in 2021 and set a floured patch to check the tracks and it turned up trumps with sets of very clear little hedgehog pawprints where he (not got around to checking the sex for sure) had gone to the food dish and then to the water dish.

Last year we realised we also had a fox and weren’t sure whether it was eating Horace’s food or not so we placed a couple of extra saucers with a bit of food in them at other parts of the garden.

By this year it became clear that Horace had a complete circuit which included our front garden, under the gate (which had a gap just suitable for a hedgehog where one of the uprights had snapped), stopping at the back door for a feed and a drink then continuing his perambulation along the path to the conservatory door – although he sometimes took a detour down the path to the garage – around the low wall along the front of the conservatory, down on to the paved area in front of the shed and then on the border by the fence (sometimes on the path), behind the rose bower to the garage, then to the gravelled area between the greenhouse and the house, back under the side gate and then up to the front path and out (actually under) the front gate.

It was fun knowing that we were on a hedgehog route and we made sure not to put out the wrong food or drink (hedgehogs are lactose intolerant.

Since we got the trail camera, however, it has been enjoyable to check the stills and videos each morning and see who, or what, has been dining at chez Robin.

I will put some more videos up over the next few weeks.

I would also be interested to hear about any visitors to your gardens.

Casablanca

by Roger McGough

You must remember this
To fall in love in Casablanca
To be the champion of Morocco.

The size of tuppence
Photographs show Uncle Bill holding silver cups
Wearing sepia silks and a George Formby grin.

Dominique
Had silent film star looks. With brown eyes
Black hair and lips full to the brim, she was a race apart.

He brought her over
To meet the family early on. An exotic bloom
In bleak post-war Bootle, Just the once.

Had there been children
There might have been more contact. But letters,
Like silver cups, were few and far between.

At seventy-eight
It's still the same old story. Widowed and lonely
The prodigal sold up and came back home.

I met him that first Christmas
He spoke in broken scouse. Apart from that
He looked like any other bow-legged pensioner.

He had forgotten the jockey part
The fight for love and glory had been a brief episode
In a long, and seemingly, boring life.

It turned out
He had never felt at home there
Not a week went by without him thinking about Liverpool.

Casablanca
The airplane on the runway. She in his arms.
Fog rolling in from the Mersey. As time goes by.

Lovely or loathsome – the wide world of animals holds them all

By now I take it you will be aware that I have a great fondness for nature in general and wildlife in particular.

When I was little we had a Welsh collie called Scrap and I thought the world of him. He had been part of the household long before I arrived, in fact before my sister and brother arrived.

Scrap was fun, we used to play together, indoors it would be a sort of wrestling match or a tug of war with his rubber ring. Outside I would play fetch with him and he never seemed to tire.

We also had a cat, called Smokey, but he spent most of the day asleep and most of the night on the prowl.

I even kept mice for a while. Not just white or brown but others with more fascinating furs, a silver fox (very light grey), piebald (brown and white) and even a sable (black). Cross breeding proved interesting and if they bred too fast the local pet shop were always asking for mice (hopefully to sell on but they might have had snake-owning customers in need of live food for all I knew).

Growing older I took an interest in horses and used to enjoy an early Sunday morning gallop on Rhyl beach or a couple of circuits of the showjump course at the stables.

I really did enjoy riding, and took it up again when we lived in Australia, but I was never interested in anything more than healthy exercise on horseback. I would never, ever have gone fox hunting.

Over the years there have been many animals in our life. An Australian galah; a lorakeet which I rescued from local cats in Australia when I found it in our yard; an Australian terrier; a Shih Tzu and a Manchester terrier cross collie; the flying foxes or fruit bats, that favoured our mango tree at night; cane toads; and the birds that have always visited our garden wherever we are, and know they will always find food and water.

There are animals I have never liked – mainly cane toads (the most loathsome-looking creature you have ever seen) and rats. Can’t stand them.

Then there are those I have come to hate over time – CATS.

More about rats and cats later.

Ferdinand the Fearless, a vulpine visitor known affectionately as BB

You have met Francesca the Fearful, now let me introduce you to her male counterpart (I have assigned their sexes based on my observations and could easily be wrong) Ferdinand the Fearless.

As you will see

he is not your typical image of a fox with an elegant bushy tail – which is why he has earned the unfortunate nickname of Bog Brush or BB for short.

His whole attitude is completely different to that of our other foxy visitor.

When Ferdinand comes on the scene he seems to have a swagger which seems to say: “I’m in charge here and if I want to eat then I’ll eat and I don’t care who goes hungry.”

Confident as he appears he does not eat all the food put out and will often return two or three times a night to grab an extra bite.

When he does turn up he will go straight to the table, often putting his front paws on it, and tuck in, not really bothering to check what is on the menu, wolfing down as much as he can.

Surprisingly, when any of our nightly customers turn up at the same time they tend to ignore each other, Both foxes definitely ignore Horace, or any of his prickly friends, maybe they have had a taste of those prickles in the past and are not willing to repeat the experience. Horace still takes no chances and often tries to make himself appear invisible./

As you can see from the video clip, nothing much seems to bother our Ferdinand. I just wonder if the state of his tail is down to an encounter with a larger nocturnal wanderer when Ferdinand had stood his ground.

If you have any idea what might have damaged Ferdinand’s let me know.