Farewell to a comfortable office life and it’s hey ho for the open road

Having made my decision to move on it was not just a simple case of finish work as a journalist at 5pm on a Friday and start working as a roadie for a puppet show at 9am on the following Monday morning.

Giving up the flat would be a bit of wrench. It was the first home of my own (I don’t count the caravan and cottage in Burnham as that was always temporary) and I had had some good times in it. There had been parties galore in the 18 months I had lived there.

It was also where I had told the love of my life how I felt and knew that my feelings were reciprocated.

On the other hand that link to my love would have been a daily torture if I could never see her again, and that was the way it seemed.

Handing in my notice to the corporation, as landlords of my flat, was simple enough. I would need it up to the last moment of work in Basildon would sleep there on the Friday night. Before leaving on the Saturday morning I would leave the keys with a colleague and the corporation agent could collect them on the Monday morning.

Before that, however, I had to arrange to get the majority of my furniture and belongings stored somewhere safe. Where else would it be safer than with my parents.

It was fortunate that there was clean, dry storage place in the outbuildings at Mum and Dad’s place. Each weekend for three weeks I hired a Transit van and took some of my stuff up to North Wales.

There was one mishap and that was on the middle weekend. when on the motorway the traffic ahead of me stopped suddenly and I just managed to stop about two feet short of the car ahead of me. I automatically checked in my rear-view mirror and could see the car behind had managed to brake hard enough not to run into me.

A few seconds later I was jolted back on my seat and the van was shunted into the car in front.

I got out just as the driver in front got out and headed towards me. Before he could say a word I said: “I was shunted.” At which point we both went to the back of the van and could see that vehicle was nuzzling my vehicle’s bumper.

The driver was getting out and, seeing us bearing down on him, before we could speak he also said: “I got hit.”

I was sure he was right because I had seen him stop, so the other car driver and myself moved down the line. There were only three more cars and each had a crumpled front and rear except for the last one. His rear bumper was bent but there was no car behind him.

He claimed he had been hit but the car had reversed and then gone to the outside lane, which had been clear.

We had our doubts but couldn’t really be certain as to whether he was the one who had failed to stop in time.

In the end all the vehicles were driveable, I escaped the worst because Transit vans are solidly built. I swapped details with the driver in front and the driver behind and after they had also swapped details forwards and backwards we managed to drive off soon afterwards.

While I was at home with my parents I typed up the information on the shunt, including the details from the other two drivers, and gave it to the hire company when I returned the vehicle.

I never did find out what had caused the initial stoppage but I did suffer from a stiff neck for the next few weeks. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I was shifting scenery and loading and unloading the equipment before it had eased.

On the third weekend I took the last of it up, except for basics like a plate, mugs and kettle and pans, having bought myself a camp bed and sleeping bag to survive the last week.

Work kept me busy and my weekends were spent in North Wales but that last week was not easy. I was giving up everything and going on the road for at least six months. I hadn’t even considered what I would do after that.

On that last Friday I didn’t really have much to do. All the stories I had been working on and had been tied up and my notepad was clear.

I did have to say goodbye to one special person, a goodbye I believed might be forever. That didn’t stop me giving her a list of our tour dates with addresses and phone numbers for each theatre.

I woke early on the Saturday as I wanted to leave before the town was brought back to life. The keys were popped in an envelope which I dropped off through the letterbox at the office.

Then I was heading for home (North Wales will always be my home) in my car, a Morris Minor again, with my suitcases, camp bed, sleeping bag and kitchen essentials stowed in the boot and on the back seat.

I stayed with my parents overnight and packed away the last of my stuff.

On the Sunday morning I packed all that I would need in a single suitcase.

I had two black polo neck shirts; two pairs of black trousers; two black button up shirts; five pairs of black socks; two pairs of black cotton gloves; five pairs of briefs; a pair of black plimsolls; and a pair of black Chelsea boots.

You may have noticed a theme with this stuff – it’s all black.

I could say that I chose to do a Johnny Cash (Man in Black) as I was heading for a life with a broken heart. Actually I needed all the black clothing for stage work as although some changes would be done in blackout you would be less likely to see a stage hand dressed in black than in bright colours.

All the above were packed in my suitcase, along with toiletries, I also had my trusty portable typewriter with me, but as it happened my travelling attire was also black, trousers, shirt, socks, slip-on driving shoes and a black leather casual jacket (not a biker jacket).

I said my farewells and then I was on the road, heading south for Harry Corbett’s home in Dorset, in the village of Child Okeford near Blandford Forum.

I was setting out on my new life.

The Sun

by Mary Oliver

born 1935, Cleveland, Ohio
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the holls,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone -
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming up on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance -
and have you felt for anything
such wild love -
do you think there is anywhere,
in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed -
or have you too
turned from this world -

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

Durin

by JRR Tolkien

1892-1973
The world was young, the mountains green,
No stain yet on the Moon was seen,
No word was lain on streams or stone
When Durin woke and walked alone.
He named the nameless hills and dells;
He drank from yet untasted wells;
He stooped and looked in Mirrormere,
And saw a crown of stars appear,
As gems upon a silver thread,
Above the shadow of his head
The world was fair, the mountains tall,
In Elder Days before the fall.
Of might kings of Nargothrond
And Gondolin, who now beyond
The Western Seas have passed away;
The world was fair in Durin's Day.
A king he was on carven throne
In many-pillared halls of stone
With golden roof and silver floor,
And runes of power upon the door.
The light of sun and star and moon
In shining lamps of crystal hewn
Undimmed by cloud or shade of night
There shone forever fair and bright.
There hammer on the anvil smote,
There chisel clove, and graver wrote,
There forged was blade, and bound was hilt;
The delver mined, the mason built,
There beryl, pearl, and opal pale,
And metal wrought like fishes' mail,
Buckler and corslet, axe and sword,
And shining spears were laid in hoard.
Unwearied then were Durin's folk;
Beneath the mountains music woke;
The harpers harped, the minstrels sang
And at the gates the trumpets rang.
The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge's fire is ashen cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls,
Thecdarkness dwells in Durin's halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

Life

Charlotte Brönte

1816-1855
Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerfully
Enjoy them as they fly!
What though Death at times steps in,
And calls our Best away?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway?
Yet Hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair?

Who needs to run away to the circus I found my place in a puppet show

My father was a good man.

He didn’t lay down the law when I was growing up, instead he led by example. He was gentle and considerate, I never heard him swear and he only shouted at me once – I deserved it.

There is one piece of advice he gave me in my teens that I have never forgotten and that stood me in good stead more than once in my life.

I was 15 at the time and had just had my “difference of opinion” with the headmaster at Rhyl Grammar School. He wanted me to stay down and do my fourth year again – I didn’t.

The point is if I didn’t go back to the school on the headmaster’s terms then I wouldn’t be able to go back at all and that would make achieving the future I had planned since I first started there – to be a pathologist.

I would be able to get decent exam grades in some subjects by studying via a correspondence school, but the practicalities of studying the sciences with distance learning would be somewhat remote.

My parents took it well but they wanted to know what I was going to do.

That was when my father said to me: “If you want to travel the world that is fine, but you’ll need something to fall back on when you settle down.”

He wasn’t expecting me to down everything and go and jump aboard a ship with no experience of life beyond Rhyl. What he did want was for me to decide on something I could train for while working, but he wanted it to be my choice, not something he and my mother had come up with.

As I have said before, I had a good think about what my alternative to pathology might be and it was obvious – my other great love in life was words, the written word and the spoken word. After all I had spent years working on the basis that if I needed to know something then all I had to do was find a book about it.

Nowadays people just Google. The problem there is you may not know the source of the information.

That was when my life took a turn for the good. I studied and then became a trainee journalist and knew that at any time I could walk away if I wanted to; I could take a completely different path and, if that failed, I would have a career in journalism I could go back to.

It was nine years before that moment came, however.

By late summer 1974 I may have been doing well as a journalist but my private life was falling apart.

I had met the love of my life and I knew she cared about me, but …

Yes there was a “but”.

You have probably heard someone say: “Can’t live with her. Can’t live without her.” That was the position I found myself in. She was a good person and she had a strong sense of moral duty. Yet as long as we were in the same town – not even the same town, but the same county, neither of us could move on.

At the same time I was somewhat confused about my life as a journalist and where it was going.

I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed creating pictures in words and seeing it go out to people who would hopefully enjoy reading it.

I also enjoyed writing on a more personal level and, like every other writer, saw myself as a poet, but the poetry I had written so far had been for two people only and it has remained like that ever since.

I was down at the Arts Centre having a drink with Lawrence one Sunday evening and I happened to tell him that I was looking for a change of direction and needed to get away from Basildon and away from journalism for a while.

Then came that life-changing moment.

He told me he was leaving the Arts Centre and was going to work for a small touring show as stage manager. His new employer had also asked him if he could find an assistant stage manager: someone capable of shifting scenery and operating a sound system for the show as well as other general jobs.

The point is the person would need to start in four weeks’ time as there was work needed doing before the tour started.

It was Sunday night, I had to give four weeks’ notice.

The timing was perfect.

I told Lawrence I would like to take the job and he was already aware of my experience of working backstage, front of house and on stage.

We shook hands and the following morning I gave in my notice to Tony Blandford, my editor.

Which is how I came to run away and join – not the circus, but something I thought far better and far more fun.

I ran away and joined The Sooty Show.

A Subaltern’s Love Song

John Betjeman

1906-1984
Miss J. Hunter Dunn, Miss J. Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-handled racket is back in its press,
But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

Her father's euonymous  shines as we walk,
And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the verandah that welcomes us in
To the six-o'clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,
As I struggle with double-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,
And westering, questioning settles the sun,
On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hillman is waiting, the light's in the hall,
The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair
And there on the landing's the light on your hair.

By roads "not adopted", by woodlanded ways,
She drove to the club in the late summer haze,
Into nine-o'clock Camberley, heavy with bells
Amd mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park, the dance has begun,
Oh! Surrey twilight! importunate band!
Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl's hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the intimate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,
And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead,
We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I'm engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

Britons retire into the west as the mercenaries fight each other

Britain was no longer British after Anglo Saxon mercenaries mutinied against their Romano British paymasters. They wanted the land to expand into as their homelands in Europe were not enough for a growing population.

The Celts/Romano Britons, had withdrawn to the west (what is now Wales, Devon and Cornwall and a large portion of what is now the Midlands), the border between them and the Anglo Saxon ran from the Severn estuary in a sweeping curve up to Lothian.

The occupied areas had split into minor kingdoms with some paying dues to the larger, better-armed kingdoms.

The largest kingdoms were the Northumbrian; Mercia; East Angles and West Saxons. These eventually becoming Angle Land or England, and uniting the kingdoms (the Jute lands had already been absorbed by the greater strength of the Angles and the Saxons).

Rather than working together these early kingdoms not only fought against each other but also against a new wave of invaders from the North, often called Vikings but more often known as Danes.

By the late 9th century, 860 AD to 870 AD there had been battles between kingdoms for supremacy and battles against the invading Danes when two or more kingdoms might combine for strength.

Then came the Great Heathen Army (yes the various kingdoms had become Christians by now) in 865 which consisted of various armies from the Viking countries united to attack Anglo Saxon Britain.

The individual Anglo Saxon kingdoms were not overly keen to fight and the Mercian king was overthrown and it became a puppet kingdom.

The only real resistance came from Wessex and this is where the modern-day English (more a mixture of Anglo-Saxons, Norman, French, Scandinavian etc. etc.) gained one of their favourite heroes Alfred the Great.

Not that he was great at the time, he wasn’t even king of Wessex, that position was held by his brother Aethelread. Alfred did, however, lead the Wessex army and defeated the Danish army at Ashdown.

Alfred did become king three months later when his brother died. When the Danes turned up again Alfred did not face them in battle, instead he bought them off, just as other kingdoms had done.

The Danes were allowed to settle in the east, an area which became known as the Danegeld, as part of a deal which also saw them getting payments from the Anglo Saxons.

Alfred used this period to build up his own strength and create deals with the other Anglo Saxon groups to form a more cohesive group. This involved various deals and marriages until the time Alfred was accepted as King of all Anglo Saxons (which did not give him power of the lands held by the Danes).

This title (which marked Alfred as the first real king of England, was passed to his successor, his son Edward, when Alfred died in 899.

Although Mercia was still an entity in its own right it was subservient to the Kingdom of Wessex. A Northumbrian army (Danes) was then defeated by the Wessex/Mercian alliance and Edward turned to defeating other Danish enclaves in the southern region until only Northumbria was left to the Danes.

By now Edward had taken Mercia into Wessex and he was the Anglo Saxon ruler of all the lands from Northumbria down to the south coast and out to the east.

The line from Alfred the Great to Edward the Confessor (he’s the one who died and left no real heir but was succeeded by Harold Godwinson even though William of Normandy claimed he was the rightful heir) is fairly straightforward, although there was a glitch when a Danish king Cnut (we know him as Canute) ruled for a while.

Basically the title King of the Anglo Saxons (by the Confessor’s time King of England) went from Alfred to his son Edward the Elder (a lot of names were similar in those days which is why monarchs tended to have descriptions as well) and then to his son Aethelstan who called himself King of the English; he was succeeded by his half-brother (still a son of Edward) Edmund I, who was succeeded by his brother Eadred.

The crown then went to Eadred’s nephew (Edmund’s son) Eadwig the Fair and later to Eadwig’s brother, Edgar I the Peaceful and then to his son Edward the Martyr who was succeeded by his brother, Aethelred the Unready.

At which point we get the glitch and a temporary rule by the Danes who left England with an interesting tale about a throne on the beach and an incoming tide.

In 1012/13 Aethelred had been quite happily ruling England for over 30 years and the last thing he expected was for the Scandinavian hordes to descend on his kingdom.

It all began with Harald Bluetooth the Scandinavian king who gave his name to the modern Bluetooth communications system. He was usurped by Sweyn Forkbeard, who for centuries was believed to be his son. It appears Sweyn was actually the son of Harald’s brother Knut but was raised in Harald’s household.

Sweyn then headed an invasion fleet of England which landed in 1012 and his army was powerful enough to send Aethelred into exile and Sweyn ruled as King of England as well as with his Scandinavian titles.

He didn’t enjoy his new position for long as he died in 1014 and Aethelred came back to reclaim his throne. He didn’t have long either as two years later he died. He was still the longest-serving Anglo-Saxon king as his split sovereignty meant he ruled for 37 years.

His son Edmund Ironside replaced him but only lived a few months as king.

Cnut had remained in Scandinavia when his father died but he decided to take an invasion fleet to England and eventually forced Edmund to sign a deal in which the Viking would rule the area known as the Danegeld and would become king of England on the death of Edmund.

He didn’t have long to wait as Edmund died, probably of wounds received in battle, a few months later.

The foreign usurper actually proved to be a good king for 20 years but on his death the kingdom was returned to the hands of the Anglo Saxon dynasty when Edward the Confessor, another son of Aethelred, was eventually crowned king of England after a tussle between Cnut’s heirs and the Anglo Saxons. The Anglo Saxons won and brought Edward back from exile in Europe..

This gave peace in England for over 20 years until Edward died without an heir – but that’s another story.

Casualty

by Seamus Heaney

1939-2013
He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman's quick eye
And turned his observant back.
Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS 13, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL, that Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled.

II

It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral
Like blossoms in slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band,
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.
But he would not be held
At home by his own crowd
Whatever threats were phoned,
Whatever black flags waved,
I see him as he turned
In that bombed offending place,
Remorse fused with terror
In his still knowable face,
His cornered outfaced stare
Blinding in the flash.
He had gone miles away
For he drank like a fish
Nightly, naturally
Swimming towards the lure
Of warm lit-up places,
The blurred mesh and murmur
Drifting among glasses
In the gregarious smoke.
How culpable was he
That last night when he broke
Our tribe's complicity?
'Now you're supposed to be
An educated man,'
I hear him say, 'Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.'

III

I missed his funeral,
Those quiet walkers
And sideways talkers
Shoaling out of his lane
To the respectable
Purring of the hearse...
They move in equal pace
With the habitual
Slow consolation
Of a dawdling engine,
The line lifted, hand
Over fist, cold sunshine
On the water, the land
Banked under fog: that morning
I was taken in his boat,
The screw purling, turning
Indolent fathoms white,
I tasted freedom with him.
To get out early, haul
Steadily off the bottom,
Dispraise the catch, and smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond...
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas

1914-1953
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman,the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hill barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery 
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and among such songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means.
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Sonnet to Liberty

by Oscar Wilde

1854-1900
Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes
See nothing  save their own unlovely woe,
Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, -
But that the roar of thy Democracies,
Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,
Mirror my wildest passions like the sea
And give my rage a brother -! Liberty!
For this sake only do thy dissonant cries
Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings
By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades
Rob nations of their rights inviolate
And I remain unmoved - and yet, and yet,
These Christs that die upon the barricades,
God knows it I am with them, in some things.