Market meeting was a real bonus

Meeting my Muse at the market in March 1973 was a bonus as I thought it would be two weeks after the party before I saw her again. That half an hour with her made all the difference.

If you are thinking of a long-term relationship then you should base it on each of you having an understanding of the other, and sharing some common interests, rather than basing it all on physical attraction.

How many marriages have been broken because it was only after the ceremony (anything from a year to seven years) the people involved realised their only compatibility was in bed.

Our first proper meeting, although not lengthy, gave me some early insights into her interests. Reading and history as strong passions were certainly a good start in my book. I could only hope that my interest in both had come across.

Meanwhile it was back to work and in my spare time delving deeper into the origins of socialism and the Labour Party, although I should say labour movement because that movement really came about in the 19th century long before the party itself was born.

When it came to the readings before the next play was cast I was looking forward to an evening with my Muse – and the dozen or so others who would be there of course.

The group had decided on The Importance of Being Earnest by that brilliant Irish playwright and poet Oscar Wilde, an interesting choice for an amateur drama group which clearly had a limited number of members.

When I arrived others were already there, including my Muse, once again sans baby. She also appeared to be sans hubby. Since the party I had gone over faces from that night and realised that the somewhat older chap with a balding head, who had played a small part in The Servant of Two Masters, was almost certainly the prime suspect.

While waiting for others to arrive I chatted to a couple of people who I remembered from the party, and then said hello to the subject of my desire.

I commented that she appeared to be on her own and she told me her husband was looking after the baby as he had decided he was not really that bothered with amateur dramatics.

This is when I also discovered that she was not intending to go on stage anymore herself but was going to be stage manager for shows in future and would also be the prompt.

I had a good knowledge of these reading evenings where everyone would get a chance to read for any of the parts, which means I also knew that certain roles would already have been cast.

As a newcomer I wasn’t expecting much, even though I was asked to read Algernon and Merriman. My final reading of the evening was for Canon Chasuble. If I wasn’t offered a part this time I would have been content to help backstage but I was very pleased to be asked to play the canon.

After the readings, everyone chatted for a while over a cup of tea and I had a further chance to chat to my lady. This time we talked about plays and our likes and dislikes.

Now it is good to have the same interests but it would probably be unlikely, and possibly even undesirable to have the same taste in everything. That night I discovered the first difference between us – she was NOT a fan of Shakespeare.

It was only a minor setback, after all I wouldn’t expect her to be a dedicated fan of Welsh rugby, or a devotee of Sherlock Holmes.

She got a lift home with another couple. I hadn’t offered to give her a lift myself as it would have been too forward of me and I had deduced someone must have given her a lift to the meeting, unless she lived close to the house where the readings had been held.

The next few weeks were a combination of work, including evening meetings and theatrical shows for review; evening rehearsals for the Wilde production; an occasional NUJ chapel meeting; and “accidental” meetings in the town centre with my Muse.

Things were looking good. I saw her at least one evening a week and we got into the habit of going for a coffee on Friday or Saturday mornings after having a browse at the market bookstall.

Work was just as good and my Friday morning absences were no problem because I was getting my fair share of stories for the paper and was even given the occasional bit of subbing to do – something which stood me in good stead in my future journalistic life.

There were to be quite a few ups and downs before I stepped up to that level.

To woo or not woo – that is the question – only fools rush in

Since I last mentioned the moment I actually met my Muse, and discovered she had a six-month-old baby, I have not gone back to that period, well not until yesterday when I commented on that eventful year 1973.

It is not because there were any bad memories from that event, or even that year. In fact 1973 sticks in my mind as the best of the times. The trouble is that the following year led me to the worst of times.

Let’s not dwell on that today, however.

Instead I will hark back to the Sunday morning after Jean and Jim’s party.

I was still euphoric in that I had met my Muse in the flesh rather than seeing her as a character on the stage. There, dressed in a long skirt and a loose blouse top, I had concentrated on the face and the dark hair which tumbled down her back almost to her waist.

In my dreams I had seen her face but the stage lights had prevented me from seeing their colour. At the party I had been far closer and even in the dim light I could see they were a soft, dark brown – eyes that you could lose your soul in.

Once the euphoria of having met her settled down I came back to the reality that my Muse was a young married woman with a six-month old baby and to make any advance without knowing her feelings would not only be unseemly but could also lead to never seeing her again.

I decided it would be better to become a friend and at least I would be able to see her again.

I didn’t expect to see her for a couple of weeks as the reading for the next play would not take place ’til then.

Instead I immersed myself in my work and my reading.

Monday to Thursday were busy with courts, council meetings and making my regular rounds of the emergency services to check on any action overnight. I think I had at least two evening meetings that week which kept my mind off other things.

Friday was publication day for the Standard Recorder and, as was my wont, I got myself a cup of coffee, a copy of the paper, put my feet up on the desk, fortunately without falling back on the chair, and smoked a couple of cigarettes as I drank my coffee and read the paper from front to back.

I even read the sports pages even though my only real sporting interests were Welsh rugby and darts (yes I do consider darts to be a sport no matter what some sports reporters say).

Being this thorough with our newspaper and with the evening paper out of our stable meant I knew almost everything that was going on in our patch.

Afterwards I headed to the Town Centre intending to have a stroll around on the offchance I might bump into someone with a story (that can really happen you know). I soon found myself in the market and heading for the secondhand book stall.

This was one of my favourite haunts. In those days these stalls, and secondhand bookshops, were common and as well as selling old books they would buy ones you had finished with.

I had already picked up a number of political works on the stall, including booklets by Marx, Engels and Lenin as well as items on the British labour movement and old copies of books from the Left Book Club.

I was browsing the politics section when I happened to look up and notice another browser where they displayed historical novels – guess who it was. You probably did guess and got it right. There was my Muse standing just a few feet away from me.

I walked over and as she turned to me I was struck by her eyes.

We said the usual “Hi” and “fancy meeting you here” and then my brain clicked into gear and I asked if she would like to go for a coffee.

She agreed, but said she couldn’t stay too long as she had left Sarah with her mother.

While we were sitting having a coffee I asked her if she had found anything of interest at the book stall and from there we began to talk about books in general – she said she liked historical novels, as long as they were factual; I told her I would read anything, even a sauce bottle label.

After about 20 minutes she said she had to go and we said our goodbyes and I said I would see her at the reading the following weekend. Then I went back to the office and back to work.

I suddenly realised that the wooing had begun. It was a very simple form of wooing, but I had set myself on a long-term journey to charm my Muse.

Wooing is a very old-fashioned word and it harks back to the days when if you wanted to win the love of a good woman you had to take it slowly and easily, You discover what she is interested in and where your interests coincide.

I wasn’t planning a short, sharp charm offensive – I was looking well ahead.

Meanwhile it was time to get more involved with my union, the National Union of Journalists, and find out when the next chapel meeting was scheduled to take place.

IRA bombers, fairy tale wedding, three-day week and heavy rock – all help make the world go round

Some years are full of events, others can be very quiet.

For me 1973 was one of those busy years.

It was certainly a year which sticks in my mind.

The year began with the UK, along with the Republic of Ireland and Denmark, entering the European Economic Market. Not something which impinged on my life that much. It was also when the Open University awarded its first degrees. Again, at the time it didn.t mean a lot to me although it would in years to come.

On the first of March Pink Floyd released their album Dark Side of the Moon which did affect me very much because I bought it and found it to be one of the greatest rock albums to that date. I’ve still got it.

Two days later IRA bombers set off two explosions in London killing one and injuring 250 others. Ten people were arrested at Heathrow airport suspected of involvement in the bombings. Five days later two more IRA bombs went off in London, one in Whitehall and one at the Old Bailey.

At the end of May, Anne, the Princess Royal, got engaged to Captain Mark Phillips and it was announced they would be married in November. Didn’t seem important to me then but that would change later that year.

In September the IRA were at it again with bombs exploding at King’s Cross and Euston railway stations and two days later a further two bombs at Oxford Street and Sloane Square.

In November eight members of the Provisional IRA were convicted of the March bombings in London. On the same day Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were married at Westminster Abbey.

As a result of coal shortages, caused by industrial action, Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath announced, on 17 December, that moves would be put into force to reduce electricity consumption. At midnight on 31 December, as we began New Year 1974, the three-day week came into force.

On a personal front it was the year I began my life in Basildon rather than just reporting what happened in the town; I got deeply involved with the union; took part in my first union action; spent a couple of weeks picketing my employers; met the love of my life; played an elderly CofE prelate; and began a journey which I am still on 49 years later.

I’ll fill you in on the details tomorrow.

No Swan So Fine

by Marianne Moore 

"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chinz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.

Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea-urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers-at ease and tall. The king is dead.

Surrounded by tins and it all started by accident

Are you a collector? I don’t mean someone who rattles a plastic box trying to get cash for charity; or someone who goes around on a big lorry in the early morning collecting the rubbish from our bins.

I’m talking about things like stamps; or coins; or teddy bears; or beermats.

Remember collecting these and sticking them in an album? Maybe you still are a philatelist.

I am sure that most people at some time have collected something.

When I was young I did try stamp collecting but thought it too much hassle to sort them out, identify the country and then use those little bits of paper to stick them on the correct page of an album.

After that I didn’t really bother with collecting until I became a journalist and collected stories and news clippings.

Recently, however, I discovered I had become an accidental collector.

No, that doesn’t mean I collect accidents, or chase round looking for accidents and taking photographs.

The trouble is I don’t know what term describes me.

A stamp collector is a philatelist; a coin collector is a numismatist; a collector of teddy bears is an arctophile; even collectors of what appear to be odd things have names: fusilatelists collect phone cards issued by different phone companies; falerists or philarests study and collect medals, badges.

Even collectors of beermats have their own name – tegestologists.

A tegestologist would love these beermats

So what do I collect – tins.

Not empty soup tins, or chopped tomato tins – advertising tins. That is tins which once contained biscuits, or sweets or items such as OXO cubes.

Advertising tins such as these OXO ones are not just interesting designs they serve a useful purpose keeping the cubes fresh.

I didn’t buy these because I wanted the tins – when we bought them they were filled with OXO cubes and the price was the same as buying the cubes packaged in cardboard. It also means we can keep OXO beef, lamb, chicken and vegetable cubes separate, or even put other brand cubes in them.

In fact I have never bought a tin that didn’t have something in it and in the main the price has normally covered the contents with no extra charge for the tin.

Over the years we have bought many things that came in tins and then utilised the tins for other purposes. I don’t think of myself as a glass jar collector just because I keep various baking ingredients in glass jars.

So what made me realise I had become a tin collector?

Just a fraction of our Quality Street tins

I was taking down our Christmas decorations, ready to pack them away until December 2022, when I started to count the tins we use for the baubles, the beads and the small items we put on the boughs around the room.

We started buying a tin of Quality Street at Christmas when we settled back in North Wales in 1988 after two years in Oman. It became a new tradition (just as we had a tradition of Christmas stockings which could be opened first thing and presents under the tree which were only dished out after everyone was dressed and had eaten breakfast) and not many Christmases passed without a new tin.

We now have over 25 of them and I think that signifies a collection.

I have to admit that it doesn’t stop with the Quality Street tins and the OXO tins. I do have one or two others. Well maybe more than one or two.

There are the Cadburys tins which once held Cadburys fingers. These include one shaped like a drum, four or five oblong tins with old-fashioned advertising images (even though the tins are late 20th century) and even a stacking set of three which held mini-fingers.

Then again there are shortbread biscuit tins and Christmas biscuit tins along with tins from bottles of single malt whiskey and even two different tins made to look like London buses.

A small selection showing Cadburys Fingers tins, single malt tins, even After Eight.

As I said I do utilise these tins for various baking goods, caster sugar, demerera, Muscovado sugar, icing sugar, rice flour . . .

I also use seasonal biscuit tins for the purpose they were created – to store my home-baked biscuits.

Just two of a selection of 10 or more biscuit tins which still serve their original purpose.

I could show you more but I think I have confessed enough.

I did think back to where this all began. What was my first tin?

I lay it all at the feet of my Auntie Flo, mum’s aunt really as she was my grandmother’s sister. She and Uncle Bill (her husband and my grandfather’s cousin) had no children but they did have an old-fashioned sweet shop, run by Flo, and a newsagent’s shop, run by Uncle Bill, on opposite sides to West Derby Road in Liverpool. We used to visit them four or five times a year and there would be comics to read and sweets to be consumed.

I remember one Christmas in the 1950s when they sent my brother, my sister and myself a tin of sweets each. My tin, which contained toffees, was rectangular with a hinged lid, in silver (the colour not the metal) and blue with a raised decoration on the top showing a country scene.

Once I finished the toffees (probably Boxing Day knowing me) I used that tin to store my “treasures” (an interesting pebble, a shell from the beach, a fluffy feather from a baby bird) and later it became a place to keep pencils and pens. It’s still around, somewhere, but my study is all over the place at the moment and I’d have to carry out a major search.

I think I know how I came to like tins for keeping things in. My mother used to have a Quality Street tin, possibly from the 1930s, and a lot smaller than modern ones. she used it to keep buttons, snipped off old clothing, or a “spare” which you used to get with any clothes, although now it is mainly with shirts and trousers.

We used to use those buttons (some of which probably went back to the 1920s or even pre-WW1) as tokens when playing cards. As it happens that is something else people collect, buttons.

I just wish I knew what to call myself now that I know I am a collector.

Any ideas?

I WANNA BE YOURS

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
Breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
Let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat
For those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
When you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
Take me with you anywhere
I don't care
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
You'll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
Hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
That's how deep is my devotion
by John Cooper Clarke

Deck the halls with boughs of holly – and lots and lots of Christmas lights

Sorry about yesterday but I got a bit behind myself and stuck into the early processes of de-decoration on Twelfth Night.

No matter how bad a time it is, and the last two Christmases have not actually been a ball of fun, I find the Yuletide season to be a special time, especially when it comes to decorations, parties and presents.

This year there were decorations and presents but definitely no parties.

Normally I put the decorations up in the middle of December. Last year I decided to do it on 1 December just to cheer things up a bit. Even then there were not as many as usual.

The Christmas tree was new.

When I still lived at home we had a real tree, as far as I remember, but over the years since then we gradually moved to an artificial one and in the late 1980s we got a fantastic tree over six foot tall and reduced to half-price.

Since then we have moved house a number of times and always put that tree up every year even if it was a little bit big for some of the living rooms.

Just over a year ago, however, we found the old tree was getting a bit tired and its branches were getting loose and droopy.

The new one is just five foot and sits nicely on the old mariner’s chest (one of the few relics I have which once belonged to my great-great grandfather) in our front room. The point is it does not need as many lights and decorations as we had in the past.

The trouble is I hate throwing things out which means the old tree is still up in the loft and we have more decorations than we really need.

This year I’m biting the bullet and the first thing to go is Christmas lights.

For one reason or another I tend to buy new lights every few years. Sometimes because I like what I see and sometimes because old ones stop working. The trouble is I kept hanging on to the old ones in the belief I could fix them

This year it looks as though four sets of old lights are going in the bin – well I can’t throw all of them out, I might be able to get some working again even if I have no room to put them up.

Maybe next year I can throw more away. I just have to make sure I don’t get tempted to buy any new ones.

Have a Nice Day

by Spike Milligan

‘Help, help,’ said a man, ‘I’m drowning.’

‘Hang on,’ said a man from the shore.

‘Help, help, said the man ‘I’m not clowning.’

‘Yes I know, I heard you before.

Be patient dear man who is drowning,

You see I have got a disease.

I am waiting for a Doctor J Browning.

So do be patient please.’

‘How long,’ said the man who is drowning, ‘Will it take for the Doc to arrive?’

‘Not very long,’ said the man with the disease. ‘Till then try staying alive.’

‘Very well,’ said the man who was drowning. ‘I’ll try staying afloat.

By reciting the poems of Browning

And other things he wrote.’

‘Help, help,’ said the man with the disease, ‘I suddenly feel quite ill.’

”Keep calm,’ said the man who was drowning, ‘Breathe deeply and lie quite still.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the man with the awful disease, ‘I think I’m going to die.’

‘Farewell,’ said the man who was drowning.’

Said the man with the disease, ‘goodbye.’

So the man who was drowning, drowned.

And the man with the disease past away.

But apart from that,

And a fire in my flat,

It’s been a very nice day.

A poet who speaks to all ages

I adore poetry and cannot remember a time when I didn’t.

I suppose my parents must have read to me when I was very young, possibly nursery rhymes. It is amazing how many of those I know without actually remembering reading them myself.

As I got older I was introduced to more “serious” poetry. The works of Keats, Wordsworth, Browning, and more were on the bookshelves in the hall and lounge. Quite a few of them, including the Shakespeare, were school prizes won by my father and his sister.

I loved the flow of words, and even devoured the nonsense poems of Edward Lear and later Spike Milligan.

The older I got the wider my net was cast and I left Lear behind me as I embraced Wilde, Thomas and Hughes (both Ted and Frieda as it happened).

I do remember in later life my brother talking of a great poetical story book he had bought for his grandchildren all about a bear hunt by a children’s poet called Michael Rosen.

I didn’t pay too much attention as my own children were, I thought, beyond children’s poetry and I didn’t have any grandchildren at that time.

Later I did read odd bits of poetry by Michael Rosen but it was not until Covid hit and I spent a bit more time online with Twitter that he really came to my attention.

People I followed and who followed me were talking about Michael Rosen being seriously ill in hospital with Covid and there were references and links to Emma-Louise Williams @Underthecranes with daily updates on his condition.

It was later that I discovered Emma-Louise Williams is Michael Rosen’s wife and the family were using her Twitter account to keep his friends and fans informed as to his condition.

All those who know and love Michael Rosen are aware that thanks to the dedicated care he, and thousands of other NHS patients, received he pulled through, although he has been left with Long Covid.

Once he got back on Twitter himself I began following him as his Tweets were both hilarious and incisive as he related his ongoing recovery.

I still thought of him as a children’s poet (he had been Children’s Poet Laureate after all) but found his Tweets went further than children’s poetry. He also has a political conscience.

Late last year I found out that he had written political poetry as well as his children’s work and I decided to put Fighters for Life, selected poems by Michael Rosen on my Christmas list (along with CDs by Bix Beiderbecke, a black on red Guevara Tshirt and the final seven books in Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series).

When Christmas Day dawned my wish list was fulfilled.

I have been dipping in and out of Fighters for Life over the past week and want to introduce you to one that really struck a chord with me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:

A family arrived and said that they had papers
to prove that his house was theirs
-- No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here.
   My father, grandfather . . . and look in the garden,
   my great-grandfather planted that.
-- No, no, said the family, look at the documents.

There was a stack of them.

-- Where do I start? said the man.
-- No need to read the beginning, they said,
   Turn to the page marked 'Promised Land',
-- Are they legal? he said. Who wrote them?
-- God, they said, God wrote them, look,
   here come His tanks.

I love Michael Rosen. He doesn't need many words to make his point.

A brand New Year and a new me? We’ll just have to wait and see

It’s now 2022 – not 1 January but 2 January.

So why am I starting a day later than most to set my plans for the New Year?

Because many of us wake up on New Year’s Day with a determination to GET THINGS DONE. Mind you, if we shout it out loud like that it might hurt, especially if you welcomed in the New Year a little bit too well.

To be honest it is quite some time since my Muse and I welcomed the New Year in with alcoholic refreshment. If it wasn’t for Jools Holland and his annual Hootenanny we might not even have welcomed the New Year until it was about eight hours old.

But I digress.

The first day of the New Year should not be a time to make promises, it should be a time to evaluate the previous year and then decide whether to lay out a plan, only to be disappointed by failure within a few days, a fortnight at the latest, or establish a “take it as it happens” attitude and muddle our way through the rest of the year.

I am not saying that in one day I can examine everything that I have done in the previous 365 days. What I can do is consider what I hoped to achieve in that time and judge whether or not I achieved any part of it.

As it happens my Muse and I have succeeded in doing what we hoped to do in 2021 – we lived. We certainly lived to see in 2022.

That was not our aim at the start of 2020. We had all sorts of good things to look forward to: having days out to the seaside with our grandchildren; working on my Muse’s garden (well she would do the horticultural work and I would dig holes, make raised beds and perform other manual labour); lazing in the garden in the sunshine; visiting family in North Wales . . .

As we know now all these plans went to hell in a handcart thanks to Covid.

From March 2020 through to now we have just been grateful to wake up each day and survive to go to bed that night.

Thanks to the speedy work of scientists to come up with vaccines to help fight Covid our hopes of survival on 1 January 2021 were stronger than they had been in the middle of March 2020. On that New Year’s Day we had hopes that Covid would be over and done with before Christmas.

Thanks to the incompetence of the Boris Johnson government (and I’m not including Chris Whitty in that) we find ourselves entering another year with the threat of a new variant hanging over us, and who knows whether there will be another variant this year and in years to come.

That is why I am not making great plans for this year. Instead I will get up in the morning and decide day by day which jobs I will do around the house and garden; whether I’ll read a novel, a political volume or some poetry; maybe I’ll bake some bread or make cakes or sausage rolls; possibly work on the novels I have been working on for five years now; or maybe just write.

One thing I do plan to do (but cannot guarantee) is to put something of interest on this site at least once a day. Just don’t have a go if I fail. After all I’m only human.

PS: I spent yesterday knocking out a baker’s dozen of bread rolls.