by Louise Wallace
I choose pounamu
it is a river stone
she was of the earth
she was orchids in the hothouse
less difficult than her husband
fruit trees
their hard graft
plums
nectarines
a child we never spoke of
another a castaway
I choose to plant my legs
to ground them
I am the child of which we won’t speak
I am the castaway
I am orchids
fruit trees
I can bear more than you think
I am a river stone
and I choose a ring made of pounamu
to remind me
by Oodgeroo Noonuccal
They came into the little town
A semi-naked band subdued and silent
All that remained of their tribe.
They came here to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: ‘Rubbish May Be Tipped Here’.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
‘We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are of the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal elders told.
We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.
We are the lightening bolt over Gaphemba Hill
Quick and terrible,
And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.
We are shadow ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.
We are nature and the past, all the old ways
Gone now and scattered.
The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.
The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.
The bora ring is gone.
The corroboree is gone.
And we are going.’
by Spike Milligan
Somewhere at some time
They committed themselves to me
And so, I was!
Small, but I WAS!
Tiny, in shape
Lusting to live
I hung in my pulsing cave.
Soon they knew of me
My mother – my father.
I had no say in my being
I lived on trust
And love
Tho’ I couldn’t think
Each part of me was saying
A silent ‘Wait for me
I will bring you love!’
I was taken
Blind, naked, defenseless
By the hand of one
Whose good name
Was graven on a brass plate
in Wimpole Street,
and dropped on the sterile floor
of a foot operated plastic waste bucket.
There was no Queens Counsel
To take my brief.
The cot I might have warmed
Stood in Harrod’s shop window.
When my passing was told
My father smiled.
No grief filled my empty space.
My death was celebrated
With tickets to see Danny la Rue
Who was pretending to be a woman
Like my mother was.
Working alone at the Holywell office of the Flintshire Leader had its good points and its bad points.
In many ways I have always had an independent streak. I prefer to control my own life.
Take transport, for instance. I hate going anywhere by train or bus because it makes me reliant on other people: the driver and whoever sets the timetable.
In a perfect world there should be a timetable that gets me from A at the time I want to leave and gets me to B at the time I want to be there.
If the taxi driver who would take me to A (train station) is late then it only works if the train driver is also late. That, of course, provides its own problems as I wouldn’t get to B at the time I need to be there.
I prefer, and have always preferred, to rely on my own transport. That way if I am late the only one to blame is myself.
It might sound paranoid but it does make sense.
I know how long, under normal conditions, it takes to get from A to B. I then allow for any adverse conditions on the way and am reasonably certain I will arrive at B in plenty of time to park, unwind and then get to ny final destination at the given time.
It has tended to work over the years apart from the occasional glitch but I put that down to old age these days.
When I was at school a frequent comment on my term reports was: Robin needs a deadline to work to and if he doesn’t have one he tends to create an artificial one.
They made it sound like a bad thing – but it wasn’t.
My time spent working out of the Mold office with a senior reporter began as a weekly event but then fell to every other week; one week in three; and eventually just an occasional trip over if there was something happening which would benefit my journalistic training.
The trips to head office and the printing works remained on a regular basis, however. The only times I didn’t go while working for Peter Leaney were when I was on holiday or Peter was on holiday. Graham, his deputy, preferred to go alone when he was in charge.
It was no skin off my nose.
Those visits to Oswestry broadened my knowledge beyond the realms of the district office. It also gave me an opportunity to meet people from other parts of the company’s area.
Naturally I used to see the directors around, mainly Eric and his cousin Robbie, and they would sometimes stop to chat. It was, after all, a family firm and at times “Pater and Mater” would talk to the younger children.
I did get on very well with a senior director, Tom, I think his surname was Roberts, and years later that friendship paid off (yet another story).
What was good that I met journalists from some of the other papers, such as the Border Counties Advertizer, as well as the weekly sub-editors who were based at Oswestry. I also met Brian Barratt, who edited a farming newspaper, and he was to play a major part in my life very soon.
Being on my own at Holywell this infrequent contact with journalists meant I didn’t know much about the way our union, the NUJ, worked within the company.
I did at times meet people on other papers, not ours, with the odd Daily Post reporter popping over if there was a good story going on.
This meant my best source for unionism was with one or two of the subs who showed a keener interest and, of course, the print unions, they were a good source of union rights and the working man.
In all honesty, at that time I found the provincial NUJ to be a little bit socialist and a little bit more liberal. I think some of them might have preferred a National Association of Journalists to a union.
With little in the way of direct sources for considering the working men’s rights (in all honesty it was more men than women in those days) I turned to my old friends – books.
Nowadays they tell you that if you want to find something out then hit the internet.
As it happens reading an easily selected number of books on the subject you are interested in is often less time-consuming than wading through the 10 million hits you get when you type in “labour” or “workers’ rights” on Google.
I soon realised the best place to start was the first half of the 19th century at the time of the Chartists, the Rebecca Riots, Captain Swing and Peterloo.
Clearly much of this was at a time when workers in this country were often treated little better than the slaves who had only recently gained their freedom.
Very soon my research went in two directions – both, as it happened, linked to Engels and Marx.
One stream followed the Chartists and the early working men’s associations and the route taken by suffragists (one arm of the women’s suffrage movement); the other took the path of the Rebecca Rioters and the followers of Captain Swing, a path preferred by Pankhurst’s more militant suffragettes.
Frierich Engels made a study of the conditions of the working class in England and later, in collaboration with Karl Marx produced an outline manifesto for the Communist Party.
Although it was revolutionary at the time it was not like much of Marx’s later works which appeared to indicate that a mass revolt by the working classes throughout the world was the only way to gain workers’rights.
Engels was more interested in other ways of workers getting involved in the ownership of that produced by their own hands.
If you only picked one line of thought you have to wonder which of the two you would follow.
I know I had a lot more reading to do. At the time I didn’t really know how little time I had before I would have to decide which path to take.
by William Blake
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, and it did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft, deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
by Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests, snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clear rasping sound
When the spade sinks in to gravelly ground:
My father digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man in Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Today marks 104 years since the start of the Battle of the Somme when almost 20,000 British soldiers died just on that one day of a battle which lasted over four months.
My grandad, Harry Lloyd was there with his Pals because when the call for volunteers went out in 1914 from the Earl of Derby 19-year-old Harry signed up with thousands of other lads from Liverpool to serve in the King’s Own Regiment, four battalions of which came to be known as Liverpool Pals.
Clerks and managers, factory workers and foremen signed up to serve alongside their fellow workers.
Harry’s cousin, Bill Roberts, was already serving in the Territorial battalion of the KAR known as the Liverpool Scots and he went to France in the first wave in 1914.
His younger brother Bob Roberts also answered the call and became part of the 19th Battalion – grandad was in the 20th Battalion.
Harry and Bob went to France in 1915 after six months of training.
Grandad and his cousins met behind the lines when they could and one such meeting came in June 1916 when they had their pictures taken.
Soon after the 19th and 20th battalions of the KAR were sent to the Somme. The Liverpool Scots were elsewhere on the front and arrived at the Somme mid-July.
On that summer day 1 July 1916 Harry and Bob went over the top. By the end of that grim day Harry had survived against all odds.
Private Robert ‘Bob’ Roberts of the 20th Battalion King’s Own Regiment Liverpool Pals lay dead on the battlefield of the Somme.
Today I remember Bob – and Harry and Bill.
by Ivor Gurney
Suddenly into the still air burst thudding
And thudding, and cold fear possessed me all,
On the gray slopes, where Winter in sullen brooding
Hung between height and depth of the ugly fall
Of Heaven to earth, and the thudding was illness’ own.
But still a hope I kept that were we there going over,
I, in the line, I should not fail but take recover
From others’ courage, and not as coward be known,
No flame we saw, the noise and the dread alone
Was battle to us; men were enduring there such
And such things, in wire tangled, to shatters blown,
Courage kept, but ready to vanish at first touch.
Fear, but just held. Poets were luckier once
In the hot fray swallowed and some magnificence.
I have always enjoyed cooking. I don’t just mean knocking up the odd meal of fish fingers and chips (although the time I did do that I was accused of burning the fish fingers). No, I mean the real thing.
The reason I probably enjoyed it can be pinned down to two things – I enjoyed the creativity of trying new recipes and I didn’t do it often enough to get bored.
It began with baking when I was about 10 or 11. I tried my hand at a sponge cake – you really can’t go wrong with a sponge cake.
It comes down to equal portions, whether you use one egg, for a single sponge cake to be iced, or two or three, depending on size, for a Victoria sandwich.
Flour to the weight of the eggs, same with butter or margarine and caster sugar. A dash of vanilla essence and Bob’s your uncle.
Once cooled, ice it and sprinkle on the sugar strands or vermicelli.
From there it led to butterfly cakes and then ginger biscuits.
Oddly enough I’m not keen on spicy foods, hot chilli and all that gubbins. I do like ginger in my biscuits though. Making my own meant I could up the ante on the ginger. I used to use two teaspoons instead of one, the ones I made last week had five teaspoons and I reckon one more for good measure wouldn’t do any harm.
It wasn’t long before I was trying out different recipes and getting quite daring.
Like most men I preferred cooking fancy meals rather than the daily dinners. I think it’s that male ego thing.
I did do a couple of weeks of proper cooking though. That was Christmas week 1978. My son was born on the 19th and Marion wasn’t allowed to do much more than get out of bed in the morning and rest on the sofa all day.
We were actually on strike at the time (now that definitely is another story) but my mother-in-law was there for when I had to be on picket duty and, as FoC, at strike HQ at the local Labour Club.
It was during that week I was accused of burning the fish fingers – my accusers were my daughters, aged six and four.
They certainly didn’t complain about any other meals that week, including a full-on Christmas dinner, my parents had helped out with food parcels.
Apart from that I did occasionally do a full meal but, as my wife has always pointed out, I tended to use enough pans to feed a battalion and spent hours with the preparation.
Some years later, when the children were grown up, I cooked a proper spaghetti with meat balls and my own reduced tomato sauce for it made from fresh tomatoes.
It was all done from scratch including making the meat balls and the sauce. They all agreed it tasted great but said there wasn’t enough sauce and asked for tomato ketchup.
I don’t know about prophets being without honour in their own land (John 4.44) but this chef was left without honour in his own kitchen.
Once we settled back into the UK in the late 80s I tailed off the cooking but did stick with the baking. For the last 30 years or so it has become a family tradition that I make and ice the Christmas cake and make the Christmas puddings.
For the last 20 years I have baked my own bread, although now I need a stand mixer with a dough hook for most of the kneading as my hands aren’t up to 20 minutes of kneading.
I tend to use the best ingredients from the flour to the sea salt and a good hemp oil in place of butter and bake at least once a week.
What I still cannot understand is why, within days of the lockdown, strong white bread flour was almost impossible to purchase.
Did all these people told to stay home suddenly take up baking bread? Or was it the mass impulse to stock up anything that might run out, even if you don’t need it.
Luckily I always keep in enough flour to last a couple of months and had stocked up just two weeks before the lockdown began.
One of my daughters was getting a weekly shop for us and every week I would put bread flour on the list and every week my daughter told me she couldn’t find any, no matter where she looked.
Have we turned into a nation of bakers? I doubt it.
I wonder how much of that flour will be pushed to the back of the cupboard and turn up in a few years’ time wriggling with weevils. They don’t add anything to the flavour you know.
Let’s hope we can get back to normal soon and those of us who have always enjoyed baking can buy the right ingredients.
I can’t even get chocolate drops in plain, milk and white, for my fabled triple chocolate chunk cookies.
White chocolate and milk chocolate buttons just don’t do the business.
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate,
To say that for destruction ice is also great
And would suffice.
Robin's Nest