by Christina Rossetti
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It’s winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring,
And sun warm’d sweet to-morrow;–
Stripp’d bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.
As the old year ended and the New Year of 1966 began I made the most of the last week or so of my holidays before getting my head down for studies in my home classroom.
Naturally I was enjoying the English studies, especially the literature. I have read, seen or appeared in a number of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and no longer have a clear memory of which one I studied that year.
I do remember the major work of fiction I studied, however. It was William Golding’s brilliant vision of how the thin veneer of civilisation that coats us all can be so easily stripped away: Lord of the Flies.
Young people who grew up in the 60s are sure to remember this book and the film released in 1964 which brought to life the schoolboys stranded on a Pacific island with no adults to guide them.
It was a well-made film but the book was far better because more was left to the reader’s imagination. After all it was the imagination of those boys that created real monsters from their own minds.
I was used to creating my own visions from the books I had read. Those of my childhood had been left behind and for almost five years I had been browsing my parents’ bookcases as well as the packed shelves of the municipal library.
At home I could choose from classics such as Alexander Dumas or the more recent tales of Maigret by Simenon, or fall in between with Conan Doyle’s Baker Street detective or Bronte’s Jane Eyre.
Now I had a new author to discover. If an author wrote more than one book then it was down to me to see if all the books were the same story or whether they varied.
There appeared to be one theme running through Golding’s first three books – survival; but the means of survival or lack thereof, were treated in differing ways.
If a book is written in isolation then it can only be read that way; but if there is more than one (and I don’t mean a series) then they all need to be considered when making a judgment on any.
It sounds like some form of philosophical meandering but at the time it was an early entry into literary review.
Of the three books I still think the first was the best but maybe that is because it was a plot that I was closest to in that I was a boy and could imagine what boys might do on a deserted island with no adult supervision.
I could not yet turn my imagination to existence in prehistoric terms, even when that is the direction the boys had been heading.
Harder still was to see myself as Pincher Martin, surviving alone on an island when he had already died before being washed up on the island’s shore.
Many years later I read all three again and now found myself feeling a greater affinity with Lok than with Ralph and Jack but still failing to find that empathy with Pincher Martin.
We all take something from every book we read and it helps us to grow. Not necessarily physical growth but certainly a growth in understanding.
Tomorrow: the exams loom and another decision on my future must be taken.
by Sylvia Plath
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools’ Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Studying at home while getting work experience with a recently-launched local newspaper was working well in the run-up to Christmas 1965.
Naturally I took a break from studying over what would have been a school holiday and spent a little bit longer at the Gazette offices while also having time to spend at the Little Theatre as panto time approached.
This led to me getting my first ever byline in a real newspaper while helping to publicise the theatre group which meant so much to me.
The editor asked me to write a feature about the pantomime, Mother Goose, which I turned into a potted history of panto and the Little Theatre.
The feature included a number of pictures of main characters and the chorus but it also showed the start of my feature-writing style which set a standard for me for decades to come.
Whether written about a drama group, or a school group ski-ing in Austria I would ensure there was some background, even historical at times.
In this case I brought in the history of pantomime, the history of the Little Theatre and even a reference to the local Conservative MP Nigel Birch in six paragraphs.
The rest of the article was mainly details of the main players and of the chorus members, local names for local people in a local paper.
For this I was granted my first ever byline at the age of 15. In the 60s and 70s bylines were rare occurences and not dished out like lollipops to well-behaved children at a party as they seem to be nowadays.
For a new newspaper the feature was worthwhile because it was the first time such a piece had appeared in the Gazette. For a long-running newspaper it would just have been dragging out the same old story as the previous year.
That first byline was very important to me. I achieved many more before I moved from reporting to production – and even a couple afterwards, but that’s another story.
I actually helped out backstage at the panto as well, but on the night the pages were being made up for an overnight print run I was allowed to stay on and lend a hand.
Luckily I wasn’t in the union at that time, not being a “proper reporter” or even old enough to join the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) because things I did to help out that night would have brought the unions out at most newspaper offices.
All that was still to come.
I was just happy to get a byline.
PS: Memories can be rusty especially when harking back over 50 years.
In the same scrapbook I found the picture of Monica Rose on the elephant. That was when I discovered we did not use the picture with Hughie Green. Hannibal the baby elephant was well-behaved without his touch.
by Ted Hughes
I imagine this midnight moment’s forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock’s loneliness
And this blank page where ny fingers move.
Through this window I see no star
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox’s nose touches twigs, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye
A widening deepening greenness
Brilliantly, concentratedly
Coming about its own business
Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
If I had been born a few years later I would not have had the option to leave the regimented education system of the grammar school behind me.
As it was in 1965 the age was still set at 15 even though attempts had begun a year earlier to raise it to 16. Luckily for me the efforts were stalled and the change did not go through until 1972.
Leaving at 15 did me no harm. Thanks to Harold Wilson I did actually go on to tertiary education in the 1990s with the Open University and have the right to put BA (Open) after my name.
I’m getting ahead of myself, however, as in September 1965 I had officially left school and was studying for my GCEs at home.
Without the rigid structure of the grammar school I could study each subject at the time that felt right for me.
It was that joyous moment between school and work when I could start at 8am if I had woken bright and early or 10 if it had not been a good night.
I was still getting up at the same time as when I went to school, after all the household routine didn’t revolve around me. My sister still had to get off to school and Dad had to open the shop.
The living room became my classroom and the big table was my desk – with plenty of room to spread books and papers.
If I wanted more information I only had to go to the library. At school this would have required a note of permission from a teacher and a walk to the old buildings.
Now I could go to the library whenever I felt like it as it was just a walk to the end of our street. The only danger was that I would be distracted by the books that surrounded me.
By the end of September I was well ahead in all the subjects I was studying. That was the moment my big break came out of the blue.
The local newspaper when I was growing up was the Rhyl Journal, which had been around since the 1800s and had incorporated at least one other paper during that time.
In April that year a new weekly newspaper was launched called the Rhyl and Prestatyn Gazette, run by a journalist and an advertising executive.
The journalist was clearly the editor (and editorial director) and his partner was advertising director. The editor was in our shop one day chatting with my father who just happened to mention I wanted to be a journalist. When he heard this he asked my father if I would like a bit of work experience (I’m not sure that was even a concept at that time) – a few hours a week.
The deal was struck and I joined the team the following week. Initially it was a couple of hours on a Monday morning and the same on a Thursday afternoon, the day the paper went to the printers.
The offices were a lock-up shop set over three floors in the building which housed the Odeon Cinema. The Rhyl and Prestatyn Gazette had the middle shop in the row.
Downstairs there was a receptionist and a small room to one side whch housed the filing cabinets for pictures and other editorial cuttings and material as well as a desk. The next floor was the advertising department with a team of reps on phones drumming up business.
The top floor was the page setting and makeup department as well as the editor’s office and a desk for a reporter.
The editorial and ads were set on a system using punched tape to produce typeset material which was cut and pasted on to page layouts.
Nowadays it is all done by computers (which is pretty well what a lot of journalists are these days) but even this form of typesetting was a move on from the hot metal setting used on most newspapers at that time.
My role, for four or five hours a week, mainly consisted of sitting in the downstairs office typing up lists of mourners and floral tributes for funeral reports; taking down sports reports over the telephone; filing the previous weeks’ photographs; and, joy of joys, occasionally going out with a real reporter on a story.
My biggest scoop was getting quotes from Hughie Greene (Double Your Money) and his miniscule assistant Monica Rose to go with a picture of Monica on the back of a baby elephant with Hughie patting its trunk.
Not the biggest scoop in the world but it made me feel good.
I also wrote a serial story for the Gazette Childrens Club and set puzzles for the youngsters under the guise of Uncle Bill.
This continued through to the summer of 1966 and was my first real taste of the world of newspapers.
by Dylan Thomas
from Under Milk Wood
Every morning when I wake,
Dear Lord a little prayer I make,
O please to keep a loving eye,
On all poor creatures born to die.
And every evening at sundown
I ask a blessing on the town,
For whether we last the night or no
I’m sure is always touch-and-go.
We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side not our worst.
O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say, goodbye – but just for now.
For Gwyneth and Christine
Eighty years ago today my father was celebrating his 25th birthday – somewhere in France. It was a week before the mass evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the French port of Dunkirk.
Unfortunately Sgt. David Pierce, RAMC, did not get to Dunkirk with his ambulance convoy.
My father was studying at the Liverpool College of Pharmacy when war was declared on 3 September 1939. He immediately went and volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps.
The second thing he did was to visit his fiancee, Ivy Lloyd, who he had met in Rhyl two years earlier when she was on holiday with her family.
He told her what he had done and asked her to have their wedding earlier than planned – in fact in just six weeks’ time.
He spent those six weeks at an army training centre in the south and returned to Liverpool on Sunday, 15th October, having gained the rank of corporal.
They got married on Monday, 16th October and had a two-day honeymoon in London. Then she returned to Liverpool and he joined the troops heading for Belgium.
Seven months later she did not know if her new husband was dead or a prisoner of the Germans. She did know that he was not one of those evacuated from Dunkirk on the “armada of little ships”.
In fact his ambulance convoy was eventually evacuated from a port on the West coast of France (Brittany).
Following a recently-released film most people are aware the Dunkirk evacuation was called Operation Dynamo.
The last ships left Dunkirk on 4th June and then they had to organise Operation Aerial which took two weeks to get the rest out. Unfortunately the families of those who did not get out at Dunkirk were not informed there was a second chance.
Dad could have reached Dunkirk if he had been willing to leave the ambulances of wounded men to be captured by the Germans. Every single medic and driver refused to leave their charges and struck out for the West.
They managed to stay roughly 24 hours ahead of the German army. Unfortunately the Luftwaffe constantly pursued them and time after time they had to seek cover as the Germans didn’t seem to notice the red crosses when they strafed the road.
Dad made light of this when he told us of his wartime adventures but to this day we knew we were lucky to be here because he was lucky to get home.
It was mid-June before he finally got back to Britain. He was given a short leave and was then posted to the Middle East and my mother didn’t see him again for five years.
But that’s another story.
Happy Birthday Dad.
by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Home schooling is not easy, as many parents are discovering during this crisis. That does not mean it can not be done and done well.
In the 80s I spent two years working in Oman as night editor of the state-owned daily newspaper.
After a few months my wife and children joined me but it was not long before we realised it was not the best place for a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old girl to be.
My daughters went back to Prestatyn to stay with my brother and his family and attend the local secondary while my son, aged seven, stayed with us in Oman and began home schooling.
Simple maths problems were easy to supply and for English a teacher back home had given us material to get us through a couple of years.
That left geography and history. The latter wasn’t too hard as Marion and I had a good working knowledge of both and for the former we started with a large scale world map pinned up on the apartment wall.
It began with giving him a place to find on the map. After two weeks he was finding towns or countries within 60 seconds.
By the time we returned to North Wales he was ahead of his peers in almost every subject. I was not that hot with Welsh but his maths and command of the English language was great.
My own home schooling was not quite so free and easy.
In September 1965 my first major problem surfaced. I missed my friends.
I know Roger and I, along with a couple of others, Dennis Randall and Peter Horton, had knocked about together all summer.
The difference on the first day of the autumn term was that I was sitting down at home with a stack of books and lesson booklets and they were together in a classroom.
Ater a while I began to take a break and meet Roger and others after school at a local coffee bar in town Le Nautique.
The difference to learning in school as to learning at home was that without the school discipline I had to discipline myself.
Later in life I found that this was a bonus especially as a journalist when setting a deadline and sticking to it was vital. If deadlines weren’t met and presses didn’t roll on time the story didn’t get to the people.
A few years later when I was on a journalism block release course a lecturer (teacher not journalist) said: “Robin needs deadlines and if they are not set then he sets his own, which is not always a good thing.”
She was right and she was wrong.
At work my personal deadlines meant I always completed my work to fit in with the overall deadline.
In life itself I often set unnecessary deadlines as to when to set off to get somewhere, allowing for problems en route. This has meant that at times I arrived for appointments half an hour beforehand. At least I wasn’t late.
Back to home school.
My first delivery of schooling material arrived about a fortnight before the September start which meant I did have time to go through it and work out my own timetable.
For history and geography it was fairly easy to plan because pieces of work had to be returned at set dates and, especially with history, there was a chronological order of study.
Englsh was a different matter. Did I read Lord of the Flies in one straight run and then refer back to it as necessary or should I read it alongside the course insructions?
That was easy – I read it on the day I got it, for pleasure, then read it twice more before home school began. Once because I enjoyed it and the second time just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.
Occasionally I slipped and instead of working I would let my mind wander.
In school this would have meant a sharp reprimand or even a well-flung piece of chalk.
In my lounge/classroom I had to snap out of it and get back on track because I wanted to, not because someone was making me do it.
It soon dawned on me that my problem was grammar school rigid authority. The school’s problem was that the more they clamped down on me the more I rebelled.
It doesn’t make either setup right or wrong but it was a lesson that helped me over the next 55 years and continues to help me to this day.
That’s the school bell ending the lesson. Or is it just the old black telephone ringing away?
Robin's Nest