Sonnet I

by William Shakespeare

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory:

But thou contracted to thy own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self be cruel:

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding:

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by thy grave and thee.

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense   
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence   
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept   
    For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.   
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and   
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;   
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped   
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass   
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth   
Until the next town, new and nondescript,   
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys   
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls   
I took for porters larking with the mails,   
And went on reading. Once we started, though,   
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls   
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,   
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant   
More promptly out next time, more curiously,   
And saw it all again in different terms:   
The fathers with broad belts under their suits   
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;   
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,   
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,   
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.   
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed   
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days   
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define   
Just what it saw departing: children frowned   
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared   
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.   
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast   
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,   
And someone running up to bowl—and none   
Thought of the others they would never meet   
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.   
I thought of London spread out in the sun,   
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across   
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss   
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail   
Travelling coincidence; and what it held   
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power   
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower   
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

Summertime and the lovin’ is …. not that easy

In 1965 in the UK Harold Wilson was Prime Minister; wartime PM Winston Churchill was given a state funeral; Liverpool won the FA Cup for the first time; Ian Smith was preparing to declare UDI in Rhodesia; the Beatles first film ‘Help” was released; capital punishment was ended; Kenneth Tynan was the first person to use the “f” word on British television.

Meanwhile in Rhyl my friends and I were making the most of a mediocre summer.

I truly intended to make the most of what might be my last summer of freedom. After all if you don’t go to school you don’t get school holidays.

The amusement arcades and the theatre were not my only source of enjoyment.

In later years, when we had our own motorised transport, we could travel far afield but that summer we relied on our bikes or just walked.

It wasn’t far from the town centre to the harbour or the Marine Lake and at that end of town Rhyl had not one but two funfairs.

Although they were technically two separate fairs the Marine Lake Fun Fair and the Ocean Beach were one great homogenous, flashy, brightly-lit and loud source of fun.

Sometimes we would go down in the daytime but the real fun was to be had at night when all the stalls and rides were garishly lit with multi-coloured bulbs; the stallholders and barkers shouted out the delights of their offerings; and holidaymakers screamed and shouted on rides such as the Caterpillar, or the Mad Mouse rollercoaster; or the carousel.

The Big Wheel, from the top of which you got a view of the Clwydian Range in one direction or out to sea the other, and the Mad Mouse, a rollercoaster ride which left your stomach behind as it dropped from the heights, or had you scared it would come off the tracks on corners.

At ground level the fair seemed to go on and on with hoop-la stalls, coconut shies, roll-a-penny pitches, even a rifle range with real rifles, Winchesters, and real bullets, just as the cowboys used at the Saturday morning pictures.

At 15 (going on 16) we were aware of the opposite sex. Not that sex was really on the cards with local girls where you were more likely to get a slap wthout even the slightest tickle.

Holidaymakers were a different matter.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that these girls were ‘easy’. Far from it. Yet wandering hands might get a bit further when the girl knew she was unlikely to see you ever again once the holiday was over.

When the cover went over the carriages on the Caterpillar the shrieks weren’t all from girls scared of the dark.

Not that local boys had the pick of the girls at the fair. That ‘honour’ was more likely to benefit the lads on the dodgem cars who would jump from car to car as they collected the money.

Dodgem cars at Rhyl were holidaymakers were an easy target for the lads who collected the fares.

If you did find a girl at the fair you were best advised to take her round some of the sideshows first to win her a cuddly toy by hitting the Ace of Spades with three darts; or flicking a wooden ring over a post with a prize on top. Trying to impress her with the ‘Test Your Strength’ machine was not a good idea.

A couple of prizes, a candy floss or hot dog followed by a ride on the carousel was the perfect prelude to a trip on the Ghost Train where you had a good chance of your partner clinging to you in fright at the luminous skeletons and giant spiders.

An offer to walk her back to her digs was a further chance of intimacy as you slipped an arm around her waist and, if you were really lucky, you might get a five-minute midnight smooch on the doorstep.

There are probably numerous boys who went back to school after that summer and told their pals of the fun they had under the pier with a different girl every night.

In reality the closest they would have got to the birds and the bees was in a biology lesson.

Philip Larkin claimed in his poem Annus Mirabilis that sex was invented in 1963 – he may have been right but it didn’t reach North Wales for quite a few years after that.

Sea Virus

by Gwyneth Lewis

I knew I should never have gone below

but I did, and the fug of bilges and wood

caught me aback. The sheets of my heart

snapped taut to breaking, as a gale

stronger than longing filled the sail

inside me. To be shot of land

and its woodsmoke! To feel the keel

cold in a current! To see the mast

inscribing the water like a restless pen

writing a fading wake! It’s true

I’m ruined. Not even peace will do

to keep me ashore now. Not even you.

What a year

School’s out so the dull school uniform was a thing of the past as was the old school tie. Me at 15.

I have to admit 1965 turned out to be quite a year. Leaving grammar school at 15 was not a usual occurrence in the 60s. The point is I didn’t fit in.

If a lesson interested me then I gave it my full attention. The problem was that other than English the major part of most lessons was boring.

Even the science subjects, which for four years were the foundation of my dreams for a future in forensic science, could not hold my attention for more than half a lesson period – and we sometimes had double periods.

Put me in an English class, especially literature, and I was all eyes and ears. Dale Jones had opened a new world for me.

For now, however, I had an early summer holiday and the actual summer holidays ahead of me as my correspondence courses did not start until September.

An extra bonus was that I could give more time to my major interest – the theatre. Not theatre in general but specifically the Rhyl Little Theatre.

Since my debut as a fish I had participated in a number of productions including my first Shakespearean role.

That’s me on the right with horned helmet (indicated), posh red cloak with a yellow lining and a sword

Unfortunately when I won a part I used to throw myself into it heart and soul and with a week of evening performances this can be quite draining to a 14-year-old boy. By the third night I had developed a temperature and felt constantly cold – not that I admitted that to anyone.

When I was offstage I would go to the dressing room and wrap myself up in my cloak and do everything possible to stay awake.

I kept going for the week, Monday to Saturday 7.30pm to 10.30pm. When I woke on Sunday morning I felt drained, but by then I could afford to feel that way as the play was over.

My parents kept me in bed all that day and the following day they called the doctor. He could not identify the actual sickness but he knew the best cure. I spent that week in bed not school.

I have had similar bouts since but have normally recognised it in time and just spent 24 hours in bed gettng shot of it.

I think it was 1965 that I appeared as Dennis in the Group 200 production of Loot by Joe Orton. It was a risque play for any theatre company let alone an amateur drama group in a Welsh seaside town.

I suggest you look up the plot. Suffice it to say that at 15 I was playing a bisexual undertaker’s assistant turned bank robber. My fellow criminal was Mike (Williams) Carpenter who had appeared with me in The Deserted House. He also played the eponymous hero in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer when I played his pal Joe Harper.

I said 1965 was an important year in the sense of my growing up. I mean at 15 I had certainly recognised the delights of some of my female companions at the theatre.

I did go out on some rather juvenile dates, generally to the pictures, but things certainly never went as far as others claim was their experience in that “summer of love”.

Maybe that is why so many “girl friends” remained girl friends.

That was not the major part of my growing up that year, however. That came with a Sunday magazine supplement and an article about a young revolutionary who within two years would become an international icon of youth.

At that time he was still a niche character, subsidiary to the Cuban president Fidel Castro who had expelled the corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959.

The newspaper article was about a young Argentinian who accompanied Castro in 1959 but was now resigning from the government to take the revolutionary message further afield.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara

Not that I jumped straight in to revolutionary politics, although that was when my earliest socialist views kicked in. Probably the radical background of Nonconformist ancestors including Welsh weavers and shoemakers.

My first affiliation to any political party was, as many people will be surprised to hear, Plaid Cymru led at that time by Gwynfor Evans.

Plaid Cymru’s attraction to me might not have been totally political. I was in a relationship with a very attractive red head at that time and she might have had an influence on me.

It did not last long as both the girl and Plaid Cymru were put behind me later that year and I looked towards a political ideology that was not quite so nationalistic – possibly more internationalist.

That, as they say, is another story. For now we will leave it there in the glorious summer of 65 when my life began to branch out.

Batpoem

By Adrian Henri
(for Bob Kane and The Almost Blues)

Take me back to Gotham City
Batman
Take me where the girls are pretty
Batman
All those damsels in distress
Half-undressed or even less
The BatPill makes’em all say Yes
Batman

Help us out in Vietnam
Batman
Help us drop that BatNapalm
Batman
Help us bomb those jungle towns
Spreading pain and death around
Coke ‘n’ Candy wins them round
Batman

Help us smash the Vietcong
Batman
Help us show them that they’re wrong
Batman
Help us spread democracy
Get them high on LSD
Make them just like you and me
Batman

Show me what I have to do
Batman
‘Cause I want to be like you
Batman
Flash your Batsign over Lime Street
Batmobiles down every crimestreet
Happy Batday that’s when I’ll meet
Batman.

Headmaster O belligerent boy 1

All the way home after my “little chat” with the headmaster I was wondering what to say to my parents and how they would take it.

I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t frightened. My father was a big man. He was also a gentle man. He never raised his hand in anger.

Considering all he had gone through earlier in his life it was surprising he was NOT filled with anger.

My father was born during the Great War in 1915 the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls. His father, Rev Edward Vyrnwy Pierce, and his mother, Catherine nee Crocket, were everythig to their children and their oldest daughter Dorothy was young David’s “big sister” in every possible way and he called her Dodo.

In the late 20s Dorothy left Grove Park Grammar School and went to Bangor Unversity to study to be a teacher.

David hoped to follow her to Bangor to study classics.

After her graduation in 1932, when David was just 17, she hung herself in her rooms at the university.

Their mother never recovered from the shock and heartbreak and died the following year.

This left David home alone with his father, his siblings had already left home and begun their lives.

University was now a forbidden word in the house of mourning.

Meeting my mother made all the difference to him.

These were the people I was cycling home to tell that I had been involved in a difference of opinion with the headmaster and had defied his authority.

As it happened they both took it reasonably well. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t caused them plenty of concern in my 15 years, with all sorts of scrapes. Putting a stink bomb in a solicitor’s car was the least of them.

Naturally they knew something was up by the time I got home. A telephone call had covered the mile faster than I could cycle.

What they didn’t know were the details. The headmaster’s secretary had simply said he wanted to speak to them the following day.

Dad had an office behind the shop, linking to the kitchen. He needed to keep an eye on the shop as it didn’t close until 6 and so the great discussion took place there.

I explained the situation so far to my parents and finished by saying I was not going to stay down a year and if that was what the head intended for me then he was out of luck – or words to that effect.

Afer listening to everything I had to say there was silence and my parents looked at each other and then my father said: “Well what are you going to do with yourself now then? If you don’t go to school how will you study? You will need some form of educational certificate or you will find it a hard slog ahead.”

“I’m not going back.”

“OK. We’ll take that as read. So what do you want to be? A shop assistant? A clerk in an office?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s say you don’t go back. I don’t mind what you decide in the end. You can travel the world if that will make you happy but what will you do when the travelling comes to an end? You need something to fall back on. You need something to show, even if it is just a piece of paper with an official stamp on it. What do you enjoy other than science?”

“Writing. Words. William Shakespeare.”

It was not a brilliant start but it did begin a conversation.

It took time but somehow, without knowing how I had got there, I found myself saying: “I want to be a journalist.”

That was a significant moment which set me on a course not just to my future career but also to my political enlightenment and to meet the love of my life.

For many years I firmly believed I made that decision and settled the course of my life then and there.

It was many years later I realised my father had never believed I would have settled to a scientific life and knew that my future lay with words.

He was right.

It was initially a tortuous road.

I don’t know how but I did not go back to school; my parents signed me up with a correspondence course and I studied for four GCEs from home but sat the actual exams at my old school – I was the only one not in uniform.

I know I studied English Language and Literature as well as history but I don’t remember the fourth subject.

It was an interesting time during that period from May 1965 to June 1966. I probably worked harder than I had done at school because now I was in charge. Well my parents were technically as this was home schooling but I wanted to make a success of it.

I still had the theatre, which in its way was part of my education, and my books, and the library and my friends at weekends.

I was happy.

Defying the headmaster only made it sweeter.

Pathology of Colours

by Dannie Abse

I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
but not when it ripens in a tumour;
and healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
in limbs that fester are not springlike.

I have seen red-blue tinged with hirsute mauve
in the plum-skin face of a suicide.
I have seen white, china white almost, stare
from behaind the smashed windscreen of a car.

And the criminal, multi-coloured flash
of an H-bomb is no more beautiful
than an autopsy when the belly’s opened –
to show cathedral windows never opened.

So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
in the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen, visible, Death’s artifact
like a soldier’s ribbon on a tunic tacked.

Feet of clay

Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the pathologist who became known as the father forensics.

Over the last four or five decades forensic science has become a major factor in TV series.

If the main character was not a pathologist then he/she was sure to be one of the stars.

The first major tv show starring a pathologist was Quincy ME, starring the lugubrious Jack Klugman as Professor Quincy, a medical examiner (an American version of our pathologist), which began in the late 1960s.

Jack Klugman, seated right, with other major stars in the American TV series Quincy ME

My own interest in forensic pathology began long before that. Just a few months after starting at Rhyl Grammar School in September 1961 I had decided on my future career. I was going to be a pathologist and my benchmark for success would be the great British pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury.

Over the next few years I became an “expert” on crime and the importance of science in solving murders in the first half of the 20th century.

I was already a fan of Conan Doyle’s ceation Sherlock Holmes and it was clear the author had imbued his offbeat hero with many of the elements of the forensic scientist.

By the time I was in my second year I was getting my books from the adult library and was reading the trials of some of the most notorious murderers of the first half of the 20th century. It was in reading one of the trial reports that I came across Spilsbury.

He was involved in a case which is still frequently referred to these days – that of Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen accused of murdering his wife Cora and entombing her in the cellar before eventually fleeing to Canada on the SS Montrose with his young lover Ethel Neave.

A Morse code message to the ship ensured Crippen was held and a detective sailed on a faster ship and was in Quebec when Crippen’s ship docked.

A Scotland Yard detective escorts the arrested Dr Crippen off the SS Montrose in Quebec.

Spilsbury was also central to the brides in the bath murder case (George Joseph Smith) which I saw referenced in a recent UK crime series.

These and many others gave him a reputation which lived on for years after Spilsbury’s death.

It saddened me years later to find that this “great man” had feet of clay and in many of his cases later examinations revealed errors in his methods.

In fact there is now a belief that the body in the cellar might not even be that of Cora Crippen and might have been buried before Crippen lived in the house.

In the 60s, however, all that lay ahead and I applied myself to chemistry and biology lessons and also to physics as I would need all three if I wanted to get to university.

The problem came in my fourth year. The physics teacher and I did not get along (a situation I was to face many times with people I did not see eye to eye with) and this meant I did not always pull my weight.

Not that this bothered me as what I fell down on during term time I tended to make up just before the exams.

In the summer term of 1964 the exams would determine which subjects we would be allowed to choose for the following year and which we could drop.

My intention was to stick with the sciences and I was quite prepared to drop geography for a start.

Unfortunately the physics teacher, Bill Fizz, had different ideas. He wanted me to drop physics and said that no matter how well I did in the subject if I did better in geography then that was what I had to do.

As I say, I wasn’t worried. Diligent revision would get me what I wanted, except it didn’t.

Just as my belief in Spilsbury was to be destroyed so was my belief in my own abilities.

My chemistry and biology marks were adequate but for the first time my physics mark was below 50% and my geography mark, usually faltering around the 50% mark, was over 60.

Bill Fizz got his way but that was not all.

The headmaster called me to his study and gave me a lecture on how failure at school would lead to failure in life. He had, therefore, decided that the best thing for me was to stay down a year and go through fourth form all over again.

Now I was well aware that I had done badly in my exams and it certainly looked as though my brilliant medical career, slicing up dead bodies, was about to crumble around me.

I was always a contrary little son-of-a-gun but this time something inside me went into overdrive and I told the headmaster I had no intention of staying down and would quit school rather than do so.

I don’t think this had ever happened before and he appeared dumbstruck until he managed to say: “It will not be your choice boy. I will be speaking to your parents.”

With that I was dismissed and as it was the end of the school day I headed straight home to get the first word in with my parents.

Tomorrow: when one door closes . . . .