Up sticks and we’re heading home to the land of the Red Dragon

We talked a lot that Sunday, the love of my life and myself.

The point is that anything I said involved convincing myself that I would not just hop from job to job. I had responsibilities. I had a family.

It was my darling who put her finger on it and broke the deadlock.

As she rightly pointed out, I would see the move as running away again, as I had when I joined the Sooty Show. But if I found another job first it would not be running away, but starting afresh.

That is why when I went in to start my noon shift on Monday the first thing I did was to ring a number in Oswestry and ask to speak to Mr Tom Roberts.

Obviously the operator had given him my name because as soon as I was put through he said: “Hello Robin, how are you doing, Enjoying watching all the big movies and getting paid for it?”

We had a bit of general chat about this and that. Being one of the directors of North Wales News he had a lot he could chat about, but then he said: “Well, that’s enough of the news room chat, why have you really called?”

Then I told him I wanted to get back into journalism and I wondered if there was anything going in the company.

He told me there might be something, but he would have to check first. I arranged to call him again at 3pm, thanked him for his time and hung up.

I had plenty of paperwork to keep me busy for the next three hours but it still seemed time passed slowly. Finally three o’clock arrived and once again I dialled the number and asked to speak to Tom Roberts.

He told me there was a vacancy for a reporter on the Chronicle, a weekly newspaper based in Bangor, although the job was based at Holyhead covering a good part of Anglesey.

The editor was Ray Bower and he was prepared to take me on as I came recommended by Peter Leaney and Brian Barratt, two senior editors. The job would come open in two weeks but, as they thought I would need to give four weeks’ notice, the job could be held open for another two weeks.

I told Tom I would have to talk to my wife about it but thought she would be happy with the situation. I said I would confirm the position by ringing him on the Tuesday morning.

I couldn’t help thinking about the situation all day and evening and on the journey home that night. As soon as I got home Marion could hardly wait to hear what had happened.

I told her everything that had passed between Tom and myself and then just said: “The job’s there if I want it. Start in four weeks’ time. Do we want it?”

She threw her arms around my neck and said: “Yes we do.”

The die was cast and from that moment we were on our way home.

Verses on a Butterfly

by Joseph Warton

Fair Child of Sun and Summer! we behold
With eager eyes thy wings bedropp'd with gold;
The purple spots that o'er thy mantle spread,
The sapphire's lively blue, the ruby's red,
Ten thousand various blended tints surprise,
Beyond the rainbow's hues or peacock's eyes:
Not Judah's king in eastern pomp array'd,
Whose charms allur'd from far the Sheban maid,
High on his glitt'ring throne, like you could shine
(Nature's completest miniature divine):
For thee the rose her balmy buds renews,
And silver lilies fill their cups with dews;
Flora for thee the laughing fields perfumes,
For thee Pomona sheds her choicest blooms,
Soft Zephyr wafts thee on his gentlest gales
O'er Hackwood's sunny hill and verdant vales;
For thee, gay queen of insects! do we rove
From walk to walk, from beauteous grove to grove;
And let the critics know, whose pedant pride
And awkward jests our sprightly sport deride:
That all who honours fame, or wealth pursue,
Change but the name of things - they hunt for you.

For a row of laurel shrubs

by David Wagoner

They don't want to be your hedge,
Your barrier, your living wall, the no-go
Go-between between your property
And the prying of dogs and strangers. They don't

Want to settle any of your old squabbles
Inside or out of bounds. Their new growth
In eight-foot shoots goes thrusting straight
Up in the air each April or goes off

Half-cocked sideways to recconoiter
Wilder dimensions: the very idea
Of squareness, of staying level seems
Alien to them, and they aren't in the least

Discouraged by being suddenly lopped off
Year after year by clippers or the stuttering
Electric teeth of trimmers hedging their bets
To keep them all in line, all roughly

In order, they don't even
Want to be good-neighborly bushes
(Though under the outer stems and leaves
The thick thick-headed, soot-blackened

Elderly branches have been dodging
And weaving through so many disastrous springs
So many whacked out, contra
Dictory changes of direction, they've locked

Themselves together for good). Yet each
Original planting, left to itself, would be
No fence, no partition, no crook-jointed
Entanglement, but a tree by now outside
 
With all of itself turned
Inconvenient angle you can imagine,
And look, on the ground, the fallen leaves,
Brown, leathery, as thick as tongues, remain

Almost what they were, tougher than ever,
Slow to molder, to give in, dead slow to feed
The earth themselves, there at the feet
Of their fathers in the evergreen shade

Of their replacements. Remember, admirers
Long ago would sometimes weave fresh clippings   
Into crowns and place them squarely on the heads
Of their most peculiar poets.

Cantata on the Day of Lenin’s Death

(21 Jan 1924)

by Bertolt Brecht

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and for the past two years I have saved this cantata so that I could post it on the centenary of Lenin's death. That was yesterday - I missed it. Never mind, better late than never.

1.
The day Lenin passed away
A soldier of the death watch, so runs the story, told his comrades:
I did not want to
Believe it. I went inside, and
Shouted in his ear: "Ilyich
The exploiters are on their way!"
He did not move. Now
I knew that he has expired."
2.
When a good man wants to leave
How can you hold him back?
Tell him why he is needed.
That holds him.
3.
What could hold Lenin back?
4.
The soldier thought
When he hears, the exploiters are coming
He may be ever so ill, he will still get up
Perhaps he will come on crutches
Perhaps he will let himself be carried, but
He will get up and come
In order to confront the exploiters.
5.
The soldier knew,  that is to say, that Lenin
Throughout his life, had carried on a struggle
Against the exploiters.
6.
And the soldier who had taken part
In the storming of the Winter Palace wanted to return home because there
The landed estates were being distributed
Then Lenin told him to stay on!
The exploiters are there still,
And so long as there is exploitation
One must struggle against it.
So long as you exist
You must struggle against it.
7.
The weak do not fight. The stronger
Fight on perhaps for an hour.

I can imagine that solder leaning down to speak directly into the ear of Lenin. That ear is very small (I know because I have seen it) but it heard the peasants, even though they were far away. The day always comes, however, when that ear can no longer listen and someone else must listen to the sounds of people calling for justice

Dream Barker

by Jean Valentine

We met for supper in your flat-bottomed boat.
I got there first: in a white dress: I remember
Wondering if you'd come. Then you shot over the bank,
A Virgilian Nigger Jim, and poled us off
To a little sea-food barker's cave you knew.

What'll you have? you said. Eaves hung down,
Bamboozled claws hung up from the crackling weeds.
The light was all behind us. To one side
In a dish of ice was a shell shaped like a sand-dollar
But worked with Byzantine blue and gold. What's that?

Well, I've never seen it before, you said,
And I don't know how it tastes.
Oh well, said I, if it's bad,
I'm not too hungry, are you? We'd have the shell ...
I know just how you feel, you said.

And asked for it; we held out our hands.
Six Dollars! barked the barker, For This Beauty!
We fell down laughing in your flat-bottomed boat.

And then I woke up: in a white dress:
Dry as a bone on dry land, Jim,
Bone dry, old, in a dry land, Jim, my Jim.

January

by John Updike

The days are short
The sun a spark
Hung thin between
The dark and dark

Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor
Milk bottles burst
Outside the door.

The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees of lace.

The sky is low
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.

It takes a tough wake-up call to tell you that you’re in the wrong job

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things; of shoes and ships; and sealing wax; of cabbages and kings.

If I am the walrus (not the one the Beatles sang about) then Marion was not the carpenter, but the gardener, and a time did come when we had to talk of many things.

Not cabbages, or kings, but more where the future would take us and if we were to leave Basildon, where she had grown up, then should we remain close or make a giant leap.

Initially when I started to look at management roles in the Rank Organisation we had considered looking for a manager’s role which included accommodation.

Camden Town, where I did get my first manager’s position, had accommodation but it had been let out to the permanent assistant manager, and she had occupied for about 20 or 30 years.

The talk about making a move came to a head one Saturday when I came home early, following an incident at the cinema.

We had a Children’s Cinema Club session every Saturday morning and it always proved popular.

When you talk about children you probably imagine the youngsters at Saturday Morning Cinema in the 1950s or 60s. There is old film footage of these youngsters cheering on the cowboy hero, or gasping as Flash Gordon was surrounded by aliens.

They would cheer and bounce up and down on their seats. At the very worst they might throw empty ice-cream tubs at each other, but an usher or usherette (they still differentiated in those days) flashing a torch soon settled them down.

By the second half of the 70s the age range reached somewhat higher with many in their early teens. The trouble then was that teenagers did not behave the way they did when I was that age.

London teenagers in the 70s were also tougher and rougher than any others.

Rank had policies about what should happen in various situations.

At the top level was the instruction to managers facing armed robbers demanding the day’s takings: Do nothing – let them take the money.

This might be considered as concern for the safety of employees but it was probably based on the compensation they might have to fork out if a member of staff was badly wounded or even fatally wounded.

Unruly behaviour in the foyer or auditorium could be handled by ejecting the troublemakers (if you had enough ushers to handle it). Quite often ejecting the worst troublemaker could end with his or her mates leaving of their own accord.

Anybody trying to pinch sweets from the confectionery counter would also be ejected (after taking back the stolen goods of course).

On this particular Saturday morning I was doing my rounds to keep an eye on staff and the youngsters and I just happened to be in the foyer when the intermission began and hordes of youngsters aged 6 to 60 poured into the foyer to either avail themselves of the toilets or to buy more sweets, drinks, ice-cream or popcorn.

I noticed a bit of trouble starting near the hot dog stall and headed over to calm it down. As I approached I put one hand on one youngster to my right and my other hand on a shoulder to my left.

The next thing I knew was that the character on the left had shrugged off my hand and squirmed away into the crowd and then the one on my right had twisted round and his fist was aimed straight at my face – which it did not take too long to make a connection with.

This was not some weedy 12-year-old, this was a mid-teens with a build and a punch that would have equalled those of Carl Gizzi (a champion boxer from Rhyl).

I ended up flat on my back on the marbled floor and could feel the blood trickling down from my nose.

By the time members of the staff reached me to help me up my assailant was gone. At this point I was more interested in staunching the blood flowing from my nose and ruining one of my favourite silk ties,

The handkerchief from my breast pocket proved adequate and I managed to get to my office where the assistant manager had brought me some cloth and a bowl of ice cubes.

Although the punch in the face had produced what seemed like gallons of blood it hadn’t been a full-on central punch and although my nose hurt like hell it was, fortunately, unbroken.

As it was my assistant was perfectly agreeable to take on the rest of the Saturday shift, I was due to finish at 6 and it was around 12 o’clock, and also suggested I rest up and come in at midday on Monday for the afternoon evening shift.

When I did get home, my coat covering the blood on my shirt (I’d taken the tie off) but not disguising my bruised face, Marion was immediately concerned and suggested I should go up to the hospital but I said I’d rather wait and see how it was in the morning.

The girls wanted to know what had happened and, not wanting them worried I told them I had tripped and fallen flat on my face.

They were curious about the colours now showing up on my nose, under my eye and on my swollen cheek, but at the same time were very solicitous and until their bedtime they were sat either side of me.

Marion and I had a long talk that night and the following day, by which time my face was not looking so bad, although my cheek did hurt.

Our first concern was as to whether or not I should go back to work but I felt that even if we did decide to make a change in either the place where I worked, or even if I would continue with Rank I was not going to allow some young thug keep me away from my work.

One thing we did discuss was a return to journalism, and, if so, where.

I didn’t want to remain in the area, although Tony Blandford would have taken me back, I am sure. At the same time if I was establishing myself in a different area I would prefer it to initially be with former colleagues and in a place where there was family.

Although we made no firm decisions I certainly had as lot to think about before I returned to Camden Town on Monday.

Houses of Dreams

by Sarah Teasdale

You took my empty dreams
And filled them every one
With tenderness and nobleness,
April and the sun.

The old empty dreams
Where my thoughts would throng
Are all too full of happiness
To even hold a song.

Oh, the empty dreams were dim
And the empty dreams were wide,
They were sweet and shadowy houses
Where my thoughts could hide.

But you took my dreams away
And you made them all come true -
My thoughts have no place now to play,
And nothing now to do.

All the World’s a Stage

by William Shakespeare

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his life plays many parts,
His acts being seven stages. At  first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like a snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor,sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly, with good capon lined.
With eye severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again to youthful treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love has come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and fleur-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.