Somebody Liked My Poetry!

I've joined this writing group at Blackheath Library. Writing is a solitary activity, and I like to put it off: put it off until it's too late. A writing group provides some social discipline. I have to do something to show them. My pride then provides the necessary discipline of doing it early enough to allow for some editing and polishing. At least, that's the theory, and so far it seems to be working. Plus, they're a nice bunch.

This group was brought into being under the auspices of Spread the Word, a London-wide writers' support network. Spread the Word (which I shall call StW from now on) invited us to its 'Write Next Door' Showcase in Stratford, so that we could experience reading our work, and listening to others' work. These were groups from all over east London (StW thinks Blackheath is in east London, a good example of the literary confused with the literal). Blackheath is, of course,in 'Safeaslunun'. But, since, as it turned out, it was represented by a Scottish, an American, and a Yorkshire accent, that hardly mattered.

I read a prose piece which I think has some potential to make a proper story, but was, nonetheless, self-contained and short. So, if it was any good, an audience might think it was, at least, well written, or raised questions in their minds which a longer piece might go on to resolve. That was my idea, anyway. And, if you're going to write, you have to run it up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes: no point otherwise. If you're really, really keen to write, and you're no good at it, best to find out as soon as possible.

Actually, if I'm no good at it, I don't think I'll find out at StW, because they're very supportive. I think they think that people should be allowed to hang around till they've got good at it, however long that takes. Anyway, I shouldn't think they've got a critical firepower sufficient to get through my self-esteem defence system.

This was a proper, stand-up-at-a-microphone-in-the-lights event, so we really had to take it seriously. I got to do my stuff in the first half, so I could have a beer in the interval. I was enjoying this beer in the bar, hoping adulatory groups would swarm around me, asking for autographs, but no such luck. There wasn't even a shy middle-aged lady trying to touch the hem of my garment. Oh, well!

But there was one bit of fulsome praise: a middle-aged chap came up to me (he may just have been going to the bar, and I was standing beside the only gap) and, as our eyes met, he said "I really enjoyed your poem". My poem? By no stretch of the imagination … No, wait a minute, this is praise being handed out here. My imagination couldn't stretch to seeing my piece as poetry, but maybe his could. I nodded non-committally. Then he said "I'm a bit political myself", and I realised he was praising one of the other performers. It wasn't his imagination that was being stretched, it was his eyesight.

I remembered the piece he was talking about. I stood up to deliver my piece, the other chap (it was, at least, a chap) sat down. I only limp slightly, he walked with the aid of a stick. My white hair is faded red, his was faded brown or black. I've got a beard and he doesn't. I've got a Scottish accent and he doesn't! I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture.

I bit my index-finger knuckle and spluttered "you bastard, if you're talking to me, can't you find something good to say about my piece? You people are all the same. You come here, you don't pay attention: then you casually demolish a fragile, fledgling ego. YOU MAKE ME SICK! If this is what Spread the Word calls a supportive environment, then they've got a lot to learn. PISS OFF!" No, I didn't: that might have made the evening a lot more interesting, but, in fact I said, in carefully-measured tones, "I think you mean that chap over there".

"Oh," he said, "I'm so sorry, so I do. How silly of me." And that was that.

I wonder if he said it again, this time to the right audience? It would be a shame if he didn't, wouldn't it? Every little helps, and there's no testimonial like an unsolicited one. And it was deserved: I enjoyed the poem as well.

All I got, later, from another performer, was: "you've got a nice voice for that sort of thing". Since we're trying to be writers, that is surely the faintest of faint praise, is it not?

A Christmas Thought

The great Tom Lehrer penned this (or something like this)

The Age of Women

I should know better at my age. But we're all stupid from time-to-time. This particular stupidity was just the other day: I asked a woman her age. I don't know what came over me; I should have known better. Dammit, I do know better! But I can't deny it. I did, I did it.

It was a very relaxing conversation about children, and the age of children. Most of the other women were really too young to have children at all, although one or two of them, surprisingly, had several, older than I would have thought possible. But she was clearly old enough. And she wouldn't say what age her children were. "I never tell people my children's ages," she said, with an air of finality: there was not going to be any negotiation. Everybody knew that this was an attempt to disguise her own age. Well, more than an attempt: it did disguise her age. The others, all young women, did the 'whatever' thing and moved on; they weren't very interested. But I was.

Some seductive demon rerouted the path to my tongue, bypassing all my critical faculties: judgment, experience, good sense, all shorted out. I could feel it rising in my gorge. And I couldn't stop it. I almost managed that humming thing that can frustrate the demons at the last gasp. But I failed.

And out it came: "So, em, what, em , age, em, em, are you, em, then?" I heard myself say. As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know what she’s going to say next (we all know what she’s going to say next, don’t we?). Oh, no! Run for it! The wrath of God is but small bier compared to the galactic carnage I've just unleashed on myself. Her eyes glinted. I swear it: no cliché, they actually glinted. I squirmed (no cliché either).

You've probably heard of transactional analysis, a way of analyzing human interchanges. Best known for a simple (and very entertaining) book called "The Games People Play", which was a popular Christmas gift a couple of decades back. We were now playing a game called 'Cat and Mouse'. It is useful to understand what game you're in, and which role has been chosen for you. It lets you get your mind back in gear. I knew I was the mouse. She knew she was the cat. It was all going to end badly, at least for me. I could delay the inevitable, but only by being, in her judgment, sufficiently entertaining. I had ceded entire control of the conversation to her. And she was about to enjoy herself.

Anyway, knowing what she was going to say next (you do all know what she's going to say next, don't you?), I thrashed round for clues. I expect you know this too, but there's an old adage, purveyed among males from generation to generation to cope with this situation: 'face goes at forty, hands go at fifty'. It's a very rough guide, but it has stood me in good stead for many years. I peered hopefully round her eyes and mouth. I tried to examine her hands. I should have paid attention earlier: it was too late now, the hands were clenched as demurely as she could muster, and her head was doing that 'Miss Piggy' thing that tightens everything up.

Then she pounces: "What age do you think I am, then?" she asks, menacingly. Oh, God! Here it is: the moment I've brought on myself. My only chance is to tell her what she wants to hear. I have to find a number sufficiently high for her to think I'm trying to be honest, yet sufficiently low to enable her to justify the cost, in time and money, of all that cosmetic glabber that she drizzles over herself continuously.

"Oh", I say, nonchalantly, "I'm not very good at that sort of thing." I know I'm not going to get away with this, but we have to play all the moves.

"Never mind", she says, with measured calm, "I just want to know what you think." And she does: she does want to know what I think. But I haven't yet managed to figure out what she wants me to think. I struggle to recall previous contacts, and possible conclusions. I maintain an outward 'we who are about to die, salute you' kind of calm, and solid eye contact: fear just makes it worse.

Then my racing brain unearths a memory of being quite close, face-to-face. I plump for a number, and examine it for 'what she wants to hear' quality against this memory. And it passes.

"Forty." I say, with ringing confidence, although I don't feel any confidence at all. All I know at this stage is that she's between twenty and sixty, probably between thirty and fifty. And I've split the difference.

"That's about right." she says: no further information. Did I go too high or too low? As I survey the smoking ruin of this conversation, I realise I'm never going to find out.

Which is why I'm so bad at this sort of thing.

A Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist

I was on my way home.  As I came into the lobby and pressed for the lift to attend me, a man came striding out of the stairwell, and strode past me to the front door.  He seemed intent on ignoring me.  Well, you can't have that, can you?  I mean, maybe he wasn't supposed to be there: he has to have some sense that people recognise each other around here, and might remember him later.  "Good evening," I said, loudly.  He looked at me a little startled, and strode on. 

"Oh, well," I thought, looking after him, "a little-friendly wouldn't hurt".

Then I noticed his trousers.  They were hanging below his bottom.  Just so you're clear, this revealed his underpants, and nothing else.  In particular, it didn't reveal the back-end of a pair of braces.  So how were they being held up?  Just as I was contemplating a rugby-tackle-style test of their security, the lift arrived.  I got in, thus depriving myself of any practical evidence to support my theorising.

Theorising on the nature of trouser-levitating technology: what else is there to do in a lift, apart from admiring one's self in the mirror thoughtfully provided for that purpose?  And theorising based on almost no evidence at all is a common activity of mine, as any of my friends will be quick to tell you.

"Perhaps," I thought, "he had been caught 'in flagrante', and was actually clutching his trousers in front of him, maintaining full-frontal dignity during flight".  Then I realised that the underpants would probably not be present at all in those circumstances, certainly not fully raised.  And there would likely have been someone in pursuit.  Perhaps he had been expressing some extreme criticism outside someone's door, and was now in flight.  But that was ditto for the pants.

Then it struck me that it was jolly cold outside.  I would have been most unhappy to, if you'll pardon the word, expose those parts of myself to those sorts of temperatures.  I resolved this difficulty by recalling that he was young.  So there was some evidence: the temperature, and his youth.  I deduced that this was a stupid fashion statement.  It is a reasonable deduction that a young person would be willing to freeze their bottom off if they thought they looked 'good'.  They could have had a 'dungaree-style' halter front, hung round his neck.  It was philanthropy: he was just giving us a good laugh.

The lift had reached my floor.  And I had reached my answer.

Life is a Zero-sum Game

An evening supping ale in front of a wood fire, a good meal, and then off to bed would have most people marking a plus in their diary.  But not when some careless parker (I can think of a different spelling for that) knocks over the companion's motor bike.  "Can you help me pick it up?" says the phone. 

"Well," I say, " just give me time to rub out this plus, and I'll be up on my big white charger and round, as the Americans say, 'momentarily'."

"Oh," she says, "have you been down the pub?" 

"Only because the Sun came up this morning" I retort: I know how to keep my dignity.

She tells me she can get the RAC, who can apparently be contracted to pick up motorbikes whenever they fall over.  But chaps of my age and upbringing need to give the old white c. an outing now-and-again: especially after they've been down the pub.

"It'll be quicker if I come round: five minutes."  And round I go, and up the bike is picked.

Of course, it's been damaged: lights, mirrors, clutch lever, gear change pedal.  So the dreaded RAC is still going to be summoned to tarnish the whiteness of my charger.  I consider the possibility of running repairs, but it is apparent to me that 'an evening supping ale in front of, etc., etc.', and running repairs on sick motorbikes don't go together.  I have also, actually, discovered that 'an evening supping ale in front of, etc., etc.', and picking up sick motorbikes don't go together too well either.

She arranges for the RAC to waft the sick bike off to its garage first thing in the morning, apparently something else they can be contracted to do.  I am acutely aware that the white charger is running on empty.

"Let's do that," I say, grandly, as though I had decided it.

"So," I think, "'evening supping ale, etc., etc.' – plus; careless bastard knocks over motorbike – minus; opportunity for white c. outing – plus; motorbike broken – minus; RAC contracted to waft bike, etc., - plus.  That means we're ahead, so let's quit."

So I do.  But on the way home, I fall over in the churchyard.  "Oh well," I think, looking up at the church, "Life's a zero-sum game".

The London Triathlon, ExCeL and around, 10th August 2008

The London Triathlon is (I think) an amateur event. People do it just for fun. So it's obviously much more attractive than the Olympics. I get co-opted most years for equipment transport. Triathlon comes in various sizes: 'Sprint', 'Super-sprint', and one that's actually called 'Olympic', which may mean they're doing it there as well. It was the 'Olympic distance I was doing roadie for: they swim one and a half kilometres, cycle forty kilometres, then run 10 kilometres. They even have a team event, which sounds like a fun introduction: one swims, one cycles, one runs; not, I suspect, over the olympic distances.

You may have heard of the 'Ironman' versions where they swim several miles, cycle hundreds of miles, then finish with a marathon. There is a story about one such triathlete who wanted to go to Paris, so he got on his bike, cycled to Dover, … oh, never mind, you're ahead of me anyway, aren't you?

All this means that ExCeL (that's how they spell it!) is full of people worth looking at. For example, if you see three people of roughly the same age on an occasion like this, I think two of them are likely to be siblings. So I can try and work out from their faces which two it is. I think I'm very good at this, but of course I never dare to ask (that's the sort of thing that can get you arrested). If only I could find a bookie prepared to take my bets. Then I'd find out.

Another area of special fascination is the 'boys' toys' furnished by the cycling, where you can spend simply fabulous amount of money on bikes and helmets. Bikes so thin you can't see them head-on. If they ran over you, they'd slice you leg clean off; helmets with pointy bits at the back that make them look like something out of Dr Who (for those of you old enough to remember the particularly naff alien costumes); and, of course, the lycra.

During the running, they mostly wear a T-shirt proclaiming the charity which is sponsoring them (although I think the 'sponsoring' is actually the other way round). I had a delightful moment where I spotted a lady wearing a 'Water-Aid' T-shirt. She was running along carrying a small paper cup of water! Was she a charity runner? Or was she special event staff? Was she racing off to some parched participant lost out in deepest Docklands desperate to have his lips moistened by this indefatigable St Bernard of the course? Or was it another of the many events in life which I totally misunderstand?

The running is the last stage, and by that time, the competitors must be lost in some endorphine-induced sub-consciousness. I remember watching the London Marathon one year at the point where the 'elite' men caught up with the 'elite' women. This is timed to be well into the race. One of the men simply ran into the back of one of the women and sent her flying to the ground. But what was really memorable was that she simply got back to her feet and carried on running at the same pace. I recalled this event as one small boy, no doubt here to cheer a parent on, not only escaped his keepers, but managed to get through the barriers and on to the running track. I expect during training he enjoyed getting picked up and swung round: being run into the ground would have come as a bit of a shock.

Looking at the women in the picture, I'm reminded of something else I noticed: most competitors seemed to swim alright, and most seemed to cycle alright, but some could run and some couldn't (not that that stopped them, of course!). What I found odd was that the men who couldn't run could still kind-of run, but the women who couldn't run really couldn't run. I wonder if it was just a skewed sample, or if there is some truth in that observation?

I took quite a few pictures: none were well-composed; none were in focus; very few were even of the right person. You really have to do your homework to be in the right place at the right time. I really admire those photographers who can capture sporting moments: and compose it well; and get it in focus. Of course it's not just the photographer: when I watch golf on the telly, and marvel at the cameramen following that tiny ball in close up, I have to remind myself that they can do that when Tiger Woods hits the ball, but they couldn't do it if it was me hitting the ball.

Why Do Policemen Lick Their Balls?

Sorry, ladies, this is a terrible boys' joke. Your boys all know the punchline. In fact, it cropped up on 'I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue' the other week, when they were talking about chat-up lines that might be used by dogs … Oh damn, I've got it wrong: I didn't mean to say 'policemen', I meant to say 'dogs': "why do dogs lick their balls?" The punchline, as all boys know, is "Because they can!".

What I meant to say about policemen is "Why do policemen park on the pavement?" What confused me is that the answer is, of course, the same: "Because they can!" Now they're very busy, and it's a very hard job, and I/you wouldn't like to have to do some of the things they have to do. And they can't plan a lot of it at all. So why do things like this upset us so much?

Well, it's because we suspect that this isn't one of those urgent, unplanned situations, where they were trying to rush some psychopath into a cell, or pick up some urgent piece of equipment en route to rescue some terrified woman. We suspect that they're doing it because they can; because nobody can stop them, like they stop us. And we're jealous. If only we could break the law when we have an urgent need to, without some pecksniff jobsworth taping a ticket to our windscreen.

It's the tension between our feeling cowed by minor laws, and our suspicion that they don't apply to people in authority. I'm sure we've all been in a group when a police car passes with its blue lights flashing: someone in the group is pretty nearly bound to say "I expect they're late for their teabreak", aren't they? It's because we have a statistical understanding of the world: although we rarely overrun our parking time, we often get a ticket; although the police rarely struggle with psychopaths (and I repeat, I don't envy them their task when they do), they often park on the pavement.

I used to walk up and down Eltham High Street a lot, late in the evening. Police cars would sometimes pass me, going, in my judgement, much too fast. They were only going a few miles at most, so however fast they drove, it was only going to save a few seconds. And it was so dangerous. Not because they were bad drivers, I'm sure they weren't (and aren't). I'm sure they were driving well within their competence. It's the rest of us who couldn't cope with it. It only needed one of us to be stupid and there was likely to be a disaster. So I always wrote a letter of complaint. And the Met did its PR thing and tried to smooth the ruffled feathers. But it went on. And I continued to write my letters.

They don't do it now. Well, so rarely that I'm inclined to think those occasions might indeed be exceptional. But I don't think it had much to do with my letters. I think it was because the accident rate was becoming apparent to the public.

We need brave policemen who are willing to risk making mistakes, who are willing to shoot the wrong man, or bang the wrong head. Which is why we need them to be highly disciplined and well-officered.

I'm sure the parking shown in these pictures was well-justified. These pictures were both taken outside Eltham Police Station. The night picture was taken at 11.09pm on the 8^th of July, and the daytime one at 7.24pm on the 10^th.

Truck Drivers Find Eltham Diverting

When I see something unusual and entertaining, I take a quick photo with my phone. If it sticks in my mind, I come back the next morning with my camera and take a proper photo. Well, this time you're stuck with the phone photo, because the Council must have spotted me taking it and moved like lightning to avoid further embarrassment. Councils moving like lightning may seem an unlikely concept, but it does happen when there's embarrassment at stake. Anyway, I took the photo you see at about nine in the evening, and the signs were gone at seven the following morning: amazing!

The main sign, which you may just be able to read, says "No access for LGV follow diversion". (LGV, by the way, is European for HGV.) This sign, you will see, is parked on the War Memorial outside the Parish Church on Eltham Hill. (As a digression, we might pause to note that at a time when we are giving new consideration on how to honour servicemen killed in foreign wars, our Council dumps traffic signs on our War Memorial.) The other sign, which you can't read in this photo, says "Diversion ends". It is in front of the traffic lights at the main junction: less than the length of two LGVs away! Could this short stretch of hill have similar properties to Harry Potter's Platform 9 ¾ at King's Cross. Have LGVs been diverted into some other dimension? Is Eltham the Bermuda Triangle of the LGV world? Or did the council put up a nonsense set of signs? What do you think?

You're probably unpleasantly aware of the amazing abilities traffic engineers have with road signs. Like me, you will have made countless journeys desperately following diversion signs, only to find, at the most stressful junction, that you missed one. How do they do that so consistently? They must learn it in school, mustn't they? On the Traffic Engineers' course there must be a module on the subject: something like 'Application of the Poincaré Duality to Ensure Discontinuity in any Directed Transversal of an N-point Topology'. Or to put that in old money, they can get all of us lost all of the time; which we already knew. Put not your faith in traffic engineers: study a map beforehand.

They also think they know where you ought to be going. 'For Stoke, follow Newcastle' they say. So you do. And where do you end up? Well, Newcastle, of course. Then what? You start to follow 'Other Routes', in the forlorn hope that Stoke must be one of them. But it isn't: in what seems like no time at all, you come across a sign saying 'For Stoke, follow Newcastle'.

Then there are the signs so confounding, I hesitate to blame them on traffic engineers. There is a sign on the A102(M), just beyond Kidbrooke, which says "For the Dome, follow Blackwall Tunnel"! Now that must have been put there by Poplar pirates, hoping to lure out-of-town pop fans north of the Thames. Or perhaps the traffic engineers are still hoping to extend the Dome's failure by preventing people getting there by car.

Further down the A102(M), there is a sign so amazing, it must have won prizes at Traffic Engineering Conventions: "For the Dome", it reads," follow the Dome". This actually manages to produce a diversion inside my head! What can it possibly mean? Is it just deeply insulting, or have I missed something?

Of course, there are probably more prosaic explanations: where I started from, the signs on Eltham Hill, is really a question of councils having left and right hands, and the one not knowing what the other is doing. You see, a water main burst in Well Hall Road, and the council put up two diversion routes: one going north, and one going south. The left hand must have done the one going north, and the right hand the one going south. One sign is the beginning of one, and the other is the end of the other, if you see what I mean.

Question is: was it the council's left or right hand that profaned the War Memorial?

Alien Slavery in Eltham

Mike Slavin May 2008

I go to the station every morning to pick up the free paper. It’s not just that I’m Scottish, it forces me down and up the stairs with a mile walk in between. At my age, I call that exercise. One of my young friends told me he’d seen me one morning: “You were in your track suit. You must have been going to your exercise, or coming back.” “No”, I said, “I wasn’t going or coming – that was the exercise.” And there’s another plus: I like to go to a fringe theatre event every week, and the Metro has, by far, the best London fringe listing I’ve found anywhere.
Anyway, there I was, the other morning, on my way to the station, when I spotted an abandoned parking cone on the edge of the pavement.

Hardly very interesting; roadwork gangs abandon equipment right, left and centre along there. The Gas Board (which I think has now moved to its holiday gite and calls itself ‘Le Board de Gaz’ these days) has been sniffing for a leak there for years. Safety barriers are constantly being blown into the road. And the Water Board (or is it the ‘Wasserborden’ now?) has cleared away its recent workings, leaving only a very large pump behind on the pavement. So what’s to worry about one little parking cone?

Well, as I got quite close, it appeared to have been run over, but someone had drawn scars and stitch-mark over it. I stopped to have a better look, and, do you know, on the side pointed towards the road, there was what you see in the picture below.

(If you eyes are as aged as mine, the writing at the top says ‘ALIEN SLAVE’ and the speaking bubble says ‘hello, handsome’, an obvious reference to me.) Fancy someone taking all that trouble just to bring a smile to my lips first thing in the morning.

I’m not myself much impressed with what is nowadays called ‘Installation Art’. I reckon an artist has to show a bit of technical skill. Someone getting up in the morning, realising they haven’t done anything for the exhibition, and displaying their unmade bed just leaves me cold. Or rather, thinking “There’s one born every minute”.

But this little cone impressed me: this wasn’t to get another million out of Saatchi, this was just to cheer me up. Which it did. Quite made my day, it did.

I sometimes walk up the High Street, contemplating with some equanimity a law which would allow police marksmen to practice on the little tykes who deface the shops. They just make things a tiny bit worse, but they do it day after day after day. And it simultaneously depresses and angers me.

But this little Alien Slave added to the gaiety of life. I could put up with something like that every morning. Do it again, son, I can’t wait!