Well readers, I knew this day would eventually arrive. I have started a new blog for my start-up publishing business, viewable here - which leaves the future of Let's Talk About You For a While somewhat in jeopardy. It seems unwise to split my attention between two blogs, as it could only result in confusion and in both of them being very rarely updated (although I have roped a few other contributors in for the VP blog, ensuring far more posts than I could manage alone.) So this will be the last post here for the foreseeable future. I know...sad, isn't it. I don't know about you, but I've had a lot of fun plying my trade down these hallowed halls! But I will leave this site up for posterity, and so I know it will always be there should I need to go back (like the Trotters with their old flat in Only Fools and Horses - what a wise move that turned out to be.)
Before we go though, there's just time for a few more amusing pieces of reported speech - the type of trivial, purposeless content that will have no place on the dynamic, focused blogs of the future. (I'm just kidding of course, there'll always be room for some gentle mockery of my relations!)
I had heard some charity representatives stopping people on the street and asking 'do you like animals?' So when one came up to me, I thought I was prepared...except, he switched the question.
BLOKE: 'Alright Captain! Who's your favourite chef?'
ME: (accusingly) 'I know what this is about! Animals!'
BLOKE: 'Forget that! Who's your favourite chef?'
ME: 'Are they cooking the animals?'
I then escaped while he was momentarily off-put.
MUM: 'I had no trouble walking home. The only man I saw looked really reputable...he had a silver trophy in each hand.'
(I reckon he'd either stolen them, or brought them out specifically to hit people with.)
MUM: 'I saw a woman on TV, apparently the day after her daughter died she found an enormous feather in her dining room.' (thinks for a second) 'I mean...it must have come from an angel...there's no other explanation.'
MUM: (watching 'Arcade Fire' on the BRIT awards, volume up much too high) 'Who are these, OK Fire? I'm tapping my feet! I don't know what he's saying, and I don't care!'
Good old mum. I also saw a news-board sign in Driffield recently, proclaiming the story of the week: GUN THUG KILLS CAT. You can read the full story here. Notice the amusingly misstaken caption on the photo - a woman with a cat X-Ray becomes 'Sutton sorting Office Manager Bob Minett who retired on Wednesday' - then head here for a similar story with a happy ending (featuring some extraordinary prose: 'Tuppence, as the pretty puss has been christened, faced a long, lingering death after being shot under the chin by a callous person.') I personally think the two crimes may be related. Has anyone seen a dog with a gun?
I mention this because, to my surprise, the feeling this elicited was a reassuring one. Those newsboard messages really let you know what sort of town you live in, don't they? Not exactly the best, but far from the worst. The hierarchy would go:
5: GUN THUG KILLS CAT
4: GUN THUG KILLS MAN
3: GUN THUG KILLS FOUR
2: GUN THUG KILLS EVERYONE
1: EUROPEAN COMMISSION MOVE TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION
...because in the last one, everyone is being killed so often it's no longer newsworthy. Which of these headlines is most common in your local newspaper? Really? I'm sorry to hear that.
See you on the other side.
- J.M.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Monday, 14 February 2011
Photo: Saltburn Weir (2008)
Just another photo post today; but a short post is better than none. This very small man-made water feature is found in Saltburn, up in Redcar, a very beautiful town and the subject of a previously unpublished poem by me from early 2008 - an outtake from What Do I Know Anyway?
Would you like to hear it? What's that, no? I can't quite hear you...
----
Saltburn
Living in Saltburn, with the bank closed
For resurfacing. In the same clothes
Teaching for eight weeks straight,
Away from home.
We talk to friends every night,
For thirty minutes, thirty seconds
Building up the bill, but
We’ll cross that bridge in time.
Checking out the pizza, down the road
And seeing what’s on channel four
Tonight. In bed by ten, or half past
Or past that – it’s just a working draft.
It’s just a plan.
We write our essays, schemes of work
And file them with the rest of that
Assessment shit. And hand it in
And never look at it again
And every day we’re up at six,
To catch our bus, to get our lift.
By half past five, we’re home and dry
And too weary to move.
We’ll have to go at some point
But we’ll cross that bridge in time.
For now we’re stuck in stasis, Saltburn
Purgatory with no crime.
A happy sort of nowhere,
A jolly little time
And if we only get one shot at life
This is where I line up mine.
----
Not a classic, but the sentiment is there. The 'bank' is of course not a money-filled bank (is there such a thing these days? Ha, satire!) but rather, a steep incline which provided the only way into the town - it being closed meant we were effectively trapped. Chronologically, this was written shortly before the end of my second teaching practice (the dismal failure one), so the 'shot' I was attempting to 'line up' did actually miss.
This poem finds me in the traditional position of being completely wrong about everything, so you can see why I've buried it until now (the published poems need to be either good, or make me look good, ideally both.) But I now think I've moved on enough to let it back out into the world. Just one of the many pluses of having a blog!
See you when the bank re-opens,
J.M.
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Photo: Under the Bridge (2007)
In lieu of a proper post (with both time and inspiration somewhat at a premium this weekend), here is a nice picture of Valley Bridge I took in 2007, in heavy rain. Can you spot the rain?
Valley Bridge is a bridge over Valley Road in Scarborough, definitely the best place I have ever lived. Not only was the landscape dramatic and fascinating, I was just yards from the local pub ('The Valley') where meetings of the Scarborough Poetry Workshop were held, and an even shorter distance from the local Tesco, which is at one end of the bridge. I had a top-floor flat overlooking the whole valley - you could see the sea during Winter, though overly leafy trees obscured the view for most of the year. And this of course is where I made my first tentative steps into publishing - so is it really any surprise that it ended up being called Valley Press?
Someday I'll go back, buy up the entire road, and turn it into some sort of strange, 'Let's Talk About You For a While' theme park. Or I won't, of course. Stay tuned!
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