Adventures big, adventures small...

‘You may be wondering what I’m doing sat on top of this wall without a care in the world.

Well, this is my wall and I like to sit here watching the world go by waiting for an adventure to arrive. I like adventures, adventures are fun and this wall is a hissing good place to see them coming. Sometimes the adventures are small - like that bee buzzing just over there - and sometimes they are much bigger – like the time that the bull from up the road escaped and came charging down the road followed by three red-faced farmers with ropes and sticks. Hissing fun!

I was once sat here and a big bird swept down and grabbed a mouse that I was thinking about chasing from right under my whiskers. It was a very big bird with a huge, hooked beak. Another time the postman dropped all his letters and had to run after them as the wind tried to blow them up and away – he missed one and I ripped it open. It looked like a bill, whatever a bill is. They can’t be good though, Hisfault is always saying - ‘Not more bloody bills’.

You see all sorts of adventures from up here. The first time I saw the jets they scared me. Well, I heard them before I saw them and… BOOM! Then they were away across the sky with a SSShhhhhing noise. I’m used to them now. So I don’t run up the Holly tree when they fly in unexpectedly waggling their wings and flying much too low.

Sometimes those silly men on those lawnmower engine thingies, held up by big bits of cloth and string, fly overhead like tiny birds. Hisfault says they are puddled and I think that, for once, he’s right (if puddled means the same as kitten-brained). Why would anyone want to fly like a bird, especially in one of those flimsy things? Birds are for catching.

One time a big whirly thing landed in the field behind. Two men carried somebody on a flat thing to the whirly thing and off they flew straight up into the air. I didn’t like the whirly thing; it was noisy and made lots of nasty windies. It hasn’t been back since thank Mu-Mu.

Every now and then sheep come down the lane all white and silly and following each other. The shouty boys make sure all the gates are shut so they can’t run in, but they still try and keep bumping into each other. I like it when the sheep come. I hide in the bushes and jump out at them. It makes them jump around and bleat. I don’t get too close though – sheep can be a bit unpredictable, and they’re a bit pongy.

I wonder what will happen today? What adventure will come down the lane? Will it be a big one or will it be a small one? Will it be a tractor, a dog, the man on the wobbly bicycle, one of those red, floaty, bouncy things, a weasel, the milkman, the woman with the stick and the basket, a circus clown, the fish-man? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder!

All I have to do is sit here and wait, stay alert - eventually an adventure will turn up…’

What is Misty waiting for? She looks like she’s expecting something but I don’t know what. Nothing’s going to happen. It’s always so quiet around here…

Remember, Remember…

The fifth of November… so I have. I’ve remembered a few out of many.

For years I loved bonfire night, I still like it, always will and I still enjoy fireworks, but the excitements gone- taken away by rules, regulations, restrictions and SO many safety warnings when we are already over-cautious and afraid to let our children have fun.

Guy Fawkes Night was ONE of the big nights of the year, almost as big as Christmas, bigger than Halloween and much bigger than Easter with its chocolate eggs and daffodils - maybe even bigger than my birthday. I looked forward to the fifth of November for weeks before, collecting wood, gathering old clothes to make the guy, saving my pocket money, buying fireworks from Platers corn-merchants to store in the metal biscuit tin in my wardrobe - bangers, Catherine wheels, sparklers, rockets, jumping-jacks, and then on the night ‘Dad’s big surprise was Standard Fireworks’, a big box, a five shilling box. It was huge!

I spent days making the guy, carefully modelling a mask from papier-mâché just like John Noakes had on Monday's Blue Peter, knowing that it would burn but not minding – after all, that was what it for, and besides it was the law to celebrate Guy Fawkes night – and it really had been until the mid-1800’s. My mask of dark hooded eyes, hooked nose, pointed beard and Salvador Dali moustache was so much better than the orange egg-box cardboard masks that you could buy at Castle’s the newsagents in the high street.

Everyone built huge bonfires in their back gardens, it was almost a competition. No, it was a competition and the Bowler’s always won - building twenty feet stacks of wood in their back garden and setting fire to them. One year it got out of hand and the fire brigade had to be called to put it out with their long black hoses - but the Bowlers were back next year with an even bigger fire.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a ‘penny for the guy’ on a street corner but it was a regular sight when I was a boy and a good way to ‘earn’ money for fireworks. I was never allowed to do ‘penny for the guy’, it was too close to begging in my parents opinion, but the Braham boys did and ‘earned’ fortunes which they spent on huge ‘mortar shell’ bangers. Oddly I WAS allowed to go carol singing, I don’t know where my parents would have stood on ‘Trick or Treat’ – it just didn’t exist back then – but one year I built my guy, stuck it in an old pram and pushed it down to the bottom of North Street, standing there with my tin asking for ‘a penny for the guy’. I made seven bob in about four hours, not bad going.

Unfortunately someone must have seen me and told my dad and when I got home he made me own and confiscated my hard earned money – all three bob of it!

Every year at the end of the night at around 10.30 the whole estate would stand in their back gardens and wait for the ‘parachute’ to go over. It was the grand finale of Bonfire Night. The father of the spastic kid in the wheelchair who lived at the bottom of the road in the big houses made his own fireworks… amazing!

Each year he’d hold a big display in his garden, we were never invited of course, but we used to peer up into the sky and watch his homemade rockets and shooting stars thunder into the dark night. They were brilliant! Far better than anything that we could afford to buy – and then at the end of the night he’d set off the last firework… the parachute. A huge rocket whooshed into the sky, setting free a parachute that would unfurl high in the air and float across the darkness. Somehow it was lit from the inside so that the parachute glowed with ever changing blues, reds, yellows and greens. It mesmerised us as it passed and we held our breath as it gently floated away to disappear over the treetops of James's farm.

I lived on that road for ten years and I only saw that poor spastic kid twice. Once in his Dad’s car waving at everyone from the back seat with a huge smile on his face - I waved back, a huge smile on my face also - and one other time when his Mum wheeled him up the road and back again on a very sunny afternoon. She was crying. In those days disability was talked about only in whispers and you never saw the disabled kids - they were kept indoors like a shame. And tell me, just when did the word spastic become unnaceptable?

And then... that would be it.

Firework night over for another year. And back then it was a single night, back then we celebrated Guy Fawkes on the fifth of November, his night, and not for weeks before and weeks after. The whole country was lit up with fires and fireworks and blitzed by the boom of bangs on each November fifth… for one night only!

Please, just one more, allow me one last memory of firework night.... Years later when I was at college in Oxford - taking my BA foundation year - we would visit the Ashmoleum Museum each Tuesday to sketch and paint the exhibits. They were fantastic – insects, skeletons, costumes, paintings, furniture – you name it they had it, even Guido Fawkes lantern.

The lantern had been given to them by the son of the man who had caught Guy Fawkes back in 1605 and sat in a glass case in one of the side rooms at the museum. One Tuesday, just before Guy Fawkes Night, I decided that the lantern would be my subject and stood in front of the case drawing it.

After about ten minutes drawing one of the attendants asked me if I wouldn’t be more comfortable sitting down and I said that I would - expecting him to offer me a chair. Instead he took a ring of keys from his belt, opened the case, reached in, took out the lantern and handed it to me telling me to take it to the table in the corner by the window and to be careful not to drop it. I very carefully carried the lantern – the one that Guy Fawkes had been carrying when he was arrested - across the room, placed it carefully on the table, sat down and spent the next three hours happily drawing away with my 2b and smudge stick, the attendant occasionally popping back to make sure everything was okay. It was a pretty good drawing when it was finished – I wonder what happened to it.
Guy Fawkes lantern, a small significant piece of history - in my hands… incredible!

And like 'penny for the guy' - I don't think that would happen today either.

So that’s it:
Remember, remember the fifth of November - Gunpowder, treason and plot. - I see no reason why gunpowder, treason - Should ever be forgot...
Now, light the blue touch-paper and stand back please.

Change...

The nights are getting longer and colder and this is Chester’s first bed of the season, looks snug doesn't it.

Yes, it's time for him to come in from the field and for us to start shelling out the cash. Stabled horses are expensive. I learnt to make his bed last year and how to muck out a stable with the minimum of effort. It isn’t as easy as it looks and it’s still bloody hard work. The back of the stable bed is banked up a little higher than the rest and it’s quite an art to get the straw laid to the same depth with a nice straight line at the front edge. I think I’ve done a pretty good job all things considered.

Holly’s had Chester a while now, they look great together and he’s a good horse, thoroughbred, ex-racehorse, but now she wants to spend more time at home, less time in Wales – some of it’s about school friends, but most of it is about boyfriend. Of course it was always coming and we knew that would have had to rethink Chester at some point with GCSE’s, ‘A’ levels and university rushing towards us like a freight train.

Having a horse for a pet just isn’t an option. Horses are expensive to keep and they need riding regularly, it just isn’t fair to keep them as pets. We either have to sell him or put him on loan. If we can find him the right home with someone that will care for him and ride him them we’d probably let the loaner keep him as soon as Holly loses interest completely – which will happen in the not to distant future I’m sure.

It’s funny really, I didn’t like horses, they scared me, but I’ve enjoyed looking after Chester and I think I’m going to miss him. Making his first bed of the season made me realise just how much a part of my life he’s become. I felt a real pride making his bed for him - how strange.

Oh well, he’s destined to become another memory to take out occasionally and let run in my head. Better put another light bulb in the projector Charlie.

Coming over all Leary...

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My blog is broke, my blog is broke,
The words all eaten by the Runnaby Goat,
And I swear by the trives of the words I wrote,
My blog is unquestionably wangle poked!

I mentioned previously that some days my life is like an Edward Lear rhyme, a nonsense, nice to listen to but not as nice to be in and it can be quite small things that turn it upside down and break the rhythm. I’m afraid that I’m a creature of habit and the break to my blog last week really took its toll. I feel like life has been out of kilter since last Thursday, the day before my blog loss episode. I feel as if I’ve been, in almost the words of Edward Lear…

Tossed where the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:

Or thereabouts at least, if not directly on the hills of the Chankly Bore, then I wasn’t a million miles away from them. You see, losing my blog, even for that short while, caused me to go all Leary… Edward Leary. If Edward Lear were alive today he’d understand how losing my blog, even for that short, short time might cause me to grin with a runcible smile, and a quivering quavering groo, made me snort with buffoon, by the light of the moon, with a wispet of harrowing guile… or some such nonsense.

Edward Lear if alive today would have been the blogger of all bloggers. Just imagine what his Blog would have been like, the wonderful nonsense it would have contained, the variety, the fun, the lunacy, the poetry and pictures. Even the word Blog sounds like something he'd have made up and secreted in one of his wonderful nonsensical verses. For sure, anybody who can invent words as interesting, silly, and at the same time perfectly believable as Pobble, Jumblie, and Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò would have no problem inventing a Blog to blog about.

I wonder what Lear's Blog would have been like?

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The Blog and the Dimpley Do

Around the corner and through the thrump,
To the land where the Carricles dimp their dump,
Sat the Bongley, the Bingley, and the Blog,
All sat quite still upon a log,
Watching the Oysters sing and play
On viola, cello and guitars gay,
And all so that those three could say
That shellfish are fine fiddlers,
That shellfish are fine fiddlers.

And for that time as the Oysters croon,
The Blog stared quietly at the moon,
And pondered some vast blue lagoon,
Where he would seek his Dimpley,
Where he would find his Dimpley.

‘It is no use!’ exclaimed the Blog,
I can sit no longer on this log,
For I must away to the Borrible Bog,
Off to the land of the Dirigible Dog,
For I must find my Dimpley,
For I must seek my Dimpley.

So past the corner and around the thrump,
Where the last of Carricles dimp their dump,
Goodbye to the Bongley, the Bingley and log,
With gelatinous tears from the eyes of the Blog.
No more for Oysters to sing and play,
For they could wait till another day,
The Blog thrumped off along his way.
In search of his fair Dimpley
To look for his fair Dimpley.

He seeked and searched, he searched and seeked,
For many a day and many a week,
But not one sniffle did he find,
Nor a single snatch of Dimpley rind,
And after a while did lose his mind.
A searching for his Dimpley,
A seeking out his Dimpley.

And remembering the time of the Oysters croon,
The Blog stared quietly at the moon,
A dreaming dreams of his blue lagoon,
And longing for his Dimpley,
A dreaming of his Dimpley.

So day on day poor broken Blog,
Searched high and low with unflappable flog,
Searched low and high with face agog,
But never to find his Dimpley,
To pine and die for Dimpley.

My Blog is broke, my Blog is broke!
His words all eaten by the Runnaby Goat!
And I swear by the trives of the words I wrote,
My Blog is unquestionably wangle poked!

And all for the love of a Dimpley Do!
And a Dimpley Do's love is NEVER true.

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What was it that Aunt Jobiska said to the Pobble?

'No harm can come to his toes if his nose is warm; and it's perfectly known that a Pobble's toes are safe, -- provided he minds his nose.'

Good advice methinks – mind your nose and your toes will look after themselves. Mad? Not quite.

Halloween 1974…

So another Halloween has come and gone. We had lots of trick or treaters this year, our road was alive with all manner of creatures. Six or seven groups came to our door – ding-dong - a trio of witches with wonderfully painted spiders webs on their faces (I probably shouldn’t have asked for a photo but they were so cool) – ding-dong - another trio, boys this time - a skeleton, a devil and a fat boy in a white tee-shirt – knock-knock - a tiny Chinese Ninja vampire and his mother – ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong - a group of six assorted pre-teen monsters – knock - a solitary goblin whose parents hid behind the hedge so that he could go it alone. The effort they had all gone to was incredible - they really deserved the sweets that we gave them. I answered the door in my Dracula cape as always. I usually wear a false hand that I allow to nonchalantly fall to the floor as the children reach out for the sweets, but after turning a three year old Spiderman into a gibbering, hysterical, blancmange last year I decided to give it a miss, perhaps another time.

Holly was off to her friend’s Halloween party dressed as a she-devil – that’s her in the middle. I remember when she would ask me to come with her as she tricked and treated along the road, too scared to go up the paths of people she didn’t know. This year she went off to her party with Superman. She still needed me to carve her out her pumpkin and make the bats for her cakes though, so I’m not completely surplus… yet.

At around the same age I was invited to the best Halloween party of my life by my friend Sacha who lived (holidays only) in a huge mansion of a place in a nearby village.

I could never really understand why Sach was at boarding school when his parents only lived about eight miles from school, after all, Sach wasn’t THAT bad.

The house was huge and quite a lot run-down. Sach and his family lived in one half of the ground floor and a couple of the bedrooms. Sach’s dad was going overseas, so it was only temporary for them. I think his parents were renting it from Sacha’s Dad’s family. It was very grand even in its faded state, no gates, the gardens so overgrown that the drive was almost hidden by massive rhododendrons, and it came with an old gamekeeper who lived in one of the cottages and used to keep the rats down with his shotgun.

There were about forty of us invited to the party. The usual crowd - Toby and Kate, the mathematician and the actor, the rags and hats and feathers and robes, Ju-Ju, Dave, Julian MS, Titania, me – we all dressed for the night.

I became the Phantom of the Opera for the evening - black cape, white mask - this was years before Lloyd Webber and it was the old Claude Raines movie that inspired me. Titania went as the Phantom’s pupil, Christine Dubois the opera singer. Titania's mum had a long cream dress and a fox stole so we went as a pair.

Ju-Ju came in his tails with a black top hat and a spade, Dave as the Jethro Tull character from the cover of Aqualung, Toby and Kate were rock vampires all black satin and red blood, and Sach - always so left field - came dressed head to toe as the Marquis de Sade - frock coat, powdered wig, buckled shoes and carrying a long glass walking cane and a tin of pins.

The party was held by candlelight in the cellars. They were huge, dusty and full of cobwebs and rat droppings – no wine though.

Sach had set up his stereo and we’d all brought bottles of cider to swig as we danced to Mott the Hoople, and Alice Cooper, and the Velvet Underground and Nico, and the Doors, and David Bowie. He’d mocked up a dungeon room and we took it in turns to be tied to the wall for fifteen minutes of fame as the ‘prisoner of the moment’ in true Warhol style.

It was all a bit wild and free, well it was 1974 - and Dave got sick from too much cider, and one of the girls started crying, and Kate’s shirt got ripped, and Sach dropped his pins on the flagstones, and the candles kept blowing out, and someone nicked Ju-Ju’s hat, and the actor and the mathematician left early, and one of the feathers started a fight with the robes, and a bottle went flying and smashed on the wall, and a girl screamed that she’d seen a rat, and we all fled out into the garden at midnight to play hide-and-seek and other games in the deep darkness of the all-enclosing undergrowth.

And we all stayed up till the early hours.

And crashed in the bare rooms of the house.

And the next day Sash’s mum cooked us all breakfast.

I drive past the house sometimes on the way to Reading. It’s been renovated, the grounds have been cleared, there’s a new drive, a new fountain, and black electrically operated iron gates instead of the open entrance. I bet the cellars are brimful of wine and there isn’t a cider bottle or a single rat in sight.

Halloween 1974 - Best party ever. Thanks Sacha.

Normal Service...

Some days my life is like an Edward Lear rhyme. But you'll have to wait to find out why. You see, I really don't know what's going on but I can only upload very short posts and no pictures at all. All I can say is I will resume normal service as soon as I can but in the meantime one of my favourite opening verses ever as a test.

On top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see,
On account of his Beaver Hat.
For his hat was a hundred and two feet wide,
With ribbons and bibbons on every side
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,
So that nobody could ever see the face
Of the Quangle wangle Quee.

Trick or Treat - afterward

My blog is fixed!

I've now put this tale back into a single offering (below). I still don't know why my blog wouldn't accept it as a single entity - hence the three instalments that I had to run with.