What It Says On The Tin

I sometimes wonder whether this blog is in breach of the Trades Descriptions Act. It’s billed as ‘Phil The Bard’ but there’s often very little ‘bardic’ on it – (‘I am Taliesin ...’).

Even the header photo is misleading. My daughter set it up and took it. Much as I appreciated her trouble, there are inaccuracies.

For a kick-off I never, ever, ever, ever (did I say ‘ever’?) drink beer from a can. It’d more likely to be a bottle-conditioned ale. My daughter, bless her, found an empty bottle of Stout that my wife had used in cooking. She did drink Stout from cans, my wife, when the kids were babies. It helped with the lactation. But that’s too much information. If I’m going to drink Stout I’ll have it from hand-pumps down at my local or else from a bottle. Never from a can. Same goes for other ales.

So, this is a misleading blog. A bardic blog with few poems on it. Well, I’m about to rectify that as I’ve had seven poems published in recent weeks. It’s like buses. You don’t get one for ages and then they all come at once. I’m pleased to say that I’ve had six in the latest edition of Iota (Iota 91) and one in Planet, the Welsh Internationalist Magazine. This is the first time I’ve made it into Iota and to have all six submissions accepted is very gratifying. It’s the second time I’ve been in Planet. What a great magazine it is.

What I’ll do is reproduce one of the published poems here and put it along with the rest on one of the side links should anyone be kind enough to want to read them.

Or you can read them here and here.

If you do, then pray let me know what you think. We bardic types like that. We’re all ego. We’d like to think it’s art.

The Gas Fridge

What else in 1980s bedsit land

but 1960s furniture? Earlier even.

Items I had not seen since pre-fab

parlours, great aunts' kitchens.

Then, unexpectedly,

where I prepared for finals

and for unemployment, a gas fridge.

Half the height of ours at home,

it fed, like cooker and gas fire,

on the 50p coins I pressed and turned

into the meter every second day.

It showed its life by a pilot-light,

blue and awkward behind its back.

To ignite it I would stoop and drop

match after lighted match

down its fissured tube, hope

that they would reach and catch

before they fizzled out.

I could waste half a precious box

before I found the knack.

Who would have thought

that Einstein patented the spell

that drove ammonia around

those cooling pipes without a sound?

A pity then no patent way

to keep the pilot light from going out

in Mrs Hossey's redbrick bedsits.

'No blacks, lovey, no coloureds.'

Just two pints of Stones

in The Little Park on my 21st

birthday. The Sheffield drifting

in the South Atlantic, charred

and stricken. Boys my own age

between her decks, burning.

--

If you've enjoyed that (and even if you didn't) have a look at the page on the right with the rest of the poems. Why not visit the Iota and Planet websites. Take out a subscription too, if you are so inclined. The good people there would be very grateful. These magazines deserve our support.

Above Us Only Sky?

Two chapels, two towns, two Spitfires ...

It’s the Heritage Open Day weekend. On this weekend in September buildings that aren’t always open to the public throw open their doors for people to visit. It’s been going for some years now and is a crackingly good idea. I never miss it. Private houses, old mills, factories, churches, chapels and lots of other things besides open their doors for people to mooch around. It’s all run by volunteers and I’m told that the event has gone from strength to strength each year. I’m also told that our own region, North Staffordshire and South Cheshire, is one of the areas where it’s really taken off.

I can’t prove that, but even as an incomer, I’d like to think it’s true. I don’t think I’ve ever known one of these weekends where I haven’t been delighted or surprised by something new. Whether it’s been a Victorian mansion, a non-conformist chapel or the leaning church tower in Wybunbury, I’ve enjoyed them all. I bet you didn’t know that experts from Pisa came over to Wybunbury to learn how a Staffordshire man had propped up the church tower to correct the lean back in the 1700s?

I love it. People taking a pride in their heritage, in their built environment, in structures that mean more to them than bricks and mortar.

Take yesterday, for instance. We decided to bob down to Hanley to take a look around BethesdaMethodist Chapel, one of the stars of BBC 2’s Restoration programme back in 2003.

The unusual apse at the back of Bethesda

It’s open at various times throughout the year but we thought there’d be more of a buzz about the place this weekend. What a place!  I knew it was the largest non-conformist chapel outside London but the galleried interior is immense. A giant octagonal pulpit with twin-staircases projects into the body of the chapel and the acoustics are superb. Unusually for a Methodist chapel there is a crypt beneath where prominent members of the congregation were buried. There are memorials to local worthies and notable ministers around the walls. These were stolid, active, public-spirited people. I had to smile at the epitaph of one of the chapel officers, ‘enterprising in business’ and whose piety was ‘unostentatious’ and sincere. ‘Unostentatious’. Blunt, direct, straight-down-the-line. They didn’t mess about.

As we were exploring the vast interior of the chapel there was a sudden hubbub and vistors made for the main entrance and a side exit opened for the purpose. Word went round that a set of Spitfires were heading for The Potteries Museum just across the road. They’d arranged a fly-past for the Heritage Weekend. There’s a Spitfire on display inside the Museum, of course. Reginald Mitchell the engineer who designed the iconic fighter plane was born in Butt Lane near Kidsgrove.  Now some working Spitfires were heading our way.

We clambered down some broken steps into a brick-walled yard, the sound of approaching engines bouncing off the walls. We couldn’t tell which direction the Spitfires were coming from as the roar of the engines seemed to surround us. Across the road people were waiting on the steps of The Potteries Museum and a guard of honour in blue berets stood to attention. Suddenly, there they were, two Spitfires, one after another, so low you could see the light gleam on their cockpit glass. They swooped over the rooftops, banked and flew into the distance. The roar of the engines diminished then resumed as they hurtled back for a second pass. I’ve never seen a Spitfire in flight before and I was thrilled. Sure, I know it’s a weapon of war but they pack an iconic punch. There’s the local, Mitchell connection, of course, but also the continuing resonance of The Battle of Britain. 

We knew a Battle of Britain pilot when we lived in Leeds, a quiet, unassuming chap, a real gentleman, far from the ‘Yoicks! Tally-ho!’ cliché of popular depictions. He’d shot down six Luftwaffe planes. A friend once bluntly asked him, ‘Did you kill anybody?’

He dropped his head thoughtfully. ‘One doesn’t like to think so, but one must have done, of course.’

I thought of him, alone amidst the throb and roar of his machine, heading dutifully towards each encounter. I remembered him telling me, too, how he’d been sent up to Newcastle-upon-Tyne by train to break the news to a family of their son’s loss. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. As the train neared his destination his heart sank further and further. A few months later, he had to make the same journey again, with news of the loss of the second son.

Holy Trinity RC church on London Road, Newcastle-under-Lyme is the polar opposite to Bethesda Chapel. You couldn’t imagine two places of worship more different in tone. One all tiered pews and confident pulpit, with a thin communion rail beneath. The other an eccentric construction of decorated blue Staffordshire brick. One dusty and devout, the other full of an almost Mediterranean light. They have lightened up the interior of Holy Trinity over the years. Old photographs show how cluttered and crepuscular it used to be. 

Holy Trinity, London Road, Newcastle-under-Lyme

It’s now all post-Vatican II with a forward-facing altar and fresh coats of paint. I confess that I am not a fan of RC kitsch, I prefer Orthodox iconography. In context, though, it has a kind of garish appeal. The whole of the RC Church seems to have undergone a good taste by-pass at some point in its history. It's part of its charm.

Holy Trinity has a lurid replica of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham and various competent but uninspiring sculptures. It's light and airy though and has a strangely homely feel. The parish has a fascinating tale to tell. Holy Trinity was among the first RC churches to be built after Catholic Emancipation in 1829 and the first to be built on a main road. It’s first priest, Fr Egan, seems to have been a real character.

One of the things I like about Catholicism (and Orthodoxy come to that) is its matter-of-factness. They’re completely unapologetic and comfortable in their own skins. 

They’ve got part of the forearm of the Blessed Thomas Maxwell interred in the wall of the Martyr’s Chapel round the back. They make no bones about it. Groan ...

They ‘Expose’ the Blessed Sacrament in the Chapel for the faithful to venerate and also use it for the Sunday school. I imagined mischievous and screaming kids running around in the presence of a holy relic. We Prots are squeamish about all this stuff, of course, but I sometimes wonder whether we could learn from the everyday, kitchen-sink piety of our more Catholic brothers and sisters? They might not be as ‘unostentatious’ in their devotion as the Methodist chapel steward, but there’s something very grounded about it, in a different kind of way. I can imagine Fr Egan and the stolid burghers of Bethesda Methodist Chapel comparing notes even now and looking down and commenting on what the rest of us are up to. I hope they appreciate that people continue to care for the buildings they helped establish, and the faith they represent.

Two towns, two chapels – above us only sky? Or the same heaven overhead?

Why Whitchurch?

Where have you been this summer? Scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef or snorkelling off Skegness? Watching the Olympics or sunning yourself somewhere where there’s been some sun?

I’ve watched some of the Olympics. I was one of the cynics it won over.  I’ve also been to the Lakes, went ‘Ape’ (did ‘Go Ape’ for the first time) and went kayaking. I am not the most ‘gainly’ of people. These things are not my natural milieu but I thoroughly enjoyed them. I also visited Dove Cottage, and paid my respects to the Wordsworths at their family plot in Grasmere church yard. I’ve been to the gardens at Woolerton Old Hall, the Arboretum at Quinta, The Potteries Museum (once again and always worthwhile) in Hanley.

I’ve also been to Whitchurch. That’s Whitchurch in Shropshire, not one of the 14 other places in England and Wales that bear the name.

Why Whitchurch? Well, my eldest went camping there with some of her pals. She seemed to like it. So, meandering about after visiting the gardens at Wollerton Old Hall, we thought we’d drop by and explore. I’ve been there before, of course, or at least, around its ring road a few times. I’ve even driven through it, just for a peek. But I’d never got out of my car to have a look round. It’s worth doing. Honest. Even if it’s just for half an hour, which is probably about how long it would take to see the place ...

Seriously, poor old over-looked Whitchurch is trying very hard to get itself noticed. It’s even declared itself to be a walker-friendly town, whatever that means. There are boot-print motifs on posters in shop and pub windows telling you how it suitable it is for walkers and hikers. I must admit, I’d never thought of Whitchurch as a walkers’ destination, but perhaps the posters with the boot-print motifs will convince the world otherwise.

'Frog he would a-Wooing go ...' Randolph Caldecott

It’s easy to scoff. The place is trying its hardest. The ‘Heritage Centre’ does its best with not a great deal to go on. A few Roman artefacts in a sand-pit from when it was Mediolanum, the settlement in the middle of the plain. An early fort and then a civilian settlement grew up half-way between Wroxeter (Viriconium) and Chester (Deva) and there’re a few clasps and potsherds to prove it. There are some interesting clock mechanisms – a foundry in the town built some hefty tower clocks – and a whole room devoted to Randolph Caldecott the Victorian children’s illustrator and Elgar’s contemporary the composer Sir EdwardGerman. I’d never heard of him, but my wife had. They even have an Edward German music festival centred on the rather quirky parish church, St Alkmund’s, an 18^th century red sandstone pile on top of an early Norman foundation – the ‘white church’ from which the town derived its name.

A steep high street, some half-timbered houses, a few tempting looking pubs and that’s about it. Whitchurch, population 8,934, home to the wonderfully nick-named ‘Allbran All Stars’, among the founders of the Cheshire Football League before they joined the Mercian Regional Football League. It boasts a short section of the Llangollen canal, the grave of Sir John Talbot killed in the last engagement of the Hundred Years War and a railway station. Whitchurch was once the hub of a thriving branch-line before the Beeching cuts.

Was it worth stopping? Yes it was, because we need the Whitchurch’s of this world. We need the small market towns where nothing much happened, where no battles were fought and no-one of sufficient note was born to put the place on the tourist map. Sure, it’ll get a smattering of visitors, it may even get some hikers. There’ll also be people like us who’ve driven around the ring-road a few times but never stopped, who say each time we pass the place, ‘Your/my great-uncle Hal lived here once. I wonder why ...’ and who stop the car and take a look. Will we go back? Yes, we will, perhaps on the way back from the Welsh borders or passing by one languid afternoon. We’ll stop and see how it’s doing, whether they’ve re-printed the pamphlet in the Heritage Centre, ‘Whitchurch And The History of Cheese.’ We’ll be glad we stopped, glad that we could still walk or drive. Glad that we could return.

'Real Bloomsbury'? Real Mac'?

Support small publishers. They reach the parts others do not reach. I purchased a copy of ‘Real Bloomsbury’ by Nicholas Murray the other day, part of the ‘Real’ series by the marvellous Bridgend imprint, Seren. Check them out. Some wonderful poetry and general ‘Welsh-iana’. As well as poetry collections by contemporary poets they publish town and regional guides – Real Newport by the poet Ann Drysdale (‘Tidy’), Real Cardiff by series editor Peter Finch, even Real Merthyr (‘Fair do’s) and Real Aberystwyth.

Now they’ve ventured over the border, and it's not Real Bristol or Real Liverpool as one might expect – but Real Bloomsbury. The titles beg some questions, of course. Is there a ‘false’ Bloomsbury, an ‘inauthentic’ Merthyr? But you get the idea.

‘It gives a good walking tour of Bloomsbury,’ said the manager of Skoob Books as I browsed in the Aladdin’s Cave basement they’ve been driven into by vertiginous Brunswick rents. He’d been explaining as much to three American tourists who’d clearly been wondering why it was full of second-hand books and not the latest Harry Potter. It’s a second-hand book shop, ladies. The clue is in the title.

‘It doesn’t mention us,’ he complained.

‘Ah, yes, but it does,’ I chirped. I’d had a sneak preview in the library at Goodenough College and noticed a passing reference.

He flicked through the pages, looking for it. ‘But not in the index ...’

But it is there. As are Judd Books on Marchmont Street, various statues, fountains, squares and gardens and more blue-plaques than you could possibly take in on an afternoon’s stroll. As the blurb on the dust-jacket tells us, ‘he even mentions Virginia Woolf.’

Another question begged – why Bloomsbury? Why has Seren bounded over Offa’s Dyke and missed out Swindon (silly question), Marlborough, Reading (another silly question) or Hounslow? Might it be because the London Welsh have their Headquarters here, just on the boundary between Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell? Some 30 years ago now I met some London Welsh by chance in a tremendous pub in Holborn – which I’ve yet to find since. The Welsh are there. There in Llundain, chief city of the Island of the Mighty. There were there before David Jones marched away In Parenthesis (I bought a copy of that in Skoob), before they buried the head of Bendigeidfran under the White Hill where London's Tower now stands. They are there in Bloomsbury among the academics and the students, the guest-houses and hotels, the hospitals and the headquarters of all manner of wierd and wonderful organisations.

'An extremely accurate MAP of Mac.'

For that reason, and many others, Bloomsbury deserves the Seren treatment. Perhaps all towns do. Even Swindon. Give me a chance and I’ll write one (well, not about Swindon). I’m tuned into genius loci and my eldest daughter has taken to drawing mind-maps of the places she visits. She took herself up to Macclesfield (Mac’) the other day to visit her grandmother in hospital. She found her own way there by train and on foot and drew a map of the place when she got home.  The route from the train station to the hospital takes in Poundland (‘Yes, everything’s £1’), The Cheshire Building Society, a Big Sports Field, and a ‘wierd school-like building – possibly a school?’ – which is the best description of the exclusive King Edward’s School I’ve heard so far. There are also some ‘really gorgeous old houses’, a ‘cute Victorian museum’ (‘Must visit, it has mummies and stuff’).

‘It kind of counts as a day out,’ my daughter records, pathetically perhaps, but then, we live in Cheshire.  ‘It also kind of counts as Manchester,’ she also observes, rather hyperbolically. She is 16 and like I say, we do live in Cheshire ...

‘Weren’t Joy Division from here?’ she asks (she’s seen Control and keeps nicking my albums), ‘Or was that Salford?’

Quick, someone write a Real Macclesfield and answer her questions.

Can't Compline?

I've landed on my feet for a while with an interim position for two days a week at the rather special Goodenough College in London. It's an international hall of residence for postgraduate students and if you're interested you can find out more about it on my business blog, Coracle Communications.

We're often told not to mix business with pleasure. To some extent it's hard not to when you're working somewhere like that which has a distinctive community feel all of its own - and where there are various talks, exhibitions, concerts and extra-curricular events going on. Of course, it's best to keep the professional and the general interest side separate on such occasions.

That said, I find I'm benefitting greatly from some of these extra-curricular aspects. I attended one of the College's 'Port Talks' the other week and found it really helpful - all about decluttering your email and organising your work priorities.

There's something very holistic about that. Equally, as I'm around on a Monday I've attended the candle-lit Compline service that takes place at 10pm that evening. I do like reflective liturgical services, but I wasn't familiar with the Anglican Compline setting. Where has it been all my life? It's lovely.

Goodenough College Chapel - simple, dignified, beautiful

I've only been twice and won't make it every Monday (I've got people to see and things to do) but there's something about the rhythm of it. Just the job before you settle down for the night. I must admit, it threw me a little the first time as they divided the chapel in two for the chanting of the Psalms and the various responses. There were only two of us on my side of the aisle and my chant leaves a lot to be desired. My wife can do Anglican chant but I never learned and so I tend to trail along with what everyone else is doing. As there were only two of us I felt a tad exposed ...

It was easier going the next Monday as there were more chanters on my side of the chapel. Not that it had thrown me the first week, I'm old enough and ugly enough not to be intimidated so easily. And once you get into the swing of it, the chants suggest themselves.

Why don't more places do this? I can see why chant has fallen into disuse, but look what's replaced it? Grim sub-Cold Play power pop and slop.

Ok, ok, there's nothing more boring than a born-again liturgist. But I'm unrepentant. Bring back the chant. We need it. It can do us good.