Bloody Jutes

one of the many things my brother taught me was that there is no such thing as an 'English' person; England is a rich tapestry of ancestral heritage that comes from all over Europe and beyond. he wrote this ten years ago and it still resonates today. perhaps even more so than it did back then.

Multiculture

Saxon walled town,
Celtic field system,
Old Norman church,
Roman road,

Angevin Bailey,
Tudor construction,
Mock Gothic arch,
Bloody Jutes.

Paul Maddocks (26 January 1969 - 19 April 2007)

Advice to Lovers

I knew an old man at a fair
Who made it his twice-yearly task
To clamber on a cider cask
And cry to all the lovers there : –

‘Lovers of all lands and all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme,
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.

Whistle, and Love will come to you :
Hiss, and he fades without a word :
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do :
Speak, and he tells what he has heard.

Then all you lovers take good heed,
Vex not young Love in thought or deed :
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon, nor forget.’

The old man’s voice was kind yet loud
And this shows what a man was he,
He’d scatter apples to the crowd
And give great draughts of cider free.

Robert Graves, October 1919 via Brainpicker

And The Winner Is...

Early morning, never sleep
Enough to have a dream.
Dreads bathing mother, fears
That no-one will be
Her selfless friend
When the time draws near
That is misnamed 'the end'.

The postman nearly visits,
On the mat a letter
Sealed in dumb reply
To her only ever
Rush of madness -
"Why you should have a holiday
In twenty words or less."

Excitement lasts a gulp
Then stood one foot upon
The pristine pedal of the bin
The thought that if she'd won......
If frightens her to laugh;
The unopened letter gets dropped in
And she goes to run the bath.

Paul Maddocks (1969-2007)

Just So

There's no harm in asking
Why everything should be just so
There's no harm in dreaming
That someday I'll know all there is to know
I just want to know
Perhaps it's true that some surprises
Are much better left untold
But there's no harm in hoping
That one day their secrets
Unfold

Why does the ostrich have feathers that grow in a plume?
And why does the hippo have tiny red eyes
When there's so much room for eyes to bloom?
Why do camels get the hump?
Why does the crab play with the sea?

Why does no one seem to be bothered by questions but me?

In these High and Far-Off Times
There must be reasons behind rhymes
There must be answers to every question
And puzzle, I propose
Though I've asked all of my cousins
Aunts and uncles in their dozens
The only thing I've learned
Is no one knows
No one knows...

There's no harm in asking
Why everything should be just so
(I like his young, inquiring mind)
There's no harm in dreaming
That someday I'll know all there is know
(A joie-de-vivre...?)

Perhaps it's true that some surprises
Are far better left untold
But there's no harm in hoping
That one day their secrets
(One day their secrets)
Unfold

There's no harm in asking
(No harm in asking)
Why everything should be
Just so

Anthony Drewe, from the musical Just So based on the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

if today were the day you had to stop dancing…

these lyrics are from A Chorus Line, a musical i have a dance chorus part in, but will likely have to drop out of because i have fractured my foot. i broke it in July when i fell off the fence i was peering over when i was lost taking a shortcut home. i have been dancing on it since then, not knowing it was fractured but feeling something wasn't right. the pain has been overwhelming at times, but it's worth it. just for the sheer joy of dancing.

Kiss today goodbye
The sweetness and the sorrow
Wish me luck, the same to you
But I can't regret
What I did for love, what I did for love

Look, my eyes are dry
The gift was ours to borrow
It's as if we always knew
And I won't forget what I did for love
What I did for love

Gone
Love is never gone
As we travel on
Love's what we'll remember

Kiss today goodbye
And point me toward tomorrow
We did what we had to do
Won't forget, can't regret
What I did for love

What I did for love
What I did for

Love
Love is never gone
As we travel on
Love's what we'll remember

Kiss today goodbye
And point me toward tomorrow

Point me toward tomorrow
We did what we had to do
Won't forget, can't regret
What I did for love what I did for love

What I did for love
by Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban

Watcher In The Woods

“If we didn't have strong feelings, how could we love or fight? When our flesh is cut, we bleed. When our heart is broken, we cry. There's nothing wrong with that. It only becomes a problem when it gets in the way of what you have to do. You can't crumble when others are counting on you.”

Robert Liparulo

Gobbolino, the witch's cat

I have just adopted a 5-week-old kitten. He's black with a bit of a white belly and four white paws. He is tiny and adorable.

He was found by a friend of a friend, who posted a photo of him on Twitter. As soon as I saw him, I was reminded of this song I used to sing as a little girl in music class. Loki is not quite Gobbolino: he does have bright blue eyes and is black, but, he has three more white paws and as much as I'd like to, I don't have magic.

The song is based on a story about a witch's cat who does not like his humble beginnings, and leaves his sister Sootica to embark on a life of adventure. He comes unstuck though, and eventually returns to the farm that he first left and becomes a kitchen cat, as he started. His black coat has faded to an "unrecognisable tabby" which is another similarity, because Loki is actually a black tabby, not "black all over".


Gobbolino, the witch’s cat

One fine night in a witch’s cavern,
Two kittens rolled on to the floor;
One, called Sootica, was black all over,
The other, Gobbolino, had one white paw.

Who’ll give a home to a kitten?
Who’ll give a home to a cat?
Gobbolino you may call me;
I want just a fire and a mat.

One white paw and a sheen of tabby,
Two lovely eyes not green but blue,
None of the witches would take this kitten …
And neither did his mother know what to do.

Then one day, when the sun was shining,
Gobbolino found he was all alone.
The witch had gone a deserted him forever,
So Gobbolino washed himself, then he left home.


the lyrics end here but I think that's a fault of the website I found them on... does anyone know the rest?

Joseph Brearley 1909-1977 by Harold Pinter

Dear Joe, I’d like to walk with you
From Clapton Pond to Stamford Hill
And on,
Through Manor House to Finsbury Park,
And back,
On the dead 653 trolleybus,
To Clapton Pond,
And walk across the shadows on to Hackney Downs,
And stop by the old bandstand,
You tall in moonlight,
And the quick shadow in which it persists.

You’re gone. I’m at your side,
Walking with you from Clapton Pond to Finsbury Park,
And on, and on.

1977, Teacher of English

Prophet and Loss

As it kicked in,

The stray psilocybin

In the Boeuf Bourgignon,

He said,

"I’ve an urge,

Next market day,

To kick it all over.

I don’t know why,

I just feel

It’s the root

Of all our unease."

Then stripped to the waist

He tore up the street

Screaming,

"England is dying,"

'Til they took him away.

Paul Maddocks (1969 - 2007)

Untitled

The many nightmares seem to have ended and by day
I am awaking from one long, hazy dream. I am going
backwards as the world thrusts forward, or so it seems;
but we are both wrong and only one of us is doing
anything to try and correct. On I go; or back.

...and it is here that I feel most truly alive,
back, back amongst the dead. For I was dead
once and yet to be, now living I am yet to be dead,
feeling so longing once more for life.

For even in the fields of the romances of both faint and flint-
hearted middle classes are their children growing
into desolation - nought to haven't, no food for
their minds, their souls withering.

Paul Maddocks
26 January 1969 - 19 April 2007

Present, tense

Oh poor he
that imbibes
pills, whisky
and survives.
Awakes in
unknown place,
gleaming white,
not heaven
but hell; race
through all thoughts
not dispelled.
Attempt to
end them all,
die, has failed.
Nurse glowers,
doctor rails.
Present tense,
past gone, no
future nailed.

Paul Maddocks
(1969-2007)

I Love You, Waterloo Bridge

The London Eye from Waterloo Bridge, Saturday 6th August 2011, taken by me

Waterloo Bridge is the king of London bridges. Why is it masculine? I'm not really sure. But it's strong, and comforting, and it makes me feel safe. Like everything's okay. (Though maybe that's more indicative of my relationship with men.)

I moved to London for university eight years ago, and never wanted to go back to the tiny town in Dorset where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. Broadstone is sweet, and peaceful, but it's not me. I enjoy a short visit to my parents a few times a year, but when the train pulls in to Waterloo Station from its journey across the south coast, I feel a sense of relief. As my footsteps fall over Waterloo Bridge, I feel like I'm coming home. Like everything's okay.

Wendy Cope has written a poem that reflects upon this magnificent bridge better than my words can:


After The Lunch
On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love
On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?
On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
the head does its best but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I am halfway across
Wendy Cope

Whenever I'm halfway across Waterloo Bridge, I snap a photo. The view from Waterloo Bridge showcases the best of London's landmarks, and it seems to change every time I cross it. These photos are not very good, but they're a chronicle of my homecoming and I hope the different moods show why I cannot get enough of the king of bridges.

Thirty Odd Years Ago

I keep borrowing my brother Paul's words for my blog, but the truth is he was a better writer than I'll ever be. There are many tragedies about his too-short life but the saddest is that his son will grow up not knowing his biological father, like Paul before him. This is something he wrote about being without a father many years ago:


My sixth summer saw me fatherless and trying to work the world out, unconscious to the gravity of each, neither weighed me down.

I thought Queen morphed into Abba, variations on a theme of Mamma Mia, for a while; then, that there were just three teams in League Division One.

The end of World War Two had been just thirty years before and my Grandad would stomp round to use the phone. He never knocked.

School was Gothic, sometimes vomit spoilt the day. Church would always hold my soul, television grabbed my bones.

Football sticker albums taught me where things were and Celtic’s not a place, and things grow on nun’s noses. All I’ll recall of Sister Liam is her face, and Sister Aloysius held me both in fear and thrall.

I had a little book of saints, treasured art, that ended in the toilet; as I say, the downfall of the Nazis had been thirty years before.

I found a dead mouse in the garden, which upset me. I understood for the first time nothing lasts forever.

Paul Maddocks
1969-2007

At the fund raining ball

Tomorrow I am going to a fundraising comedy night at the Bloomsbury Theatre. This reminded me of a poem my brother wrote:

On the sunbed, dead
The picture in the local mag had said,
'At the fund raining ball, (sic.)
Local lovely Debbie, forty.'

Poor Debbie.

From Then On

My brother wrote this. It seems fitting, now.

From then on
It’ll always be different.
Quite apart from the pain
And the grief
And her room unchanged,
In the street
They’ll always be different;
From then on.

From then on
They’ll wonder at death,
But you’ll know.
They’ll ask you round;
If you don’t want to go,
Understand,
But still wonder at death;
From then on.

From then on
You’ll wish you could scream.
You carry emotions
From room to room
And they have small notion
Of gloom.
Every day’s a bad dream
From then on.

Paul Maddocks
26 January 1969 – 19 April 2007