Starting to read John Cowper Powys' Autobiography ...

I've just started reading John Cowper Powys' Autobiography - 

This magical slab of confessions and wonder has slept upon my shelves for over twenty years - 

Only now do I feel ready to open these yellowed pages - the book smells of smoke and Autumn - 

I can hear Powys' voice in the low ceilinged room - 

His brother, Lleweyn, lived near West Chaldon, only a short drive away in the red Peugeot - 

A shepherd once told Lleweyn that he'd soon be wearing a green coat - 

On the second page of my foxed Picador, Powys says - It is a criminal blunder of our maturer years that we so tamely, and without frantic and habitual struggles to retain it, allow the ecstasy of the unbounded to slip out of our lives - 

I shall throw apple logs on the fire whilst I push my way through mazy sentences - 

Already I wonder how this magician knew my secrets - 

The wind is shaking the pine trees as I write this - my heart is beating fast, quivering inside its cradle of thin bones - 

13.33

November 13 2014

The Old School House

East Stoke

The railway station platform in the woods and the Weedking ..

After sighing over sad editorials in The Independent on Sunday, I turned to the travel section - I always found solace in the depictions of boutique hotels -  

That day, however, I read the article describing a walk around Powerstock, a village north east of Bridport, dreaming in a remote valley amongst chalk hills - 

My eyes were drawn by the magic phrase revelatory landscape -

So, a week later, Penny and I were crossing a silent meadow, climbing over ancient stiles, making for Eggarden Hill - 

We followed a path through a wood, full of dancing shadows, past coppiced hazel - we glimpsed a stream, flowing over bright stones - unseen birds sang nearby - 

We came across a stone house, festooned in creepers, by the side of the stream - 

It was a house, I thought, where you might sleep to waken in a different world - 

We found a railway station platform in clearing - it was like something lost in a dream - grass grew where there were once bright rails - old fallen leaves were deep underfoot, wrought iron railings were being swallowed by trees - 

I thought of the Weedking in Thacker and Earnshaw's Musrum - perhaps, any moment, I'd see him, or the wolves -

That wicked fable was hidden somewhere in The Old School House, perhaps in the whispering attic - 

13.00

31 October 2014

Powerstock

Note 

Musrum, by Rev'd Eric Thacker and Anthony Earnshaw, the Jonathon Cape 1968 First Printing Edition

Remembering fearful jakes and reivers ...

Outside Drumburgh, we headed for the Laal Bite tuck shop, an austere shed with a jakes worthy of Castletownbearhaven - 

Sipping my powdered cappuccino, I recalled Richard's ashen face when he emerged from that reeking palace - 

We'd been staying in a shieling scented with peat smoke - above the icy sea was a treeless mountain - I'd smoked a pipe before our fire - we'd heard girls playing wild fiddles in a bar full of farmers and gunmen - 

This all came back to me as I heaved shut the door of the jakes - 

We sat with our polystyrene cups gossiping for a while, then set off, heading for Glasson and The Highland Laddie - 

Leaving the silent village, I glanced up at the doughty stone mass of Drumburgh Castle, imagining reivers clasping their bloodied swords, singing the praises of their captains - 

15 July 2014

Drumburgh 

Note

The tower house, or pele tower, known as Drumburgh Castle, dates from the 14th Century. Thomas Lord Dacre's coat of arms are placed over a doorway.

Nearby was the Roman fort of Coggabata.

The sea rising at Port Carlisle ...

Whilst we were walking from Drumbrugh to Port Carlisle, the tide came in, silently and swiftly, as though conjured, covering the marshes with shining water - fast flowing currents swirled over submerged reed beds - fish were swept over sculpted sand banks - seawater lapped against the narrow road - 

We paused for a while, in Port Carlisle, opposite the old breakwater, a sad spine of decaying brick and tangled grass - 

A small yacht was anchored a hundred yards or so offshore - a cormorant spread its wings - 

Apart from the piping of seabirds, all was silent - I felt that I was at the end of England, about to step out of the visible world -

I gazed out over the wide Firth - I could see, very faintly, beyond the far shore in Scotland, the outlines of mountains under the vast ancient sky - 

15.00

15 July 2015

Port Carlisle

Watching Rosemary and Thyme and Doc Martin with my mum and dad ...

My dad shifted his arm chair so that he was a little closer to the bright TV world - 

Rosemary and Thyme were on - it's a gentle programme Anne told my mum - 

I sat with my mum on the big settee, soothed by elegant sleuthing in beautiful gardens, polished skulduggery in Jacobean country houses - 

As the absurd plot jerkily unwound, my parents fell asleep -

The dainty weirdly ageless Felicity Kendall twinkled - was she like Dorian Gray, I wondered - was there a terrible image in a mirror somewhere?

There was no such problem with Martin Clunes in Doc Martin - 

My mum and dad soon came to - they chuckled at the antics of the quirky Doc - 

I was disappointed that Foyles War wasn't on next - 

20.45

November 8 2014

Staunton Road

Havant

My dad's 87th Birthday ...

Today is my dad's 87th Birthday - we arrived yesterday, with a birthday cake Anne had made - it had blue icing and brave candles -

My Aunt Sylvie, my dad's youngest sister, was showing him some tiny photographs - 

There's George Sylvie said - there's Bill - there's mum - there's Dennis - there's dad - 

I gazed at the tender images, at the raffish young men standing in back yards, the shining eyed girls, the worn beloved faces - 

There you are - there's some of you Chris Sylvie laughed - 

There I was, a sturdy cherub and, some years later, a shy thin boy, standing next to my brother, Nick, and my mum - 

She looks glamorous Sylvie said - 

We are all beautiful when we are young, I thought - each of us has a time when we are flawless - 

My dad's sitting opposite me now, sighing over The Times - birthday cards are arranged upon the top of the gas fire and around the Sony Bravia flat screen TV - 

We played A CD of Arty Shaw yesterday - 

Your mum loved dancing Slvie said - 

Billie Holliday sang Any Old Time -

10.40

November 8 2014

Staunton Roadb 

Havant 

Sad Weymouth Hotels ...

Walking along Weymouth seafront, towards the gaudy statue of George III, I felt the melancholy of the near empty hotels - there they were, a reef of sad stucco and dark windows - 

I imagined sitting in a silent TV lounge, reading an Agatha Christie, perhaps The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - there'd be a mad lurid carpet underfoot - a woman in red high heels would emerge from the creaking lift - 

Upstairs, each bedroom would hoard its secrets - in the bar, an ornate radiogram would start to play Begin The Beguine - 

11.00

14 October 2014

Weymouth Seafront