Visiting Poundland ...

This morning, we were in Falkland Square - sad gaffers rode their mobility scooters through brimming puddles - they were like anguished prophets, seeking their tribes - 

We had just emerged from M & S, where we'd walked past hanging gardens of Blue Harbour shirts - 

We'd sipped cappuccinos in the cafe - icy rain was falling upon the car parks - 

I'd fallen in love, for a few moments, with a slender mannequin, decked out in daring lingerie - 

But then we decided to explore Poundland - 

I'd read Simon Armitage's Poundland a few weeks ago, in the second half of the New Statesman - 

We wandered past the feverish displays - brilliant light flooded the aisles - there was a medicine for sale called Kilkoff -  

We bought two pirate swords - 

Pale mums queued before the tills - 

12.30

October 13 2014

Poundland 

Falkland Square

Poole 

Jay plays Autumn Leaves in The Crooked Book ...

This morning we drove to Boscombe, so that we could spend an hour or two in The Crooked Book - 

Vicky had recommended a visit - she knew, I think, one of the owners - I had gone there once, after the elfin Sharon Halderthay had put down her sinister instruments - 

We parked the shiny Golf in an avenue lined with mature trees - driveways led to large detached houses with silky lawns - 

By contrast, Christchurch Road was a louche exciting drag of electronic cigarette shops, Costcutters, nail bars, Primarks, Tesco Expresses and Wetherspoons pubs - 

I felt, all around me, the turbulent currents of precarious lives - 

Inside The Crooked Book, we ate banana cake and shortbread biscuits - 

Jay bought three novels by Nancy Mitford  - he considered buying a trilby - 

Anne discovered a small rocking horse - I gazed at the mad covers of foxed Sci Fi paperbacks - a glass case contained a stuffed bird with a wicked curving beak - 

Then Jay played Autumn Leaves upon an upright piano - 

I heard the beautiful chords whilst I was skim reading a space opera by Brian Aldiss - 

It was as though Jay had cast a spell - I wondered what beautiful spirits the music would summon - 

12.00

12 October 2014

The Crooked Book

Boscombe 

Walking along The Walls ...

This evening, I walked along The Walls, from Bloody Bank to North Street -

I was with Jay, whom I'd met earlier in Poole - he'd been staying with Vicky - 

Vicky told us about her father, leaping into his raffish MGB - she smiled her dazzling dreamy smile - 

I looked out from The Walls over the darkening spell wreathed landscape - 

The trees on the horizon were like fine bones - 

Jay said later Ben Webster plays the coolest saxophone - 

19.30

October 11 2014

The Walls

Wareham 

Becoming a character in a short story by J G Ballard ...

Walking from Carlisle to Grinsdale, I thought that I was becoming a character in a short story by J G Ballard - 

I was as haunted, surely, as any of his ambiguous narrators - 

The widening river was bridged by crumbling brick structures - brutal spans of concrete were like abandoned bunkers - savage graffiti adorned damp walls -

Tall reeds bordered the river bank - banks of wild disordered flowers brushed against my legs - 

Unknown machinery growled in an industrial estate - 

Power lines crossed the river, strung between pylons neck laced with barbed wire - 

A train passed overhead - pale boys threw stones into the river -

I took photographs of two bridges - 

Penny, Alyson and Julia had walked on ahead - I ran after them -  

10.10

September 14 2014

Under the power lines

Between Carlisle and Grinsdale

Cappuccinos and pastries at South Sands Sports Centre ...

We stamped the Hadrian's Wall Path Passports ourselves outside the Sands Sports Centre - it was a drizzly dour morning - lean tee shirted figures brooded in the riverside park - 

Gazing at the bleak hull of the Centre, I felt again my boyhood loathing of Physical Education lessons - I smelt once more the smell of plimsolls - I heard the cruel banter in the juddering showers - 

We lingered, however, for a while over cappuccinos and pastries - I avoided looking at the dancing leaping women in the Zumba class - they would tear me to pieces I thought, if I ventured inside - 

Alyson and Julia told more stories about their childhoods - I wished that I'd had a raffish grandmother who shook her fist at the News - 

10.40

14 July 2014

South Sands Sports Centre

Carlisle 

 

Surprised by joy ...

Sitting in the garden, my Mont Blanc fountain pen in my hand like a wizard's wand, I thought of Wordsworth's sonnet, Surprised by joy - 

It was after sunset - there was a half moon in the flawless sky - the fir trees bordering the churchyard were like strange sculptures -

We had been gifted with a September fit for a Ray Bradbury short story - perhaps a young witch might be in the church tower, dancing from one soul to another -

I recited the opening lines of the sonnet under the lichened apple tree -

Anne said of my parents this has been their golden summer - 

Now the time of rain and snow was coming - 

In my heart, joy and sorrow were intermingled - 

18.30

September 24 2014

Under the apple tree 

The Old School House

East Stoke

Floods and young footballing gods ...

Seeking a hole in the wall, I walked down a canyon of guest houses - I passed a pub called The Bee Hive - I knew that I would have to be in deep cover to drink Spun Gold there -

I gazed at Carlisle United's stadium - there was a statue of a young footballing god outside the gates - 

Warwick Road was an invisible river of diesel fumes - 

The hole in the wall was outside a Fort Apache newsagents - 

That morning, we'd heard about the flood - I was admiring a noble full English - 

Our landlady fixed us with the mesmerising stare of an Ancient Mariner -  

We were all in bed she said - I heard a police siren, going on and on - it was after midnight - I went downstairs - I looked out of the window - there was water everywhere - it just came in - more and more of it - it was all dark - there were no lights - 

That bridge you came over - that was completely under - the biscuit factory was flooded to the roof - the night shift was on at the time - all their cars were floating away - 

There was one old lady drowned down the road - two other people were killed  - 

We were shown a photograph of Warwick Road, each Victorian mansion like an ornate stone reef, lapped by a dark lagoon - 

We got it all spanking new afterwards - the insurance you see - some good came of it - 

09.00

July 14 2014

Courtfield Guest House

Carlisle