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A Christmas Story

Knitting for Victory

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May 18, 2021Reviewed by Richard Toogood THE MOON STALLION is, superficially at least, a quaint children’s story about a wild white horse. But it delves into unexpected depths which wholly belie the innocuous nature of its premise and invest the book with power and substance. In so doing it cleverly mirrors the complexity of the beast itself which is demonstrated to be a manifestation of primordial forces which remain active in the Berkshire hills, even in the summer of 1906. The book began life as a television serial broadcast by the BBC in 1978. It was written by Brian Hayles, a gifted and versatile scriptwriter who had been active in television since the early 1960s. It was a late addition to a roster of fondly remembered children’s programmes which both the BBC and the various regional franchises of ITV produced with regularity throughout the 1970s, many of which were characterized by mythological overtures. Other series and serials of particular note in this vein include Arthur of the Britons (1972), The Changes (1975) and Children of the Stones (1977). It was a common practice for tie in books to accompany television programmes in those pre vcr days but it was not so common for the scriptwriter to undertake the task themselves. Most seem to have balked at the scant remuneration that the work received. But Hayles seems to have been justly proud of his scripts and liked to undertake the novelising of them himself where possible. And THE MOON STALLION benefits from being the product of his own hand in ways it might not have done otherwise. The Moon Stallion becomes the focus for a small corpus of well drawn characters that assemble at Coleshill Manor over three days in the early summer of 1906. Foremost among these is Mortenhurze, the stern squire of the estate who seeks to revenge himself upon the horse which he blames for the death of his wife. Then there is Purwell, the genial professor of archaeology, engaged by Mortenhurze to investigate the evidence for a real King Arthur active in the surrounding landscape. Also in attendance is Purwell’s blind daughter Diana, fey and intuitive, destined to be the instrument of Fate in the unfolding drama. And finally there is the sly and surly Todman, Mortenhurze’s stablemaster, who connives with his master in plans to capture the Moon Stallion but who is actually motivated by dark and dangerous ambitions of his own. THE MOON STALLION is not a wildly eventful book. Its action is largely restricted to exhilarating gallops across the hills. But this fact simply reflects the budgetary restrictions that the original scripts were produced under, as does the small cast and the centralized location. But the book compensates for the limitations of its scope with narrative depth and richness of erudition. It skilfully draws in aspects of prehistoric belief, ancient Celtic ritual and Arthurian legend in a cohesive and rewarding mix. And in a similar vein to Alan Garner’s books it profits also from being grounded in a real and relatable setting; in this case the Vale of the White Horse, dominated as it is by its evocative prehistoric features such as the ancient Ridgeway, the Neolithic tumulus of Wayland’s Smithy and the chalk hill figure of the Uffington White Horse itself. Each of which contributes its own sense of credence to the book’s diversions into superstition and folklore. And nowhere is this better exemplified than in the nocturnal encounter between Diana and the Green King (a marvellously visualised creation with its arm “gnarled and mossy, like the bark of an immensely aged tree”) which takes place at a Wayland’s Smithy eerily illuminated by bale-fire, and where Diana is afforded that nightmarish vision of the future which, together with its attendant rumination upon the cyclical nature of human striving, serves to invest a simple children’s fable with resonating profundity. The other significant aspect to the book lies in the way in which it eschews simplistic notions of good and evil. The ancient forces which are invoked by Todman’s schemes are shown to be laws unto themselves, self-protective, destructive in nature and largely ambivalent about the purposes of people. It is an ambitious approach for a children’s book. THE MOON STALLION is a consummate example of a type of children’s fiction which is seldom written anymore: thoughtful, wordy and celebratory of history and heritage. It remains a recommended and richly rewarding read for anyone – of whatever age – who values imagination without cynicism, education without hectoring and didactics without preachiness. Originally issued by the publishing arm of Mirror Group Newspapers it is gratifying to note that THE MOON STALLION was republished in 2014 by Fantom Films. An audio version read by the serial’s star Sarah Sutton also remains available. Brian Hayles himself never lived to see The Moon Stallion broadcast. He died suddenly in 1978 at the premature age of only 47. And while the book wasn’t his final completed project few writers could hope for a finer memorial to stand as a testament to their talent. [...] Read more...

QUEEN SHEBA’S RING by Sir H. Rider Haggard

March 17, 2021Reviewed by Richard Toogood Neither Sergeant Samuel Quick nor Professor Ptolemy Higgs are to be found in William Freeman’s DICTIONARY OF FICTIONAL CHARACTERS. At least not in the 1963 edition which is my resource of first resort in reference to such matters. Whether they succeeded in making it into any later issue I am not in a position to know. But I rather doubt it. And this seems to me a sorry omission as each is in his own way a memorable creation which deserves to be better known. Quick is yeoman stock out of old England; stolid, modest, sensible, loyal and dependable: the sort of man whose ancestors stood ruminatively in the Saxon shield wall at Hastings. Stalwart working class characters of this type are commonplace in popular fiction of the Imperial Era. Haggard’s achievement was to invest this stereotype with personality which finds expression in a droll disdain for pomposity: “Shut it, porpoise…and keep your eyes where Nature put ‘em, or they’ll fall out”. Equally delightful is Quick’s phlegmatic fatalism: “Begging your pardon, Captain, there ain’t no such thing as risk. Man comes here when he must, and dies when he must, and what he does between don’t make a ha’porth of difference.” Part comic foil and part moral yardstick, against which the failings and foibles of his betters are measured, Quick illuminates every page on which he appears with his repertoire of dry observations. Ptolemy Higgs, by contrast, is a stereotype of a different sort: the eccentric expert. In this instance an archaeologist reputed to be one of the foremost authorities on extinct languages in Europe. But at the same time a man so unconcerned with his mode of attire that it was said “the police invariably request him to move on, should he loiter in the streets at night”. Shrill, irascible and often reckless Higgs appears to have directly inspired the creation of Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger. Furthermore his recourse to a whip of rhinoceros hide against his detractors might be said to have informed another famous fictional archaeologist as well. The abiding pity is that two such sterling and scintillating characters could not be found a place in one of Rider Haggard’s better books. First published in 1910 by the firm of Eveleigh Nash QUEEN SHEBA’S RING dates to the middle years of Rider Haggard’s career which few would advocate as being his best. The masterpieces he had regularly produced during the 1880s and 90s were long behind him, whilst the remorseless exploitation of Allan Quatermain, which would commence with the publication of MARIE in 1912, was still to come. Looking at the books Rider Haggard published in this period there is an inescapable sense of revisiting tried and trusted territory, be that on account of the belated resurrection of She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed in AYESHA (1905), the recycling of the same geographical settings with PEARL MAIDEN (1903) and THE BRETHREN (1904) or the repetitious employment of colonial Africa which he knew intimately. One can but speculate whether other commitments at this time – of which he had many – precluded him from undertaking the field trips to new locations which invested his stories with authenticity. QUEEN SHEBA’S RING is one of those signature tales of Africa with which Rider Haggard’s name will always be indelibly associated. In this instance the setting is sub Saharan central Africa instead of the more customary Transvaal. The narrator of the tale is an ex-pat doctor called Richard Adams who is on a mission to find his kidnapped son. Years of fruitless searching eventually bring him into the remote lands of the savage Fung people where the son is found enslaved. Attacked by the Fung Adams finds sanctuary in the mountain city of a lost tribe of Abyssinian Jews called the Abati. The Abati are ruled over by Maqueda, aka Walda Nagasta, the Child of Kings, another graduate from Rider Haggard’s inexhaustible academy of impossibly beautiful queens. Although the Abati prove to be a wholly degenerate, debased and spineless rabble Adams bargains their aid in rescuing his son in exchange for recruiting experts from England to undertake the task of destroying Harmac, the monumental black sphinx which the Fung worship as a god. For there is a prophecy that the Fung will depart the land and cease to menace the Abati should their idol be obliterated. It is this set of circumstances which serves to bring both Higgs and Quick into the story, along with a rather bland hero by the name of Oliver Orme who has the role of besotted love interest impressed upon him from the off. From this point forward events progress along fairly routine lines. The requisite quota of diversions includes a lion hunt, a sandstorm and a fire fight with the Fung before Adams and company succeed in reaching their destination. Whereupon an infatuated Orme and Maqueda engage in a romance in defiance of custom which incurs the enmity of the Abati and threatens to bring disaster down upon the entire enterprise. It isn’t a bad premise by any means but it smacks of a tale written with the left hand instead of the right which was Kipling’s way of criticizing stories that lacked the full force of authorial commitment. And it must be said that the book springs very few surprises. In fact it is possible to glean a pretty accurate impression of the entire story from the chapter titles alone. The reader’s expectations appertaining to the aforementioned heroic romance are addressed even in a manner which hints at authorial self-parody. For having all declared themselves to be “past that sort of thing” Quick observes that “woman is just the one thing about which you can never be sure” and speculates, prophetically as it transpires, that they may all live to “see crawling after this one on knees, with the gent in the specs behind, and Samuel Quick, who hates the whole tribe of them, bringing up the rear.” The book suffers too from a degree of artifice and contrivance which, while it is only to be expected in a story of this nature, in this instance strains credulity on more than one occasion. Possibly the most glaring example of this occurs when the Fung choose to attack the gates of their own city instead of making use of the alternative entrance by which Orme, Adams and Quick blundered into it. Readers familiar with the works of Rider Haggard will not be surprised to learn that the savage Fung are written about in admiring terms whereas the venal and cowardly Abati are relentlessly pilloried in a manner which strays alarmingly close to outright anti-Semitism. In compensation for this the book does provide one of those marvellous images in which Rider Haggard excelled and for which Graham Greene credited him with the ability to enchant; in this case the spectacle of a hunchbacked skeleton ensconced upon a throne, surrounded by treasure and washed by firelight. If the image resonates then it is probably because it was appropriated by that notorious literary magpie Lin Carter, by which route it eventually found worldwide exposure in John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian (1982). For my money Rider Haggard was, and always will be, the greatest adventure story writer of them all, and one mediocre offering will not impact upon that assessment in the slightest. When one considers that he wrote in a period which bequeathed such an abundance of ideas and characters to posterity, from Long John Silver to Sherlock Holmes, the Psammead to the Martian tripods, – and upon which films, television and comics have been ravenously feeding ever since – Rider Haggard’s sheer creativity and influence yet elevates him above all his peers. Without him there would be no Tarzan, no Conan, and no Indiana Jones. His shadow even extends to Star Trek where the Kirk, Spock and McCoy triumvirate is a direct parallel with the tripartite protagonist formula he pioneered in KING SOLOMON’S MINES. With the statuses of Orme, Higgs and Adams being that of soldier, scientist and medical man respectively the comparisons in this instance could not be any more direct. QUEEN SHEBA’S RING is not a bad book by any means. If it does disappoint then it is only in comparison with Rider Haggard’s other works to which it surrenders both depth and richness. But it remains eminently readable and entertaining even so. And sometimes it pays those of us who persist in claiming profundity for popular culture to remember that that is all it was ever intended to be. [...] Read more...

A Christmas Story

December 17, 2020It was the day that celebrated the birth of a carpenter who would later be nailed to a cross before he was forty, and the girl stood on the beach and watched the waves come in and soak the sand. She wore a soiled white dress over her thin body, and her black hair that ran halfway down her back was whipped into snaking tendrils by the harsh icy wind that rode in over the surging sea, beating the backs of the waves as it came and casting foam high onto the rocks further up the beach. Goose pimples stood out on her skin, for the dress was a short sleeved one. She stood facing the sea, but out of the corner of her eye she could see the man approaching, as he had been for the last five minutes, walking over the sand and parallel to the water’s edge, where he had slowly grown from a dot. He was a fat man, muffled by layers of clothing, including a scarf that hid half his face so only two eyes, magnified by thick round glasses, showed over it. Eyes that squinted at her like those of a curious cat. “This is something you don’t see,” he said when he reached her. “Pardon?” she answered, not turning to face him, but her own eyes swivelled as far sideways in his direction as they could manage. “I SAID THIS IS SOMETHING YOU DON’T SEE,” he shouted. She turned to face him, her hair billowing as she did so. “What is?” she asked. “A girl on a beach on a cold Christmas Day.” He began to take off his coat. She noticed a second coat underneath it. “Girls should be indoors, opening presents.” “What are you doing?” she said stepping backward. “You’ll catch your death. You shouldn’t be out like this.” He held his coat in his arms and stretched them out to her, like an offering. He had loosened the scarf and she saw chubby, rosy cheeks and a kindly smile. “Put it on,” he said. She paused and looked at him, then she took the coat and pulled it over her brittle frame. It dwarfed her and her arms were lost in its sleeves. With difficulty she pulled them up. “That’s better,” he said. “Don’t you think that’s better?” “Yes,” she said. She put a hand in a pocket and pulled out some yellow tickets. Sommerbee’s was printed on them. “The name of the fair,” she said surprised. “And what’s wrong with that?” he said. “It’s as good as any name.” He sounded disappointed. Her hair blew over her face, then retreated. “Your hair moves on its own like a Gorgon’s; are you Medusa? Or Stheno? Or the other one?” The girl didn’t understand. “Come off the beach,” he said and, turning his fat frame, wobbled off over the wet sand toward the promenade. She watched for a moment, and then followed. She saw the width of his shoe marks and placed a foot in one of them. Her foot was tiny in comparison. Silently he led her up onto the promenade, then on over the main road, empty this morning, and to where a padlocked gate stood under a sign that repeated the word on the tickets she still grasped in her hand. “Sommerbee’s,” he said, taking out a key from a trouser pocket and turning it in the lock. He took up the padlock and pushed open the gate. “In we go.” He padlocked it again when they were on the other side. “You can’t trust people nowadays,” he said. He led her through the rides and booths, which she recognised despite their shrouds of tarpaulin, shrouds that lifted in the wind that seemed to follow her, and to a large caravan that stood behind the generators in a corner of the fairground. “I like the ghost train best,” she said. But he did not answer. He took out another smaller key. “Home,” he said. He unlocked the door and squeezed through it. The girl waited beside the open door, but he did not return. She stretched out her arms at her sides and shook them; how strange I must look, she thought. Like I have been cursed, perhaps by one of those Rose Lee gypsies you find in these places, and I am slowly shrinking into nothingness. “Roll up and see the Nothing Girl!” she said. “Nothing Girl come in,” the man’s voice bellowed through the door. Inside she saw a bed, a large comfortable chair that had a dint in it, a desk with an office style chair, which the girl was sure the man could not fit into, and a small kitchen at one end. There were lots of books. An electric kettle was making a noise on a bench. “Tea, Nothing Girl.” “Are you Summerbee’s?” “Mr. Summerbee to you.” “Mr. Summerbee,” she said apologetically. “That’s better. Yes,” he said. “Tell me why a Nothing Girl is out in the cold, without a warm coat on a day like this? Where is your home?” The girl didn’t answer, she began to peel off the great coat the man had given her. “Are you sure you won’t disappear when you take it off?” The man asked her. “It’s warm in here,” she said. “Home should be warm.” “You have plenty of books.” They were stacked in piles around the floor. “You should buy a bookcase.” “So she is an expert on how to look after books,” he said. A grimace came to his face. The girl noticed it. “What is it?” “Nothing Nothing Girl,” said the man. He waddled over to the comfy chair and sat down. He stretched out his legs. “Do your feet ache?” Now it was his turn not to answer. “Aren’t you going to take off your coat?” she said. “So now it is you who asks questions,” he said. The girl wasn’t listening, she had noticed a photograph on the bench next to the boiling kettle. “Who is this?” she said picking it up. It was a black and white picture of a woman holding a large baby. “Is it you?” “Put it down,” the man said crossly. “It isn’t polite to look without asking.” “It is you, look how big the baby is!” The kettle clicked. “Tea’s boiled,” said the man. The girl got the mugs and teabags from a cupboard, like the man told her, and the milk from a small fridge. She made two teas, fishing out the bags from the cups and throwing them into a small bin by her feet. “Don’t let them drip,” warned the man. As they sat and drank, he in his great chair, she in the office one, he told her about the fair and how he struggled to keep it going. “It isn’t fancy enough for today’s kids,” he told her. “Not enough flashing lights or lasers.” “I like the Ghost Train,” she said. “Ouch,” he said leaning forward and squeezing his shoe. “Your shoes are too tight,” she told him. “Are you my mother now?” he said. She put down her steaming mug and got up and went over to him, she stood over him hands on hips. He looked embarrassed. “My feet are sore. I’m too fat,” he told her. “I wobble when I walk.” She knelt next to him and began to undo the laces. “Is it difficult to get shoes?” she said. “ Yes, very. I send away for them. A man in Ireland makes them. I call him my leprechaun.” “I’ve never been to Ireland.” “I’ve never not been fat,” he said. “In the old days I would have been a circus fat man. I was brought up in the circus.” “Really?” “ My mother was an acrobat,” he told the girl. “Did she have a nice costume?” she asked.. “Yes; sea blue, with sequins sewn on by hand, that sparkled under the big top lights.” “I’d like one like that,” said the girl. “I had a blue leotard once.” “When I was young there were lots of strange looking people around, others would pay to watch them –“ “Freaks,” said the girl. “No not freaks – people. There was a leopard man, a crocodile man, a bearded lady, whose whiskers tickled when she bent and kissed me, a giraffe woman-“ “Lots of animal names.” “And real animals too!” he raised his voice. “Ponies, lions, an old elephant-” “I’ve never seen an elephant.” “You won’t. The old circus is gone; the people are gone, the animals are gone” he said. “Only noisy machines remain. You can’t talk to machines.” The girl thought of the empty fair outside and the padlocked gate. She looked around her. “Haven’t you a wife?” she asked. She looked at his face. Water had formed behind the lenses of his glasses. Tears ran down his ruddy cheeks. “I’m just a fat man,” he said. She stared at him, then got up and went to the sink. She emptied the crockery from a plastic bowl that sat in it and began to fill it with hot water. “What are you doing?” said the man. She did not reply. She found a sponge and some soap in a cupboard and turned off the tap. She added the soap to the bowl and some cold water from the other tap, then turned that off too. She tested the temperature with her elbow. “My mother used to do that,” said the man. She placed the sponge under an arm then carefully picked up the bowl. She carried it over to where the man sat. She placed it on the floor in front of him, and knelt down once more. She pulled off his great shoes, and then his socks and saw his swollen, raw feet. She put the sponge in the warm soapy water and, taking it out and squeezing it lightly, began to bathe an aching foot. The man was silent all the while, watching in wonder. She never looked up as she worked gently on one foot, then the other, and then, shaking her head lightly, she bent close to them and taking up a handful of long dark hair in each hand, began, delicately, to dry them. Outside it started to snow. [...] Read more...

Who Remembers Soranus?

November 18, 2020Man is Bourne When you come as an inhabitant to this earth, you do not have the pleasure of choosing your dwelling, or your career. You do not even have the privilege like those poor little shivering souls in “The Blue Bird,” of sitting about, all aware and wondering, while you are chosen, one by one to take up your toilsome way on earth. You are a helpless victim of your parents’ coming together. There is denied you even the satisfaction of knowing that they created you, in their own bungling fashion, after some manner of a work of art, or of what they imagined an adequate child should be. On the contrary, you may be merely an accident, unintentioned, a species of catastrophe in the life of your mother, a drain upon the resources that were none too great already. And your parents have not only not conceived you as a work of art, but they are wholly incapable after you are born of bringing you up like a work of art. Randolph Bourne. Old Tyrranies The American writer and political activist Randolph Bourne may well have counted himself unlucky from the first moment of his birth. An accident with forceps as he struggled out between his mothers thighs left him with a misshapen ear, at four tuberculosis of the spine stunted his growth and hunched his back. By age thirty-two he was dead, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which ravaged a world already suffering from the results of a war he opposed so vehemently. He gives us a grim picture of a universe in which we are victims of blind chance and circumstance before we are even born. If his words seem bitter then this is a man who lived in a society where judgement was based on the superficial. It is still true: All too easily we turn away from the crippled and infirm. “the doors of the deformed man are always locked, and the key is on the outside. He may have treasures of charm inside, but they will never be revealed unless the person outside cooperates with him in unlocking the door.” He writes in his essay The Handicapped. “for at the bottom of all the difficulties of a man like me is really the fact that his self-respect is so slow in growing up” Faced with such a negative world-view it would be easy to retreat into a fatalistic, sceptical view of things, but Bourne doesn’t, instead he finds a firm bedrock of inner conviction to anchor himself to (he uses the language of religion to describe it), it was a theory based on social progress. “For this is the faith that I believe we need today, all of us–a truly religious belief in human progress, a thorough social consciousness, an eager delight in every sign and promise of social improvement, and best of all, a new spirit of courage that will dare. I want to give to the young men whom I see–who, with fine intellect and high principles, lack just that light in their faces that would give them a purpose and meaning in life–to them I want to give some touch of this philosophy–that will energize their lives, and save them from the disheartening effects of that poisonous counsel of timidity and distrust of human ideals which pours out in steady stream from reactionary press and pulpit.” A theory where man has within him a higher creature. His change is not to his inward character, as H. G. Wells or George Bernard Shaw believe is necessary, rather the higher man is already there, all along, stifled by the conditions around him. It is not man as such that needs to alter, it is his surroundings. Bourne recognises two separate factors: “a social and group capacity” and a “individual and personal one”. The former is the more dominant, the individual is forced to conform, his true self subsumed by its demands. It is a harsh taskmaster, as the crippled Bourne could vouch. By separating the two he has at least stated the problem. “Really to believe in human nature while striving to know the thousand forces that warp it from its ideal development…this is my religion on its human side.” For man is shackled, in a sense they are deformed mentally as much as Bourne himself is physically. “This is the goal of my religion-the bringing of fuller, richer life to more people on Earth….And this is not to be a mere philosophical precept which may well be buried under a host of more immediate matters, but a living faith, to permeate one’s thought, and transfuse one’s life.” To Bourne education can achieve this end. Man must mature mentally for he is still in the process of evolving, says Wells, man is evolved, replies Bourne, he just doesn’t know he is, because his surroundings blind him to it. The difference is subtle, but there. He is trapped like a puppet, held fast by the strings that bind society together, and moved by them. Cut them and he can move freely, sit up and take stock of his predicament. He can do something about it. The fatalism of Bourne’s doomed world of chance and circumstance is removed. He has found a way out. It is a dangerous thought though, it invites the Burkean nightmare of the Terror. The overthrow of everything will bring human perfection. Man is only the way he is because of the social system. The social system is a virus, destroy it and a new man is born. Healed and harmonious, in tune with his fellows. The stunted twisted anaemic individual rises up, stretches his flowering shining ebony body to the heavens and greets a new epoch in his story. He was a giant after all, it was only the world that was lacking. Man is a Work of Art The Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus explains the reason for the rise of ape-like looking men in the ancient world (it is the latest fashion in pets) and how to ensure your offspring are well proportioned: “some women, seeing monkeys during intercourse, have borne children resembling monkeys. The tyrant of the Cyprians, who was misshapen, compelled his wife to look at beautiful statues during intercourse and became the father of well-shaped children; and horse-breeders, during covering, place noble horses in front of the mares.”1 The tyrant of the Cyprians was lucky. In Sparta, physical perfection was all in in a race of men bred to be warriors. Legend has it the weak child was left at the foot of mount Tatygetus to die of exposure.2 Exposure was seen as a form of birth control in a society where abortion would have been dangerous to the health of the mother. But did the Spartans ever do it? Could it be a case of our idea of the perfect human form is given root in these mighty warriors, and an ideal demands the removal of the weak. Disabled people did exist in Greece. The Spartan king Agesilaus II was born with one leg shorter than the other but was still trained in traditional Spartan methods. Such is the western desire for perceived normality in children that we abort children for having hair lips, despite this being easily correctable. Our Utopian futures offer a race of perfect humans gene massaged in the womb. We should note the Yoruba concept of beauty. The Yoruba are an African ethnic group that mostly inhabit Nigeria. To the Yoruba external beauty is recognised as a mere superficial veneer. Real beauty is the moral character of the person, bound up with helping others, doing her chores well, being a great aid to the greater community. So the most beautiful woman in a community could be the most displeasing to our western eyes, where the image is all. There was once a lady called Julia Pastrana who, according to Darwin “was a remarkably fine woman,”3 he then goes onto say, “but she had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead; she was photographed, and her stuffed skin was exhibited as a show; but what concerns us is, that she had in both the upper and lower jaw an irregular double set of teeth, one row being placed within the other, of which Dr. Purland took a cast. From the redundancy of the teeth her mouth projected, and her face had a gorilla-like appearance.”4 Observers who met her (Darwin didn’t) say she had a fine singing voice, could read, and converse well on many subjects in English and Spanish. “She was all womanly: kind, very charitable and accomplished; she possessed a sweet voice & great taste in music; she spoke three languages, and danced with ease, lightness & grace” Her husband, who managed her as a displayed freak, allowed intimate examinations, and she fared better under the pen of Darwin than of a Doctor Alexander B. Mott, who declared her to be the offspring of the mating of a human and an Orang hutan. Humanity to him was skin deep.5 Some say there was, long ago, a race of hominids called Boskop Man.6 10,000 years past they walked the ocean shores in Africa as the last ice age came to an end. They are often known by the Afrikkans word Strandlooper, “the beach walkers.” They were small in body with huge heads and child like faces. They lived simple lives, but they had greater brains than ours. The thinking goes that they cared nothing for technology, they were hunter gatherers, but because they had such huge brains then they must have used them for something. And because of this they contemplated the world in ways only the enlightened Buddha could know. In The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, the unnamed narrator travels far into the future and finds mankind has evolved into two separate species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi have become lazy, without threat (they have wiped out the dangerous animal species, and we presume disease also) or challenge (their food is provided for them) they have regressed mentally. In the George Pal film version of 1960 they are blond, blue eyed Aryans. The dark after image of the National Socialist dream. Aren’t the Boskop people a 20th/21st century Eloi, only with active intellects? The Eloi of the film are classical beauty, a fixed ideal, the Aryan master race of the Nazi horror made flesh. They also represent a pre-modern world view. In a god created universe they are how the original man looked, modelled, by a god artist, into a perfect David. They are man before the Fall, before he was driven from the primordial garden. But the Boskop are what a Darwinian driven species sees itself becoming, there was no first man, no god given mould, instead there is progress, the Darwinian future, evolutions product. The Eloi’s mistake is they have ceased to move forward. This is their failure. By standing still they doomed themselves. To a society where we weigh progress as change, a smarter race can not just think differently, they must look different. They are what we see ourselves becoming, creatures of brain not brawn. They resemble the greys of alien lore which might not be by chance. Their lack of technology and simplicity in living is because they have found something else, within. Perhaps they have harnessed mental powers such as telepathy or telekinesis, rather than the cyborg of man and machine which science and the futurists offers us, they are a Luddite version of the coming superman. They are, in the words of Loren Eiseley: “the men of the future.” who came before their time. They were an evolutionary failure because the world not ready for them. Someday, unimagined years hence, they may come again. There was another race of hominids who once walked the Earth, the Neanderthals. These, according to Wells, were savage and brutal creatures. In his short story The Grisly Folk they are described as “Hairy or grisly, with a big face like a mask, great brow ridges and no forehead, clutching an enormous flint, and running like a baboon with his head forward and not, like a man, with his head up,” and that “he must have been a fearsome creature for our forefathers to come upon.” And in the story he is indeed, for a pair of them abduct and feed on one of the children of a tribe of our early ancestors who have wandered into their territory. Hairy and apelike they resembled Julia Pastrana. And, like the Morlocks of his story, they were savage. The Morlocks, having evolved to live underground, are hiding away in the dark, The Morlocks ultimate regression was to become cannibal, preying on the Eloi aspect of himself, eating his own beauty. Yet in reality we know, like the Strandlopers, Neanderthals buried their dead with ritual. Evidence for flowers have been found in graves. They made cave paintings and decorated shells. And they may have played flutes too, in which case they knew music. It seems they mourned and knew beauty, and their brains where greater than ours, also like the Strandlopers. Only, like Julia, they weren’t beautiful in looks themselves, so they became savages, Morlocks to the Strandloper’s Eloi. In a cut scene from the book version of The Time Machine, the narrator moves further through time to discover man’s final fate. On a bleak moor, under an orange sun, he has become a rabbit-like creature, hopping around in an almost mindless ignorance and preyed on by giant centipede-like monstrosities. He mocks the forward ever upward promise of evolution. Plato in the Symposium has the prophetess Diotema speak of the beauty of the mind being more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. For there are levels of beauty. We ascend to the absolute beauty. She tells Socrates that he would move beyond the shallow beauty of fair boys and youths into a real of the absolute. Beauty is not skin deep, as the Yoruba people understand. Leave a Bourne or a Julia in a room to converse with a sighted woman and a blind woman. After half an hour who would understand their true character more? Perhaps the blind woman sees best after all. We like our outsiders, in a perverse way, for they are different in looks, they give us someone to blame for the mess of our own lives or the society around us. Call them Black, Jew, Gypsy, Arab, they suffer because they are different. Anyone with a skin tone of a different shade to European norms stands out, and be careful not to open your mouth, an unplaced accent could mean a foreigner and you could join those silent ones of a “funny tinge”. When the Enlightenment broke on the Western mind it brought with it concepts such as the rights of man. The Inalienable Rights. Equality was one. But paying lip service to the higher ideals of the enlightenment is easy, it’s when they impact with reality that problems occur. Being a critical bystander is fine, but what happens when you have to make decisions? Man is Nobel In 2017 the government of Myanmar began to ethnic cleanse, an ugly term fore genocide, the Rohingya people7, while the world looked on in apparent horror (but did nothing). The State Counsellor (a position akin to a Western Prime Minister) of that country, Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Prize winning laureate, encouraged it and defended it later at the UN. The shock-waves reverberated that she could do such a thing. But why should we in the West be surprised at this? Why shouldn’t someone share the same prejudices as the majority of her fellow countrymen? Given that Myanmar is among the most deprived nation in Asia, why wouldn’t it seek scapegoats for it’s problems? After all Western politicians are happy to target immigrants to round up a few more votes when it suits them, why should she be so special? Isn’t it we who expect too much by proclaiming these people as heroes. They do the pure saintly stuff so we don’t have to. So we carry them on our shoulders like Catholic icons on saints days, parading them through the streets of our own failures pointing them at the stars, which, being mere mortals, we can never reach. They are also there to show it is possible to be a saint , it could be me if I wanted (only I don’t want the inconvenience). It’s part of the job description. Like Buddha with enlightenment they live the saintly life in our place so we don’t have to. By supporting them I engage with their actions. Even if it is only in the most superficial way, I can switch off from worrying or the cares it brings, they do all the uncomfortable stuff. In ancient societies the woman wailed and shrieked at funerals. Professionally. The lamentation of the women. In the Bible the Lord of hosts calls for the professional mourners to mourn for his people: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye,and call for the mourning women, that theymay come; and send for cunning women, thatthey may come:And let them make haste, and take up awailing for us, that our eyes may run downwith tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.Jeremaih 9; 17-18 It would be wrong though to see this as a simple monetary arrangement, an absolution of duty by those hiring them, the hired mourners had a role to play then, it was a skill learned, and part of a societies reaction to death. A shared social grief and a means of overcoming loss, after all birth and death are the two unavoidables. modern society gives us a perverse version of this, shorn of its deepest meaning, we seek to avoid rather than to engage with grief. In 20th century Britain there was a company called Rent a Mourner where professional actors where hired to pretend to be family members or friends, they would mingle with guests and act out the lie. We could ask what is the point of this, after all the dead man is hardly going to care what the living think, so it must then be his surviving family who want to put on a false show of their relatives popularity and social standing, even to the extent that he bred well. It was a purely monetary transaction and tips were expected. When we have reached this stage then why not go the whole way, after all funerals are generally miserable things, and send the professionals in everyone’s place?8 My chances of being embarrassed are also zero.In a society where I want all the advantages without having to think of what they entail on a wider level, on the political, on the environmental, the other, the professional hero, is waiting in the wings for the messy stuff. I can go about my business knowing this other is out there somewhere in my place.9 And what is even better is that other somewhere is off-stage.But there is a danger with these enlightened ones of our imaginations. As Rohingya shows, as the villages burn, as the black smoke clouds shift in the sky and the people are driven away or worse, we discover to our dismay that the Nobel can do the horrible. Julia Pastrana was Beautiful. Notes 1 Soranus, Gynecology, Tr. Owsei Temkin, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991, pp. 37-38. [...] Read more...

Spacial Voids of Swan

November 18, 2020The writings of Swan. Who Remembers Soranus? Man is Bourne Man is a Work of Art Man is Nobel [...] Read more...

November 9, 2020Who we are Our website address is: https://beyondthestarreefs.com/ What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments If visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/ After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. Media If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. Contact forms If visitors use a Contact form on the site we collect the data shown in the form. The data will be used to respond to the contact and may be kept indefinitely. Cookies If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year. If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser. When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed. If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day. Embedded content from other websites Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. How long we retain your data If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue. For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information. What rights you have over your data If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. Where we send your data Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. [...] Read more...

Meetings

November 3, 2020The Sun shone. Tall ships were coming out of the harbour. The two women stood side by side on a raised mound of grass above the main promenade. Their hands touched the white painted bars of a waist-high hooped metal fence. It was a great event for the city. A race of sail, that would take the ships out over the North Sea to Denmark. One spoke of it and the other replied. One had a Dutch accent and the other a local one. Soon they talked of a shared love of the sea; the Dutch one talked of being born near the sea, the local one said she had friends in Leicester who had never seen the sea for years. They talked of how dogs liked to get wet, in great oceans or small puddles, not being fussy things. Unknown to these two strangers they had more in common than they realised. For the local woman – if only she knew! – had North American blood in her veins. Far back in time a man, her ancestor, had set out in a canoe with others to greet a great ship, tall as these she now watched, as it came closer to shore. They carried tobacco and Indian wheat with them to trade. The ship carried the other woman’s ancestor. Dutch too like her. From his place on deck he saw a heavily wooded shore and traced the canoe’s approach on the water, the movement of strong arms on paddles. There was a faint trail of smoke over the trees. He rubbed the back of his neck, for it was a hot day too that day in New York Bay as he gazed out over Manhatten Island. The year was 1609. [...] Read more...

Welcome

October 22, 2020Here you will find fiction, poetry and essays. We hope you will find something of interest and will return as the site is regularly updated. “And on this day, as every other, she had come alone. And died alone. They had found her lying in the purple heather, her favourite. From her resting place the flowers of the plants seemed to be part of her. As if they sought to make this lover of themselves one with them. It was the couple’s dog, a lurcher, that had drawn them to her.” Alan James Roll, Death in High Heather. “The American writer and political activist Randolph Bourne may well have counted himself unlucky from the first moment of his birth. An accident with forceps as he struggled out between his mothers thighs left him with a misshapen ear, at four tuberculosis of the spine stunted his growth and hunched his back. By age thirty-two he was dead, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which ravaged a world already suffering from the results of a war he opposed so vehemently.” Swan, Who Remembers Soranus?, Man is Bourne. ” QUEEN SHEBA’S RING is one of those signature tales of Africa with which Rider Haggard’s name will always be indelibly associated. In this instance the setting is sub Saharan central Africa instead of the more customary Transvaal. The narrator of the tale is an ex-pat doctor called Richard Adams who is on a mission to find his kidnapped son. Years of fruitless searching eventually bring him into the remote lands of the savage Fung people where the son is found enslaved. Attacked by the Fung Adams finds sanctuary in the mountain city of a lost tribe of Abyssinian Jews called the Abati.” Richard Toogood, Iron Pulpit, Queen Sheba’s Ring. [...] Read more...

Death in High Heather

October 15, 2020‘Look!’ said the mistress. ‘Someone is there. My God!’ They had found her lying in the purple heather… She lay just off one of the tracks that crisscrossed the heath. Her right arm was raised up, as if calling… About nineteen…Brown shoulder length hair, average looks, a scar above her right eye. Pale skinned, probably burned in the sun, so would keep her arms covered up in summer. Her throat had a mark around it… When the body of a teenage girl is found on a local fell, Detective Chief Inspector Jason Ascalon and Detective Inspector Dionysia Tempest must unravel the various threads of her past, in order to find the reason for her brutal murder. A seemingly lonely outsider, who retreated into a world of romantic poets and the literature of the Bronte sisters, what was her link to the so-called Poet Club? “Do you think someone would kill over the contents of a sonnet?” A murder mystery set on Waldridge Fell and Chester-le-Street, in County Durham. [...] Read more...

Knitting for Victory

October 14, 2020They were knitting for victory. The war was into its fourth year and the five women sat around the open fire as they had done every week for the last seven weeks. Sally had to marvel at the way that the older women (she was only twenty-six, and the youngest by quite a way) were able to talk and look each other in the eye and still not drop a stitch. She couldn’t do it; never mind using the knitting needles, she had trouble just holding them. When she first started she had been so embarrassed, and kept apologising, which the old women were polite enough to wave away and tell her they were all like her once, and we all had to learn sometime. Still, as the weeks progressed it was slow work to knit the scarf she had decided on making for the brave boys at the front. “I was thinking,” said Mrs. Onslow, a widow woman, who had lost her husband in the last war. “Perhaps we should knit something for our allies, you know they can’t be getting much comfort, with their countries overrun by those awful Nazis.” “You mean for Canadians?” asked Mrs. Strangelove in a squeaking voice. “No, they’re from the Empire, and the Nazis haven’t got that far dear. I’m talking about real foreigners.” “And being in a strange country, with a different language,” Mrs. Strangelove shook her head sadly. “There is nothing strange about England,” Mrs. Onslow wagged a finger. “I know, I meant being from a strange country, with all that foreign food they have to eat.” “Yes they are an odd collection, I went to France once. Didn’t like it. Still we must try to help, be civil and all that.” “Too true,” said Mrs. Farrier, whose husband ran the village post office, a task he took particular pride in, “but would foreigners be interested in knitted scarves?” “And why shouldn’t they be?” Asked Mrs. Richardson, a stern, large bosomed woman, “After all they are flesh and blood, just like you and me.” “Too true,” chipped in Mrs. Strangelove. “Too true.” They all looked at Sally. She was lost for words. Still she must try to be part of the conversation, mustn’t she. “I think it is a…splendid idea.” There she had said something, and she thought it was rather good. The four older women nodded in agreement. “It will make them feel wanted,” said Mrs. Richardson. “Sally, how are you finding village life?” asked Mrs. Onslow changing the conversation suddenly. “I’m sure Sally has settled down nicely by now,” said Mrs. Richardson. I could have answered for myself, thought Sally, somewhat put out. “Ah, but for a young girl used to the hustle and bustle of the city…” said Mrs. Onslow. “It is very busy, the city I mean. Here I can relax more,” said Sally softly. “See,” said Mrs. Richardson, almost triumphantly, “a village is much more civilised, and no more nasty German bombs to worry about.” “That’s true,” said Mrs. Strangelove. “It is good to get away from all that for a while, isn’t it Sally?” Said Mrs. Onslow. “Yes,” and she meant it. Here in these surroundings, the vast city she had called home for her twenty six years, and the millions of passing impersonal faces that crowded the streets, could be forgotten for a while. The women around her seemed pleased at her contribution and smiled indulgently at her. Sally now felt daring, she said, “How are your chickens Mrs. Strangelove?” “Laying well, Sally dear.” “Rhode Island Reds, aren’t they?” “No dear, Light Sussex…” Drat, thought Sally, I forgot. This will never do, she had to try harder, remember, if she was going to be a part of things. She would look up chicken breeds when she got home, so she could converse in more detail. It was restful sitting here in the front room of the small, perfect English cottage. It was a warm summer day, so a fire was unnecessary. Sally couldn’t wait for winter and the blazing log fire it promised. She imagined warming her hands in front of it. A vase of roses gave off a pleasant scent. A framed photograph of the King peered at them over the mantelpiece. Sally remembered that he stammered and last week had dared to venture in the conversation that his stammer had improved in the last Christmas broadcast. It had brought wise nods of agreement, and pleased her. It was a comfortable room, with its pre-war decoration, that held an image of how the rest of England should be, if it wasn’t for this horrible war. The word “cosy” came into her head. Yes, that was it, a cosy room. Very cosy. The women chatted about the egg laying ability of various breeds of chicken, but Sally didn’t dare contribute, she was too afraid of making a mistake; she might say blue eggs, instead of brown. It was odd to think that while these women chatted and gossiped about the minutiae of village life, of a new baby, or a drunken husband, beyond these walls a brutal, destructive war was being waged, with civilization at stake. Its scale was something they couldn’t grasp. The village was everything to them. The talk of chickens continued and then Mrs. Onslow turned to Sally and said, “Sally dear, who do you think we should knit our scarves for?” Sally dreaded Mrs. Onslow’s sudden questions; it always seemed as if they were part of some great test, a test Mrs. Onslow knew Sally would fail. She became nervous and blurted out, “Soldiers.” “Why of course Sally dear,” replied Mrs. Onslow nodding her head sagely and embarrassing Sally, “but what nationality?” Oh dear thought Sally, she hadn’t expected this. “Err, Italian?” she asked, a degree of hope in her words. “Italian!” declared Mrs. Richardson. “Why they are the enemy!” Oh no, she had done it again. Sally had made another mistake, and she had studied so hard for this, it was nerves, she knew that, nerves can make you say the strangest things when they get to you. “I meant…Japanese.” “What!” Mrs. Richardson almost dropped her knitting. “I don’t believe my ears.” Oops, thought Sally. “You appear to have forgotten Pearl Harbor.” Yes she had. “I was in error, the Japanese were our allies in the first, Great War.” she said to the four stunned women. The women began to make tut-tutting noises and then the flood gates opened: “Well I never!” “I’ll say!” “Japanese, my word!” “And don’t forget Italians!” “She has really gone too far.” “Scandalous.” “It’s today’s youth, no respect.” “And our brave boys fighting over there as well.” Sally felt annoyed now. After all, it was a small slip up when all is said and done, anyone could have made it. How Mrs. Richardson annoyed her so. “Sorry,” she said raising her voice, “I meant…GERMANS.” Well now she had done it, the women froze, there chatter stopped, then they flung their arms around as they realised what she had said. And a dam burst. “Outrageous.” “Traitor!” “Too much!” “Should be locked up!” And did she care, not one jot, as the women would say. In fact she found it liberating. “How about,” she called over the tumult “knitting some special socks for…HITLER!” It got a bit out of control after that. Mrs. Richardson began to make butbutbut noises, Sally thought Mrs. Strangelove, who had gone an odd red color, might pass out, or should that be explode. But still, she had paid enough and she wasn’t doing any real harm was she, so she stood up and did the Nazi salute. The room went dark. There was complete silence, then a red light began to flash over the cottage door, and a buzzer sounded. Her time was up, they had finished it early, which, in view of what had happened, didn’t surprise her. It hadn’t gone quite the way she had expected. She walked over to the door and it slid open, to let her pass. Outside the chamber the overseer in charge of the 1940s room wasn’t happy. “Well Sally?” he said. She squirmed and rubbed one foot against the other. “I got confused.” she replied. “I got my nationalities mixed up.” “And the old women nearly blew their circuits.” Then seeing how apologetic she looked he smiled, revealing gold capped teeth, which was the current fad amongst the fashionable crowd. “Well not that they would really. But you have to treat them more gently. They are meant to be lifelike you know. Mentioning a liking for Hitler isn’t the best way to integrate in their social circle. Which is the general idea.” “It’s difficult remembering all those things ain’t it.” “It is, but you can’t rush it, it takes time. Try one of the other chambers, the 1980s or 2010s. You might fit in better there.” “But I likes the 40s. It’s calming. Y-y-you’s won’t ban me will you?” She began to stutter. “No, we won’t ban you, but you have to try to act like you belong there. Remember the guide book for the 40s, re-read it. If you don’t like the way the conversation is going then change it. Don’t be shy.” “You’s right, sorry.” Sally said. “An’ I thought I did so well at the start.” He touched her shoulder. “You did,” she liked the way he spoke, just like the old women, who now sat frozen by the fireplace in the cottage chamber, waiting to be turned on, to live out another day of that long distant time when an entire world had been at war. Waiting for Sally, or another like her, to cross the chamber’s threshold and there sit and relive those days, knitting for victory. [...] Read more...

Fifteen, in Fitzrovia

October 13, 2020You are visiting London for the first time. You wear your best dress. You are day tripping, taking an early train and returning home later the same day. It doesn’t give you much time to take a look around, so you wander through Fitzrovia, passing the pubs where Dylan Thomas and Julian MacLaren-Ross had drank away their days, casting your eager eyes over the Fitzroy Tavern and The Wheatsheaf, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside through a window or an opening door and wishing: Oh to be old enough to enter those cathedrals of alcohol, to sink in a drunken stupor on the arm of a poet, into the arms of an absinthe drinker. He has to be an absinthe drinker doesn’t he, after all absinthe is so romantic isn’t it? You can think of the two poet lovers Verlaine and Rimbaud (you are well read for your age aren’t you) in their Parisian Left Bank cafes supping the green liquid in place of food. Bickering and fighting (including assault with a wet fish in this very city you are standing in) until the staggeringly ugly Verlaine shoots the future slaver Rimbaud with a pistol in far off Brussels. Kind of romantic isn’t it all, you think. Reckon it would be a good way to go – death by a bullet fired by a genius. You had always wanted to be a muse, and if a William S. Burroughs type wanted to put one through your skull, trying a William Tell trick, why who were you to argue? One time you had dreamed you were Thomas De Quincey’s lost Ann (surely one of the most painful episodes in English literature), seeking that future god of opium through the endless labyrinth of London. A ‘not yet fifteen’ year old prostitute (almost the same age as you) who had befriended the teenage runaway De Quincey, she was lost to him when he returned to his world of well off family and friends, seeking money. But just as the child prostitute of Oxford Street had haunted the opium eaters adult dreams, so he had haunted yours: ‘Thomas!’ you would cry out in your sleep, ‘you have forgotten me!’ Later, on waking, you wondered if it could be memories of a past life, which could explain your liking for these bohemian types, but then again, maybe it was all wishful thinking. The Romantic in you. But times have changed in London, things ain’t what they used to be; roaming, you pass shop after shop with household names that could be found in any high street. There are no ghosts from the past. Where have all the bohemians gone? Where are the Welsh poets with flame haired wives? Where are the homosexual painters yearning for the brutish arms of burly workmen? Where are the McLaren-Ross’s stalking their Sonia Orwell’s, plotting murder? No Augustus John is waiting to bed you, no Nina Hamnett sits on a urine-soaked barstool now. Come down off the mountain, Star Gazer, you wanderer above a sea of mist. The modern city waits, eager to absorb you as it did Ann. It was thus ever so. [...] Read more...

TRIPPING WITH THE MAN

October 13, 2020I Hallucinogenic primordial visionary states. increased awareness. A doorknob: in the background crackle of the cavernous universe an alien grub creature, its spongy flesh anaemic white, crouches protectively upon the frosted surface of the sphere, a thick grumous liquid, like curdled milk, oozing out of a nipple-like swelling atop its back, drips onto the polished chrome, smearing it and congealing there. II Anxiety states: The strengthening rays of the rising sun glitter on the doorknob, and as they do it starts to revolve. Thin shards of chromium begin to flake away, fragments drifting like metallic confetti. The grub thing extends its body upwards, then it begins to rock gently, in a steady rhythm. III Sparks leap between the floating chromium shavings, blue light arcs around the swaying grub, as a hand, from the watcher, lifts toward the knob… [...] Read more...

Chapter One

October 6, 2020Lament For JAmong the small graves a soft shaft of sunlight gently rainsOn a memory; etches, as a glittering finger,Golden corn field hair, ignites eyes sweet as the sea’s blue plains,Traces lips pink as Mary’s carnation tears and lingers…Then – is gone. Oh ancient Sun above how shall I tellOf the heart’s deep yearnings that the years can never quell? PROLOGUE On Waldridge Fell She would often come onto the fell. The heather was the main attraction for her, and she looked forward to when it was in flower and the earth was awash with its colour. The weather was no barrier to her: wind, rain, snow had not stopped her visits. In fact she had a particular liking for the colder months of autumn, for the heather still bloomed and there were fewer people then and she could, for periods, pretend the fell was hers alone. Those who, like her, had come all year long, were dog walkers mostly. They would often drive here to walk them. She suspected the dog was an excuse, that they were drawn, as she was drawn, by the landscape. An ancient heathland landscape, with rare plants and animals that she could put individual names to. Names she had learnt through long years exploring the fell’s every nook and cranny. And, as a landscape, it was the last of its kind. There was a new attraction this year that she had been eagerly anticipating: Highland cattle. Great shaggy beasts. They were here to manage the Wanister Bog area. By grazing and trampling it was hoped they would stop several invasive species from destroying the delicate balance of this wetland that flooded seasonally. For it was a fragile land. Ever since she was a child she had loved this place. She could have told you how the fell had not been immune to man’s handywork: coppicing still took place among the beech trees and the once mighty activity of Durham – the coal mining industry – had left its mark. She could have shown you the old overgrown waggonways on which they once transported the black gold. And on this day, as every other, she had come alone. And died alone. They had found her lying in the purple heather, her favourite. From her resting place the flowers of the plants seemed to be part of her. As if they sought to make this lover of themselves one with them. It was the couple’s dog, a lurcher, that had drawn them to her. ‘Shut up dog!’ its master called. ‘I wouldn’t bother love,’ its mistress said. ‘He never listens to you, do you Hobo?’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘Bad boy!’ The dog barked happily and ran to her then back to the edge of the path, it barked loudly again and wagged its tail. ‘What is he up to?’ said the master. ‘Being his usual crazy self,’ replied the mistress. ‘Come on dog. Hobo!’ the master called his name. ‘Look!’ said the mistress. ‘Someone is there. My God!’ ‘What?’ said the master. He moved to her side and grasped her shoulder tightly. Master and mistress both stared ahead. She lay just off one of the tracks that crisscrossed the heath. Her right arm was raised up, as if calling them. She wore a yellow anorak for visibility, as she had often walked back along the roadside late at night, to her home in Chester-le-Street. The master pushed his way through the heather to her. He bent over her, and knew at once that she was beyond help. ‘It’s a girl.’ The dog barked as if answering him. ‘Is she…?’ The mistress could not bring herself to say the words. Her mouth became dry. Her face took on a pained expression. ‘She’s dead.’ The dog sprang round its mistress. It wanted to play, but she was silent, frozen. ‘We should call the police,’ the master said. ‘Yes,’ the mistress spoke as the dog pawed her legs for attention. ‘The police.’ Another man was making his way toward them up a path that rose gently from the direction of the car park. She saw him and beckoned with wild hands. ‘Help us!’ she shouted. The dog barked excitedly at her movements and raced down the path toward him. The flowering heather was all the time calm and unmoving as it smothered the yellow clad girl in its fragrant embrace. CHAPTER ONE ‘The couple who found her were a Mr and Mrs Ashworth. Seems they were walking their dog,’ she said. ‘It is a popular place,’ he replied. They were standing in the car park, from there the path led onto the fell. ‘Yes. A nice place. Usually.’ She was dressed as if from another time. Almost Edwardian, with blue skirt, white blouse and short blue jacket. A cameo was pinned at her neck. She was in her thirties and her hair was what some would call red, but she preferred titian. She had a straw hat, with a blue band on it, on her head. She was holding it in place with her left hand, the wind was picking up. ‘Usually,’ he repeated. He remembered the body in the heather. He was middle aged, around forty with black hair greying at the temples. Dressed all in black – black suit, black shirt, black tie, black socks and shoes – he sported round rim glasses that were tinted black as well. Only his hands broke the monotony of colour: he wore purple leather gloves. They made for an odd pair, but they were effective at their job, which was what mattered. ‘Get their statements Miss Tempest, but I doubt they will be of much value.’ Behind the darkness of his glasses Detective Chief Inspector Jason Ascalon squeezed his eyes tight and visualised the body: about nineteen he would say. Brown shoulder length hair, average looks, a scar above her right eye. Pale skinned, probably burned in the sun, so would keep her arms covered up in summer. Her throat had a mark around it. He concentrated on the mark in his mind’s eye. Detective Inspector Dionysia Tempest recognised his silence and stillness for what it was and stood by. Finally she broke his reverie. ‘Here comes Wellsby,’ she said. The pathologist came down the path. He was large of girth and dressed in his protective coveralls. In his right hand he carried a black bag that held the tools of his trade. ‘Well?’ Ascalon took off his glasses. His green eyes were flecked with gold. ‘Well…’ He knew what Ascalon wanted. He supplied it. ‘I’d say killed around midnight to one o’clock. Left overnight, to be found today by those walkers.’ ‘Dog walkers. The couple found her at seven this morning. Out early with the dog. Left home around six thirty. It needs a lot of exercise the woman said.’ ‘Dogs usually do,’ said the surgeon. ‘You own one?’ He shook his head and laid a hand on his belly. ‘I’m a cat man. As to the victim, I can say she was strangled by something resembling a belt. Which isn’t with the body.’ ‘The girl’s age?’ ‘Hmm. Twenty, or twenty-one maybe. Perhaps late teens, but early twenties at most I’d say.’ ‘Did she fall where she lies now?’ ‘Unlikely, I’d say it was a poor attempt at hiding the body. But that’s your domain.’ ‘He dragged it there then. The heather does show some signs. Strangled her on the path, surprised her from behind probably, and then moved her.’ ‘To play Devil’s advocate, you seem to be making a major assumption that she was killed on the path and the man who discovered her could have caused the damage to the heather.’ ‘Possible, but the route Mr Ashworth said he took would not have caused the damage, and I doubt the murderer killed her anywhere else but on the very path you have walked down, after all there are easier places to dump a body. Why drive all the way here, then drag or carry her uphill along a well walked path where you risk being seen?’ ‘It was dark.’ ‘Still too risky, it is the main car park for the heath.’ ‘Speculation. I prefer facts.’ ‘We will get them. My men are looking for signs, there is always the possibility the killer tore his clothing whilst moving her.’ ‘He? It is at least conceivable it was a woman.’ ‘I know, but a he is preferable don’t you think?’ The surgeon nodded in agreement. Like Ascalon he didn’t like the idea of a woman committing such a crime. ‘Any signs of interference?’ Ascalon asked. ‘You mean sexual? No, but I would have to be more thorough. When I get back I will-‘ ‘Fine.’ ‘After I’ve done the post-mortem I’ll write it all up. I’ll be very meticulous.’ Wellsby knew Ascalon disliked the medical details ‘I’m sure you will.’ ‘Oh and you can move the body now.’ He smiled and turned to Dionysia. ‘Having problems?’ he said. She looked up from the mobile phone she had been hunched over. ‘Oh, signal problems,’ she said. Wellsby nodded and moved off to his car. ‘Off for a late breakfast,’ said Ascalon. Why was it that police surgeons always seemed to have healthy appetites? he thought. ‘He’s a cat man,’ said Dionysia smiling. ‘Something to do with not having to walk them,’ Ascalon replied, putting on his glasses. In the car, while Dionysia drove, Ascalon went through some of the facts in the case. ‘Nothing on her body to give away her identity. She didn’t drive there, all the cars in the local car parks were accounted for.’ ‘Unless her attacker took it,’ said Dionysia. ‘She didn’t have a bag with her.’ Ascalon looked over his shoulder to where his colleague’s handbag lay on the backseat. ‘No, she didn’t. But I don’t think she drove there. Her attacker might have though. Then again her attacker could have brought her.’ ‘With the intention of killing her?’ ‘Possibly. If she is local she could have walked here, and if she walked then someone who lived nearby may have seen her. I’m guessing she was local. We should check that out.’ ‘Yes sir. Was it random or pre-planned? Could he have been following her?’ ‘Or watching her? It was dark he could easily have concealed himself. Was she a regular visitor to that spot?’ If she was then it would make their task easier, she would at least be known by sight to others who frequented the heathland. ‘She may have been friendly with him, perhaps more than that – even a lover. If he had planned it then he did a poor job of thinking about covering it up.’ ‘Yes, there are better areas on the heath to hide a body. If he had really wanted to conceal it then it could have gone undisturbed for days.’ Perhaps, he thought, her attacker didn’t have the strength to move a body very far. Could a woman really have done it? He asked himself. ‘Put some music on,’ he said. ‘There’s a CD already in, just press play.’ He leant forward in his seat and pressed the button on the car’s CD player. A choir began echoing around them. ‘What’s this?’ ‘Bethlehem Down, a carol. Sorry, you can change the CD if you don’t like it.’ ‘No, it’s interesting.’ He didn’t listen to much in the way of classical. ‘And today is a Sunday. Who is it by?’ ‘Peter Warlock, an English composer.’ ‘That’s quite a name.’ ‘It isn’t his real one.’ ‘I’d like to hear more.’ ‘You can borrow it sometime, or better still I have a record of his compositions. Do you have a record player?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then the record will sound better.’ ‘Record it is.’ Dionysia returned to the subject of the girl. ‘She didn’t wear makeup.’ ‘No.’ ‘And as of now there have been no missing persons reported, and she doesn’t-‘ Dionysia checked herself, ‘Didn’t look like she was homeless.’ ‘No.’ Both her clothes and skin were too clean for that. ‘Somebody must miss her.’ ‘Yes.’ It was early days. [...] Read more...

October 6, 2020Milky Way Dreamer And she is floating, drifting out, aboveThe fading rooftops and the concrete hazeOf dirty tenements; a fume choked doveShedding city clothes, upward lifting gazeToward the milk white seam that streaks the night.Embraced by sighs that ghost her pillowed headA glitter shower eclipses street lights:Snowfall of light-years on her dreaming bed.Free-fall confetti bathes the cosmic bride,A million little pearls, sweetly shifting;She moves a tiny hand, turns on her side,And this brittle flower blinks on waking,And these eyes that once were city shrouded,Are Pleiades bright and nebula clouded. Fifteen FifteenHer eyes stained glass, her hair peroxide blond,A uniform of blue her schooldays dress,Shining as the classroom’s lighthouse beaconTo the boys; in glancing looks, curve of breast,Catwalk proud stance: Aladdin’s gilded cave.She in truth a would be anorexicBy twenty-one, childhood’s withered blossom;Nocturnal broken doll tenement sickBeside the kitchen sink, or bedroom longBeneath the sheets dreaming – for gilding fades. Sixteen SixteenOn a beach in printed swimsuit, flowerBlossoms’ blue on white over puppy fat,“Just a teenage thing,” her mother told her,She sulks beneath her brand new summer hat,While smooth curved women make the grand paradePast adolescent boys who, to impress,Brawl in puffs of dustbowl sand; childhood fades.She sucks her stomach flat and pinches flesh.Lovesick Norma-Jean of ice cream, deck chairs,Beach balls, multi-coloured blankets, lollies,Dreaming of her Marilyn, streaming hair,Peroxide blond city pretty pollyOf the high rise; reflected wishes sighIn the golden pigment of her eyes. Birthday Dreamer And look: outside the window neon moonsAre shining, splashing slanting sea blue raysAgainst the pastel walls of Sally’s room,Against posters friends gave on past birthdays.Sixteen! Tomorrow moves on dreamer’s lips:Thin filament of shifting white she’ll wear…Chili pepper hair…scent from Paris dripsOn wrist, to please the stranger by the stair.On the flaked, grey windowsill stands a bowlOf paper flowers – bright oranges, redTinted whites – fragile things to which her soulBrings the meagre garden’s rose perfumed beds.In her translating head a car alarmAs a bird is singing. The room is warm. In the high rise In the high rise bulkhead lights are bleedingOn stair well, where he groped beneath her top;Where his drunken promise set her dreamingShe stands, the watcher of the tower block.A little flower blooms against her breast,A saint carved in blue, on a fragile chain,Casting roses through the chicken wire meshOn broken windows, a wonderful rain.Sunlight spills upon a shard of glassBeside an ashen, nervous hand that sighsFrom rings on fingers, haunts of boyfriends past;The fake stones glitter, reflect on eyes,Silver pointed stars, silver pointed starsIn broken windows, above the burnt out cars. Midlife Sonnet Her brittle boat takes mid-life’s river bend,Leaves the driftwood forty years of travelsTrailing sternward, its mounting friction rendsWith heat tenement webs, her workday veil,Melts saleswoman door to door dull patter sighs,Whispers great poet rhythms to mindInvisible, unlocks the dreamy eyeGazing inward, so that, beneath the rindOf catalogues and “Avon calling”, blowsA photon maelstrom, and from this golden purseA furnace forms inside, and yearning grows,Till ten new suns, as one, engulfing burst,And she becomes a swan necked daggerRainbow driven, folding outward, parting air. She woke She woke. And then the concrete city came,Through wish filled seas: on Sally’s martyred eyesSodium flared, or was it cars aflame,Hemmed by grey? She tortured, she crucified,She shipwrecked high upon a beach of grass,That stains her cotton dress (of daisy prints),As summer germinates she spies the castOf lover’s body by her side and sinks,Guy roped, to unvoiced sighs – this morning’s dreamWas golden, silver, bronze, a jewelled displayThat anguished died as fading sunlight teamedOn cigarettes and bottles; yesterdays’long lost amid a maze of neon bars,And little dull eyed lamps of battered cars. Parfum 5×2 ml5x .07 fl.ozIn a little orange box, treasured seasOf foreign scent, held in five glass walled rooms;Decoration- Rêve de Grasse; Mélodie;Fragonard; Emilie; Murmure: perfume.As morning sunlight wraps itself aroundThe bottles’ angles the needle points, kissedGlass, become as diamonds, summer boundSmall rainbows of ruby and amethyst.Here are precious metals: silver on goldOn platinum shelved- pure alchemy seamsThe Translucent ocean; these bottles holdThe hoarded shapes of hidden teenage dreams.Released at night on pallid, slender beds,Filament droplets form as silken webs The Paper Rose Her love’s a paper rose. Embraced by glass,On strands of plaited hair around her neckDisplayed. Fragile ark of memories castIn crystal deep; uncharted, timeless wreck.Red tinted petals has the faded rose,The feathers of the hanging albatross,The grey becoming red; no voiced wind blowsOn this Sargasso sea of glass: her cross.Oh speckled rose! O, B, A…G, K…Aldebaran, Rigel, Wolf 359…John, David, Stephen…a little Milky WayFramed against her skin. Self-radiant shine,Run on spectral men; clustered lovers shapesVein a noose that anchors breast to nape. Venus Girl in Bottle How many shades of orange are there?What’s the scent of blue? The form of red?Is Sally made of rainbows once she’s bareOf city things? Is colour in my head?Rises – abstract, shattered, colours shifting,A maze of mirror lenses, angles, curves,Flowering luminous shards, all lifting,Trailing glitter showers in drunken swerves –A Venus girl in bottle, white borderedNaked colour child, stricken youth aflame,Secret sapphire shape she midnight hoarded,A flung reflection of the city lame:A living show of light, the untapped seamBeyond our poor vision, the hidden dream. In the Distant Future an Alien Traveller Visits the Earth. SheBefore an orange striped horizon stands,Her world is that of vanished lines and points.She braids her hair with silver spider hands,Frail kites of linen flesh on angled joints.She is tinted gold, dressed in red and blue,Holds her body translucent to the breeze,And greets dull, ephemeral shapes that flewAcross her clam shell eyes, out of the trees;Around her body’s faint electric sparksCome these wraithlike things, that once were human,To dash against the current, flare and arc –Dazzling phantoms bathe the star born woman:Volcanic particles of unchained truth,Manlike echoes, the burning absolute. She has enamel earrings She has enamel earrings, oval charms,Tortoise shells of green on purple background,Edged by forty golden beads, each one farmsOf tufted light, misted webs spinning round.Their surface scratched, these gifts from Normandy,Small in palm of hand, and bought by loverFrom roadside stall for twenty francs, are seasOf bright memory, a foam of colourWhose dazing filaments, of sunlight woveOn disembarking shoreward, fling halosRound the ashen face – flawless diamonds roveIn sally’s unkempt hair – a blinding showFrom rose strewn Liseux, Normandy and France;Hard held galaxies, sprung from cheap romance. Athens Friday night in Rose Street under neon,The sky’s Hellenic myths, zodiac signsAre lost, or one brief Sirius then gone,Engulfed in rum and coke and cheap made wine,Or stillborn die in a blacked out bedroomWhere, once, she nightingaled through storm force lipsHer dreams to pillow, now becalmed too soonBeneath a stranger, lifting thighs to gripThe skin, patchwork black and blue. Thatcher’s childAmong so many drenched in Wallace, Bruce,Knows the star grieved Scotland, the hopes defiled.Across the city, noble Athens look!The blinded ones are moving; groups of menAre spitting on the Heart of Lothian. The city wakes The city wakes; a web of steel, twistingVertebra of outward concrete image,Yields to warmth of photon spillage, and bringsA breath through window pores to Sally’s cage.She is wrapped in bedcloth chrysalis; bright,The sleeper’s waking neonswarded eyesAre in dream-time herded with foreign sightsThey never really saw, are lost in lies,As nameless pen pal postcards nagging callTo glossy magazines long-time hoardedBeneath her bed, or plastered across walls.Normandy, her midnight star connectedDreams are for you, your church, your towns, your land;The tortured convent girl of Liseux shinesOn bedside paper roses, made by handsThat stack a supermarket’s cut price wines.The dreamers blue eyes open, one by one,Street mascarad blue eyes, eyes of Neon. [...] Read more...

Stories

October 1, 2020A Christmas Story Knitting for Victory [...] Read more...

Flash Fiction

October 1, 2020TRIPPING WITH THE MAN Fifteen, in Fitzrovia Meetings [...] Read more...

Poetry

October 1, 2020I Milky Way Dreamer Fifteen Sixteen Birthday Dreamer In the high rise Midlife Sonnet She woke Parfum The Paper Rose Venus Girl in Bottle In the Distant Future an Alien Traveller Visits the Earth She has enamel earrings Athens The city wakes [...] Read more...

Iron Pulpit

October 1, 2020Content QUEEN SHEBA’S RING by Sir H. Rider Haggard THE MOON STALLION by Brian Hayles Now available: Worlds of Strangeness: 4 Contains By the Light of the Worm Moon by Richard Toogood. [...] Read more...

Fiction

October 1, 2020Here you will find: Stories Flash Fiction [...] Read more...

First Page

September 30, 2020This is an example page. It’s different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this: Hi there! I’m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my website. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin’ caught in the rain.) …or something like this: The XYZ Doohickey Company was founded in 1971, and has been providing quality doohickeys to the public ever since. Located in Gotham City, XYZ employs over 2,000 people and does all kinds of awesome things for the Gotham community. As a new WordPress user, you should go to your dashboard to delete this page and create new pages for your content. Have fun! [...] Read more...