A Terrible Fear of Cheese

In fact, the title of this piece isn’t strictly true… or fair. It is always a matter for horses and courses. Digital reading is useful in all sorts of situations. It’s easier to have “War and Peace” on your iPad than having to lug a great volume of it when you’re going on a long journey.

Digital reading is cheaper too. I always buy thrillers, light entertainment in digital format rather than buy a new piece of entertainment which I will only read once. and digital publication comes with added extras – you can see how much you’ve read, how much time you’ve spent reading, all kinds of notes and additions that you won’t get with a plain old print’n’paper job.

The text, along with all. the bells and whistles, is what you get.

This can be a real help. If you’re reading a Shakespeare play for the first time, you need all the help you can get. If you’re reading a paper on astro physics, then a few visuals would be very useful.

Well, what has an ordinary old book to offer ? The answer to that is atmosphere, history. If you buy a battered copy of “Oliver Twist” you don’t just get the story, you get the story of the book.

Let me explain. Years ago I bought an old, leather bound prayer book. It was badly printed with rough line drawings, and I bought it because it was cheap…and something drew me to it.

When I got home I had a proper look. It was an incomplete prayer book published in 1583. It was five hundred years old. Somehow or other it had drifted down the centuries until it found…me. And there was more. Written in the margins were notes in shorthand.

What, I wonder, was that all about.

Old books link you -physically- with the past.

Think about that one

the pain that gnaws and can’t be talked away,

http://the pain that gnaws and can’t be talked away,

I taught myself to. read when I was five years old. I was in hospital at the time, recovering from an ear operation. In those days- sixty years ago-it was quite a major procedure, which meant that I was in a single room, with no-one to talk to. Even my parents weren’t allowed in the room. They had to stand outside and wave through the window.

After a couple of days the nurse came in with a pile of “Beano” comics.

“That should keep you busy,” she said.

Now I knew the letters of the alphabet, and I knew the sounds most of them made, but I hadn’t yet mastered the skill of putting them into words. But now, in the hospital room, I had the chance. I taught myself to read. By the time I came home I had worked my way through “Dandy” ” Beano” and a couple of Ladybird books. I was hooked.

After I’d ripped through Enid Blyton, I went on to “Biggles”- unlikely tales set in the First World War – I was beginning to get a feeling for structure now – how these simple stories were put together. I loved the way that stories can lift you out of yourself, open up a whole world, which might be real or a creation of the author.

When I was eleven I bought my first grown up book – it was ” The Ides of March” – a modern version of the murder of Julius Caesar, by Thornton Wilder -and that led me to Shakespeare ( my father had a big influence there) and then Dickens and then…and then..and I’m still going strong…

Except things are changing.

The first computer I ever bought was that chunky, solid little thing with a minute screen. I loved it – you could send email ( whatever happened to just mail ?) you could be in contact with everything everywhere. A great door on the world had swung wide open, and that other secret pleasure – adventures in your head- was less attractive than before.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everyone put their books down as soon as the screen lit up. I’m saying that, although we have the world in our iPads, we have backed away from the magic which happens in that magic space between the page and the eye.

Let me know what you think….there maybe more to this than you might think…

that magic space

You never see them fall

pendulous 

as Christmas baubles or

littering the summer grass,

like tennis balls

some shrink too small

to fit their skins

creased and mobile

between your finger tips

.

some, drum tight

crisp white flesh

with one drilled hole

rimmed with black

where the maggot

bores through its’ sweetness

to the core.

I never thought for an instant that the genteel, ginger kitten – all purr and cuddley, could turn into well…an emperor. There was nothing in his early life to suggest it. He used the bedpost as a teething post, was quiet and polite, and deferred to the other animals in the house – Digby the dog and Pippin, the Senior Cat. It was Pip who had precedence at the food tray, Pip who had his special place on the sofa. Life was gentle and predictable until Pip died. He was 16 years old and a shadow of his former imperious self. I must be honest and admit that Simpkin waited untilPip had made his final Visit to Uncle.

But then things started to change. The modest Heir Apparent took over the throne. Diplomatic relations were cut. Pip and Digby were quite good chums – they even shared a pet carrier when they went to the vet, but Simpkin in his pomp ignored the dog, and the dog (who is a mild mannered soul) ignored him.

And then there was the food. Simpkin has always been a good trencher cat. He’s a big lad, as you can see, and he needs plenty of CattyGunge to keep the fires burning. But he’s eating seven or eight sachets of GunkForCats every day. The vet says it’s all to do with his metabolism, in which case the Boy Simpkin is running at about 2000rpm

Then he started doing parkour. To be fair, Simpkin only did it at night in the passageway – thumping and crashing as he hurled himself from one wall to the other.

But the thing which surprises me more than anything is this – he thinks he’s human. He reminds sharing my breakfast – which is a bit of a cheek because he never offers me any of his GunkForCats. And he loves clambering up on tables, chairs, human limbs – anything which will get him on eye level

when he will look up at me with googol eyes and purr like a motorbike on tickover.

He will look up at me with googoo eyes and purr like a motorbike on tickover

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Just another word
for amputation.
Fleshed of leaves
the hedge gapes open
like a charnel house –
clawed fingers, knuckles, elbow joints
fused in a mass of spikes and barbs.
An eye for cramped and crooked growth,
long handled cutters and a pair of gloves
will see you straight.
                                Now pull the twigs aside.
See the main stems –long bones, twisted
tight as cables in the bitter winter.
Pick those thinner than your wrist
and slice them through. The stumps may bleed 
but this will clot and heal the gash.


              Now drag your cuttings out
and burn them.
Thin as lace and filled with air, the hedge
will fade from sight
                              until the warm days come,
when overnight it grows a lush green pelt.
It smells of sunshine.
Its dappled heart is loud with sparrows.

How to eat cherries

Otter ( lutra lutra)

Soft vowels  in their name implies

a life near flowing water,

clear as glass with green weed streaming.

You only see where they have been –

some fish scales scattered on the bank,

the wreckage of a broken gull –

not where they are.

Fifteen miles is nothing in a night –

upstream steadily against the flow

then branching off down becks and brooks –

silent, they leave nothing

but paw prints in the soft earth.

It’s said that they can purr like cats,

feign birdsong, lure sparrows from the trees

then crack their bones with needle teeth.

Unafraid, they lounge

by the fishpond

chew carp, still twitching in their jaws,

then melt into the shadows,

the black waters,

make no more noise

than the rippling of their name

You only see where they have been –

Funeral Music