liathach

Hi All

Apologies for my extended absence. What do you mean, you didn't notice? Tsk!

Since our home PC got some virus problems a while back, I've been using my company laptop, which wasn't a problem until the Web Filter designated SG as pornography and blocked access. But, on the bright side, it did prompt me to finally get the PC sorted, and it didn't work out too expensive either. And, as it's got all my music on it, and a kicking set of speakers, it's nice to have it back.

I spent my exile thinking 'Oh, that would be a great subject to write about'. So you're probably going to be flooded with a backlog of all sorts of trivia, I'm afraid.

So lots of love to all of you - I've kinda missed you, you know!

Anyway, subject for the day.....

I know this site has more than its fair share of awful poetry - usually when someone is having a really bad day, and feels prompted to put their emotions into verse. I gave up doing that very early on in life, when I realised what a great poet Auden was at 16, and how it really takes a lot of intelligence and dedication to be good at it.

But, as I sit at my table, working or daydreaming, I've been watching the tulips grow and bud, and open, and lean outside my window over the past few weeks. And it prompted some ideas in my mind of a poetic nature. It's by no means perfect, but I think I like it, especially its self-containment. But see what you think.....



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The Garden Party

Glasses brim full of colour
The tulips nod and converse,
Guests at a Spring wedding.

Maintaining a polite distance
They talk of the weather.
'There's rain in the air'
'A garden reception?
At this time of year?'

Some brush petals discreetly
As they pass.
A token of intimacy
Shared,
Yet to come
Or only imagined.

As the day lengthens
And the Spring showers fall,
An excess of colour
Causes petals to be loosened.
Neat buttoned satin
Now creased and revealing.

Some lean on their lover
For support
While one slumps
Wearily
To the ground
Ignored
By his more sober companions.

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And to finish with, a little song in honour of my wife's 50th birthday, which will be next Thursday. For those who don't know, which is usually everyone, Richard Hawley was the guitarist in Pulp and, like the rest of the band, hails from Sheffield. He writes the most beautiful songs, in a kind of crooner style, and they are often about very simple things like waiting on Coles Corner in Sheffield on a Friday night, to see whether your date for the night will turn up, as generations of people have done in this city.

We saw him first at the Cambridge Folk Festival, where he was a last-minute stand-in for a cancelled artist. He was incredibly nervous, because his music hardly falls into the folk category, but he went down a storm. And we saw him a few weeks later in an old theatre in Holmfirth in the Yorkshire hills. He is stunning live; an incredible guitarist, and I envy him his Jazzmaster with the candy red pearlized finish - it looks gorgeous!

This song is The Ocean, which I'm currently learning to play, and the video is doubly special, as it was shot on Porthcurno beach in Cornwall - one of our favourites. My daughter and I were swimming in that water last summer or, rather, getting battered to the ground by big freezing waves! The 'classical ruins' are actually the Mynack Theatre, an open air theatre on the cliffs above, and a really magical place. And, to be really trivial, this is the beach from which the world's first transatlantic cable was run.

Richard Hawley introduced this song by saying 'I wrote this song for my wife, cos I'm soft as a bag of tits'. As am I.

Here comes a wave.....