Oh, I know, and I’m sorry. I’m just not the type for romantic demonstration. Luckily, my best pal and partner-in-rhyme is of a similar mind-set. We have previously hosted alternative Valentine live events involving laughter, verse and song. This year ‘My Funny Valentine’ comes in the form of a podcast. It’s about half an hour of light-hearted conversation on the theme of today’s festival and the broader topic of love, romantic or otherwise, with plenty of poems thrown in. I hope you enjoy listening. If so, please ‘like’, subscribe and share!
Sunday was spontaneously designated Stuffing Vine Leaves Day. This is a loosely annual event in my kitchen: I intend it to take place more frequently but it is such a fiddly and time-consuming process that, like the Christmas sausage rolls, the summer dolmas come but once a year. It turns out that they are a great favourite of the man who, by this time next week, will be our son-in-law, hence the timing of this year’s production to coincide with a pre-wedding family picnic.
While food fashionistas swear by Ottolenghi, I don’t need all that restaurant razzmatazz. I rely on Claudia Roden for simple, fresh and fabulous Middle Eastern dishes geared to the home kitchen. Her mother’s recipe for stuffed vine leaves doesn’t include anything that I didn’t already have in the cupboard, the fridge or the garden. I even found hiding in a neglected corner of my spice drawer just enough saffron in its own mini terracotta pot, an historic gift my late sister brought home for me from a holiday in the sun. I thanked her again.
Having weathered several deaths in the close family over the most recent years, it is a long-awaited joy to be celebrating a wedding and officially expanding our small family. The departed never really leave us, of course, but they do vacate a space that needs to be filled with the same kind of love.
The vine, by the way, was grown from a cutting taken from my mother’s garden. It will, of course, outlive us all by centuries if it takes its natural course. I must pass the recipe down our line.
Leftovers
Time came round to clear the last cupboards left untouched since you suddenly went, their contents a hidden monument to your renowned flamboyance.
Abundances of sugars and grains, sun-dried fruits and aromatics collected with the resolute carelessness of plenty.
The world stored here in bags of rice: an exotic strain required for a recipe, sampled once then left, forgotten, in favour of new curiosities.
Four or five bottles of fine aged balsamic, a major collection of cold-pressed oils, culinary herbs and flavoured salts, an epicure’s curation.
Spices procured on distant holidays, rose masala, ras el hanout, Moroccan mint and duplicate jars of star anise and cardamom seeds.
Your store exceeds domestic needs. But there were lavish banquets back then, all this bounty freely offered, your energy fuelling the feast.
Still I can taste that voluptuousness, the excess, the essential vivacity expressed through these ingredients whose piquancy fades on the shelf.
What remains here will not go to waste. Your surplus is saved and it will sustain us in measured rations seasoned with hints of your passions, your unique self.
…and all that. We’re rescheduling for early summer, so watch this space for updates. Meanwhile, catch us at the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival ‘Vocal and Live’ events – we’re hosting the first open mic evening on June 1st at Even Flow. Free entry!
Some days still feel wintry but I am well out of hibernation now and busy with various projects that would all be enhanced by friendly faces (both new and established) showing in the flesh. The next event is this, an evening of original entertainment in comedy, song and verse. with an open mic segment and audience participation encouraged. So, if you are in the Kent/Sussex area, do come along! Tickets available here.
Oh yes, I remember the 5th of November before it fell prey to the corporate takeover, simpler days of events unencumbered by strangling hands of the risk insurers. No amplified commentary, no piped music or clever computer-controlled displays, just fire on the patch of bare earth by the river under an unending late autumn sky, the young and the old at one with the elements, gathered together upwind of the blaze.
With darkening evenings and chill in the air we began to prepare for the time-honoured day, clearing the garden, raking up leaves, the squeak of the wheelbarrow bumping its way down the narrow track to the back of the bank that defends the dwellings from rising tides. The heft as we hurled our fuel on the pyre, these offerings to the growing tower of pallets and fence panels, branches and tyres, watching each day as the bonfire grew higher.
A moth-eaten sweater frayed at the cuffs, by now handed down some three times or more, no longer good enough to be worn, stuffed with crumpled newsprint and straw. Discarded trousers, ragged and torn, a pair of Dad’s old threadbare socks filled and roughly stitched together, the effigy taking familiar form. Fleeting thoughts of the physicality of burning flesh as his face was drawn.
When, at last, the great date dawned the wheelbarrow carried Guy to his fate and we waited to witness the way he would fall, a flaming sacrifice to tradition. First the faltering whisper of flames licking the paper and spitting through twigs till they roared when they found the sump oil poured as libation to raise the conflagration, consuming the work of preceding days in its hissing and crackling unstoppable blaze.
The scratch of a match as the phosphorus catches the moment before the blue touch paper’s lit while big-booted feet beat a hasty retreat. Whispered coarse oaths under visible breath. A whoosh as the rocket releases its tension, lifting off in an unplanned direction. Silence as witnesses offer a prayer of thanks that nobody stood in its way, then laughter and jokes as the blokes taking charge check the next firework with much greater care.
Every eye’s raised to the ink-black sky, collective breath held for the fizzing ascent, gasps and ‘Ooohs’ at each thundering crash, sighs and ‘Aaahs’ as explosions of stars are suspended a moment in sparkling array before falling and floating forever away. Faces tilted to follow each flare, we turn like spits to distribute the heat, familiar voices heard round the fire, features lit warm as neighbours meet.
Toes turned frosty inside our boots, cheeks feeling flushed and fingers tingling as, taking reluctant leave from the fire, we trudged up the street to a welcoming kitchen to round off the evening with jacket potatoes and slurping of soup for central heating. The smell of the smoke in our hair as we woke on plain old November the sixth the next day, checked on the bonfire, its embers now fading and Christmas still seven whole weeks away.
…and there’s a lot of water under the bridge, but most recently I have been heavily involved in the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival. I think it’s fair to observe that the word ‘poetry’ does not attract the same mass audience as, say, the words ‘celebrity’ or ‘gin’, but that does not detract from the quality of the events, and I made sure to attend as many as I could.
This year I got over my fear of poetry workshops and joined in. I had good days and bad days, and one of the good days coincided with an event led by three successful and delightful poets, Sarah Salway, Sian Thomas and Jill Munro. They unblocked my block, and now that I have had some time to go back and rework my scribblings, I have what might be a finished poem. I hope it doesn’t matter, but here’s how it worked: the title/theme and the first few words were supplied as a prompt, then we started writing. After that, some key words were thrown in at random and had to be incorporated into the poem as we wrote. Can you guess which were the prompt words?
Mismatched China in a Castle Tea Room
It is said that we become our mothers, with age. Accepting this, we find an open gate to Grandma’s realm. A Sunday tea where plate and cup and saucer match, each modest sandwich cut to triangles, linen pressed. She would have noted, with an eyebrow raised, today’s display of china disarrayed in strict accordance with the modern taste. Her Jasperware attracts dust on my shelf beside her snakeskin purse and button tin, my house a fairy tale recycling bin of objects I would not choose for myself. I guard this hoard in honour of my kin. While I draw breath, no wolf will blow it in.
Live events are the focus at the moment, and much fun is being had. It’s not a complicated formula, it’s just about bringing people together. I’ll drink to that!
Has it really been over two months since I last posted a blog? How lax of me! That said I have been posting HEAPS of stuff on the Voices website as well as all the stuff for the Tunbridge Wells Poetry Festival etc., so not so much lax as just busy elsewhere.
Any-old-hoo, enough of that and on we press with news of a couple of things I’m involved in over the next few months, the first being “Gunpowder, Treason and Poets” which takes place next Thursday (November 4th) at the Leicester Arms in Penshurst. GT&P is an evening of poetry, comedy and song that combines an augmented version of Flitt & Folio’s Potted History of Humorous Verse (first seen as part of the TW poetry festival) with an open mic on the topic of bonfire night, fireworks, treason and other autumnal delights. We’re joined for this by our friends…
Sunday morning is a good time for me to gather thoughts and write a little. There are few distractions, there is tea in the pot and I seldom have other commitments. I have a bad habit of not doing the thing I should be doing, though, and this morning I ought to be writing some topical humorous verse to share as ‘News in Rhyme’ at our Voices open mic evening on Tuesday, but on Sundays I find myself more reflective and serious.
Despite being an informal and undisciplined type, I like the formality and discipline of writing to a particular form. Unlike many writers more creative than me, I also enjoy the challenge of a writing to a theme or a prompt. So I took up the challenge of writing a couple of poems on the theme of ‘Reflections’ and submitting them to the Sir Philip Sidney Poetry Prize for Penshurst Festival, taking place next weekend. There will be a poetry reading and free (donations invited!) ploughmans lunch at Penshurst church next Sunday, October 3rd. This promises to be a well-attended event, and will include a selection of poetry on the chosen theme including those written and read by local children. As last year’s joint winner, I will be reading that poem, and my partner in (c)rhyme, David Smith, will be reading his prize-winning Lockdown Limerick. I have just heard that I have a poem short-listed for this year’s prize, so I will be reading that too.
Here’s the one that got away.
Mirror, Mirror
It startles me, that face so like my own it disconcerts with eyes that scrutinise to see through secrets, filter facts and lies. It knows the sum of everything I’ve known. Beneath the skin the contour of each bone is unmistakable. I recognise my mother, whom I greet with wry surprise, which causes her to pause and, sighing, frown before we both resume the ritual act of powdering and redefining lines. Then I stand back so distance blurs the truth of years I try to mask with this compact and brush, defying time and all its signs with blushes yet more foolish than in youth.
I will be sorry to miss performing at the Priory Festival at Orpington this weekend due to family commitments, but I know my Partner in (c)Rhyme David Smith, aka Ivor Folio, will be brilliant!
My feet have hardly touched the ground over the past couple of months what with fringe festivals, sketch and comedy nights, poetry festivals and the like, but after all these months of lockdown isn’t it FUN to be having FUN again?
I’ve got another 3-4 weeks of blue-arsed-flying to do but after that things should settle down a bit. Meanwhile, the next thing on my performance calendar is a wee set for Auntie Beeb at the Priory Festival this Saturday (7th August) and then I can relax (HA!) for a bit.
Looking forward to this but will miss Pam (who has family commitments) very much as it’s been a while since I’ve flown solo. I’ll be doing my thing at around 4:30 – if you’re about do pop in and say hi!
By ‘for a bit’ I mean three days, because the next thing on the to-do list is on…
From bad to verse... 