Dick Jones' Patteran Pages

In a fascinating post (Saturday, May 30th), Dominic Rivron presented a picture of himself in early youth and accompanied it with roughly 200 words describing in the present tense the circumstances, specific and contextual, of the photograph. 

Wary of the somewhat viral nature of the ascribed meme, he offered the format to all who might feel ready to produce appropriately embarrassing photos from their own archives. I have hundreds. Here’s one.

The scene is in the Ballroom at Wennington School, a mixed boarding school of ‘alternative’ persuasion near Wetherby in Yorkshire. The year is 1962. It’s late Sunday afternoon. Adam (right) is wearing a fur-collared donkey jacket. I am wearing a duffle coat and my weekend beatnik jumper. Adam is 15, I am 16. In the background are our respective girlfriends, Liz and Lindsay. Adam and I each dangle artfully from our lips an Embassy Filter cigarette. Adam is poised to strike a match. As soon as the picture is taken, cigarettes and matches are returned to their respective containers. 

Adam and I spend the morning of the interminable day sat either side of our dorm window. It overlooks the side door of the main school building through which a constant traffic of students and teachers passes. For us it is the window of the tiny flat overlooking the junction of Buck Street and Camden High Street in North London where Adam lives with his mother. All the passers-by are poets, drug dealers, teenage whores and jazz musicians and each has a story to be told.

In the early afternoon we work on our huge junk sculpture of Christ Crucified, fashioned from discarded wire boot lockers, a Morris 10 car bonnet, several 5-gallon petrol canisters, some steel wall-bracing rods, assorted nuts and bolts and a bale of fence wire.  

The sculpture is never completed. Three weeks after the photo is taken Adam slips out of school just before wake-up bell at 7.00 and, with fellow local authority placement Yvonne, he hitchhikes the 200 miles down the A1 to London and disappears without trace into his beloved Camden Town.  

...

Shortly before his 4th birthday Reuben was diagnosed as high functioning autistic. He was classed by the consultant as being just within the spectrum, displaying certain clear signs of behaviour consistent with the condition, but functioning normally in most respects.

Two years on, his obsession with successive CGI movie and children’s television characters, emotional vulnerability in situations that challenge his sense of order in the world and some specific difficulties with peer relationships indicate the prevalence of a degree of autism. But he is above all a happy, gentle, dreamy and very loving child.

REUBEN ON THE BEACH

Stones and shells. Each
grey disc or pink ellipse
is a crashed planet.

Driftwood and shards. Dreams
tangled up in the mystery
script on bust cartons

and vagabond bags. He scuttles,
unshelled, under a carillon
of seagulls, drunk on salt

and ozone. This child
who fears clouds and mirrors
for the shapes they throw

is healed for a day
by the moonstruck logic
of the tides.

A second draft.

MUTATIS MUTANDIS

There is an understanding that,
if the stars are yellow and the moon
is wrapped in a milky caul, then dreams

will pass through the muslin veil
that hangs between this waking world
and the world beyond. At such times

the longed-for wings unfurl, the water
changes into wine and, whichever way you turn,
your lover will be coming through the door.

GO WEST...

We’ve just had our offer accepted on this house and the purchase process is now going ahead. It’s on the western edge of the village, part of a line of nine houses facing open fields. There’s a substantial garden behind and there’s room both outside and inside the house for a fourth bedroom extension. And thanks to Mum, we’re able to buy it without having to sell our present house (although the extension would have to be financed from its sale.)

ROAD TO THE WEST


VIEW ACROSS THE ROAD

...

Blogging is like living in a commune built on an oilfield. One day the diggers will move in.
Rafael Behr

Surprising myself somewhat in the process, two posts ago I produced a positively upbeat assessment of my relationship with blogging. Alarmed in its wake lest I should be taken for some kind of cheery evangelist, I present now an altogether bleaker perspective on the blogosphere. 

For the past two days, I’ve been mulling over the contents of a cutting someone emailed me from an undated Observer, maybe from last year, possibly the year before.  Presenting bloggers as free agents roaming the open range, able to settle at will and nail up their shingles without let or hindrance, the article predicts dark days ahead. Within a world dominated by rapacious capitalism (recession notwithstanding), the author Rafael Behr, in characterising the open source nature of the Internet, tells us that it is hard to conceive of a parallel society established and self-governed in principles of trust and common ownership. But it exists. The biggest aggregation of human experience and knowledge ever created belongs to everyone, it is available on demand and it is free.

Not for much longer, apparently because ranged against the new culture of digital freedom is a strange coalition of spooks, suits and vandals. There are governments unable to resist the technology that can track our every move; there are corporations lusting after the attention of the 2 billion eyeballs focussed on screens…

Not least amongst these circling birds of prey is Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp has set aside a war chest of $1 – 2 billion for online developments. Particularly unsettling was their purchase four years ago of Intermix Media, owners of MySpace.com, the blogging community to which many of us, more or less uneasily, belong.  Rafael Behr predicts the ultimate absorption of these web allotments and the imposition of rental sweetened by that most potent of web currency, free downloads.

The goal Behr writes, must be to marshal the energy that bloggers currently expend on creating their own content into the consumption of industry-manufactured, pay-per-view content.  Control of copyright sources and weblog software tools would effectively turn the key in the lock against the independent blogger. 

A couple of big hitters are quoted in support of this dystopic vision. J. D. Lasica of online creative archive Ourmedia warns: Nearly every day brings word of an entertainment company forming an alliance with a technology provider to corral an audience into a walled garden and force it to behave in a certain way.  And that Cassandra of the Left Noam Chomsky declares: Major efforts are being made by the corporate owner and advertisers to shape the internet so that it will be mostly used for commerce, diversion and so on. Then those who wish to use it for information, political organising and other such activities will have a harder time.  

And that is the problem for the current generation of web citizens, Behr concludes sourly. They are neither the aristocrats, nor the foot soldiers of the net.  They are simply its conscience and they will scream and shout as the web is carved up and sold off...  The real gold rush has barely begun. To experience the sharing culture of the blogosphere today is like living in a commune built on an oil field. One day, the diggers will move in.

Those of us who move around the shared territory delineated largely by the mutual links on our blogrolls, currently enjoy a sense of a community that, by and large, commits to an ethos of liberalism, even radicalism. That’s why I’m on your sidebar and you’re on mine. Within its loose territories, our blogging activity enables us to evaluate, assess and generally commentate on events in a world that most of us believe to be controlled increasingly by knaves and fools.  But how inviolate are we?  Is our freethinking corner of Blogistan vulnerable to that ultimate offer that no properly constituted business could surely refuse – rules drawn up for the ‘responsible and appropriate’ governance of our webhost’s blogs by webspace proprietors?  As weary onlookers contemplating the situation local and global have asked since the dawn of civilisation – where is it all going?

Extracts © Observer Newspapers

Retirement has brought many benefits, not least of which is the opportunity to snuggle deep into the worn leather of a library armchair with a good malt and a briar pipe charged with Smallweed’s Old Shag, there to contemplate the great verities.

Most evenings you’ll find me there. And now, after nearly a year of deep contemplation, I have questions, questions to which I want answers...

Light travels faster than sound. Is that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?
If it's zero degrees outside today and it's supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?
Why do you press harder on a remote control when you know the battery is dead?
Why are they called ‘buildings’ when they're already finished? Shouldn't they be called ‘builts’?
Why do people without a watch look at their wrist when you ask them what time it is?
Why is the alphabet in that order?
If you got into a taxi and the driver started driving backwards, would the taxi driver end up owing you money?
What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?
Why is a carrot more orange than an orange?
Do fish get cramps after eating?
Why are there five syllables in the word ‘monosyllabic’?
Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?
Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
How come Superman can stop bullets with his chest, but always ducks when someone throws a gun at him?
Why is lemon juice mostly artificial ingredients but washing-up liquid contains real lemons?
How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn't grow in it?
Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?
Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
What do little birdies see when they get knocked unconscious?
Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
Isn't Disney World a people trap operated by a mouse?

                                                              UNDER BLUE ANCHOR 

They were singing Barbara Allen. The fire was high.
Some eyes were closed with the weight of the tale;
others gleamed. All there were drinking or had drunk.
The windows ran with condensation. Rain fell straight

in the windless night. I rose and threaded my way
to the door. From woodsmoke, I stepped into seaspray.
From the crossweave of the song, I stepped into the cry
of gulls. Sickle wings looped and turned in the dark.

I sat on the wall and thought of home. I lifted my face
into the rain and thought of the children and of you,
all of you asleep – their faces secret, spellbound;
your hair spilled auburn-red over the counterpane.
 
And I called up the filaments of the rain and out
across the tenements of clouds to where you lay
sleeping, thinking not to wake you but only to stand
for a heartbeat at the corner of your dream.

MAY BLOGGERY THRIVE!

“Isn’t it all a bit sad, this blogging thing?” Mike asked. “Millions of agoraphobics snuggled up next to their laptops, sending lonely messages to people they’re never going to meet. All somewhat ubernerd, message-in-a-bottle stuff, isn’t it?”

He sipped the top off his pint of Guinness and peered sardonically at me over the rim.  I flashed him my dangerous smile – that momentary flicker at the corner of the upper lip – and, as if sensing the electricity in the air, the pub fell silent.

With the speed of a striking cobra I drove my bunched fist into his face, sensing with satisfaction at the moment of impact the crunch of bone and the rending of tissue. Without even a low moan, he tipped over the back of his chair and lay crumpled and senseless against the foot rail of the bar…

...

Yes, like you I have, on occasion in the past, had to defend our noble pastime against the sceptics and the ignorati. For six years I have been a passionate blogger with a powerful sense of purpose and direction, calm in my certainty that I shall be found in great age slumped peacefully over my keyboard, taken in mid-sentence. Now, a couple of months into my seventh year, blogging is the new mainstream black, everyone in the world is on Facebook and the zeitgeist boys and girls are tweeting on Twitter (“I just breathed in. Now I just breathed out...”)

So what about we veterans? Where do we place ourselves on the ever-expanding blogospheric spectrum? Well, at times I still feel a little like an early riser who slung his towel down on a more or less deserted beach at dawn and woke up at lunchtime surrounded by state-of-the-art sun-loungers. For me, as for so many others, it’s been a long, strange trip from those early inflexible templates to the bling-loaded blogs of today. In these nano-historical times in which we look back with dewy-eyed nostalgia to events as long ago as last week, a glance further back through the mists of time might provide perspective. 

With the development of website creation software obviating the need for HTML skills, and the interposition of interactive technology, there emerged the simple weblog and the basic blogger. Although many – probably most – early bloggers were, in fact, well versed in all things IT, there were plenty of techno hicks-from-the-sticks like myself following eagerly where they led. Bravely tackling early Blogger protocols (or in my case the leaky, steam-driven clunk-and-grind of Radio Userland), we proudly posted our pics or our poems or our recipes for authentic lobster thermidor. Most of us absorbed procedures and picked up on new developments on the hoof. Biting lips and gritting teeth in the wake of yet another system crash in which three hours of carefully prepared material disappeared into the ether and drawing on the patience and forbearance of the techies, we learned how to manage our blogs.

And we found that, with a little perseverance and some networking within the rapidly expanding genre-based communities, casual visitors became friends and the villages became towns. So that now we are each a part of a circle of bloggers with whom we share aspects of our outer and inner worlds of which only a handful of our real space friends may be aware.

In the first instance, it might be supposed that the intimacy of contact and communication that we enjoy is a unique property of the strange e-world that we inhabit. But I have met up in that real space with enough bloggers with whom I conduct such online relationships to be able to say that, in the flesh, nothing is lost in translation.  In meeting up, the only initial curiosity is the absence of the social foreplay that characterises first encounters. Once the drinks are bought and we’re all sat around the table, it’s business as usual.

So here we are still, bobbing around in a vast ocean of enterprise and transformation, surrounded by the experimenters and iconoclasts who drive the medium forward towards the next world changing innovation. Our blogs are, in their way, archaisms, strange little islands of traditional measured chatter – slow reads in a fast world. And yet to manipulate the processes and progress towards new forms that will make that murmurous yet intense café communication even more comfortable, we must maintain constant awareness of the development of the medium. A survival paradox of the 21st century with a wider application, maybe.

Blogs come and go. In recent months a small but crucial clutch of those for whom I have the highest regard have gone quiet. But enough of us are either driven by the imperative of l’art pour l’art or simply crazy in love with the sound of our own voice to carry on. And long may we thrive.

PARLIAMENT IN COMMON CAUSE SHOCK!

At last – members of the Mother of Parliaments, from Left to Right and in between – united in a sense of common purpose: to dig deep into the public pocket to lubricate their lifestyles and line their nests. And the whole process legitimised by a set of protocols and procedures set up by Parliament itself so that even when, by any reasonable scale of judgement, equity, ethics, morality itself are seen to be in breach utterly, claim can be made that no rules have been broken. Once again that crucial question must be asked: are we ruled by fools or knaves?

If, in continuing to benefit from publicly subsidised mortgage payments two months after his mortgage was fully paid off, Elliot Morley, Labour MP for Scunthorpe, simply missed the building society statement and covering letter whereby he was informed of completion, then he’s an idiot and not fit to hold office. If he knew and hoped that nobody would find out, then he’s a crook and should be charged with fraud and misappropriation of public funds.

If Tory MP for Bracknell Andrew McKay, in claiming second home allowance on his London residence while his MP wife Julie Kirkbride claimed second home allowance on her Bromsgrove residence, felt not a twinge or flicker of guilt, then maybe their respective constituencies might be better of without them. If their erstwhile supporters are feeling even only a modicum of the fury being expressed by those of Elliot Morley’s constituents interviewed by the BBC tonight, then maybe the least that both might confidently expect is dual deselection before the next general election.

At the time of writing, 34 MPs are having to account for expenses claims that seem to fall outside any responsibility that might reasonably be born by the public purse. One of them is Tony Blair. Another is Gordon Brown. And all of this has come blowing into town only weeks after many of the very same MPs were waxing righteous about the gourmandising greed of the disgraced bankers.

Lots of specious talk, much gabbling self-justification from these moral midgets. All I’m hearing is that uniquely horrible squealing sound that pigs make when forcibly separated from a newly filled trough.

This is in its third draft.

PARTING, HOW TO

Conventionally, lovers should part
in a soft storm
of blown hopes
and unconsumed potential.
Tears blur
the old horizons
and refract a new world
where one is the number.

Some might perceive a beauty
in this crafted heartbreak, others
simply paradox:
from the grit of parting
the tears that form
are like pearls.

Or blood may be shed:
spitting slanders
the lovers may wheel and dive
like wolves in a corner,
the one heartsick
on the arsenic of betrayal,
the other punch-drunk
on guilt.

Little to choose, maybe,
between the vale of tears
and the killing floor,
but passion spent
and smoke where once was fire
are markers for despair.

The truth is more prosaic.
Just after dawn
they’re sitting in a car.
The street is narrow
and the houses small and terraced.
The engine mutters
and he leaves it running,
a monologue all about departure.

A man clips a breakfast rose
and goes indoors.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”,
she murmurs
and the silence shivers
but it doesn’t break.

He lifts her tear
onto his knuckle,
tastes its salt as last communion.
He floats the final words
and they remain face up,
their shadows hanging.
She steps out
and he drives away.