I Share Good News

Class of 2019 -

Graduation!  

Another year group of students graduated last Wednesday in Wrexham. Watching them cross the stage to shake the Vice Chancellor's hand, their tutor Liz Lefroy recalled in a series of mini flashbacks and with a huge sense of pride much of what the past three years have involved - the learning, the triumphs, the setbacks, the personal losses and happiness, the determination and courage - all the challenges that are part of the BA Hons Social Work.  Here is the class of 2019 just before dropping their caps!

Gabriel wins Arts Society

Shrewsbury's 2019

Young Arts Bursary

Not strictly news - more like 'olds' but reported this month in an article in Shropshire Magazine Gabriel's major achievement in securing the Young Arts Bursary awarded after a competitive process by the Arts Society Shrewsbury.  "The panel were impressed by all 3 shortlisted candidates, but Gabriel was outstanding" said Deborah Yates, vice chair of Arts Society Shrewsbury. Here she is, pictured handing Gabriel the £2000 bursary, awarded to help talented young artists and designers educated in Shropshire further their careers.

Boudicca in Coalport
Intrepid Brompton Boudicca made it to Coalport and Ironbridge last Sunday after the frustrating days spent indoors because of torrential rain.Then out came the shiny October sunshine.

She travelled to Telford Central by Midlands Rail and used the Silkin Way to get down to the Severn, which was threatening to burst its banks. Here she is, accessorising the sky, on Coalport Bridge, shortly before making her way with companions Liz, Bertie and Mike to the Maws Craft Centre, where they met Steve by happy chance, and shared an excellent brownie with their coffee. Perfect!

Mini Pumpkin Pride
Halloween can be avoided completely in a top floor flat, says Liz of Shrewsbury. However, the lack of any tricks doesn't preclude the treat of a mini pumpkin display. "My son Jonty sent me a picture of a mini pumpkin he'd bought for his student room, and I knew I had to go one better," confessed Liz. "Two better,  in fact.

I got them from Des at Pomona. I wish I could say that I grew them myself but that would be a lie, and this is journalism."

I Give Credit Where It's Due

In the summer, I enjoyed working with a group of people involved in various ways in the degree I teach on to make a film of Graham Attenborough's poem, Andrew. We collaborated with animator Darren Mason, making a storyboard, then cut outs and models, and finally used stop frame animation techniques to create movement. The poem's colourful imagery lent itself to our enthusiastic but time-limited low budget endeavours - we had 10 sticks of plasticine, multi-coloured card, glue sticks, scissors and felt tip pens, along with our smart phones, animation apps, bouncy tripods and 5 short days to complete it.

Fortunately, Graham really likes the outcome, and it's been well-received by those who've seen it so far.  

The various makers are credited at the end of the film - well, most are. After we had tidied way the plasticine and scissors, work carried on after that original week - in particular, we had generous help which made the Welsh version possible. Graham had narrated the poem in its original English, but we knew we wanted a Welsh language version. We also knew, having watched the film without music, that this was needed at the end. Graham chose Handel, and we think it makes the film complete.

You can watch the Welsh language version of the film here: Andrew - Cymraeg
You can watch the English language version of the film here: Andrew - English

And here's the full list of credits:

Poem - Graham Attenborough, originally published in New Face in Hell, 2018, Bare Fiction, editor Rob Harper
Animator . Workshop Facilitator / Post Production - Darren Mason
Design, Animation and Technical Support - Tim Wynn, Jason Starr, Eluned Plack, Liz Lefroy, Fiona King, Laura Flannery, Nick Hoose, Lauren Evans, Jo Sefton, Georgia Hill
Narrator: English - Graham Attenborough
Narrator: Welsh - Iolo Madoc Jones
Translator: Huw Richards
Piano: Jonty Lefroy Watt (Handel - Hornpipe from Water Music Suite no. 1)
Post-post production: Mike Powell

And a big thank you to Pat Edwards who put us in touch with Huw Richards for the excellent translation - Graham says he prefers the Welsh version!

I Kiss Summer Goodbye

The sun is flickering on and off between clouds and showers, taking itself to bed earlier, rising later. I've been waking with a slight ache in my limbs which passes by ten o'clock. From time to time, there are reminders of the recent heat - a rose still sends out buds; my shadow casts itself against the wall as I walk home; on Sunday afternoon, seats cluster around a pavement café table strewn with coffee cups, wet with rain.

Not so long ago, I swam in the sea off Norfolk. I came back from the beach with the pale cross of a saltire across my back - the negative marks of my swimming costume straps. That weekend spent around the Holkham Estate was a capsule of summer: the sort I would have imagined perfect in childhood - rowing across the lake, drinking late afternoon beers to the sound of jazz, ice cream, cycling along shaded lanes, watching a game of cricket unfolding on the grass.

I walked to the Quarry Park this afternoon, carrying the marks of summer hidden beneath my coat - the light kiss of a suntan on my back, the dimples of ice cream around my waist.

The mallards were anchoring themselves on the bank, cautious of the river's higher flow, whilst the gulls surfed midstream, coursing down towards the bridge. Long white marquees were going up for Oktoberfest. 

October! July is still vivid. I camped beneath the Milky Way and my sons returned home. Things were just getting going. As for August - its sand is still in my rucksack pockets, September? It has barely begun. And this week, October.

It has all come upon me so suddenly.

I Get A Minuet

A minuet is a:

slow, stately ballroom dance for two in triple time, popular especially in the 18th century (Lexico on-line dictionary).

In my time, I have played many a minuet, and listened to a good few more. They often form part of Suites such as JS Bach's Suite in B Minor for Flute and Keyboard / Orchestra, and they often are paired with Trios.

So when a friend asked me to respond to her message if I get a minuet today, I wondered how to go about it.

Despite having a long stretch of time off work, I have not had enough of it for playing, dancing, singing along, running, writing, or any of the other activities one might do, given enough minuets in the day. Before my long stretch of time, I stacked up a list of things to do in July, when I thought I would get minuets in abundance. Surely, this freedom from the daily work routines would mean I could ...

• redecorate my home, well, at least some of it
• write a novel
• sew back buttons onto my duvet cover
• find a publisher for a collection of poems
• get fit
• play minuets on my flute?

I enjoyed many slow and stately activities during July. Some of the activities, such as camping, were for two; some turned out to be trios with my sons - climbing Cader Idris, hanging out, baking pies, watching sunsets .... All these were done with a hop and a skip in triple time. However, the novel didn't get written, and my duvet still leaks corners from its cover, as it has done for five years or so.

Back into work time, I want, nevertheless, to find even more minuets. I got one today, to write this, and another to reply to my friend, but how to find time for singing along to life to my own tune and in a stately time signature now that my time off has ended? This is what I'm trying to work out. 

1. • I wenI 

I Ace Wimbledon

My first appearance at Wimbledon was on Court 2. Getting there involved planning, diligence, holding my nerve and the support of my team - a team which knows how to meet the criteria, complete the paperwork (a form, and then another form, and then a stamped addressed envelope, a wait, another form, another envelope, many more stamps).

Fortunately, my team comprised my Longest Serving Friend who has been negotiating the ways of Wimbledon for years, and taught me everything she knows, trained me up, drove me hard. "Sign here", she said, putting the ticket application form under my nose. After winning the tickets, we needed to work out a strategy for play. It involved staying for the week at Wimbles Farm , East Sussex, a train from East Grinstead, and sun cream. 

Wimbles Farm is paradise for those who want to get off-grid, on the ground and out of doors.  The first night I unzipped my tent, made my way out for my 2am nightly stop-off, and entered a sky which was velvet-indigo, deep with constellations, strewn with the Milky Way. The view of our pitch the next day was no less extraordinary:

We could have spent the whole week in Eden, but left for bike rides, swims and, last Wednesday, Wimbledon. After our train ride, we watched nine hours of tennis in what felt like a moment of joy. The day was dense with drama: loose balls  an art form as they were collected up by the precisely trained skills of ball girls and boys; grass courts edged to perfection; line judges performing a synchronised dance of standing up and sitting down between games; gods on court who gifted us with out-of-this-world visions of grace, speed, cunning, flight and power, and the occasional outburst of mortal frustration. Wawrinka, Opelka, Halep, Buzarnescu, Anderson, Tipsarevic: names worthy of any pantheon. We took sides, grew to care about each shot, each game: got caught up in it all. It was wonderfully exhausting.

Back at Wimbles Farm, we spent evenings chilling wine in shop-bought ice, cooking risotto and sitting by the fire. Daytime, we discovered the Cuckoo trail - a disused train line, now cycle route. One day we rode to Eastbourne, and Fusciardi's ice cream parlour, then took the train on to Lewes and the wonderful Pells Pool.

On our final morning in paradise, we noted a dead grass snake on the path as we rode to a lake graced with rushes and water lilies. We undressed by the water's edge, clambered down and swam around in widening circles, before floating on our backs and looking up at the clear sky, letting happiness soak through our skins.

I Become Set To Music

As a Christmas present, Jonty gave me the gift of possibilities. He offered to make one of my poems into song. This is one of those loaves and fishes presents - something more than the sum of its parts: a gift of multiplication.

The starting sum in this particular equation was gluttony - a collecting up of all the candidate poems. They became a group in themselves: at least a sextet of some of my favourites. I had to reduce them down, so subtracted the narratives, the wistful, the greedily over-familiar - I watched out for something playful.

iniquity leapt up saying "Pick me! Pick me!" This cheeky poem drew envy from the others, with its consciously written psychological ambiguity and dark streak. It came to me after listening to Handel's Messiah. "All we like sheep have gone astray. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" sing the chorus early on in this oratorio. Somehow, Handel and the choir make this straying and sinning sound like a lot of fun. Try lazing around and then dancing to the Messiah - that is what I was doing the evening that iniquity came to me. You will not disappoint yourself.

Having been published in Magma, I have confidence in iniquity. I wanted to give my son material worthy of his attention. He was open to the suggestion, took iniquity  away, thought about it and showed it to his composition tutor. She squared up to the poem, calling it (Jonty reported back), "A work of genius!"  I watched iniquity puff itself up easily into the shape of pride.

Jonty took iniquity and months later gave it back to me having multiplied it by Schoenberg, by the dialogue between mezzo soprano and piano, by youthfulness and by his joyful creativity.  He has added layers of meaning and interpretation to this poem which does not immediately lend itself to a musical setting. Listening to it, I had the feeling, both rare and visceral, that he had seen straight through me, given me so much more than I could ever have imagined or asked.

Here's the link to the song on Bandcamp -

https://jontylefroywatt.bandcamp.com/track/iniquity-2019

iniquity …

I like the word

how it feels

tongue flattened to roof for the in

release for the second short i

cheeks and lips drawn for qui

teeth bared for the ty

it’s a total mouth experience

say it

in-i-qui-ty

four syllables of tense   relax   pout   spit

say it looking in the mirror

come on to yourself

relish the way you look like this

limbering up     for what? 

wine    women     sin

iniquity

it puts everything at your disposal

a life full of bite and sound

of going into yourself

trying out all love’s compulsions

say it

play it out

stray

you lucky devil

I Work In The Cold

It's unseasonably cold and wet. You don't need me to tell you that, unless you live somewhere else. The rain came down and the floods went up today, and I got my feet and trousers wet on the way from the station because firstly I left my umbrella at the side of a marquee on Saturday, and because secondly the water was coming up from the pavement as well as down from the skies.

The renovations happening in my part of the building at work seem to necessitate the door to the outside being left open. I suppose this is for convenience. Also, the heating isn't on, which is good because it's June, and not good because it's nothing like an averagely warm June, and someone's leaving the door wedged open.

I sat down at my desk, damp. I got on with the sedentary nature of administration, marking, answering enquiries. A slow day, a misplaced day which should have been spent on a trip to the International Slavery Museum on the waterfront in Liverpool according to another plan which I'm glad, in the end, didn't come off.  There's a best-not-experienced quality of cold on the dockside in Liverpool when the wind whips off the Mersey and the rain comes along with it.

You can't make an omelette without cracking eggs. They can't renovate a building without leaving the door open, ripping up floors, making dust and pulling down the ceiling. I can't always stop the cold from creeping in, taking hold of my hands.

But I can go home, run an early bath, get into my pyjamas and heat a bowl of soup, as if it were already November.