I Commit To Paper

On Wednesday evening, I launched I Buy A New Washer (and Other Moderate Acts of Independence) by Zoom, from my bathroom. I decided on the bathroom location as the book has its origins in my learning to change a tap washer back in 2014, albeit in a different bathroom. I was so proud of my achievement that I started a blog in order to let people know about the experience. 

From that act of minor independence to now, I have written around 250 entries, now edited to a book of 52 short essays which span the course of a year. You can read the endorsements on the back cover - they'll give you a flavour of what it's about. 

I enjoyed  the book launch enormously, not least because so many people I care about were able to attend. I also like my book, which (as those of you who have published your work) is not guaranteed. I like the feel of it, the cover design, the thickness of the paper, guaranteeing no show-through. I like the colour of the font in which the title and my name appear (teal, I think).  It's a physical treat to pick it up, feel the smooth cover, open it to its first white, thick, blank page, turn that page to see the title again. It's still too early for me to look much further. Now that I've committed to paper, I know I won't be able to hover my cursor over a sentence to insert a missing Oxford comma, if there is one. 

Committing to paper meant eschewing the photographs I often use in the digital realm for drawings by John Rae. These lift the whole to a cheerfulness which is more Billy Collins than Philip Larkin, something I could not have achieved alone. Whilst I admire Larkin, of course, and all the other slightly depressed poets, you can bet Collins has had more fun. 

From deepest Somerset, Krakow, Edinburgh, and Wem they logged in to wish the book well on its journey into the world, and what is more, they brought their own drinks. I told you they were a generous crowd. For Penny in Western Australia, it was 4.30 am the next day. My editor Ross Donlon (Mark Time Books) was even further ahead -- 7.30 am in Castlemaine, Victoria. This skillful display of time and distance travel was all part of the ride.

Although moving from the digital (this blog) to the page (that book) may seem counter-cultural, for me it's been necessary at a time when so much of my time is spent staring at a screen a couple of feet away from my varifocals. The book weighs in at 210g. I know this because I've weighed it (plus packaging) in order to post it out to readers. 

If you would like to buy a copy of your very own, they cost £10 each including second class UK postage. If you want to get a first class postal service, add 50 pence. Email me at liz.lefroy@btinternet.com to let me know your requirements. If it's a gift, I can giftwrap and add a card for another £1 and post it straight to the recipient. If you live outside the UK, I can work out the postage rates. 

You can also find I Buy A New Washer (and Other Moderate Acts of Independence) in the Poetry Pharmacy in Bishops Castle, and Pengwern Books, Shrewsbury. And there is a lending copy at Shrewsbury Library, (although the librarian I've been dealing with has taken it home for the weekend, so you may have to wait your turn). I will sort out a wider means of distribution in the new year. 

I'm deeply grateful to those who suggested this project to me, in particular Ross Donlon and Anna Dreda. I am so grateful to you, my readers. Some of you -- Peter, Kev, Anna, Graham, Helen, Morar, Mike (and it turns out, Zoe!) -- have been reading diligently for years. 

When I started this blog in 2014, I thought it would be a playground in which I could practise my poetry writing skills. What I've discovered is that playfulness / mucking about / having fun / being spontaneous (and moderately independent) suits me. 

I Bring Glad Tidings

In an age of bad news, 24 hour news, Twitter gobbets, news segments, and filets, glad tidings seem preferable. Glad Tidings of Great Joy, sang the angels, that first Christmas. "Fake news!" say some, but that's missing the point. If angels bring glad tidings, I've encountered more than a few recently. 

I've started a list to explain what I mean:

1. Outside In, a group of dedicated, thoughtful, experienced and willing-to-be-vulnerable individuals whose lives are not easy for a variety of reasons, have won a social care accolade. I work with this group, and they are phenomenal. Watch the glad tidings here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM__2YgCD7U You'll also see other people from across social care settings in Wales who give of themselves, and do so gladly. 

2. Students at St Hugh's College, Oxford, said, 'So what?' to lockdown, and compiled a virtual advent Nine Lessons and Carols: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfPr1ZMDAoQ  as did many other colleges and universities in the UK and beyond. These young people, who've spent a term in various forms of isolation, make themselves vulnerable by singing in their rooms, recording, splicing it all together. They know it will be flawed, and it's extra beautiful as a result. Reaching the top notes without a hitch is not an angel requirement. They choose to use the privileges of their youth to record a service which has brought comfort and joy to the 281 people who've watched it so far. 

3. Those scientists who've been working on vaccines, vulnerable to criticism and false claims of conspiracy. Those health professionals who are working out how to get it to, and in us, routinely working 12, 14 hour days, vulnerable to exhaustion. 

4. Teachers going into schools day after day, carrying on regardless, working harder than ever, risking the vulnerability of exposure to C-19 on our behalf. 

Angels: they're everywhere, shown up not by bright light and lofty positions, but by their willingness to engage with the grit and the grist of human experience.  

I'm so glad I know so many of them.

I Review Lucy Ingrams' Light-fall

All That Is Most Hopeful

Light-

           fall

by Lucy Ingrams

Flarestack

After heartbreak, the thought of another love, a tender love, can become a dry territory to be skirted, or walled off. Not in Lucy Ingrams’ Light-fall. Here, ‘loved me    loved me not’ exist in the same breaths and curvatures, to love, have loved, ‘is to carry  …  is to be carried away.’

Reading these poems again and again has enabled for me a different vision of what it is to be alert and sentient in the world after a thinning love: they are open with courage, even when (especially when?) ‘weary of flowers’.

Bound in the familiarly confident Flarestack style, each page holds levers, phrases and twists of sound, which shift and interact to unlock sensations of light and thorn, and above all a strange hope.

It is rare to find a pamphlet in which every poem sings, and I enjoyed so much about this from the very start. Its lines flex, supple as the sea rendered in the exquisite opening poem, Swimmer, right up to the final exhalation of Blue hour. The rich imagery of intimacy and distance ranges across landscapes and seasons, with an originality that requires close attention.

‘Can / you-in-me really heal?’ asks Ingrams in Lammas. Yes. And what is more, she has made the intimacies of a love’s passing available to her readers as a balm, beautiful as skylark song, strawberry light, and greenwood.

Light-fall is available from flarestackpoets@gmail.com

I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning with ...

 V                                                                                    V                        v

There were a dozen or more,        V          v                                           v

                                                            V            V

                                                                                       some larger than others.

We looked up to see Vs in the sky at 4.15pm on Saturday 7th November towards the end of our socially-distanced bike ride. Geese, distant at first, flew closer, then directly overhead, honking, purposeful. 

                                               V                                                     v

                      V

                                    V v                                                           V

We stopped on the cycleway. Dusk was approaching fast and the fly-past had all the exhilaration of a murmuration - thousands of geese in exact formations, heading north-west along the river.

I took out my phone, my fingers numb with cold. I snapped a wonky photo, then checked the BBC news website, saw that the Democrats had taken Pennsylvania in the US Election.

We pushed the rules, fist bumped, joined in with the geese, shrieked for wonderful happiness. 

The geese passed over, leaving us with a multiplicity of V-signs:

V : for get lost and good riddance.

V : for victory. 

V : for very, very, very, very, very relieved. 

I Party With Friends

Five of my friends have birthdays today - I'm wondering if I can celebrate, if the rule of six still applies for the moment.

At least I have been able to message my Longest-Serving Friend without breaking any rules. The girl I met at camp when we were 10, turns one month older than me today, as she always does. What we had in common back then has taken us 45 laughter-filled years to uncover, and we're still counting. We bonded over ping pong tables when we first met at camp, girls in a boys' world. Eight years later, we met again as freshers at Durham University. From that time on, we took better care of staying in touch, though she still beats me at ping pong. 

It's my other longer, Longest-Serving Friend's birthday too (2). And the birthday of my longer Longest-Serving Friend's son, James (3 - pictured below with the best of smiles and smartest of waistcoats), and of another Very Long-Serving Friend, Rebecca (4). The fifth is Amy (5), friend, colleague, former student. 

3rd November - the day on which Long-Serving Friends are born. Take note, if you want to avoid me.

My friend Paul is (2), though by some definitions, he should be (1). Paul has always been 14 years older than me, and when we first met, I was 6 or 7, and he was organist and choir master at my father's church, and he to tell me and brother Matthew off repeatedly for chatting in choir practice. So it's a semantic point, whether he is, in fact, my actual longest-serving friend. I argue that I was a pain-in-the-neck for the first 10 years at least, only graduating to friendship in my late teens.

Paul might be responsible for this blog's theme, however, as he allowed me to practise early DIY skills at his home, when, with my brothers, I helped to paint (mainly) his walls. And he brought apple juice when I had pneumonia (twice). I was around 8/9/10 on those occasions, and very ill. Paul re-labelled the apple juice 'Lizzy's Apple Juice', knowing how important that level of detail was in a large family. I can see it still, in a green bottle, sitting beside my bed, reassuring me that one day I would feel well enough again to drink it.  

Paul played at my wedding - the organ was half-built, though you'd never know it. It was over thirty degrees of heat, and he played baroque,  making best use of the notes available to him. He also played the organ at my mother's funeral three months later. I became goddaughter to Ruth, his daughter, and he is godfather to Jonty, my son. When they were growing up, spending new year's eve at Paul and Deborah's home was the highlight of my sons' year. And in that very hot summer a couple of years ago, he and Deborah provided refreshments at Jonty's post-A level piano concert. Happy birthday, Paul. Musician. Physics teacher. Steam engine fan. Reassuring and loyal friend. 

So rule of six, tier 2 or 3 or not, I'm going to party, celebrate friendship, eat cake on your behalf, toast you all, 3rd November babies, with a glass of something sparkling, and later, blow out the candles, make a wish that our friendships in the coming year will continue long, longer, longest. 

I Search For Hope

Outside, it's dark, and has been for five hours now. The clocks have gone back to GMT, and after work time has become the type for staying in. 

Each evening, a new breed of driver shatters the otherwise quiet town centre of Shrewsbury with the sound of deliberate backfiring, unsilenced motorcycle exhausts. It's been going on for weeks, this dystopian ritual of explosions: I imagine it as a lockdown strutting of paltry stuff, a defiant emptying out of thoughtless rage past the early-closing pubs. 

Anticipating the earlier sunset, wishing to avoid exercising in the evening streets, I went out midday for my walk in the park, an eye on my watch to get back home in time for the next videocall class. The sun eeked itself out from behind the showers, and the riverside paths beyond the weir were golden-brown with autumn leaves embedded in mud. I walked cautiously. Even in a pandemic, there are dog owners who don't pick up after, and twice in the past fortnight I've come home with stinking dog mess caked into my soles. 

After class, catching up on the admin. which grows heads like a hydra, I needed to search my emails for Hope, looking for the last email I'd written to her. I tapped 'Hope' into the search bar, pressed Return.

What I found was that almost every email I write contains hope:

I hope you are well.

I hope we can meet before too long.

I hope you feel better soon.

I hope you are able to find time for yourself.

 Search your inbox for Faith, for Charity. You may not find them there. But Hope, Hope, Hope. It's everywhere, littering words like golden leaves in all the mud and mess, its small, round, comforting sound topped off with the softest of plosives.

Photo credit - Mike Powell

I Bottle Abundance

The apples are falling into bags which find their way to my doorstep, the damsons have relaxed, forgiven themselves for not being plums, the dish and the spoon are getting well used, and the courgettes are running away with the beans. Even the herbs in my window box are making a final push for the moon, over-stretching beyond their theme tune ... Parsley, Chives, Rosemary and Thyme - with a ladida and a hey diddle diddle and damn the absence of Sage and a fiddle! 

I've saved jars, and jammed some fruits into them, I've baked an apple tart, sprinkled it with almond flakes and cinnamon. In years gone by I pickled. I stoned. I peeled. I cored. But this year's new harvest trick is bottling. 

Bottle. What a word. I bottle, you bottle, he, she, zhe, they, bottle. We've all bottled it through lock-down and here in the northern hemisphere we're facing, well, we're facing west and the lowering sun, and the coming of the colder months. But before that, the plenty, abundance of good things to store, to shore us up, turn into something warm and friendly, encouraging and faintly medicinal for whatever lies ahead. It's cordial. 

Cordial. A tonic. Or with tonic, or sparkling water, or however you please. Gin, maybe. You won't mind  sloshing it into your glass till it's half full, because it's a lot easier to make than jam. Or jelly, or cheese, or chutney. It requires largesse and no sugar thermometer. It involves simmering, straining, funnelling, and having a lot of glass bottles. Just what's needed for this year's harvest.