I Chant And We Cheer

I know the more sophisticated of my readers may be disappointed to hear this, but I have been to the football and I have been chanting, but not like a nun. I understand that some imagine me as a well-behaved lady poet, sitting behind my typewriter and waiting for poems to come to the rescue, but after the events of last weekend, I feel compelled to reveal the darker side to my character. 

What happened was this. My brother, the middle one, the one who has Arsenal written through him like ... well, a stick of rock, organised for me to go with my sons to Arsenal vs Bournemouth on Saturday 4th March, 2023, kick off 3pm. It's worth being precise about the date  and time because history was made. I've supported Arsenal since I was a kid growing up in Highbury, but that support has come to life again recently, as my eldest son has become as keen a fan as his uncle. 

The goal Bournemouth scored in the first few seconds of the game felt like a kick in the stomach. The familiar feelings of resigned defeat, learned on the netball courts in 1976, washed over me. "It's only a game," I lied to myself. I felt tense. Responsible. As if me being there was bad luck for this game that Arsenal, top of the league, should win easily. I remembered this feeling of old. I wanted something different, something for my boys to remember. 

The crowd was silenced by the shock of the early goal for a few beats, and then the chanting began. Ars-e-nal, Ars-e-nal, Ars-e-nal. I joined in - the words weren't hard to learn. It was a relief to sing. I breathed deeply. 

I'm not a football expert but I did notice that for most of the game Arsenal players had the ball at their feet. But this majority possession didn't result in goals. It felt unfair, as if luck was against us.

After half-time, Bournemouth scored again from a corner. 2-0. The mood was brooding in the stands, but the regulars knew what to do. Ohhhh Martinelli ... We've got super Mik Arteta ... We're the north bank ... Somehow, Arsenal scored. "We'll get another," said my eldest, with a football confidence which I've never managed for myself, but which I have learned to trust in him. We did. 2-2.

Feeling success within reach, it became increasingly unlikely as the minutes of the match ticked away. "It's only a game," I said to myself again, and this time I believed it. I embraced the truth of it. It being a game doesn't make it not matter. Games are important, I reasoned, because they're an opportunity to release our inner children. Hadn't Michael Rosen said this, in his book Play?

Freed up by this thought, I starting jeering when the Bournemouth goalie got a yellow card for time-wasting. It's only a game, I thought, so I can let go. "Send him off!" I heard myself shout. "Lo-ser! Give him a red card! Red ca-ard!" I looked across at my sons - they were roaring at the goalie too, shaking their fists. It was wonderful.  

I was enjoying the game, but time was running out. Some fans  started pushing along the row to get out of the stadium to beat the rush to the tube. One older man, let's call him Thierry, stood next to me in the gangway. There were only a few minutes left, injury time. I felt a mix of emotions, was clinging to a thread of hope, was building myself up to be brave.

Like a reprieve from a sentence of disappointment, like compensation for the netball defeats of old, like an acknowledgement that this day was special, my lads at the Emirates for the first time, all of us in Arsenal shirts, Arsenal did it. They scored again. 

The moment had a poetry and drama I've never experienced watching sport before - with uncanny timing, the goal mirrored Bournemouth's at the start of the game. We looked at the scoreboard, hoping it was true. 3-2. It was.

I found myself being hugged by Thierry, who was transformed from grumpy to ecstatic. Then we were hugging and being hugged by fans of all ages as the stadium was split by a grin and a roar as wide as north London and as long as 30 minutes. 

3-2 to the Ars-e-nal, 3-2 to the Ars-e-nal! 

I'm so grateful we were there and that I learned, at last, to the ends of my red and white scarf, that football is a game. 

Dedicated to David, Jess, Gabriel, Jonty, Jeremy, Paul and Roy - crazy Arsenal fans

I Valentine This Day

I have it on good authority that “there ain’t no noun that can’t be verbed” so I’m valentining today. Why? Because I’ve found that waiting for a noun to drop through the letterbox is a poor way to approach love. 

The way I’m going to valentine my day is to go to work by train, and to notice all that’s beautiful and wondrous: a frosty sunrise, a conversation with a colleague who’s full of enthusiasm, the repairs to the keys ‘O’ and ‘R’ carried out on my laptop, new sheets of card. I will reflect on the many blessings of love I have in my life, one of which is for mushroom risotto which I’ll cook for myself this evening when I get back to my warm home. As I stir the onions in oil, I’ll remember the times I’ve done this on a stove each evening of the brilliant camping trips I’ve shared with my longest-serving friend. Our next adventure begins in 3 months, 13 days, 15 hours and 57 minutes’ time.

Later, I’ll take this picture down from my wall. It’s a work of art that moves me each day of the year. It was brought home from school by my eldest son one February 14th long ago, He showed he is good at valentining from an early age. I relish the way his work shows a free, creative, colourful and open expression of affection for his younger brother. I’ll sit with it next to me while I eat the chocolate hearts given to me by my amazing goddaughter yesterday. We spent the afternoon painting pottery and chatting about this and that. My bowl expresses my love of flowers; hers, her love of animals. Both express our love of play. In her farmyard scene, among the chickens and pigs, lurks a T-Rex. If you look very carefully (and with your imagination) among my flowers, a chameleon is hiding.

❤️

I Rewild My Garden

In the height of the first lockdown, I discovered I had a garden (I Find A Garden). It was something of a surprise, given that at the time I found it, I'd lived in my current home for several years. Part of the explanation is that access to the garden is through a window, and climbing out of it reminds me of why I practise Warrior 1 and Child Pose. There was always the feeling, in doing so, of what the British Board of Film Classification calls 'mild peril'. But to everything a season and a risk assessment, and, sensing opportunity and necessity, I became proficient at folding myself in and out.

The rooftop garden meant freedom and fresh air at a time when living in a flat seemed like a poor choice to have made. I climbed out sometime between 11 and 1 each day of that first beautiful and strangely silent lockdown spring to drink coffee and watch the leaves on the nearby plane tree unfurl. These were the hours I learned that the sun passed by before hiding behind surrounding buildings. This was the time by which I needed a break from my laptop screen.

I pottered about clearing leaves and moss from the flat roof, reclaiming some abandoned plants. I made do with what I could find, enjoyed the inventiveness and limits of it all. I wrote poems, painted canvases, phoned friends, read books, hung out my washing. In the long hot evenings of that strange summer, I took my glass of wine outside, chatted to my shirtless young neighbour who was sat in the courtyard below, keeping cool. I think I reminded him of his mum whom he couldn't visit. Once, he sent a gift of a pizza delivery for me and my younger son. 

In the second year of lockdowns, growing in garden confidence, I planted seed potatoes in tubs given to me by my Longest-Serving Friend, with socially distanced compost borrowed from a friend's garden. I grew lobelia from seed on my windowsills, then transplanted the seedlings outside. 

With the return to greater freedom in 2022, my visits to the rooftop began to decrease. In the spring, I tidied the space again, but by summer, when restrictions lifted, it started to feel like an eccentricity. It was harder to explain why I was climbing out of a window to meet the sun in a few square metres of space, when there's a huge park, long cycle rides and friends' gardens nearby. When the restaurant next door became busy again, I began to feel conspicuous sitting above the chattering guests in the courtyard, with my underwear out on the drier. None of them mentioned pizza. 

I haven't given the garden much thought in the past few months, but today, when the fresh young sun beckoned, I decided to go out, to tidy up and think about this year's planting. Looking through the window, I stopped myself before opening it up wide, noticing a blackbird gathering flat-roof moss. It was so bright-eyed, so glossy, so busy collecting what it needs for its new nest and brood that it came to me, there and then, that I will let my garden grow by itself this year. I'll leave the moss and the leaves and the twigs of last autumn for the birds, the brave ones who visit the town centre, and their young. 

For everything, there is a season. A time to garden, and a time to refrain from gardening. The rooftop was loaned to me, for a while: an open secret. For the time that I needed it, I made of it a sanctuary. 

I Buy A New Washer: I Quote Charles Dickens

I Buy A New Washer: I Quote Charles Dickens:  As I've gone about my Christmas busyness, I've been listening to David Copperfield  by Charles Dickens. One of the things I've ...

I Quote Charles Dickens

 As I've gone about my Christmas busyness, I've been listening to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. One of the things I've done in 2022 is subscribe to what, in the 1980s, my granny (her vision deteriorating) would have called a talking book service. Subscribing has been one of the small, but significant, things I've done in 2022. 

Other small things I've done have included my 80th parkrun, decorating a pottery bowl, growing potatoes, onions and sage, drinking wine in a summer house after dark, buying curtains, and making my first nut roast.

There have been bigger things too - of course there have been.  I held my great-nephew, 3rd newcomer to his generation, for the first time; I followed in the steps of Leopold Bloom around Dublin; I became a part-time employee; I scattered ashes of one of my dearest friends; I attended the first graduation ceremony for a while. 

I was drawn to listening to David Copperfield because I first listened to Demon Copperhead  (Barbara Kingsolver) - her book's plot follows that of Dickens'. Even with extra time to myself these days, I would not have finished reading either book in print, but have enjoyed having them read to me while I go for walks, do housework, dig. I will forever associate my attic with Moby Dick, the book that accompanied my DIY insulation improvements in the spring. The timbers have something of the ship about them.

Like this blog, Dickens writes David Copperfield in the first person. The comparison goes no further than that, except, perhaps, in one respect. Today, when I heard David Copperfield musing that "trifles make the sum of life" I thought, Yes, that's right. The break ups, the bereavements, the awful news of wars and sorrows ... as well as the joys of new discoveries, the triumphs - all of these are huge monuments in our lives: the dates of birth and death which mark out years as unique. But in-between, every day of every year, it's the small stuff --  what seems trifling at the time --  that holds us (that holds me) together.

Tomorrow is new year's day and I'm lucky enough to be spending it with family, including the very youngest ones. I was reminded, thirty-one and a bit hours into David Copperfield, of one small event that tends to happen each new year in our family. Thus it is, dear reader, that I go into 2023 hopeful that, among the contributions to the spread of food on 1st January 2023, there'll be trifle. 

I Snap A Picture

I find Christmas more enjoyable, whatever its shape, whoever I'm with, however the food turns out, if it's accompanied by Handel's Messiah. It's often sung at this time of year because of its distillation of the Christmas story into quotations from the bible, the first part focusing on Unto us a child is born.

I listened to the first section yesterday as I ran round the Quarry Park in Shrewsbury for my 80th parkrun, sporting my Santa hat. I was somewhere behind Mr Yule Log, and amid 700 or so other Santas, Elves, Christmas Trees and even, I think, a Christmas Pudding. 

Here's a photo I snapped at the start. See if you can spot Mr Yule Log - he's well-camouflaged against the tress. 

And here's the first photo I've ever taken while running up hill and not wearing glasses. The first few hundred runners are a blur in front of me, cresting the hill underneath St Chad's church.

As I ran, I listened to the words of the Messiah.  Comfort ye my people, all flesh shall see it together, yet once a little while, but who may abide the day of his coming, and shall call his name Emmanuel, lift up thy voice with strength, be not afraid ... and later ... why do the nations so furiously rage together?

I love the poetry and cadence. I love the way that human experience is present and ancient in the texts. Yet once, a little while. It's so beautiful: rhythm, harmony, melody. 

This work of Handel's has survived its own popularity. This is song that can be sung in any season, even this one with its ugly-beautiful mix of religion, commerce, greed, altruism, cynicism, hope, loneliness and partying. I do not experience this work as a sermon, but as a poem. Similarly, parkrun with its accommodation of logs, fast runners, walkers, dogs, puddings and all - I don't experience it as a race, but as a temporary community with volunteer marshals encouraging us on every step of the way. 

Christmas. It's a whole mix of things, and we've not failed if it's not merry, bright, happy or joyful. We can't buy our way out of the human condition, but maybe we can sing it, maybe we can write about it. This is not a message from on high, but one from on low, from our daily experiences which includes grief and loss, hunger and cold, as well as birth and mysterious gifts. 

I think that's what I'm trying to say in this poem, which I'm grateful to Ink, Sweat and Tears for publishing today. 

28th July, 2021

Mist blankets the beach, blending

the horizon to something of a mystery. 

The air whitens to peace,

the sun, our star, glows a yellow lamp-bulb.

Gulls call the sad, glad news,

trace holy ghosts in simple pilgrimages

above the seal-grey sea, calling

holy, holy, holy are the days.

We've brought gifts from the Christmas

none of us could spend together,

sit to open them on sand warm enough

for a camel's footprint. 

Later, there'll be room at the inn.

Twelve will sit at the next table, and we'll witness

a father reach to take his silent daughter's hand.

We'll eat together at last, drink water, drink wine. 

I Decorate A Bowl

I've been meaning to get my paints out for months. Passers-by may have got the impression that I have, may have noticed that I recently applied a coat of grey eggshell to my front door, and I touched up the external frames with white gloss. But I did these things in adult mode, thinking about weathering and rot. Getting my paints out means something else. It's what I do when I want to take my inner child out to play (I Paint A Canvas). 

Last week, I met my goddaughter at the Emma Bridgewater factory in Stoke. She'd booked us into the painting studio so we had a table for two and a couple of hours. There was a choice of ready-made pots to paint, a wheel of colours, sponges, brushes, pencils and a sander for rubbing out mistakes.

I was choosing from the ready-cut sponge shapes when I let myself be drawn to the dinosaurs. I chose the one that looks like a brontosaurus: the one I grew up with but now have found out never existed. 

Dinosaurs weren't in my plan, nor was green, not that I had a plan. Somewhere in the back of my mind was lodged the thought that I'm not the target market for dinosaurs. Being in the easy company of Ruth, an early years teacher, made all the difference. She was encouraging about dinosaurs - no shape out of bounds - and her enthusiasm released my inner green thunder lizard.

Having started with the dino, representative for me of my elder son, the next choices were easy: musical notes, flowers, a swallow, bees and three cakes; symbols of our family sponged onto a French bowl.

All the while we were chatting, and Ruth was painting her pottery too. It looks amazing and I can't wait to see it once it's been fired. I can't tell you more, though, as it may become a present for someone. Mine's a present to myself: reminder of my children, myself as a child, the child I am still becoming.