My beautiful home

I thought that it would be good to share some pictures of the beautiful part of the world where I am lucky to live.

Kirby Underdale is in East Yorkshire, about 15 miles east of York on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds. It’s an estate village, owned by Lord Halifax Estates. Mainly 19th century build there is plenty of evidence of the area being occupied for up to 5,000 years.   
It is truly a fabulous place to be. I hope someone enjoys the pics.

Another sombre moment before the door

Another sombre moment before the door.
It opens to expectation. My footsteps
Accompanied by a murmured discontent
Arc toward the dock. Shuttering applause
Flutters in the sterile room, butterflies
Of fear greet my centring breaths before
The defence begins. I look up to expectation
I see gratitude, my oratory bringing joy.
Poverty blighted these lives and yet my deeds
Simple and subtly enacted give them peace.
To regain my composure I reject my weakness,
A truthful voice contains more than is desired,
Give them the certain and logically correct
Their loyal reason will ensure the rest. Each
Impassioned belligerence, spittled from my lips
Each sweep of an arm, salutes and beatifies me,
Justifies our enemies rooted out, made to pay.
No judgement is being passed. Friends don’t.
We were one in our endeavours, my people
And me. The questions asked are uninspired,
Combat for lawyers, weak moneyed men, liars
Let them save a nation, they espouse cliché,
Protecting with dull and uninventive wits.
I am angry with their ingratitude. Shits!
And disrespectful ones at that, tire me.
I refused council, in recess time is mine.
Soon judgement will be handed down. They will
Not decide. I will have my victory tonight.

30th October 2010.

First Class

Alone yet juxtaposed
We triptych, around a
Table of four, whisper
Through an architecture,
Exchanging services,
Our impassively drawn
Faces tuned to deny
Unwarranted contact,
Rushing to commerce with
Other souls waiting while
We are hurled to temporary
Meaning, minuted life.

Amended 30th October 2010

Much, much, more

There have been moments in N’s career when rewards have come too easy. The discovery that often only a working knowledge of an organisation’s failings is required in order to make personal progress through its ranks has however made life less than satisfactory. It wasn’t always so. Most companies require commitment but are easily deluded. N learnt quickly how little work people actually do, and beneficial work is very rare; he knew the shocking lie that capitalism is efficient. It’s efficient at making sure capital resources are allocated efficiently, it’s that banal, but an effective use of people? A lifetime of experience told him that less is much much more.

N was thirty two years old and therefore a late developer when his enthusiasm for the task got him noticed, ideas and projects that he put forward coincided with the company’s zeitgeist, ephemeral and glib though it was. Before long he was putting in the required hours to be known as one of the ones to watch though those that conferred privileges also kept him at arm’s length. And so it went for a few years but the projects N submitted or was allocated rarely came to anything. N probably saw through the implementation of one idea across three areas of the business as he moved from role to role but as he did so he was getting further and further from what he saw as what mattered, the company’s customers and the employees who looked after them.
Like most people he came across N had stumbled into the industry. Some colleagues found railways fascinating but strangely they were derided within the company as much trainspotters are by the general public and jokers. N didn’t find railways fascinating although he had a quiet fascination for timetablers and engineers but like he wasn’t accepted by the Directors and most of the other senior managers he knew he wasn’t part of the company’s true meritocracy either. For a time he was a conundrum, recognised by many on the payroll of three thousand his name was known to pretty much all of them. Some admired his vivacity, some were quizzical about his success, and others were downright hostile implying with their ironic greetings and unreturned voicemails that they simply didn’t value his contribution and couldn’t work out why the company did either.

This was all fourteen years ago now. The senior team changed, new faces without any railway background came in and set about making things the same with an evangelical fervour. For a few months N almost pulled off the same trick but again these new managers were a different breed. The end was swift, mostly engineered by N himself he knew that clever those these new guys were they were also stupid. N believed organisational focus a fabulous concept it allowed him to operate in the Director’s peripheral vision and create a copper bottomed case for unfair dismissal. A cheque followed a few months’ gardening leave and he was free of economic ties but also free of means.

Half Truths

I create a dream each day. The draw of a wood fire is its breath, a fast machine ride therapy for a jumped up pantry boy. In this world of opinions and momentum there is no certain way. Man is not master of the forces he unleashes woman neither; she is as bored with her materialism as a popular actor with a new toy on his fiftieth birthday. No more toys for God’s sake. Intelligent design could not have got us here surely? The dream is a pathway of justification through each highly paid day’s fraud that I commit. I have what to most would be a perfect life. I am a bee with a surfeit of nectar, a sugar rushed lazy of a man toying with my rudder. Toying too much with it, bloody thing and the Internet, how the hell am I supposed to make sense of my life with so much distraction?

Still I have a girl with a beautiful haircut and a cosmetically unchallenged body to contend with. Her enthusiasm is my noire, her enthusiasm for meals, my generosity and me, I am a waning moon and on the cusp of being alone, she’ll deny all this but as I crouch over her and admire her beauty in silence I can’t help but smile at the stupidity of youth when it encounters wealth. My crotch aches and for a moment I consider turning her to one side, she asked me in the night as she curled into me if I would leave her, in my half waken humour I comforted her with ‘of course not, I couldn't be bothered', now I can’t but soon self protection will mean I must.

I ought to be friends with my family. I have left them scattered across the country. My mother is alive and I’ve tried to keep in touch with her, she visits but the coordination is fraught. She’ll want a lengthy visit so as to get best value from her discounted fare; I have to get whichever unsuitable companion is in my life out of the way for a day or two. I try not to make it any more than that; I think I’m an unfortunate son for a widow to suffer. She arrives at ten and Jana leaves at nine, off to a weekend field trip. It is five now. I have to write a paper for a company chairman, give her what she wants and condemn a few more workers to having to think about their future. It is as pointless to import Bordeaux during prohibition as to fight this particular firebird with words. To be caught in the squall of her capitalism would be the death of me no doubt, I am lucky to ride its up draught for while yet. Do I wish that I was still married? On days like these the comfort of being known to each other and corralled by vows and legal obligations makes visiting matriarchy more comfortable. She’s not daft my mother and she knows that I have lovers, and she knows their absence when she visits is a portent of a dark future for me. But I couldn’t stand the way my wife would make sure I sent cards and gifts, made me out to be something I am not. I am not friends with my family because after I insisted on keeping the flat and left her the country house and returned to my uncommunicative ways they realised she was the one who they’d been enjoying and I was the same introspective dreamer I’d always been.
I’ll never break with tradition and will keep melodies at the centre of the life I compose. Though I harbour visions of a self-less revolutionary fervour I am no doubt a conservative and reticent man.

Out of bed and through to my office. Coffee, smoke and toast; butter and yeast extract, butter and honey, one slice of each. I précis my thoughts into a scribbled map and gradually collate them into an idea and then I start to write. Words tumble out of my bleary head and struggle through the dehydration of a cask strength Rosebank, as old as my daughter. I always tell myself that each paper I write is a work of art. I re-present the truth but as they wish it to be see. I calculate each margin and ratio, I summarise the spreadsheet model that I made last week between fucking and porn and being frustrated. True I did re-learn the Hotel California guitar solo again after a twenty year hiatus. After a couple of hours I have something half-baked which wouldn’t stand up to so much scrutiny. I read it through, correct some grammar and add a couple tables and graphs for effect. It will come back with a mixture of spite and admonishment for my lack of progress. Then I’ll turn it round, I always do. The Chairman is my judge and jury but sometimes not that bright. I am aware of my hubris. I just don’t care. I press send.

Time to wake up Jana. I am often ashamed of my never ceasing lust for her. She must be sore to distraction sometimes. I know she'd be better off without me. I shall make her a coffee and let her decide about fucking, the field trip and my mother. If she decides wrongly I shall be anxious and hateful to her. My inherent deterrent is not an attractive side to me and it will probably be a main reason why she will leave at nine and one day for good. I won't change though, I decided not to, a long time ago.

My wife was completely disinterested in the Chilean Miners' rescue! I found it moving, she was unmoved.

I have to admit to a experiencing a strange sensation when seeing so many others from around the world expressing their happiness in public on the BBC website.

I have a friend who recently won an award and when it was reported in the local newspaper some people wrote in to make strangely incorrect and disrespectful remarks. The friend felt that people who had nothing better to do than to go online and complain were donkeys (my word not hers) and to paraphrase something very old: 'if you are kicked in the head by a donkey........'.

So, although it was a positive emotion that I expressed am I just a donkey too? Or a sheep following the flock? When Diana POW died I was appalled by the public hysteria and took no part in any public display of grief, although I did moan about it down the pub sometimes.

I think my wife's disinterest shines an interesting light on me and I find it's illumination not wholly flattering. My sentiment was good and it was a joyous rescue so why not take part in it's celebration? And after all not many people look at my blog (possibly one!) so it was hardly a narcissistic post but I guess that is my fear.

What an introspective man I can be.

Success is Beautiful

Seven hundred metres doesn't seem such a great distance when it is out of context, or the context is benign, but even a fraction of it can separate life from oblivion.

I can walk seven hundred metres and enjoy every moment, though if time is limited and the walk is part of a necessary journey enjoyment is less likely. It can be the setting out, the existential joy of motion, weather or setting, or simply what is at the end of the journey that matters. Sometimes seven hundred metres is not enough and a desire to go further and then further still can only be satisfied by getting away.

Watching moving pictures of the Chilean miners being brought to the surface is deeply emotional. To them during their incarceration every metre must have moved through many different psychological states. The depth of the rock summed across the earth's surface its mass bearing down, the technical challenge it represented, the barrier to love and loved ones, for the deceivers a protection against the inevitable consequences of discovery bought about by the all the remote attention they and their lives have received. Being trapped has many degrees of separation not just the physical. Knowing freedom can be derived from only one.

It is affirming to see the impact of the successful rescue on the faces of the rescued, the rescuers and most of all the families. If ever it can be doubted that we are born to love then these pictures are the antidote. So many people have been lost in similar circumstances over the course of human existence that it would be easier for us as a race to dismiss another group of trapped miners as a common place and not worth the allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps some did this time and thought it too difficult or maybe they just didn't care enough. But some made the effort, skillfully meticulous and diligent they have achieved a tremendous victory for humanity.

The rescue is ongoing. I am nervous that it may falter at some point. I think of others in similar situations who didn't make it, the Russian sailors on the Kursk, the many in the World Trade Centre, let us hope that this mission is successfully completed and let us give thanks to humanity for having the capacity to love so effectively.

Something New

I have time and yet my time elapses leaving me frustrated and disillusioned. Each day I age and I am aware of an accelerating sense of purposelessness, my sight is increasingly ineffectual in dim light and likewise my desire for life diminishes as the light of youth fades.

My daughter is a celebrity and I am not. She has a circle of self-defined fabulous friends and I have long walks alone with my dog. We rarely talk and when we do it is over the phone, she will set down the handset and use hands-free; we will converse about nothing, our words for all in her proximity to hear. The dog enjoys being out and about, when we are out she can run and run but when we return she will lay forlorn and wait for my wife to return. I am sure she lives for her predisposition to flush out game and my wife’s affections. All else is disappointment.

I live on the side of a hill and today the hill fog matches the colour of the walls of my bedroom. It is silent except for the ringing in my ears and a stiff wind that is shaking the trees, but only a fraction of the changing air pressure or the movement of the branches gets through my windows. I have some paid work to do but it is dull and I cannot help but put it off. There is wood to chop, a house to clean, some food to prepare. I have a friend to ring another to see. Tonight I plan to go to see people in a village pub near where I used to live, but I may not. I used to go frequently, local and accessible, although I was an outsider, and a socially inarticulate one at that, I got by. Sometimes I felt one of them, generally middle aged like myself or a little older.

At 5pm my daughter’s latest venture is on the second channel. It’s an hour or two away yet but I have yet to work out what I shall find as an excuse for not watching. Still, hosting a 5pm teen show should hopefully mean that she will be mostly covered up. Made me laugh yesterday to see a female journalist from the Daily Mail bemoaning a bar where the on-duty all-girl waiting staff was dressed not so much differently from off-duty porn stars. At 11pm my daughter will be making gags about porn and flirting outrageously with her guests. My daughter is on the Daily Mail’s hit list of inappropriate young women. Little do they know that their ageing proprietor has been sleeping with my daughter’s ‘second best friend’ on and off for a while now; maybe the journalist was disappointed with her own ability to reach the parts of the organisation that others could fellate so easily.

I could pose a few questions for the journalist. What is the good of drinking poison in the hope that revenge will be served upon those who’ve trespassed against us? Do I give something of value to myself when I am bitter about my failures? Why do I drink my own vitriolic poison and hope for the best? I don’t think she’ll get it though. Apparently during a photo opportunity outside the bar one of a passing group of lads shouted she should get her tits out and then had voluntarily retracted after noticing she didn’t have any. Her point was that nothing had moved on and that feminism had seemingly lost ground again to male chauvinism. And where’s the economic imperative in that love?