Category Archives: Autobiographical

Mostly autobiographical but with occasional comment on life today

How’s the back?

Boy fishing Seychelles

A boy fishes at the scene of our suffering

ONE GLORIOUS morning on the spectacular island of Mahe the photographer, John Garrett, was dressing. Ridiculously early, I strolled along the silver sand before starting work and had the idea of paddling a little. Nothing brave, mind you, like letting the water come above my ankles. I took off my socks and let a small bubbling wavelet sweep over my toes, and back again. I went a little further out. I was up to my ankles, now, and confident. I walked, and swished the water a little. It was pleasantly warm – seductive, really. I pondered on the subject of mermaids.

This spell was broken when I trod on an upturned, broken beer bottle. The water swilling round my foot was red. Without howling (mermaids love that sort of thing) I walked, rigidly casual, up the beach to my hut. John was pulling on his socks. He spotted me and asked if I was OK – I seemed to be limping. I reassured him that I had only trodden on a broken bottle and would just put a handkerchief round it. But he became assertive and I ended up in hospital with needles being thrust into me and smiling tanned faces explaining that tetanus was a nasty thing to have.

The following morning I got up at the normal time and dressed and wondered why John hadn’t appeared. He was usually up before me, cleaning his lenses and fiddling with light metres and things. I stopped outside his hut and called. A groan came from within. I investigated. He was flat on his back.

‘Paul, I’ve done my back in,’ he growled. ‘Sprain. Nothing much. Be up in a minute. How’s the foot?’

After a few days of hobbling along, he wincing at back pains and I with foot pains, we both improved. Both foot and back grew more reasonable and work continued. But we developed a morning greeting. ‘How’s the foot?’ he would say. ‘How’s the back?’ I would reply. We made a happy couple.

I was moved to write this because, three days ago, I sprained my back. Standing and lying down are the only really comfortable positions. Sitting is OK for half an hour, but no longer. And getting up from the chair is sheer hell, with hot darts being thrown exactly at the spot where it hurts most. The days seem much longer.

And now I need the loo and I have to get out of this chair.

Pictures, not snaps: 2

Turn your snaps into pictures: 2

Sunset Middlesex

Be selective

O ne of the most common faults in snapshotting is – what? Clutter. In front of me there was a lot more than I included in the picture. More silhouetted trees, a house, a winding path across the foreground, two figures, walking.

Suppose I had included them all. The beauty of the tree would have been lost. Don’t clutter your snap with unnecessary things. Isolate the thing that caught your attention in the first place.

Turn the snap into a picture.

Lombardy Poplars

I t was 1948. I had just sailed home from RAF service in India and needed to do something quite barmy. I suggested to my friend John a cycle trip to Paris. He asked if I was feeling OK. I said I was and what about it? We went. Off the Calais Ferry and on to towards Paris, we came to a magnificent straight, narrow road, lined with tall and magnificent Lombardy Poplars (a far more lush and lavish sight than in my drawing). Somewhere around the Bethune region my barminess struck and I sang out to John, ahead of me, ‘Lombardy Poplars in Picardy Lane!’ He swung round in his saddle and repeated the words. This duet lasted for the next half mile.

In the comforts of Paris we mellowed and became ordinary layabouts again: with our bikes in the Guard’s van, we boarded the Calais train.

Screen shot 2013-03-07 at 16.57.30

Cycling Holiday

Lombardy Poplars in Picardy lane!
Laughing, we said it again and again;
squeaking of pedals and sweating of brows,
passing of shadows and staring of cows.
singing in bright yellow waterproof rain,
Lombardy Poplars in Picardy lane!

Boys with old bikes and a road map of France,
boys on the loose making most of the chance;
coffee in kitchens from black metal pots,
guy ropes entangled in mystical knots,
back on the road with that silly refrain,
Lombardy Poplars in Picardy lane!

He with the tent and the pannier bags,
I with the haversack smothered in flags;
suburbs of Paris and smells of good food,
soft feather beds and a changing of mood,
forgetting to sing on the cruise down the Seine,
Lombardy Poplars in Picardy lane!

Strolling the boulevards, seeing the sights,
comforts unleashing two young sybarites;
flambéed the crepes, lightly garnished the snail,
quietly agreeing to go home by rail,
sleeping too soundly to see from the train
Lombardy Poplars in Picardy lane.

Meat Pies

There has been much about meat pies in the Letters page of our newspaper recently, not so much about their possible equine content as about the revolting sight, sound and smell of someone sitting next to you on the train or bus and eating one. I can sympathise. Until it closed a few years ago we had a factory along the road, and shift workers made the most of the nearby shop where hot meat pies were served. The ideal breakfast, it seemed, was hot meat pies, and eaten en route to their workplace.

I truly love my fellow man,
    I love the blighter dearly;
I only wish his finer tastes
    Resembled mine more nearly.

Each morning as the sun comes up
    I walk to get my paper
And find myself enveloped by
    The most disgusting vapour.

My fellow man in rolling hoards
    Bears down on me, consuming
Repulsive, boiling-hot meat pies,
    The village air perfuming.

And in the shop are more meat pies,
    Mankind is queuing, waiting;
Meat pies are cooking in their crusts,
    Mankind is salivating.

I try to concentrate on toast
    And marmalade and butter;
But walking home again I see
    Meat-pie bags in the gutter.

I truly love my fellow man,
    I love the blighter dearly;
But does he have to eat meat pies
    Outdoors, and quite so early?

Fortissimo

fortissimo
On holiday once, having done a bit of shopping I signalled the approaching bus. As the door opened an enormous burst of noise hit me. It was practically full of under-twenties, all of them shouting at each other. Do you find that adolescent male and females shout? Even when they’re sitting side by side? Perhaps it has something to do with the headphones.

Is the human voice undergoing a change? Boys seem to have developed an indecipherable guttural, glottal-stopped, gabbling bark with hardly any d or t sounds and girls speak with clenched jaws and their tongue clamped to the roof of their mouth so that it’s impossible for them to give vowels their full, rounded shape. Their only usable vowel is ‘eeee’. And, their jaw and their tongue being the way they are, the only way out for sound is the nose. One comical result is that they are unable to pronounce the ‘oo’ sound, so that when they come to sing ‘Happy birthday!’ it has to end with ‘tee yee’.

We were a few hundred yards from my stop, and I pressed the stop button. Whether or not the height of the volume inside the bus had drowned out the sound of the bell I shall never know, but we did not slow down. I rang the bell again but to no avail. With a hundred yards to go I leaned into the driver’s compartment.

‘Stop, please,’ I said. It was a bad mistake.

I have never seen anyone jump so high. He stood on the brakes, I shot forward on to the windscreen. We stopped, I apologised to all, and got out. With the bus disappearing round the bend it was very quiet.