Friday, 9 March 2012
Articles About Articles
Next week, the County Council is sending a photographer.
To photograph the staff that take care of me, under this new scheme of SDS.
Self Directed Support. The subject of my latest article in Care Talk, about which the County Council will be writing an article for their County magazine, to go through every household letterbox.
It’s just the kind of thing that once would have been my aspiration, to write articles about which articles are written.
It is ironic that it now is happening, only the subject of this interest is how I can survive and keep my independence in spite of illness.
A reminder, if one were needed, that we will care for those that can’t, in spite of economic weakness, I am protected from something that in another country I might not survive.
This is the surreal part of my life, that my voice might be heard now when it is all that I have left to me.
I am not bitter about this, only starkly aware of it. That I have found my voice, a place to stand, something to be noticed for, that I can still speak in spite of everything.
I would rather have been noticed for my poetry, but it is apocryphal that words will not feed the hungry. And poets are perhaps the hungriest of writers. None can make a living from their work, certainly not in this country.
Cafe Society Relinquished
My senses fade with age
the way of all things. I do not read
the faces in a room
as once I did, and then
the glances of a youth
were seeking something.
Spectacles restore the sight
but nothing will improve the light -
and eyes that search with subtlety
see twice the personality.
Not Life As Expected
Since I have started to write this blog I have begun to see my life differently. As if before I saw it through a glass darkly.
And now that I write so many articles in magazines like Care Talk about aspects of my life and the way it is led, I am reminded of films in which everything that seems real is revealed to be nothing more than an appearance of reality.
It isn’t that my life is not reall. Perhaps surreal at times, more real than it might have been had I not been given the perspective that I have because of my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.
And the viewpoint from which I perceive the world, and perhaps have the opportunity to think more than I might have had, if I had continued to work full-time, and did not have the leisure enforced upon me by my condition.
The next article to appear in Care Talk is about me, written by one of the staff writers, on the subject of assistive technology. I had the opportunity to write the article, but I thought it would be much better written from someone outside of myself, and less likely for me to simply see it as an opportunity to grandstand my own use of assistive technology.
Particularly the way in which I can use voice activated software, with which I am writing this blog for example. And with which I have been able to create my two collections of poetry, and my short stories.
I have always written, and I used to pride myself on my capacity to type quickly and efficiently. But there is no doubt that with voice-activated software I can type so much quicker and easier using my voice these days than my fingers.
And now that I write so many articles in magazines like Care Talk about aspects of my life and the way it is led, I am reminded of films in which everything that seems real is revealed to be nothing more than an appearance of reality.
It isn’t that my life is not reall. Perhaps surreal at times, more real than it might have been had I not been given the perspective that I have because of my diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.
And the viewpoint from which I perceive the world, and perhaps have the opportunity to think more than I might have had, if I had continued to work full-time, and did not have the leisure enforced upon me by my condition.
The next article to appear in Care Talk is about me, written by one of the staff writers, on the subject of assistive technology. I had the opportunity to write the article, but I thought it would be much better written from someone outside of myself, and less likely for me to simply see it as an opportunity to grandstand my own use of assistive technology.
Particularly the way in which I can use voice activated software, with which I am writing this blog for example. And with which I have been able to create my two collections of poetry, and my short stories.
I have always written, and I used to pride myself on my capacity to type quickly and efficiently. But there is no doubt that with voice-activated software I can type so much quicker and easier using my voice these days than my fingers.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Dangerous Waters
The English channel is one of the busiest waterways in the world. I am not a sailor in any sense, but I have once sailed across this sea, in a six-berth sailing yacht captained by someone that knew what they were doing.
We had been invited to spend a week with a good friend and his two children, aged 9 and 11, sailing from near Ipswich in East Anglia to Calais in France, a journey that would build upon the previous Summers' sailing experience gained in the Norfolk Broads.
Our friend Martin is a writer, and after many years of living on very little but always writing, his adaptation of a children's book for television had been sold to Canada, and his share of the royalties from the BBC were substantial enough for him to pursue something remarkable.
He was in effect following in the footsteps of Arthur Ransome, of swallows and Amazons fame, and after cutting his children's teeth in a sailing holiday on the Broads, over the space of two Summer holidays he gave them the adventure of their lives, by first sailing to Calais, a journey that we accompanied him on, and the following year sailing to the islands off the Dutch coast, just as in one of the later books by Ransome.
We were not able to go with them on the Dutch voyage, because I had then just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
My balance had been impaired, but we had already experienced the thrill of sailing across the Channel, three days for the return journey, two nights sleeping on the boat. Quite an experience.
The English Channel is a dangerous seaway for the unwary, but we had the services of a chartered captain, Captain John, and he was familiar with all of the hazards involved in crossing this busy stretch of water.
We would look in astonishment at the large container ship steaming past, rising six or seven storeys above our tiny yacht, but Captain John pointed to the horizon, and indicated a far off shape on the horizon, and explained that this was the danger.
The rules of the sea are clearly that power should give way to sail, but in reality a huge container ship travelling at 20 knots would in all likelihood never see a tiny sailing yacht before it had run it down.
It would be our task to sail swiftly enough between the brief intervals separating these Goliaths of the sea, travelling at our slow five or 6 knots.
Then we slept overnight at the berth where we joined the yacht, in order to catch the morning tide at about 4 AM. Berthed that night was an enormous three masted yacht, which Captain John said there was no official indication as to whom it belonged, but he hinted that it belonged to Richard Branson, from his conversations with the men he knew around his yachts berth. We never knew the truth.
We set off for the first leg of our journey, and I of course was the only one to experience seasickness. I would never make an adventurer.
We stayed overnight in Ramsgate Harbour, ready for the dash across the Channel. Whilst we slept in the harbour itself, the maroons were launched to signal the lifeboat being called, and the next day we discovered the reason for the dash of all those volunteers to the launching of the Ramsgate Lifeboat. On the news, it had been a substantial container ship, in some kind of distress requiring a lifeboat crew to rescue them. It reached the national news, which Captain John relayed to us between his catching of the weather forecast.
Never had the weather forecast taken on such a significance, but we were set fair for France, and the next day took the tide and commenced an extraordinary experience.
The sea was relatively calm, but there was sufficient wind to give us the speed we needed to dodge between the traffic on the Channel. I had never realised it would be like crossing a motorway on foot.
At one stage, we met a comparatively large fishing boat, sailing under power and retrieving its nets, and at one stage seeming to ignore us as it approached relatively quickly to retrieve some bouys close to the yacht.
For a moment, it seemed as if it would steam straight into us, but Captain John had obviously seen such things many times before, and remained calm as they retrieved what was theirs, and steamed away just as quickly.
The harbour at Calais is closed overnight, and so we had to wait whilst the boom opened. Then we could enter the protected calm of the harbour itself, where we could dock and use showers and facilities for boats just like ours.
We were able to walk into town, and practise our schoolroom French in one of the local restaurants. And feeling most superior that we had in fact just parked our yacht in the marina.
The next morning, we purchased a case of wine from a local French vintner, as if to prove that we had indeed made the journey.
And then we were once again out of the harbour, careful to avoid the Channel Ferries, and once again dodging the container ships on this busy shipping channel.
When we returned to the yachts' home berth, we felt had been blooded by the sea, windswept and fully adventured.
I have been to France many times, but never with such memories. This morning, I have just watched an extraordinary programme about the Queens of England, which has brought these memories back to the surface. It was that when William, King William the son of William The Conqueror, had sailed from Honfleur with his son and heir Henry following in another ship. Henry and the nobles abroad his ship were so filled with drink, but they didn't notice rocks approaching at the mouth of this harbour, at the time one of the most important French harbours.
The boat sank, and with it Williams's heir, creating something of a crisis for the English monarch, grandson of the Conqueror William.
Mathilde his daughter never became Queen of England, although at one stage she was announced in Westminster Hall to be the acknowledged heir to the King.
By the time the King had died, she had been already widowed herself from the Holy Roman Emperor, to whom she had been wedded, but lived to the grand age at the time of 80 years, not bad for the 12th century, to see her son become King of England as Henry I.
So, a timely reminder perhaps that the channel has always been a dangerous place for shipping, and not just in mediaeval times.
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Would Knowing Really Help?
I'm a great fan of film, and I love to find links between films, and between the themes of films and the general cultural goings-on in the world.
Recently, I was introduced to the film, Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't been a great fan of his, but recently I can't help but admit that he has appeared in some fantastic films.
In a City Of Angels, a remake of the Wim Wender's modern classic Wings Of Desire, he plays an Angel watching over the lives of contemporary Los Angeles residents, and he falls in love with Meg Ryan, a heart surgeon. Sufficiently so that the Angel he is decides to become a mortal, so that he can fully experience his love for the woman he is smitten with.
As a remake, it is fairly close to the original, in that all of the angels still hang around in the central reference library during the day. And they listen constantly to the worries and concerns of the human residents of the city.
It is definitely a Hollywood remake of a European film, but it is a good copy. I suppose it is one of the films that has begun to change my overall perspective on Nicolas Cage.
I was recently introduced to the film Knowing, in which Nicolas Cage is the bereaved father, the son of a Preacher that has no faith. His son has a strong sense of faith, and although not deaf, he has poor hearing because he hears the constant chatter of voices in his head.
His father is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and has little time for faith, especially after having lost his wife in a tragic hotel fire when she was away on business.
The plot revolves around the burial of a time capsule, and the coincidence of his own son receiving a 50 year old series of apparently random numbers, that very quickly the scientific minded Professor at MIT discovers to relate to every major disaster on the American continent during the past 50 years. Including the fire that killed his wife.
There are additional numbers that at first seem to have no meaning, but when he is present at an aeroplane crash in which 58 people die, right before his eyes, he realises that the unexplained numbers relate precisely to the GPS location of each incident of major death tolls.
Right from the outset, it is clear that the film is an exploration of the difference between randomness, and determinism. Whether or not there is some purpose to the world, and in the course of the film the father's sense of meaninglessness is thoroughly questioned, until finally he is reconciled with his Minister father.
It becomes an unravelling of a strange truth in the predictive nature of the little girl that placed the numbers in the Time capsule, and it suddenly becomes clear that she has foreseen the end of everything, to be caused by a sudden solar flare.
The destruction of the ozone layer by this solar storm will mean the end of the human race, if it were not for the strange rescue of a few young faithful, including as it turns out his own son.
Leaving aside whatever religious convictions anyone might have, it is a compelling story. A kind of ecological thriller, but one that I did not previously think much about in terms of truth and reality.
And then, today I have just seen a Horizon documentary about solar storms, and the genuine threat that they pose to the way of life that we lead in its dependence upon technology. Technology that is exceptionally vulnerable to the destructive effects of solar storms.
As we have become so dependent upon electricity and technology, so we have become vulnerable to the sudden removal of this by the unpredictable nature of solar storms.
Suddenly, a Hollywood end of the world film seems less of a fiction, and more of a warning.
Whether or not there might be a happy ending on another world through the intervention of a race of Angels, is almost beside the point.
The world in which we live is finely balanced on a Fulcrum, so little would have to change for life to have become impossible on this planet, and one wonders if perhaps we should not live as if the world is an unchanging, forever fact. That we are not beyond the possibility of being snuffed out.
Recently, I was introduced to the film, Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't been a great fan of his, but recently I can't help but admit that he has appeared in some fantastic films.
In a City Of Angels, a remake of the Wim Wender's modern classic Wings Of Desire, he plays an Angel watching over the lives of contemporary Los Angeles residents, and he falls in love with Meg Ryan, a heart surgeon. Sufficiently so that the Angel he is decides to become a mortal, so that he can fully experience his love for the woman he is smitten with.
As a remake, it is fairly close to the original, in that all of the angels still hang around in the central reference library during the day. And they listen constantly to the worries and concerns of the human residents of the city.
It is definitely a Hollywood remake of a European film, but it is a good copy. I suppose it is one of the films that has begun to change my overall perspective on Nicolas Cage.
I was recently introduced to the film Knowing, in which Nicolas Cage is the bereaved father, the son of a Preacher that has no faith. His son has a strong sense of faith, and although not deaf, he has poor hearing because he hears the constant chatter of voices in his head.
His father is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and has little time for faith, especially after having lost his wife in a tragic hotel fire when she was away on business.
The plot revolves around the burial of a time capsule, and the coincidence of his own son receiving a 50 year old series of apparently random numbers, that very quickly the scientific minded Professor at MIT discovers to relate to every major disaster on the American continent during the past 50 years. Including the fire that killed his wife.
There are additional numbers that at first seem to have no meaning, but when he is present at an aeroplane crash in which 58 people die, right before his eyes, he realises that the unexplained numbers relate precisely to the GPS location of each incident of major death tolls.
Right from the outset, it is clear that the film is an exploration of the difference between randomness, and determinism. Whether or not there is some purpose to the world, and in the course of the film the father's sense of meaninglessness is thoroughly questioned, until finally he is reconciled with his Minister father.
It becomes an unravelling of a strange truth in the predictive nature of the little girl that placed the numbers in the Time capsule, and it suddenly becomes clear that she has foreseen the end of everything, to be caused by a sudden solar flare.
The destruction of the ozone layer by this solar storm will mean the end of the human race, if it were not for the strange rescue of a few young faithful, including as it turns out his own son.
Leaving aside whatever religious convictions anyone might have, it is a compelling story. A kind of ecological thriller, but one that I did not previously think much about in terms of truth and reality.
And then, today I have just seen a Horizon documentary about solar storms, and the genuine threat that they pose to the way of life that we lead in its dependence upon technology. Technology that is exceptionally vulnerable to the destructive effects of solar storms.
As we have become so dependent upon electricity and technology, so we have become vulnerable to the sudden removal of this by the unpredictable nature of solar storms.
Suddenly, a Hollywood end of the world film seems less of a fiction, and more of a warning.
Whether or not there might be a happy ending on another world through the intervention of a race of Angels, is almost beside the point.
The world in which we live is finely balanced on a Fulcrum, so little would have to change for life to have become impossible on this planet, and one wonders if perhaps we should not live as if the world is an unchanging, forever fact. That we are not beyond the possibility of being snuffed out.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Why Does Food Taste So Good In Films?
There is something visceral and powerful about the representation of food in films.
I have just watched Julie And Julia, starring the impressive Meryl Streep in yet another amazing role, this time as the woman that changed the way in which Americans feel about food.
It is strangely resonant for me, because a principal structural feature of the film is the way in which Julie in the present day (or close to it) sets herself the challenge of working her way through the entire contents of the cookbook written by Julia in the 1950s, and which introduces for the first time an American audience to the gastronomic joy of French cooking in English.
She sets out to do this within a calendar year, which is no mean feat since there are about 450 recipes to cook and eat.
As an aspiring writer herself, she decides to write a blog about her experience of working through this important book. At the same time as she is a government clerk.
There are few films which are solely about food, but many films in which food or eating play an important part. Sometimes surreal, but always interesting.
Perhaps one of the strangest is in one of my favourite modern films, The Lake House. Separated by two years, the protagonists arrange to meet in a restaurant that is so popular that you must book at least one year ahead.
The character in the present makes the booking, and says that she will meet the other character, two years behind her, at the restaurant on the following night. She turns up, and indeed the booking had been made, but the man she is in love with across time fails to show.
She enjoys the meal, and learns that something has prevented her time distorted lover from attending.
In Pretty Woman, Edward the millionaire businessman takes his street-walking employee as his date for an important business meeting, and Julia Roberts has to learn rather quickly how to identify the different types of cutlery she might be presented with. Slippery little suckers, snails, when eaten for the first time.
Babette's Feast is perhaps one of the few other films in which food plays a crucial central role. The plot is simple, but extraordinary. One of the finest French female chefs escapes revolutionary France by living as the servant to a couple of poor, highly religious sisters on a remote island just off the Danish coast.
The austere life of the sisters is suddenly transformed by the culinary capacities of their new cook, who has been trained in some of the most important kitchens in France.
When she suddenly wins a small fortune in some obscure late 18th century lottery, she repays the kindness that has been shown to her by her austere mistresses, by cooking the most tremendous feast.
It so happens that on this remote island at that time is a French officer that has dined in some of those extraordinary places in which the cook has learned her trade.
It is a dinner to remember, one that has never been seen the like of it in this remote and religiously austere place.
The other unusual feast that comes to mind is in a film that I saw when I was still a student in London, perhaps 30 years ago.
I recently tried to obtain a copy of the film, but it is no longer available, and even a second-hand copy from Amazon would cost around $60. A new copy would cost $140, so rare are copies of the DVD, which is no longer in stock by any retailers in this country or America.
I would like to obtain a copy of the film, the details of which I can only dimly remember.
Clearly it is a film connoisseurs product, if one can be obtained at all.
It is in Swedish and subtitled, and is entitled Montenegro.
It was the first time I ever heard Marianne Faithful sing The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, which features in the film. As it also features later of course in Thelma And Louise.
The director of the film is apparently rather well-known for having created a film that makes up the rules of film-making as the film progresses. Needless to say, it is a rarity worth watching, especially for the role that food plays in it. Which I will not reveal here. Just in case anyone should be lucky enough to see the film.
Another film starring Meryl Streep and some lobsters is The Hours, and sadly the buffet prepared in this part of the film is never eaten. Once again, a film well worth watching.
I'm sure we will all have our memories of moments in film when food plays a significant part. It is strange that food in films should always taste so good.
I have just watched Julie And Julia, starring the impressive Meryl Streep in yet another amazing role, this time as the woman that changed the way in which Americans feel about food.
It is strangely resonant for me, because a principal structural feature of the film is the way in which Julie in the present day (or close to it) sets herself the challenge of working her way through the entire contents of the cookbook written by Julia in the 1950s, and which introduces for the first time an American audience to the gastronomic joy of French cooking in English.
She sets out to do this within a calendar year, which is no mean feat since there are about 450 recipes to cook and eat.
As an aspiring writer herself, she decides to write a blog about her experience of working through this important book. At the same time as she is a government clerk.
There are few films which are solely about food, but many films in which food or eating play an important part. Sometimes surreal, but always interesting.
Perhaps one of the strangest is in one of my favourite modern films, The Lake House. Separated by two years, the protagonists arrange to meet in a restaurant that is so popular that you must book at least one year ahead.
The character in the present makes the booking, and says that she will meet the other character, two years behind her, at the restaurant on the following night. She turns up, and indeed the booking had been made, but the man she is in love with across time fails to show.
She enjoys the meal, and learns that something has prevented her time distorted lover from attending.
In Pretty Woman, Edward the millionaire businessman takes his street-walking employee as his date for an important business meeting, and Julia Roberts has to learn rather quickly how to identify the different types of cutlery she might be presented with. Slippery little suckers, snails, when eaten for the first time.
Babette's Feast is perhaps one of the few other films in which food plays a crucial central role. The plot is simple, but extraordinary. One of the finest French female chefs escapes revolutionary France by living as the servant to a couple of poor, highly religious sisters on a remote island just off the Danish coast.
The austere life of the sisters is suddenly transformed by the culinary capacities of their new cook, who has been trained in some of the most important kitchens in France.
When she suddenly wins a small fortune in some obscure late 18th century lottery, she repays the kindness that has been shown to her by her austere mistresses, by cooking the most tremendous feast.
It so happens that on this remote island at that time is a French officer that has dined in some of those extraordinary places in which the cook has learned her trade.
It is a dinner to remember, one that has never been seen the like of it in this remote and religiously austere place.
The other unusual feast that comes to mind is in a film that I saw when I was still a student in London, perhaps 30 years ago.
I recently tried to obtain a copy of the film, but it is no longer available, and even a second-hand copy from Amazon would cost around $60. A new copy would cost $140, so rare are copies of the DVD, which is no longer in stock by any retailers in this country or America.
I would like to obtain a copy of the film, the details of which I can only dimly remember.
Clearly it is a film connoisseurs product, if one can be obtained at all.
It is in Swedish and subtitled, and is entitled Montenegro.
It was the first time I ever heard Marianne Faithful sing The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, which features in the film. As it also features later of course in Thelma And Louise.
The director of the film is apparently rather well-known for having created a film that makes up the rules of film-making as the film progresses. Needless to say, it is a rarity worth watching, especially for the role that food plays in it. Which I will not reveal here. Just in case anyone should be lucky enough to see the film.
Another film starring Meryl Streep and some lobsters is The Hours, and sadly the buffet prepared in this part of the film is never eaten. Once again, a film well worth watching.
I'm sure we will all have our memories of moments in film when food plays a significant part. It is strange that food in films should always taste so good.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Diaghilev and Lady Ripon
I had a sudden thought this morning, early before I had even properly awakened.
I had a sudden sense of proximity to czarist Russia. A strange thought to have, perhaps, but then of course we all are the result of history, and so perhaps it is no surprise that sometimes we feel as if we are much closer to distant historic events or personages.
My sudden realisation this morning was that over the last couple of days, I don't quite remember where, I had heard it mentioned that Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe had been brought to London thanks to the patronage of someone that I had recently pause to come to know about. I hadn't quite realised that she was such an important patron of the arts, as I had come to know whom she was in a rather different context.
I remember reading about Diaghilev many years ago, and being fascinated at the way in which his company of dancers had been so radical in their approach to dance and choreography.
Modern ballet and dance still owes a great deal to the work of this company, which visited England very early in the 20th century. The Ballet Russes came to London in 1911, where I believe the patron behind that visit was Lady Ripon. This is supported by the existence in the library of Harvard University in the United States of scrapbooks created by Lady Ripon of dancers from the ballet.
Sadly, Lady Ripon died in 1917, many years before the death of Diaghilev in 1929. This was when the ballet was disbanded, although many of its artists, including perhaps the most famous male dancer of that century. Vasily Nijinsky, toured in America only briefly before Nijinsky stopped dancing in 1919, when he entered a sanatorium in Switzerland suffering from schizophrenia. Nijinsky died in 1950, and although initially buried in London, after three years he was reburied in Paris.
My connection with Diaghilev and his ballet is very slight, but it seems that Lady Ripon as a great patron of the arts was responsible for bringing that company to London in 1911. Lady Ripon is the person to whom my recent special edition of my first collection of poems is respectfully dedicated, since she had also been significantly involved with the Establishment in 1915 of the George V Hospital in London, which was the first point of rehabilitation and healing for thousands of wounded soldiers from the Great War.
A bust of Lady Ripon stands in one of the hallways of the present hospital, which relocated to Worthing where I live in 1933.
Although she died sadly in 1917, she is still respectfully remembered for her critical involvement in the foundation of this Hospital, and of the development of the policies by which it operated then, and no doubt still operates today.
My involvement is simply that my first collection of poems, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times - is to be sold in a special edition by the Hospital as a fundraising means.
This is a great honour indeed for me, as I am unable to earn any royalties from sales, and in any case it is likely that the sales of my poetry will be that much greater by its association with such a worthy cause.
The current hospital is an extraordinary model of quality care, and it is the home to servicemen aged between 22 and 100. As I live just across the road from the Hospital, I have attended the past two Summers open days, on doing it I have met with history by meeting with Dame Vera Lynn, who is a great supporter of the hospital.
It is this meeting which I think gave me the confidence to even consider offering my volume of poetry as a potential fundraising tool, because I included an essay about my meeting with Dame Vera Lynn in the hardback edition of my poems, a copy of which has been included within the County Council's prestigious Local History Collection thanks to the importance of the Hospital and of Dame Vera Lynn to the history of the County.
By being made part of that Local History Collection my poems are now rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.
Undoubtedly, it is reflected glory in which I am basking. But if sales of my poetry do as intended for the Hospital, and all proceeds from sales will be donated to the Hospital, it won't do my reputation any harm at all.
And so, since the dancers of Diaghilev's ballet came from the Russian czar's own patronage of ballet in Russia, it seems as if I have discovered that I am strangely intertwined in the threads of history.
Of course, anyone that subscribes to the idea that we are all inevitably connected in the great Chain Of Being will not find this at all surprising.
It is just rather wonderful to realise that without consciously realising it when I made the dedication in my special edition to be used by the hospital, I had absolutely no knowledge of the extent of Lady Ripon's engagement with the arts.
This feels particularly satisfactory to me, since when I was able to work, I worked within the professional arts, never as an artist, but rubbing shoulders with some of the finest musicians and composers of this and the last century.
I will include in this entry for my blog the link to where my special edition can be viewed online at no cost, and indeed from where it can be purchased, and thus support the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers in Worthing. A very worthy cause indeed.
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
I had a sudden sense of proximity to czarist Russia. A strange thought to have, perhaps, but then of course we all are the result of history, and so perhaps it is no surprise that sometimes we feel as if we are much closer to distant historic events or personages.
My sudden realisation this morning was that over the last couple of days, I don't quite remember where, I had heard it mentioned that Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe had been brought to London thanks to the patronage of someone that I had recently pause to come to know about. I hadn't quite realised that she was such an important patron of the arts, as I had come to know whom she was in a rather different context.
I remember reading about Diaghilev many years ago, and being fascinated at the way in which his company of dancers had been so radical in their approach to dance and choreography.
Modern ballet and dance still owes a great deal to the work of this company, which visited England very early in the 20th century. The Ballet Russes came to London in 1911, where I believe the patron behind that visit was Lady Ripon. This is supported by the existence in the library of Harvard University in the United States of scrapbooks created by Lady Ripon of dancers from the ballet.
Sadly, Lady Ripon died in 1917, many years before the death of Diaghilev in 1929. This was when the ballet was disbanded, although many of its artists, including perhaps the most famous male dancer of that century. Vasily Nijinsky, toured in America only briefly before Nijinsky stopped dancing in 1919, when he entered a sanatorium in Switzerland suffering from schizophrenia. Nijinsky died in 1950, and although initially buried in London, after three years he was reburied in Paris.
My connection with Diaghilev and his ballet is very slight, but it seems that Lady Ripon as a great patron of the arts was responsible for bringing that company to London in 1911. Lady Ripon is the person to whom my recent special edition of my first collection of poems is respectfully dedicated, since she had also been significantly involved with the Establishment in 1915 of the George V Hospital in London, which was the first point of rehabilitation and healing for thousands of wounded soldiers from the Great War.
A bust of Lady Ripon stands in one of the hallways of the present hospital, which relocated to Worthing where I live in 1933.
Although she died sadly in 1917, she is still respectfully remembered for her critical involvement in the foundation of this Hospital, and of the development of the policies by which it operated then, and no doubt still operates today.
My involvement is simply that my first collection of poems, 50 x 50 - Useful Poetry For Troubled Times - is to be sold in a special edition by the Hospital as a fundraising means.
This is a great honour indeed for me, as I am unable to earn any royalties from sales, and in any case it is likely that the sales of my poetry will be that much greater by its association with such a worthy cause.
The current hospital is an extraordinary model of quality care, and it is the home to servicemen aged between 22 and 100. As I live just across the road from the Hospital, I have attended the past two Summers open days, on doing it I have met with history by meeting with Dame Vera Lynn, who is a great supporter of the hospital.
It is this meeting which I think gave me the confidence to even consider offering my volume of poetry as a potential fundraising tool, because I included an essay about my meeting with Dame Vera Lynn in the hardback edition of my poems, a copy of which has been included within the County Council's prestigious Local History Collection thanks to the importance of the Hospital and of Dame Vera Lynn to the history of the County.
By being made part of that Local History Collection my poems are now rubbing shoulders with works by Shelley, Kipling, and Balzac.
Undoubtedly, it is reflected glory in which I am basking. But if sales of my poetry do as intended for the Hospital, and all proceeds from sales will be donated to the Hospital, it won't do my reputation any harm at all.
And so, since the dancers of Diaghilev's ballet came from the Russian czar's own patronage of ballet in Russia, it seems as if I have discovered that I am strangely intertwined in the threads of history.
Of course, anyone that subscribes to the idea that we are all inevitably connected in the great Chain Of Being will not find this at all surprising.
It is just rather wonderful to realise that without consciously realising it when I made the dedication in my special edition to be used by the hospital, I had absolutely no knowledge of the extent of Lady Ripon's engagement with the arts.
This feels particularly satisfactory to me, since when I was able to work, I worked within the professional arts, never as an artist, but rubbing shoulders with some of the finest musicians and composers of this and the last century.
I will include in this entry for my blog the link to where my special edition can be viewed online at no cost, and indeed from where it can be purchased, and thus support the Queen Alexandra Hospital Home for Soldiers in Worthing. A very worthy cause indeed.
http://www.completelynovel.com/books/50-x-50-useful-poetry-for-troubled-times-extended-edition--2/read-online
Friday, 2 March 2012
My Latest Article
I've just been checking out my latest contribution to the magazine Care Talk, which can be viewed free of charge online. Page 19 issue 10.
I'm impressed with the layout, as ever, and coincidentally I've just been interviewed today by one of the magazine's staff writers, for an article in a future issue about assistive technology.
Anyone that knows me will know that I am never short of something to say, and it is through the medium of voice assisted software that I am able to create not only this blog, but also the articles that I have written for Care Talk magazine.
Access to technology is such an important issue for everybody these days, and for someone like myself, severely disabled, it is essential to enable access to a world that has become much more difficult to access in ways that most people take for granted.
I think it was in a film somewhere that I remember first hearing about the notion of technology achieving a point where connectivity has reached a critical level, and I suspect what was once a science-fiction concept in a film, has become or is becoming a reality.
Take for example something I heard on the radio this week. There has been a report published about the skills that carers need to possess so that they can care appropriately for people, and a politician gave as an example (it is always a politician that gives examples) the fact that carers should have as an essential skill the capacity to be compassionate.
The example that was given was of the way in which people are called by their given name, rather than some shorthand like Dearie, Darling, or in a negative context, referred to as bed blockers in hospitals.
This reminded me instantly of a poem which has been included in my first selection, 50 x 50. It's worth reproducing here, to give some sense of the context about which I am talking.
My Given Name
I can't walk the walk and I won't talk the talk
but behind these tired eyes
still beats the same heart as that of
the woman that has raised her children
then their children, loved and been loved
in return. My memories
may be broken, but they are mine
please help me to keep them alive.
Don't call me Dearie, or Darling, or Ducks,
give me back what is mine
and what belongs just to me.
It's the name my fiancee proposed with
the one I married with
and the one that will be given to the registrar
one last time, all too soon.
Before then, keep me safe, keep me warm
in this place, use my name to my face
please protect me from harm
and to the end call me Grace.
It's my given name.
Like many of my poems, it is short and of course created using voice-activated software.
It suddenly struck me that the politician was virtually quoting unknowingly the first line of the second stanza, and this spurred me into action, so I sent a copy of the poem to my local authority contract with the suggestion that the local authority concerned might steal a march on what the government is talking about, if they were to produce my poem as a poster to be pasted to the wall in every staffroom in every care home in the County.
Blow me, if I don't get feedback by e-mail within a couple of hours to say that it was a moving way of communicating how everyone might wish to be treated as they become older, and that it will be raised at team meetings across the country over the next couple of weeks.
The speed of e-mail. And then I got to thinking about whether I had any other contacts that I could send the poem to, and I immediately thought of a friendly press officer that I had met in the context of a short documentary film about me being used for the launch of Social Care TV.
All of this, by the way, was happening before 6 AM in the morning, listening to the news. And so I sent something to my press contact friend, and as a consequence he asked in passing what I was up to these days.
Which meant I told him about this blog, and it turns out that the report that the politician was responding to had been written by the organisation for which the press person worked, so of course he knew exactly who to pass it on to. Small world.
And as a consequence, I may be able to have my blog hosted on some site I would never have thought about, and which would bring me to an audience that I would never have considered might be available to me. Magic.
And all of this through the medium of new technology, that makes communication instantaneous to all intents and purposes. So, I'm looking forward to the next time I can make some kind of connection between something I have written by way of a poem, and something I have heard someone talk about in the press.
Who knows how this thing might end. Hopefully, not in the way that TS Eliot said, not with a bang but a whimper, nor as at the end of Shakespeare in Love, with tears and a journey. My favourite cliched ending is that it will not end until the fat lady sings. Since I used to work in the world of opera, I feel as if I can wish for that one. And most of my friends that can sing would forgive me since they are anything but fat.
I'm impressed with the layout, as ever, and coincidentally I've just been interviewed today by one of the magazine's staff writers, for an article in a future issue about assistive technology.
Anyone that knows me will know that I am never short of something to say, and it is through the medium of voice assisted software that I am able to create not only this blog, but also the articles that I have written for Care Talk magazine.
Access to technology is such an important issue for everybody these days, and for someone like myself, severely disabled, it is essential to enable access to a world that has become much more difficult to access in ways that most people take for granted.
I think it was in a film somewhere that I remember first hearing about the notion of technology achieving a point where connectivity has reached a critical level, and I suspect what was once a science-fiction concept in a film, has become or is becoming a reality.
Take for example something I heard on the radio this week. There has been a report published about the skills that carers need to possess so that they can care appropriately for people, and a politician gave as an example (it is always a politician that gives examples) the fact that carers should have as an essential skill the capacity to be compassionate.
The example that was given was of the way in which people are called by their given name, rather than some shorthand like Dearie, Darling, or in a negative context, referred to as bed blockers in hospitals.
This reminded me instantly of a poem which has been included in my first selection, 50 x 50. It's worth reproducing here, to give some sense of the context about which I am talking.
My Given Name
I can't walk the walk and I won't talk the talk
but behind these tired eyes
still beats the same heart as that of
the woman that has raised her children
then their children, loved and been loved
in return. My memories
may be broken, but they are mine
please help me to keep them alive.
Don't call me Dearie, or Darling, or Ducks,
give me back what is mine
and what belongs just to me.
It's the name my fiancee proposed with
the one I married with
and the one that will be given to the registrar
one last time, all too soon.
Before then, keep me safe, keep me warm
in this place, use my name to my face
please protect me from harm
and to the end call me Grace.
It's my given name.
Like many of my poems, it is short and of course created using voice-activated software.
It suddenly struck me that the politician was virtually quoting unknowingly the first line of the second stanza, and this spurred me into action, so I sent a copy of the poem to my local authority contract with the suggestion that the local authority concerned might steal a march on what the government is talking about, if they were to produce my poem as a poster to be pasted to the wall in every staffroom in every care home in the County.
Blow me, if I don't get feedback by e-mail within a couple of hours to say that it was a moving way of communicating how everyone might wish to be treated as they become older, and that it will be raised at team meetings across the country over the next couple of weeks.
The speed of e-mail. And then I got to thinking about whether I had any other contacts that I could send the poem to, and I immediately thought of a friendly press officer that I had met in the context of a short documentary film about me being used for the launch of Social Care TV.
All of this, by the way, was happening before 6 AM in the morning, listening to the news. And so I sent something to my press contact friend, and as a consequence he asked in passing what I was up to these days.
Which meant I told him about this blog, and it turns out that the report that the politician was responding to had been written by the organisation for which the press person worked, so of course he knew exactly who to pass it on to. Small world.
And as a consequence, I may be able to have my blog hosted on some site I would never have thought about, and which would bring me to an audience that I would never have considered might be available to me. Magic.
And all of this through the medium of new technology, that makes communication instantaneous to all intents and purposes. So, I'm looking forward to the next time I can make some kind of connection between something I have written by way of a poem, and something I have heard someone talk about in the press.
Who knows how this thing might end. Hopefully, not in the way that TS Eliot said, not with a bang but a whimper, nor as at the end of Shakespeare in Love, with tears and a journey. My favourite cliched ending is that it will not end until the fat lady sings. Since I used to work in the world of opera, I feel as if I can wish for that one. And most of my friends that can sing would forgive me since they are anything but fat.
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