What's the score

Well, I was disappointed not to make the final 12 of the Poetic Republic competition, though I enjoyed acting as a judge like every other participant. However I have just found out that I made the second stage indeed my poem was 33rd out of 310.

I can live with that. Here's the poem again

On meeting Pam again after 30 years

I was ill
Sitting at a table
In the Art Gallery
Awaiting a friendly bowl of soup
"Is it Bill?" a voice said
And I looked up
And saw
a grey haired woman
With a somewhat familiar face
"It's Pam" you said
"Of course, I replied
Time travelling
back and forth
Over 30 years
From the blond haired young woman
Of spirit
- who I loved
To this defeated short grey haired mature woman
Were you time travelling too?
But at least you had the advantage on me
Of seeing me at a distance before coming over
I told you of the recent deaths
Of Mole and Woody
You had not heard
You'd been mad on a psychie ward
You told me you were here with your OT
And not to let on I knew you
Oh my God paranoia on your part
Or playing safe self care
You left me
With a whiff of our shared and separate histories
of sadness, of time passing
Of my survival and flourishing
Of your survival by your fingertips
Isn't life strange?

Musing on music

So on Tuesday at my piano lesson doing a bit of voice work my range developed from only being one octave to adding on 3 extra notes taking me just about to Middle C which according to Rebbecca my music teacher was good for a Bass. That aside I was also hitting the notes more clearly. Rebbecca plays a note on the piano and then I copy it. It was that bit easier to go down the scale than usual and I was able to move between singing two notes that were 2 noted apart up and then down. To those who understand this stuff it is no big deal. To me at 59 years old never being able to do this stuff and never even having any encouragement or support this is a minor miracle. What if, as a child someone had sat me down with a piano or thrust a wind instrument into my arms and said 'Try this?'

Anyway I am being shown how amazing learning is at any age. I thought I was too old that this stuff was like a lot of language stuff and had to be learnt young. Rebbecca says no and its true. I feel sorry for her some times stuck with such a basic learner as me and I am not as fast or as promising as some of the younger ones BUT I don't lack motivation or lack enjoyment in what I can do. My maternal grandmother used to say 'Count your blessings' I am with regard to music.

One of my dreams is to be able to play the piano and sing my old time favourite Pets song 'Red Letter Day'. This is going to take some time. Firstly because the musical score is actually quite complex for me. Secondly singing and playing at the same time is beyond me at present. Getting my two hands to work together well enough is still challenging let alone singing as well. Thirdly Red Letter Day is pitched at the start 2 octaves above my range. When I shared this with Grace she transposed it down 2 octaves. Fine at the start by then Neil suddenly drops two octaves and that was too low for me. So if I am ever going to sing Red Letter Day I need to extend my range by at least an octave! Well 2 or 3 notes last Tuesday was a start.

Watch this space and who knows I'll Youtube myself someday. I am on Youtube somewhere talking about Friends but that's another story and I've lost the link!

Best to all,

Bill-on-bike

On meeting Pam again - prose version

(I submitted my poem ‘On meeting Pam again after 30 years’ to an online poetry competition run by Poetic Republic and it failed to reach the final (sob). Talking with my piano teacher Rebecca last night firmed up a feeling I had that it might work, further developed, as prose. So here goes.)

It was a strange day, I felt awful in both senses of the word and I don’t why I went into work. That was not a good decision. We – me, Naomi, Valerie and James had our usual Tuesday lunchtime meeting that day and we went to the nearby Art Gallery where they do half decent vegan food that suits Naomi.

Since I was drugged up on antibiotics and feeling not quite on this planet – actually quite a usual feeling for me but this was much worse – James readily agreed to get me a soup and a roll on condition that I carefully guarded the only empty table left in the café. This table was in an alcove near to the door and not visible to most of the rest of the café.

I spread our coats over 4 of the years and slumped in the fifth seat. I was in a kind of pleasant enough daydream humming along to an OMD song in my head – I think it was ‘Joan of Arc’ – when a voice said “Is it Clive?’. No no-one calls me Clive these days I make damn sure of that. I looked up with a frown at being interrupted. I saw a middle aged woman with cropped grey haired who had a somewhat familiar face.

Whilst my brain struggled to bring this half recognised figure into focus she said, "It's Pam"
"Of course, I replied, stunned. It was like I time travelling back and forth
over a 30 years period. Pam in my mind’s eyes was a beautiful blond haired young woman. We had been close then and she had such a spirit in those days but this stranger/old friend in front of me looked defeated by life and was older and greyer. I wondered how I looked to her. I was greyer and less hairy. Did I look defeated? I daren’t ask though I know the truth or at least my version of it.

Had she time travelled on seeing me? If so she had the advantage on me as she had chosen when to make contact. We had one of those really weird conversations that occur between old friends who haven’t met up again in years. You know you talk about mutual friends you have lost contact with and what you are doing now and you share a few old memories. So I talked to her about Mole and Woody who had both died recently. She had been close to both of them and had taught Woody his first few guitar chords and arranged his band’s first few gigs long before he became famous, but that is another story.

Then things went a bit strange. No she had not heard of their deaths, mind you she never was a big reader of newspapers but “The thing is I’ve been in psychie hospital”
“Oh fuck”
“Fuck yes”
“Oh Pam” I said and I reached out and touched her hand. She flinched away at first from this physical contact but then she relaxed.
“Look it’s ok,” she said, “I don’t want you to worry”
(Oh Fuck she’s even taking care of me – do I need that? Am I that vulnerable? Am I? Or what?)

Things then got even stranger. “I’m here with my Occupational Therapist – the hospital just over the road. Please don’t let on you know me” I nodded - what was this? Was she paranoid or was this her looking after herself? How mad is that psychiatric ward she is on? “I must go” she said and disappeared.

Jesus! I felt stunned with traces of memories, of pictures of her and of me and a sense of the passing of time and my own flourishing in many ways. But was she flourishing? No, it seemed to me to be a case of mere survival by her finger tips. I hope she reaches a safer point.

How can we pass into and out of each other’s lives? You just do that when you are young. It strikes me we are wasteful of each other without little thoughts for the future but that’s how it was then and probably still is today. Pam is timeless in my mind as the young woman she was but also now as this older woman.

Isn’t life strange.

The synchronisers

(More weird creative writing!)

Then there were the so-called synchronisers. You will notice my skepticism about them but they did have a fair bit of power and influence. Indeed one of them Carl Justav (clearly named after Carl Gustav Jung who popularised the notion of synchronicity) was reputedly regularly consulted by our recently deposed King Charles, no less.

To me these synchronisers were no more than puffed up Astrologers and that's not saying much and they copied the Astrologers' habit of recommending times for actions to be taken. However, whilst Astrologers mostly worked with the individual star charts of people and organisations the synchronisers specialised in linking apparently random and unconnected events within a set time frame.

They were especially adept at claiming such knowledge after such an event had occurred, retrospectively as it were, or even more subtly whilst an event was occurring. They were well plugged into high powered CompInfo data streams and in turn their Synchtwit feeds into mobes, plasmas, and redberries were highly sought after.

One fine example of their work was their response to the Birmingford riots of i2028. It was clear to many of us that a Pandemonium* was likely to break out. What took people by surprise apart from the synchronisers was the strength and violence of the Pandemonium and how rapidly almost concurrently it spreads to other major Ionic cities. Some argued that the images and messages on Synchtwit actually caused these events to happen i.e. that the synchronisers caused the synchronised events they were forecasting. But it is hard to blame them for the simultaneous outbreaks of St Vitus dance that occur ed. But that is another entry.

* pandemonium, a slang term taken from a 2009 Pet Shop Boys song of the same name - 'Is this a riot or are you just pleased to see me?' and their world tour of the same name that led to the Pandemonium riots or Pet-ins in which thousands of their fans refused to leave the tour venues and set up semi permanent occupations instead. These were called Pandemonia and occur ed in Manchester, Liverpool, London, New York, Sydney and Moscow. Pandemonium then became a slang term for any group of people refusing to leave a place especially when asked to by the police, fire service or uncivil defence force.

Funky

Well, one of my students was talking to another student who said "You're one of William West's students aren't you? He's funky" (referring to my colourful dress sense.)

Such praise! It delights me. All of my colleagues in this rather grim concrete and asbestos ridden 60s building wear really dull clothes, greys and other dull colours. Even the women mostly show little colour doing that corporate thing of let's not draw attention to ourselves, let's blend in.

So today I have on my read trousers, pink pullover and blue shirt. Sheila has taught me something about colour combining but mostly I shop in terms of (mental) colour healing - though it is rather hard to get any amethyst coloured clothes for men!

What I find totally bizarre is how much men's cycling clothes are dark and dull apart from the odd dayglo jacket and the dreadful lycra. Indeed many cyclists just dress dull and don't even have lights on in the dark at night. They scare me when they also use their mobiles phones whilst cycling. I find the busy traffic on Manchester streets rather frightening as a cyclist and I think this is a good survival practice.

We all respond to colour go out there and flaunt it and be funky too!

Best to all

Funky Bill-on-bike!

The PEDs and the Dark Cyclists clash

(More weird creative writing shit!)

There were now frequent clashes between PEDs (pedestrians) and the Dark Cyclists or Darkies as they became known as. Occasionally MOOTs (motorists) were involved but mostly not as MOOTs looked down on PEDs as ever. PEDs were seen as would-be MOOTs who lacked the resources to access a motor.

These disorganised and apparently random battles between PEDs and Darkies led to the now notorious Easter Battles. For those few remaining Post Christians (or Christies as they were commonly called) living in Iona (Islands of the North Atlantic, formerly known as 'Great' Britain and Northern Ireland and Eire) there was something profoundly ironical about an outbreak of communal violence at the time of the most important Christian festival. On the other hand for Christies Easter symbolises the brutal death of their founder Jesus so perhaps the brutal clashes between PEDs and Darkies were not so inappropriate.

Indeed it was always thus. For example comparatively peaceful and seemingly golden age of the 1960s there were pitched battles at seaside resorts between gangs of young people called Mods (who dressed fashionably and rode motor scooters) and rockers who disdained fashion and haircuts and rode motor bikes.

But the violence between the PEDs and Darkies was different. They were lots of injuries and many deaths. This was much closer to civil war than teenage exuberance fuelled by drugs and alcohol. Indeed most of the participants were over 25. Of course mass unemployment played a part, as did the collapse of the eco system and the collapse of modern government. But there was something else here - there was a relish about these battles, they were a focus for creative energies, they gave participants a sense of belonging. In many ways they resembled the warfare between the drugs gangs in LA.

Dark Cyclist meets a PED

(More creative writing)

The pedestrian looked rather warily at me but that was not surprising. I was wearing my all-in-one dayglo recyltex cyling suit and I was riding my 40 gear teckiebike with built in Britnav, shockers and electric spear so it was not surprising he might take me for being a Dark Cyclist.

The PED/Dark Cyclist violence had yet to start in my part of town but it was only a matter of time. Indeed the escalating patterns of conflict were already happening. There were recent reports of tacks strewn across cycle lanes and of pedestrians being beaten up although as yet these did not have all the hallmarks of a Dark Cyclist attack.

The PED no doubt had friends who'd been 'burned up' by Dark Cyclists riding them down-and-over leaving their signature burn marks on their bodies. The PED would be guessing that I had friends who been tacked, jacked and smacked with endless trips to the almost defunct local A and E Department - good only for anti tetanus and anti HIV jabs. Yes rape for men and women was often a feature of these attacks. Cyclists were increasing wearing defensive clothing like my all-in-one recyltex suit which was hard to rip with a knife, and which along with my Cyclealarm gave me some illusion of protection.

I passed the PED, dressed in the usual fashionable dark clothes that makes it so easy for them to blend into the background when cyclists are out and about, without incident, not even exchanging the ususal words of natural abuse
['Effing PED! 'Crappy cyclist!'] indeed if anything I heard a sigh of relief that matched my own.