Together with art, poetry and ceramics one of my great passions is textiles. I just love, love, love fabric and my idea of heaven would be the haberdashery department of John Lewis. All those rolls of exquisite fabrics; satin, velvet, silk, lace, beautiful printed cottons and a kaleidoscope of colours and patterns. Better than sex I say! I sometimes regret not specialising in textiles instead of photography at art school. So when my bedroom curtains shrank in the wash recently I was secretly delighted. I’d never liked them in the first place, choosing them under pressure when my house flooded back in 2010. I’d put up with them for long enough so perhaps it was no accident I put them in the washer when they were labelled dry clean only! So now I have a good reason to choose new curtain fabric and I’ve had fun this week ordering up free samples. My choices are narrowed down to four. I’m probably going with the green but the one with the thrush and the bumble bee would look great in a picture frame. It’s just so pretty!
My mother and grandparents worked in the textile industry in West Yorkshire in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It was the only type of work available for immigrants but was well paid and allowed my family to eventually buy their own home, a tumble down terraced next to a railroad track. When the train shot out of the nearby tunnel everything in the house rattled and shook like an earthquake! But after years of living in refugee camps they were happy to have a roof over their head. For a few years my parents and grandparents lived together for financial reasons even after I was born. My mother worked in a local textile mill as a winder. This job entailed tending the winding machine for winding yarn from hanks to bobbins or from spinning bobbins to other bobbins, spools, cones, cheeses, etc. It also involved piecing together the broken ends of the yarn. My mother was an expert at knots and in later life developed arthritis in her fingers from all those years of handling yarn. I remember visiting her at work, the deafening roar of the rows of machines and the stink of grease.
To a small child it was like a vision of hell. But since the late 70s the old textile industry in the north of England has disappeared. The grand Victorian mills have been converted into luxury apartments and most of our textiles are now imported from abroad where they are produced in appalling conditions for low wages. Very few fabrics are made in the UK today. Sad.
So anyway, back to my new bedroom curtains which are probably made in China or India but I hope they will make waking up each morning a bit more pleasant. Now should I choose the green or the blossom?
This weekend I discovered the most marvellous novel that I’d never heard of before. Its called The Wall by the Austrian writer Marlen Haushofer, first published in 1968. Although classified as science fiction and ecofeminist it is really a profound philosophical meditation on solitude and the relationship between humans and the natural world. It contains beautifully intense descriptions of the close bonds that we can form with animals without being sentimental. The story is set in the Alps and recounts in diary format one woman’s struggle to survive in total isolation. The mysterious transparent wall that appears over night is a metaphor for the divisions between us all in a time when we interact with screens more than other living beings. The book was ahead of its time in anticipating many social and environmental issues we struggle with today. The Wall is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read and I would absolutely recommend it particularly if you are a person with a love for animals and nature.
I was whisking up eggs, sugar and cottage cheese last night to make Syrniki (a type of Ukrainian cheesy pancake) and suddenly realised the rotary whisk I was using must be nearly as old as myself. It is still going strong (unlike myself 🤣) I remember growing up in the sixties and watching my mother whip up sponge cakes using that same whisk as I waited eagerly to lick out the bowl. Ooh yummy! When I married at the age of eighteen my mother gave me that whisk along with a load of other domestic paraphernalia, a sort of perfect housewife starter kit. Obviously didn’t work as I divorced seven years later!
What vintage objects have you got in your kitchen that you still use regularly? Rotary whisks are no longer in fashion as most people have electric blenders and food mixers now. I’ve always been averse to gadgets. You spend more time cleaning them than the time you save. I like the tactile quality of a wooden spoon and the physicality of cooking. My other vintage kitchen item is a cook book from 1980 which arrived with my new oven. It contains recipes for 80s favourites such as Chicken Maryland, Cheese Soufflé and Creme Brûlée. I still refer to it often. So…what antiquities do you have lurking at the back of your kitchen cupboards?
I am always astounded by the strength of life force in nature if unhindered by human activity, the pollution of drugs and chemicals. A few weeks ago I cut a couple of branches from my Woolly Willow tree (yes, it’s really called that or Salix Lanata if you want to be formal). They were covered in gorgeous catkins and made a stunning statement in a vase in my hallway. When I decided to throw them out I was surprised to see they had grown roots so now they are destined for a new life in the garden next to their mother tree. Happy trees! I have many different willow trees; scarlet, golden, black, purple, Swiss, a ground cover variety, one that has spectacular black catkins in the spring. It is a wild, windy and wet location and yet they thrive. Branches may break off in a storm but they go on undaunted. If only we humans could do the same.
Easter is my favourite festival. As a natural born pagan I love the nature symbolism and message of renewal and rebirth. Those of us lucky enough to be not living in a war zone are able to celebrate with flowers and chocolate. In the UK the weather has been kind and we see signs of new growth and green shoots in the gardens. The Russian Orthodox Easter is not till next weekend. I have many lovely memories of Easter rituals growing up in a Ukrainian family. Easter is a big event in the Orthodox Calendar. Special food is prepared in a basket including hand painted boiled eggs, cold meats and a sweet bread called Paska and then taken to the church to be blessed by the priest in a midnight ceremony. It is later eaten for breakfast on Easter Sunday. This year I am having a peaceful and joyful time although separated from loved ones and have enjoyed painting eggs for the first time in years! Also having fun with my new rainbow lantern, (really cool!) eating cake decorated with bluebells and bumble bees and delicious chocolates in the shape of butterflies.
a bijou creative arts e-zine named after the Scottish sea mist
Photograph of Cromarty by Martin Russell
Martin Russell writes:-
Cromarty was always a popular place to go for our family, but my best memory is of The QE2 heading towards the Soutars, all lit up like a Christmas tree. Photography is a sideline for me, though I upload one picture and some speil onto Blipfoto every day, under the name: martinski. I’m not very arty, I just look for beauty where I can find it.
Roots connect. Healthy tree roots may grow far beyond the base of the mother tree. They provide water, nourishment and security. They also form invisible mycorrhizal fungal networks that link with other trees in the forest and share information. Just like people they are part of a wider community who need each other to survive. Trees talk to each other via their own Wood Wide Web! So I’m proud to announce that this autumn issue of The Haar, like growing tree roots, now extends further afield than ever before. The e-zine began with one woman in a small village in Caithness but now it has contributors and readers from Newcastle, Perth, Aberdeen, London, Orkney, New York, Finland, Argentina, Canada…The Haar is thriving and connecting creative people all over the world. This Roots issue of The Haar has attracted diverse types of work including music videos, portraits, provocative conceptual art, poems that celebrate family, history and nature, stories that will tug at your heart strings or stop you getting to sleep! There’s an in-depth interview with renown visual artist Geoff Weston and amazing tree sculpture from Ursula Troche. I hope there will be something challenging and enjoyable for everyone.
Please keep on scrolling down to the very end and don’t miss any of the treats in store. Feedback is appreciated and may be left at the bottom by clicking the ‘comment’ link or on The Haar’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thepurplehermit/
Contents in Order of Appearance:-
Photograph of Cromarty by Martin Russell
Root Power by Ursula Troche
Up To the Roots by Ursula Troche
A Firm Rootball by Finola Scott
Natural History by Finola Scott
Loose-Leaves by Ian Tallach
Portrait by Shanya Hussey
Great, Great, Ever So Great Grandmother by Gerry Stewart
Growing Up Iowa by Gerry Stewart
Keighley Gala by Lydia Popowich
Inside Out – interview with artist Geoff Weston by Nikita Shackleton
Sometimes, a Reminder by Grahaeme Barrasford Young
Untitled Photograph by Alan Thorburn
Special Baby by Lydia Popowich
Whisperings by Ellen Forkin
Cycle of Life by Rita Bradd
Origin by Rita Bradd
Roots by Moira Weir
Dora in Lockdown by Kevin Crowe
The Quilt on my Bed by Jay Wilson
Mary Webb video by Duncan Harley and friends
If I Were, Would I Be? by Mandy Beattie
Dear Babushka by Lydia Popowich
Rootless by John Crofts
Portrait by Kammo
Soul Waiting to be Born by Meg Macleod
Root powerby Ursula Troche
Recently I have been doing a lot of ‘tree sculptures’ – that is, I have been layering wool around trees, around their trunks, branches, or between trees. This idea developed out of a desire to show connections between trees under the ground which we cannot see. Trees that appear to be different ‘individuals; as far as our eye can see, are often connected below the earth’s surface. They connect with their roots and they have lots of them. There are at least as many roots as there are branches, and usually there are more roots. The network of connection is so big that it’s easy to underestimate. We now know it’s a mychorrzal network, and it’s referred to as the wood wide web. Roots are powerful, and far-reaching! So the wool I put on trees – for a day or a week, at art events, festivals and so on – is a colourful representation of imagining these connections. The tree roots are a good example of us as well I think: we may look like individuals, but we are really connected to one another in many different ways. Underneath we are all one, and one origin. It’s not surprising then, that trees are used to show the generations of a family. And who might be at the root of it all? Somewhere, Africa will appear for all of us, if we go far enough, this is where roots are. And here are all of us! Can we see the wood for the trees? And can we see the roots too?
Photograph and sculpture by Ursula Troche
Up to the Roots by Ursula Troche
It’s difficult to distinguish Between the sound of wind and the sound of water In the forest and its surroundings Open country, open-ended grass- and earth-land
Sing a song sister, brother, worker, try! Forest feels like warm womb-enclosure Open country as wide expanded land Going side by side together to form a unity
With the river as the flowing element, running wild Into the wild, making river-scape Layers of elements appearing together Encourage useful illusions
Mirror-images appearing in unexpected places Such as the outline of a tree in a leaf The formation of clouds like islands and continents Fallen branches resembling snake-shapes on forest floor
Forest flower arrangements finding echoes elsewhere Echoes gathering, and multiplying into symphonies Outlining underlying wonders, of and in the earth Forest, fauna, river, fantasy: on land and in the sea
Trees carry life, nourishment and growth, and they House amongst them same-selves dead trees too, now posing Like grand obelisks or some sort of made-up sculptures To enrich the awesome aesthetics of the woodland
Constituting treasures of this old land As much as the trees are disappearing So do the original structures they represent The lines they make, the shapes they take
Earth must be here to stay, have a look! It’s still singing its incantations with the birds Still singing, and spinning around for us To our delight, relief and survival
Three-dimensional circle of earth We need you, to have a leg to stand on Your forests to fully breathe in And your countrysides and seasides
Side by side with us within Womb-like dwelling places that we have Surrounded by soft song, gentle tunes If we can hear the sounds, distinguished
forest incantation the ends and the beginning up to the fingertips and roots!
Photograph and sculpture by Ursula Troche
Ursula Troche, writer, artist, and double migrant on the Irish Sea Coast in West Cumbria. Inspired by space and (translation) places and the in-between, inner lives and hidden stories. She has work published in English and German, and a collection is being translated into French. More details at: About | ColourCirclesite (wordpress.com)
A Firm Rootballby Finola Scott
I could say I recall our first rowan but it wouldn’t be true. I know the story of its tiny baby, roots tucked in a tin, taken to the house, that was to be my parents’ forever home.
Years on it overtook us, blessing with summer shade. My brother and I inhaled Spring from frothy blooms. We stole from birds those bright berries, sweet explosions of scarlet autumn.
When we in turns left, saplings came with us to each new garden. As trees spread city wide, I dreamed I heard the rowan bid its little ones well. I lost count of those staying behind in move after move. No going back.
Mummy tucked Dad’s ashes deep in its roots. I think of him there, nurturing as always.
Natural History by Finola Scott
We walk through grass turned bronze and hear the clamouring boasts of early geese rowdy returning to their always winter place My grandchildren count the fungi blossoming at woodland’s edge I talk of their roots spread invisible as hand in hand home we walk.
After a lifetime at the chalk face, Finola Scott escapes into words. Her poems are on posters, tapestries and postcards and published widely, including in The High Window, Fenland Reed, Lighthouse. When not tickling her grandchildren, she gardens and dances in the kitchen. Red Squirrel Press published her pamphlet Much left unsaid. She’d love to see you on Facebook at Finola Scott Poems,
Loose-Leaves by Ian Tallach
To my right, Al Pacino is holding a Colt AR-15, complete with grenade launcher, not a trace of tension on his face. Instead, he exudes an air of supreme confidence– the impression, at least, that he owns everything he sees and can do with it as he wills. And who am I to argue? The weapon is a heavy one and normally you’d see at least a vein stand out on someone’s forehead or a muscle under strain somewhere, but not with Al– AKA Tony Montana– ‘Scarface’ to his enemies, though no-one dares use that one to his face. Of course, there is that incidental ball of fire that’s aimed in my direction, vaguely, like a sort of routine devastation. Thankfully, it’s just a picture, though I must admit I did feel momentarily immersed in it and therefore menaced. Deep breaths.
The sounds of crockery and cutlery, of conversation, laughter from the other patrons, engines revving angrily outside (what do they expect? – this is Shoreditch – London E2- life sped up so much, it’s slowed right down again) … where was I?… SOUNDS… yeah, there’s a lot of voices here and I can’t understand a single language… only, I’m inclined to think the shouting from the kitchen, like the opera compilation, is Italian. Next to that framed black and white from what I still consider one of Al Pacino’s poorer films, there is a map of Europe and a number plate. (I can’t wait for him to play King Lear.)
I look around. Across the aisle, a family (they look and sound, to me, like Nepalis, although I might be wrong) are synchronously picking through deserts. They nod at me in unison. Their smiles have in them deference and shyness– self-deprecation, much in contrast to that photograph. I feel pleasantly dizzy. The wall behind them is painted greenishbrown, like ditch-water. Somehow, though, it forms a charming backdrop to the maps and artefacts, the random stamps, postcards, bunches of plastic flowers, one solitary passport, train tickets, bottle-tops- all-sorts, nailed incongruously, here and there, at jaunty angles, like a sort of frozen spontaneity. This place is just so wrong, it’s right again! It’s just occurred to me– this isn’t kitsch at all– it’s jumped right over kitsch and looks back at it, from a more ironic place.
###
‘I’m sorry to be a pain, but I asked for a pot of tea.’ The voice is delicate, but somehow strong. The speaker is invisible to me, although she can’t be far away. Her accent is unplaceable.
‘Yes, ma’am! That IS a pot of tea. Lapsang Souchong, right? You ordered Lapsang Souchong?’ (I take it this waiter was the target of the outburst in the kitchen; he seems unfairly harsh.)
‘Yes, this is a pot… with tea in it… but, for reasons much too complicated to explain…’ she tails off, but only to draw breath, apparently. ‘LOOK– this is a teabag! When I was here before, your tea was excellent– the best in town.’ Her voice is fragile, yes, but something tells me it would be the only one still audible if some disaster were to strike… if, for example, Scarface were to burst in with his Colt machine gun.
‘A teabag? Yes. A teabag… tea… Lapsang Sou… I’LL SHOW YOU THE BOX!’ He sounds positively exasperated, now. I think he might be from Australia.
‘Look… it’s been a long day. No-doubt for you as well.’ (Empathy… she’s showing empathy. I think I like this woman.) ‘Loose-leaf tea,’ she says. ‘Contrary to your assumption, sir, I’m not, in fact, a prima donna. It’s just… very important… that the tea is…’ Her voice begins to break,but comes back stronger- ‘…as before- loose-leaf.’
‘Lapsang-Souchong tea for the l-a-d-y– Loose-leaf! Remember that– LOOSE-LEAF!’ he yells, presumably to someone in the kitchen.
‘Thank-you!’ she says.
Now, most people I know would have slipped away by now;the prospect of enjoying a cup of tea, with all eyes focused on the pictures just above your head (because it would be rude, of course, to look you squarely in the eye) would be too much.
I have to see this woman for myself. So, I’m thinking that I’ll use the toilet, or pretend to do so, anyway, and catch a glimpse of her in passing. But, as I stand, I realise I reallyhave to go. In fact, I’m desperate for a slash.
She smiles at me, as if she knew I’d pass her booth exactly at this time- as if she had anticipated my arrival in her life precisely… now. Anyway, she has me frozen to the spot. Her hair is everywhere– it takes up all the space available, with jet-black curls, tight ringlets, strands that reach out like astonishment itself. But at the centre of it all, her face is perfectly at peace– warm dark-brown eyes, generous lips and skin that would suggest, perhaps, a North African origin. Her arms are delicate. She rests her hands in front. I take in bracelets, rings, impossibly long fingers and lapis nail-varnish. I’m shocked to notice that I’ve noticed all this in a fraction of a second. And at this point I wet myself.
It’s not a deluge, though. At least her eyes remain there, on my face- that’s a relief.
‘May I sit here?’ I hear my voice before I’ve consciously engaged it.
‘You didn’t really decide to ask that, did you?!’ Her laughter is a long, delicate trill.
‘No… I did… not.’ I’m laughing too. I sit down opposite her, knowing somehow that she won’t refuse, or even be surprised.
‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’ The monosyllabic response is not like me at all, but her expression tells me words might be superfluous, or even inappropriate.
Just then, the pot of tea arrives. The waiter drops it on the table with a thud. Neither of us deign to look at him. She pours a golden stream (I’d forgotten what Lapsang-Souchong looks like), swills it round the cup and pours it on the floor. Then she fills the cup and takes it to her lips. It occurs to me that there’s a certain rudeness here- offering tea, then drinking first, but then I realise the exact opposite is true of her; having taken just a sip, she holds it out to me, using both hands. I wonder if I’m dreaming. It must be fine bone china: there is hardly any weight to it. I don’t want to wake from this. I look across at her.
‘Loose-leaf tea,’ she says.
‘It’s wonderful,’ I blurt.
‘Takes one loose-leaf to know another.’
‘What did you mean by that?’ I ask, although I know exactly what she means.
‘How many countries have you lived in?’ Her question is intuitive.
I try to look the opposite of smug. ‘Sixteen, I think.’
‘You win!’ She nods and rolls her eyes. ‘One more than me.’
‘Where you bound for?’ I ask, knowing well there couldn’t be a crueller question. (Why? WHY am I compelled to say things like that?! THE most stupid things!)
She winces. I cringe, realising that I’ve killed something. ‘I don’t know.’ She sighs and rolls her eyes the other way.
The pause is long. We pass the cup in silence. Eventually, I speak. ‘You first, or me?’
‘I’ll go: you pay.’
She knows that I’d insist on doing so, anyway. ‘Thank you.’ I mumble.
She stands and when she does, a scent wafts in the space between us – something like sandalwood. She touches my gnarled and weathered hand and then is gone. I breathe out. Keep breathing out. That ache is back– that exquisite, tragic ache that no one understands– only the loose-leaves of this world.
Ian Tallach worked as a paediatric doctor for seventeen years. He became medically retired with Multiple Sclerosis in 2015. The two positives arising from this have been time for his children and the opportunity to explore writing. He also loves Toucans.
Portrait by Shanya Hussey
Shanya Hussey is a first year art student at Hostos Community College, South Bronx, New York, USA.
Great, Great, Ever so Great Grandmother by Gerry Stewart
Traced on lifeless documents from five years old until your death, everything beyond dates is conjecture.
An internet cousin’s unknown Aunt Lizzie connected dots with a sepia-pixelated print. Flamboyant ribbon at your neck while your sisters sat in stiffened black, already distanced, a married woman.
He took you away with smooth words, inked his flexible truths, dodging the record keepers. You remain steadfast to your limited female facts, your parents’ names and place of birth, fourteen years wife and mother.
You see the century turn on another rented Illinois farm until death in childbirth with your seventh makes you another footnote.
They welcomed you home, space in the prairie plot for your son and even your husband, all forgiven and then forgotten until there is only yellowed paper.
Growing Up Iowa by Gerry Stewart
Crumpling heat, clothes sticking, tar melting between our toes.
Eating dust and corndogs at T-ball games, powwows and truck-rusted rodeos.
Riding the Wapsipinicon and the muddy Mississip, old words and rivers rattling on, fishing for blue gills, sunfish living in shorts with farmer’s tans.
Building forts In the ditches’ deep shade, starting clubs to keep out brothers.
We shucked bags of corn, trying to be entertained by husk dolls. Corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn casserole, corn bread and three types of baked beans at every picnic.
Riding in the VW Bug without air condition, fighting who gets to sit in its doghouse.
Mom telling stories of long lines of kings and family trees, us listening, soaking it all in before laughing it off.
Before the changes, the upheaval, white-washing why I left.
Gerry Stewart is a poet, creative writing tutor and editor based in Finland. Her poetry collection Post-Holiday Blues was published by Flambard Press, UK. Totems is to be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2021. Her writing blog can be found at http://thistlewren.blogspot.fi/ and @grimalkingerry on Twitter.
Keighley Galaby Lydia Popowich
I’m seven feet high astride your shoulders bombing through electric crowds in Victoria Park. The air
dynamites with diesel, sweat and sugar. I’m assaulted by neon fantasy, a vertigo of blue and orange. Your hands
grip my calves, fingers laced with scars. The cloying scent of Brylcreem like candy floss wafts from your hair.
There’s a rumour of Hell’s Angels, a tremor in the summer night. Families are leaving early. I’m the only child riding
gilded ponies. You don’t see me waving as you inhale another Players. Six pence a turn at Hook a Duck, goldfish
beaming from bubbles. You hand over a shilling, wait for change that never comes. He mutters, bloody foreigner.
On the long walk home I feel a dribble down my thigh. Goldie’s little mouth opens, closes and then stills.
Photograph by Lydia Popowich
Lydia Popowich is a writer based in Caithness. Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals including Ambit,Magma, Northwords Now, The Interpreter’s House and Under the Radar. Keighley Gala is one of the poems in her latest collection The Rush of Lava Flowersavailable from Amazon.
Inside Out – interview with artist Geoff Weston by Nikita Shackleton
Geoff at age 7
N:- Hello Geoff. Thank you for Zooming with me today across borders… 400 miles or so between Caithness and Newcastle! It would be great if we could start with you telling us about your childhood.
G:- I grew up in a mining village in Derbyshire. My dad’s dad was a miner. My mum’s dad worked at Denby pottery. My dad was a centre lathe turner making different objects for industry. My mum, like many women during the war, worked on aeroplanes in a skilled job. After the war she went back into the home as women were encouraged to do and later became a cleaner.
N:- Was she around a lot for you?
G:- She was. I don’t ever remember a time when she wasn’t.
N:- At what point did photography start to feature in your life. Was it a family tradition to take photographs?
G:- I remember my dad developing films in the pantry but I don’t recall too much about it. I didn’t do well at school but the one subject I was good at was art. I left school at sixteen with two GCEs, did one or two dead end jobs and at eighteen I joined the RAF. My older brother had joined the Royal Navy and he was writing to me from different parts of the world. I didn’t fancy the navy but I knew I wanted to get away. I didn’t have the confidence to go off on my own even though it was 1968, a time when many young people were breaking free. The RAF was a way to see a bit of the world. My dad had been in the RAF for National Service and he encouraged me. I was only in it for five years, doing a trade that I was in no way suited to, but I’m glad I did it. When I came out I was far more worldly and confident.
N:- Did you travel much when you were with the RAF?
G:- I spent three years in this country and two years in Germany where I bought my first good camera. I worked as an airframe mechanic and while in Germany I joined the gliding club and learned to fly gliders. When I left I didn’t have any transferable skills such as electrics or radar to equip me for civvy street. But looking back now I can see that lack pointed me eventually to a career in art and teaching, which became so important in my life. After leaving the RAF I worked in various selling jobs, cigarettes, insurance, packaging. I was living in Bristol and doing well, company car, promotions were promised, but I just couldn’t see myself in selling for the rest of my life, meeting sales targets week after week. So I decided to become a photographer and did a two year commercial photography course in Reading which led to a job taking pictures of packaging for catalogues. I hated that, it was even more boring than being a salesman!
N:- So how did you gravitate from commercial photography to Fine Art, to an understanding of photography as metaphor?
G:- While I was living in Bristol I visited the Arnolfini Gallery and saw an exhibition called Stand Before the World by John Blakemore, black and white photographs of landscape. I was really taken with this show and found out that John Blakemore was teaching at Derby College so I applied there and got a place in the second year. It was John who suggested I go into teaching afterwards, something I’d never considered, given my own difficulties with education. In the meantime I got a job flying in helicopters taking pictures that someone else would try to sell. When that ended I was offered a part-time teaching job at my former college in Reading. That was in 1980. In 1985 I applied for a full time post at Newcastle School of Art and Design on the Foundation course and was successful. In 1987 I had the chance to do a Masters Degree at Newcastle Poly and I’m so glad I did it. It was a turning point. I learned a great deal about art, about class, about culture. For the first time it enabled me to bring my own class history into my work. It really opened my eyes to many things that then fed back into my practise and teaching.
N:- So you became a better role model for your students, a better teacher as well as a better artist?
G:- A Foundation Course is primarily about ideas, not just skills. I was making work and getting it shown. I was very active in the art world. I hope that rubbed off on the students!
N:- Do you think of yourself as an artist, a photographer, a Fine Art Photographer? How do you like to be referred to?
G:- I’ve never been comfortable with the word ‘artist’. But once I started doing video, sound recordings, text based work I couldn’t call myself a photographer anymore. Jo Spence, a hero of mine, called herself a cultural producer and I like that term.
N:- One of my favourite pieces of yours Geoff is the video, Canary about the old man at The Rising Sun Country Park. I found it poignant and powerful. How did that work come about?
G:- I was photographing that park for a long time, primarily because it used to be the site of a coal mine which closed back in 1969. I wanted to find some way of working with that history. I took a lot of what I thought were interesting photographs but they never got to the core of what I was trying to deal with. And then I took the pictures of the man with the model aeroplane. I had them for a long time, partly because I was trying to track him down. I didn’t want to use the pictures without his consent. I tried all sorts of ways to find him again but I never did. So after more than ten years I made that video. And that’s the one piece of work that for me suggests the multiple histories I wanted to explore,
N:- And it also ties in with your personal history. So it works on a lot of levels.
G:- It does.
N:- The sky, flying, working class culture were also themes in your popular exhibition about pigeons back in the nineties. I loved that show!
G:- Yes, the overall title of the show was Pigeon but the individual photographs of the birds were called Messenger. Around that time Anthony Gormley was starting to work on the Angel of the North and I was irritated because his first pronouncements were that he would change the space where it was located into an art space, ignoring the heritage of the region. It seemed like arrogance to me. After he was criticised for this he began to talk about paying homage to the industries of the northeast. A Messenger is another word for an angel and by calling my pigeons Messengers I was referencing both the use of carrier pigeons and another type of winged being that had more relevance to the area.
N:- Did you have any direct experience as a boy of pigeon keeping?
G:- Yeah, yeah. My school friend from three doors down had pigeons and so did my next door neighbour. I remember sitting with him on a Saturday afternoon, looking up at the sky and waiting for the pigeons to return. That is a very pleasurable memory.
N:- One of the things that seems to unite your work is that you play around with scale. You make people look at objects in a different way by changing the scale. Like the pigeons for example, by making them so big you turn them into magnificent beasts. Yet they are a bird some people despise, even label as vermin which is sad because they’re so beautiful. But you make them into regal creatures and by removing the background we see them in a different context.
G:- The other thing I was trying to do was reference not just the birds but the people who kept the birds. Paying homage to an important part of working class culture. Changing the scale made people look at them differently.
Messenger by Geoff Weston
N:- Do you think you’ve ever set out to deliberately shock people, eg the close-up vomit photos in Bad Taste?
G:- Not sure ‘shock’ is the right word. When I finished at Derby and moved to Reading I started using colour and a large format camera. Serious Fine Art photography was usually black and white at that time. I wanted to use colour to say something about the landscape. In the early 1980s the area around Reading and Swindon was becoming Britain’s Silicon Valley and I was recording that but even though I thought they were interesting images they didn’t seem to provoke much reaction when I exhibited them. That wasn’t surprising because I didn’t feel much connection with them myself.
One of Geoff Weston’s early works, now part of the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
G:- Sowhen I moved to Newcastle in 1985 I was shocked by how much Thatcher’s policies had devastated the northeast. I’d been living in the generally more prosperous south and although I thought I was aware of what had been happening I realised that I really wasn’t. And then when I started doing my MA I got annoyed that many of my fellow students were making abstract paintings that didn’t have any social relevance. In a sense the vomit pictures were a comment on that. But I don’t think the pictures are just about that, they’re about a lot more but that’s how they started. I noticed a similarity between the surface of vomit and abstract expressionist paintings. There’s a heavy drinking culture in Newcastle so I went into the city centre early on Sunday mornings looking for pools of vomit.
N:- The vomit photos certainly make people think twice about what they’re looking at and can cause quite a visceral reaction,
G:- The other thing was I had to re-evaluate my class position, another effect the MA had on me. I had a working class background but now I was part of the middle class art world. Working class people don’t generally go to art galleries. So I needed to announce my presence in those sort of spaces. I didn’t want to just add wallpaper. I wanted to make work, for good or bad, that raised questions about class, about galleries, about art. Perhaps I’m making big claims here but that’s what I set out to do.
Image from Bad Taste by Geoff Weston
N:- You seem to be fascinated with the inside of the body…vomit, the raw meat photos, your images of a diseased miner’s lung, road kill in America…
G:- I’m interested in the abject, the lowly. I’m interested in so called low cultural activity. I think that’s as valid and important as high culture. One of the things I’ve tried to do in my work is use low cultural activities to raise questions about high culture.
N: I’m hoping things have changed and that we no longer have such a strong divide between high and low culture, what do you think? Do the traditional elitist standards persist?
G:- Given this government is telling museums and theatres what they should be collecting, showing and producing, I don’t think it is changing. We can’t be innocent about what’s going on. Of course all governments have an agenda but this is the first one I can remember that wants to directly determine what we should be engaging with.
N:- It’s this idea that all art should be beautiful, I really don’t buy into that. The whole concept of beauty and what is beautiful when the truth is that beauty is relative, cultural. It’s a dangerous ideology because it denies reality. Life is not always pretty.
G:- It denies a lot of people’s experience. Experiences that are just as valid. Of course dealing with the abject is not to everyone’s taste. When I had a retrospective show at the Stills in Edinburgh in 1998 the local newspaper headline was ‘sickest show in town’.
N:- Finally Geoff could we talk about your lung piece, perhaps your most important work,
G:- As I said, my dad’s dad was a miner. He died of pneumoconiosis, black lung. When I was teaching, one of my students had access to the labs in the RVI hospital in Newcastle so I was able to photograph preserved diseased miners’ lungs. Later I was invited to be in a show in Atlanta, USA. When I was teaching in America people would ask where I was from and when I said Newcastle, they’d say, ‘is that like coals to Newcastle?’ So I had the idea of sending coal over there, but in a different form. I made a series of photographs and joined them together to make a seam of coal on the gallery wall. It was 18 inches high which is the height of many coal seams in the region. I placed it low on the wall so the implicitly middle class viewer had to bend down to look at it. I left the space above it where normally art would be hung empty. That was my way of saying that there would be no art if it wasn’t for the labour of miners, factory workers and all the other working people who maintain our society and enable the cultural elite to produce art. The title – When the Dust Settles – referenced not just coal dust on lungs but also the fight between miners and the State which had occurred not long before during the miner’s strike.
N:- I think you’re clever in your use of language with your titles Geoff. Not all artists do that so successfully. They always add an extra dimension to your artwork. And it’s so true what you say – it’s the labour of the working class creating the physical world which we enjoy that gives us the time, comfort and space to make art.
G:- Yes, it’s been important for me to value and comment on that through my work. We can’t ignore class, we can’t ignore our roots, our early experiences and how they influence our ways of seeing and understanding the world.
Image of diseased miner’s lung from When the Dust Settles by Geoff Weston. The black areas are coal dust.
Sometimes, a Reminder by Grahaeme Barrasford Young
After magnificence, out-walk glen dreich without rain, sullen in summer; slopedown humped peat and dead deer, menacing with not-quartz white; path slumped to deer dead in water, pain in bypassing, stab-tight, crawl-speed through antithesis of sky encompassing stride-up.
Sometimes, Place Must be Dream
A mountain’s magma root, sea-trenches’ compressing ooze, are forever barred to us. Dream can see one day a mountain stub shadowed by a shaley upturned peak. No ammonites to please with shuttered spirals, just plastic motes: even the most spaced-out mind cannot tell what patterns they might form.
What Comes After
indifferent storm spawns, seed-snow caresses cove, corrie, cwm, accumulates: ice births, grows massy, squats over sea, squashes land, grumbles down, rips eon-gathered soil from rifts, grinds it out to plains, retreats, parents fertility to feed ape, ass, men, hibernates until next need
Grahaeme Barrasford Young’s most recent collection is Starspin (Stairwell Books, 2021)
Photograph by Alan Thorburn
Alan Thoburn is a documentary photographer based in Tyneside who aims to take a ‘conceptual’ approach to his work. The work is intended to be metaphorical to some extent. He is currently exploring other ways to make art. Website: https://alanthoburn.com/
Please keep scrolling to see more wonderful writing and artwork…the best is yet to come!
Special Baby by Lydia Popowich
Good weather for planting, thought Eva. There was a sudden chill in the air as a haar drifted up from the sea like a dream. Eva straightened up to admire the deep square holes she’d dug. She was an expert at this now. It was the seventh month of the seventh year since Mother passed. Every summer she’d planted two more roses gradually transforming the path to her front door into an aromatic avenue. Roald Dahl, Gabriel Oak, The Lady of Shallot, The Ancient Mariner, Emily Bronte and Desdemona would soon be joined by Belle Isis. Fourteen roses to welcome her home like family after another soulless stint at the bank. Belle Isis bore blooms of the purest pink, Mother’s favourite colour.
A half-empty glass of strawberry protein shake tips over, pooling a viscous pink slime on the polished wood of the bedside cabinet, dripping down onto the cream shag pile. The bendy straw waves like a flag of surrender while plastic teeth grin from a beaker. Mother’s gummy mouth twisting, pleading. The pillow frilled with pink lace is speckled with blood. My heart beats hard, loud, thrashing like a trapped bird.
Eva sank down to her hands and knees, raking her fingers through the soil, removing sharp stones into an old paint can. She never used gardening gloves, she liked to feel the life of the earth, see the dirt gather under her fingernails and in the grooves of her palms; life line, head line, heart line, fate line tracing an inscrutable map. She didn’t mind the occasional worm or leatherback, letting them slither over her skin unharmed. The two Belle Isis roses were soaking in buckets of water, ready for their new life. Eva sprinkled a generous quantity of John Innes No 3 into the bottom of the holes. Now she just needed to fetch her special bone fertiliser from the shed at the far end of the garden, hidden behind the clump of willow trees.
She makes me promise. She makes me promise. I promise. How can I? Too much. I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to do it. But I do it. Will you miss me? she asks. I bet you won’t even miss miss miss me, she says. Too much. She makes me promise. She makes me promise. Together forever, she says. In pieces. Fourteen to be precise.
Eva retrieved the last two packages from the freezer in the shed. She’d forgotten to defrost them first so she made a detour into the kitchen and gave them a five minute spin in the microwave, still wrapped tightly in brown paper and string. She didn’t want Belle Isis getting frost bite. A flash, crackle zapped the oven. A loud bang! OMG! She’d forgotten about the wedding ring still circling that arthritic finger. She didn’t have the guts to remove it at the time. What an idiot she was, just like Mother always said. Always cocking things up no matter how hard she tried to be perfect. There was a smell of burning so she unplugged the microwave at the socket. Never mind, it was an old appliance, easily replaced.
The packages were still partially frozen so Eva popped them in a zip-lock bag and then into a bowl of hot water. That should do it. In the meantime she made herself a mug of tea with a couple of apricot and almond cookies. She preferred her tea strong, no sugar. She drank with noisy slurps and scoffed the biscuits almost without chewing. Then she burped twice. No one to complain anymore. Mother liked her tea weak and sweet from a small porcelain cup edged with rosebuds. It was almost impossible to make the tea just right for Mother. Too strong, too milky, too hot, too cold, or else it had a chemical aftertaste a bit like sucking on a car tyre, apparently. If Mother didn’t enjoy her first cup of tea in the morning, Eva would have no peace for the rest of the day.
Eva looked out at the back garden. Crows were circling over the lawn, swooping and arcing in an unusual way. Perhaps there was a hawk nearby. A predator. The haar concealed all manner of things. The willow trees hovered like misshapen ghosts at the bottom of the garden and beyond there was nothing but a grey void. The mist seemed to seep into Eva’s brain. She found it difficult to think clearly, to remember.
The water in the bowl had cooled so she replaced it with hot from the kettle. Another ten minutes and the packages had a delightful squishy consistency. Ready or not, here I come, she thought. Belle Isis was waiting. Mother was waiting. Eva found the meat tenderiser she used to prepare steak and placed the packages on the chopping board. She smashed down on them again and again and again. This was the fun part. She heard the snapping and crunching of fine finger bones. And then the phone rang. Who the fuck could this be on a Saturday? No one ever called at the weekend. Janice was the nearest thing she had to a friend. She was another cashier at the bank but she was always busy at weekends; four children, a husband, a dog. The screen on the cordless phone displayed a number Eva didn’t recognise so she answered gruffly. ‘Who’s this?’ No one spoke. White noise on the line, a strange vibration seemed to emanate from the handset travelling up her arm, shoulder, neck and then a swirling sensation in her head. Like vertigo. Eva dropped the phone on the table and stared at it for a long minute. The image of Edvard Munich’s The Scream flashed into her mind’s eye.
Time for some music. Eva chose Paulo Nutini’s Sunny Side Up CD with the volume turned high. Fuck the neighbours. She went outside carrying the defrosted fertiliser, leaving the door wide open so she could hear Paulo’s warbling vocals. Pale sunlight was starting to disperse the mist and the roses glowed like celestial beings. Eva pranced a funky jig up and down the path, waving the two brown parcels above her head as Paulo sang 10/10. By the time he’d started on Growing up Beside You she had tipped the contents into each hole. She tried not to look closely but couldn’t resist a quick glance. The pulverised hands sprawled in the dark earth like monstrous crabs. The gold wedding ring glistened. She covered them with compost and gently planted the Belle Isis roses in the centre, backfilling with more soil, smoothing and firming with her hands. A good watering and the job was done; complete, all the pieces back together again. The pink flower heads nodded and bowed in the breeze, perfectly at home.
She says she loves me. Her baby, her special baby. No one else will love me. No one else could ever love me. I am stupid but I am her baby. I am ugly but I am hers. She loves me. Loves me to bits. No matter what. Always. No one loves like a mother. Forever a mother.
That night Eva couldn’t sleep. Before going to bed she rinsed and dried Mother’s favourite tea cup and saucer, matching milk jug and sugar bowl, arranging them on a tray lined with a lace doily. She added a crystal glass containing a single pink rose. She filled the kettle with fresh water and lifted the best teapot down from the top of the dresser. Everything was ready. Eva had no idea how long she would need to wait for the return. The resurrection. The version of the Osiris story she’d read on the Internet failed to mention that particular detail. Eva prayed it would be soon. When she heard the doorbell chime at 3.33am her heart trembled like a trapped bird.
Photograph by Nikita Shackleton
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We have no bones to creak, yet creak we do. We moan with the wind and whisper with the mice. We are a sudden chill. A flicker of movement, just out of sight.
We watched from the windows, smudged and grimy, as you stood by the old rowan tree. You stroked the fronds of leaves, made them shiver. Squished a berry, red and plump, between finger and thumb. One of us planted the rowan by the door. To ward away witches. The door that groaned, as we groaned, when it fell shut behind you.
You frowned in the dark kitchen, while we deepened the shadows. You did not notice the quernstone in the corner. The dust was thick, choking, the cobwebs blotted with flies. The quernstone has a dip, where we left a spoonful of porridge, a mouthful of ale. You will do no such thing. And no guardian, small and ancient, will lap up the drop of milk, thick with cream, in the darkness of night.
You moved to the bedroom, fusty with damp. We clung to the combed ceiling; our ether tickling your hair, your head, the tips of your ears. A draught, you thought. You stopped at the cot, small and wooden. Stroked its crudely carved hood. You bent down to gather up the blanket, moth-eaten. Stood up sharply to see a knife, blunt iron, placed beneath the mouldering pillow. You did not notice the hook. The hook where we hung the scissors, also iron, over the sleeping baby. Safe from thieving fairies.
You heard us scuttle and scratch as you entered the dim, dark loft. Not rats. Nor nesting birds. Your mouth was grim, your eyes blinking in the dust-mote murk. The beam of your torch lit up the corner of the trunk. Half collapsed, woodworm weakening it to dust. You did not know, could not know, the stories. How we talked about the sealskin, once tucked safely inside it. A sealskin belonging to a woman, seal no longer. Her husband stole it. He kept the trunk tightly locked. Until shefound the key. The woman, the wife, slipped on her sealskin, velvet soft. She plunged herself into the sea. A selkie once more.
Back down the ladder, into the belly of the house, you eyed the chimney. Your mind was still on birds and their nests. We howled, a choir of wailing. Still, you crouched in the fireplace, cobwebs in your hair, your face, your eyes. You reached up and found the shoe, snug in its hiding place, and brought it into the light. Wrinkled, dull black leather. Small and pointed in your hand. Witches. We were never sure, any of us, how one might try to sneak into our home. Sometimes we filled the shoe with sharpness, pins and nail clippings, but mostly we were comforted that the footsteps of our past would ward away any evil. Would ward away evil still. So we howled. And screeched. And raised our voices to roar with the wind.
#
You burnt the trunk; its stories a pile of lumpen ash. The quernstone is propped up in front of the house, pretty, its uses forgotten. The cot, polished and empty, you sold to an antique’s shop. You threw away the iron knife. The shoe is in a local museum. It stands, brightly lit, in a box of glass and keeps away no one. Yet you never visit it. And the old rowan tree by the door, the one that cast gloomy shadows in the kitchen window…
Its tangle of roots tremble in the cold, pale sunlight, its leaves mingling with grass. We tremble with it. We have not one finger and thumb between us to squish a berry, red and plump. Instead we shiver as it shivers. We whisper as the breeze catches our souls. And we are chilled, as we fade, chilled and creakingand whispering, while we watch still. We watch you standing, smiling, as the sunlight turns golden. The sunlight warming your new home.
Ellen Forkin is a chronically ill writer and artist who lives in Orkney with a love of all things folklore. She recently had a piece published for the ‘Words Into Music’ project which was part of the George Mackay Brown Fellowship’s celebrations for his centenary.
Photo by Lydia Popowich
Cycle of Lifeby Rita Bradd
It begins again, a small casket filled with life. Just a germ, useless without the elements. Fire. Water. Earth. Air.
Wind lifts this seed. Carries it. Slams it into receptive soil where it rests until rain comes, falls. Drums it out from dormancy. Hydrates. Expands. Feeds.
A head breaks ground, worships the sun. Below, roots thrust down. An anchor.
A new network leaves the past, spreads, makes the future. Joins the path.
Photograph by Rita Bradd
Originby Rita Bradd
Don’t ask me where I’m from. I just know I am here and here is now.
But tomorrow I may go. Elsewhere.
I can pull up my roots let them flap in the breeze. I can shake off the dust. Plant me. Anywhere.
I won’t settle too long or there will be seeds. No I won’t do that. I won’t spread. I won’t be held back.
I want to be free. I won’t seek where I came from. I’ll never find the real answer. The truth is too far gone.
Rita Bradd is author of Clipper Ship City of Adelaide : Beneath The Southern Cross, The Three Craws plays, in Scots, are performed live and on radio. Poems are published in :- Salt & Soil (2017); anthologies; on a banner; complement a sculpture. http://www.ritabradd.com https://en-gb.facebook.com/RitaBraddCityofAdelaide/
Roots by Moira Weir
“Roots are not in landscapes or a country, or a people, they are within you.” Isabel Allende
Within each of us is a sense, a feeling, an understanding, an awareness, whatever you wish to call it, we all possess it. Some of us will be more aware of it than others but one thing is sure we all have roots. It’s something deep inside, perhaps connected to our soul, that deep rooted anomaly that shares our lives. Experiencing everything we feel, storing those experiences to mould and shape the person we eventually become.
Our roots stretch way back to others that have walked before, those people connected to us, our ancestors. Have you ever walked through woods, or entered a building, in a place you’ve just visited and it all seems familiar? Or had a conversation and instinctively know the next words that are going to be spoken? Some call it “Deja vu” or is it connected to past lives, I believe it’s connected to your roots. There is a strong sense of belonging within us, most want to feel that we belong to something, somewhere. This sense can bring comfort when we most need it and a feeling of being safe and coddled. Some may say the person who feels comfortable in their own skin and at ease with themselves are lucky and have that sense of belonging. We have many sayings that all ultimately infer the presence of our roots.
Our roots can shape the qualities we possess, strength in difficult situations, compassion, empathy all these qualities that we call upon depending on what we are experiencing at any given time. It’s lifelong learning that continues on and on, each day. Imagine a library; we have different sections with different headings for different situations. Our roots allow us to check through the back catalogue and draw on the experience and help us react to the new situation.
Do we inherit these qualities? Are we moulded from our ancestors? I would like to think that all the diverse and wonderful people who may appear on our family tree have left behind small pieces of themselves to linger on in us, our roots. To walk in their footsteps, to hold objects they have touched and treasured makes your mind and soul connect to them. When wearing a wedding ring that belonged to my grandmother it made me think about her as a young woman, and not the elderly lady I knew. Her hopes for the future going forward together with my grandfather and how their lives weaved together, their children, work, home and the private moments they shared. My roots belong there too because ultimately without them I would not exist and similarly, it goes on, to my children and grandchildren.
Our roots are constantly growing, just like the roots of trees and their very presence will always exist within ourselves and others close to us.
Moira Weir has been a lecturer for many years and has a great love of words and art. She paints, draws, felts and designs jewellery. She stays in the Central Belt but enjoys visiting Orkney which is her soul place
Dora in Lockdown by Kevin Crowe
“They’re wrong.” She didn’t know whether she’d actually spoken the words or just thought them, and being on her own she couldn’t ask anyone.
She knew they were wrong. “They” were all those politicians, journalists and commentators who kept comparing Coronavirus to the 2nd world war, calling on people to emulate the spirit of the Blitz.
She knew better. She’d been almost fifteen when the war began, and she’d seen some incredibly selfish and anti-social behaviour, as well as criminals taking advantage of the chaos. The only comparison she could see was that back then, as now, the politicians had said we were all in it together, but the wealthy had been able to bypass rationing, just as now they were able to alleviate the worst aspects of lockdown.
She made her breakfast last as long as she could, but there’s only so much time you can take over eating a boiled egg and toast. She did the washing-up and put everything away in the right place, just as she had done all her life, back when she had helped her mum even though she was too small to reach the handle to the larder door, when she was raising four children of her own and during the past ten years as a widow. She believed in a tidy mind, body and home.
She hated the use of military metaphors when talking about ill health. All this nonsense about fighting disease was inaccurate and gave the wrong impression. Thirty years ago she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she hadn’t had the energy to do any fighting. She did what the doctors told her, had her George and her children to support her and was one of the lucky ones who recovered. Some friends of hers with cancer weren’t so lucky and died, sometimes in pain despite the drugs they were pumped with. Just like her George had from prostrate cancer.
Fed up with all the talk about Coronavirus, she switched off the radio. She picked up her newspaper, flicked through it and seeing nothing but Corona this and Covid that, threw it on the sofa. She immediately picked it back up, folded it properly and put it in the magazine rack. Everything in its place, that was one of her mottoes.
Even though the house was spotless, she decided to give each room a thorough clean. It was something to do.
Living on a quiet road in a quiet town, she didn’t expect to see anyone, not that any visitors could have come in, anyway. Yesterday, one of her granddaughters had delivered her shopping and collected her prescription. She had rung the bell, then stepped back to allow Dora to collect the bags from the front step. Social distancing they called it, but Dora couldn’t see what was social about not being able to hug your granddaughter. They’d had a bit of a chat at a safe distance, then she had left.
She missed church, and she missed her visits to George’s grave. She knew some people who went to church on the internet, but she didn’t have a computer and if she had, she wouldn’t know how to get online anyway. She had her phone and people rang her regularly, but once she put the phone down, the loneliness could be even worse for a while.
She made herself some lunch, just a sandwich and a pot of tea, and switched on the TV. She let it drone on while she ate, afterwards falling asleep. She woke up with a start when the phone rang. It was someone trying to sell something she neither needed nor wanted, but she talked to them for a while, anyway. It passed a bit more time.
She tried reading, but her failing sight made it an effort. She knew she needed new glasses, but her appointment at the opticians had been cancelled. Besides, she had read the few books in the house more than once already and the library was closed.
She fetched her photograph albums and began to look through them. Some of them were faded and discoloured, particularly the few taken before she had married George. She wished she had more, but back in those days cameras were expensive, as was getting the films developed.
They were all in strict chronological order and as she turned each page of each album, the story of her life and those of George and their children spread out before her.
She recalled the day they met. Her father had forgotten to take his sandwiches to work, so her mother told her to take them to him. When she got to the mill with its blackened smoking chimneys and rusty iron gates, she saw a young lad heaving pallets from the yard into the factory and was immediately transfixed, unable to move or speak.
When he saw her, he asked if he could help. She blushed, and then he blushed. As she gave him her father’s sandwiches, their hands touched for a few moments. He looked like a young Errol Flynn to her.
He was even more dashing in his uniform when he was called up. The years he was away in the army were among the worst of her life: she missed him so much, she cried herself to sleep most nights and the occasional periods of leave were always over far too quickly. As soon as he was demobbed at the end of the war, they were married and within a year she had given birth to a son, followed in later years by three daughters.
She only realised she was crying when her tears fell on the photograph she was holding.
She longed for the day she would be reunited with her George.
Kevin Crowe is the author of the short story collection “No Home In This World” (2020, Fly-on-the-wall Press), is editor of the Highland LGBT+ magazine “UnDividingLines” (https://undividinglines.wordpress.com/) and has read at the Scottish Parliament, Glasgow’s Aye Write Festival, John O’Groats Book Festival and Highland Pride.
The Quilt on my Bed by Jay Wilson
The quilt on my bed is not an heirloom, yet it spreads like a forest floor in autumn’s seasoned rust and green, gold and brown. It was made when secrets were shared word by word in letters. Sentence by sentence.
The quilt on my bed is not an heirloom, yet we’d meet in grey dust below a grey gum, my accent pulled her in, she said, just like dad’s. Our girls were wee, with more to come, as we shared time in the shade of bark splitting sun.
The quilt on my bed is not an heirloom, yet it treasures memories cut and tacked at the heart of her sewing room. Unasked for, a present of our past, patched and shaped to embrace dreams. Stitch by stitch.
Each night, as her sun dawns down under, I curl up and sleep beneath the quilt on my bed that’s not an heirloom yet.
Jay Wilson is a Banff based dog walker and allotmenteer who forages stories from the shire and grows them into poems, fiction and non-fiction.
Video about Mary Webb made by Duncan Harley, Charlie Abel and Kenny Wilkinson
In 2020 the Doric Film Festival asked people to make a film on the theme “Jist far I Bide”. Scripted by Duncan Harley this is the tale of Mary Webb, the writer of the iconic Aberdeen anthem ‘The Northern lights of Old Aberdeen’. She died a pauper and to this day there’s no blue plaque or official recognition of her in Aberdeen or indeed anywhere in the UK.’
If I Were, Would I Be? by Mandy Beattie
If I were a barefoot fisher-lassie zigzagging down the stone-stairway would I have soles of pumice and scuffing hem, or would my wren gown be tucked up and under? Would I watch molly mokes revel in mackerel sky, as blushing thrift of sea pink kneel in cracks? If I were a barefoot sorority sister would I hoist men-fowk like peat-stooks onto The Saucy Jack to keep their soles dry? Souse barrel-baskets with rollmops of silver darlings while gutting knives glint? Would rhymes and rhythms become waulking without wool? If I were a barefoot fisher-lassie zigzagging up, zigzagging down with splayed phalanges would my barrel-basket become turban, plaid or sporran? On the seven mile quick-step to Wick Harbour there’d be no dilly-dallying with witches thimbles at Whaligoe Steps
Mandy Beattie’s poetry is a tapestry of stories and images rooted in people and place, often with a dash of otherworldliness. Her poems have been published in Poet’s Republic, Dreich, The Haar, Wordpeace, Wordgathering, The Clearance Collection and Spilling Cocoa.
Photo by Nikita Shackleton
Dear Babushka by Lydia Popowich
Did you sense the jeopardy of porcelain as you buried two cups and saucers deep in your suitcase? Your hands trembled folding children’s clothes, cocooning memories. Sirens echoed in darkened boulevards and tanks circled Kiev like wolves. Germans are a civilised race. Remember Bach, Brahms, said Dedushka as you were herded west to a secret destination.
Lying awake in the twilight hut shared with strangers, did you unwrap your treasure while they slept? Did you inhale the crisp scent of pine and snow, see yourself inside the perfect dacha? Did your fingers stroke the cool porcelain like a lover? How gentle was your first sip from this cup on your wedding morn, warmly risen from white sheets? Dedushka was the joker, the poet, coughing up stones.
Stones can roll many miles, mossy or not. Hanover, Dover, Yorkshire and a terraced in Aireworth Road. Two cups, two saucers. Four parts to the whole; your family buried in your heart. Memories died within a nest of mirrors guarded by ghosts as you slowly faded. Your prize has found a new home; a northland never reached. I am the last rolling stone. My dusting hands tremble with the weight of porcelain.
This poem didn’t quite makeit into Lydia’s latest collection, The Rush of Lava Flowers which explores the subject of hereditary trauma and is available on Amazon.
Photograph by Lydia Popowich
Rootless in Caithness by John Crofts
You Rooted deep in time Countless layers of rock Endless seas skies bogs Held fast in the comforting web of generations Disappearing back into only mouth told stories Smoothed round by the telling and retelling You The safely rooted Spare a thought for a wandering soldier’s son Born on a fleeting posting A man of many addresses happinesses memories stories But a man with no roots Nowhere he came from Nowhere to go back to Clinging now in old age to these gale swept Caithness cliffs by only his fingers As tenuous as the sea rocket on the high tide of the Dunnet Dunes Soon to be washed away by any winter storm No history of me in this northern bleakness No ancient family croft Deserted stumbles of stones No lineage of grandfathers grandmothers uncles aunts No wifies manies lassies loons countless cousins countlessly removed No well worn songs and stories of storms weathered Loves found loves lost Boggles selkies spirits of the bog Told again and again and again And loved anew each time An Incomer still after 40 years With my atomic accent From everywhere and nowhere Let me listen to your stories Let me listen to your songs Let me put down just some small roots That at least my children may cling to.
Mentality drawing by Kammo
Kammo is a first year art student at Hostos Community College, South Bronx, New York, USA.
soul waiting to be bornby Meg Macleod
set me down gently amongst those fair hills where the female sigh of the sea forms the womb and tomb of existence
set me down gently where sweet myrtle and thyme mischief of raven and plainsong of gull are gathered yet beneath the curve of one rainbow
set me down gently where the sun and the moon in sacred half light mix their glowing and where they still rise from the natural hollow of a windswept hill
set me down gently oh, set me dowm gently there or not at all.
Meg Macleod was born in 1945 in England. She lived in America and Canada before moving to Scotland in 1974 where she now resides on the north coast in a house looking out over the sea towards Orkney Islands. Meg has a BA in Fine Arts. Her beautifully illustrated book of poems entitled Raven Songs is available to buy from Amazon.
Mother Nature – Photograph by Ursula Troche
Well, that’s all for now folks. Thank you for reading this Autumn issue of The Haar. I do hope you found much to enjoy. As we plummet into a long, dark winter may your roots sustain you. Till next time…Nikita Shackleton 😊
Today I hung a silk ribbon on my favourite tree, an alder, to commemorate World Earth Day. My beloved ginger and white cat is buried underneath and his claw marks are still visible on the trunk. The tree was only small when my cat was alive and now it’s over 20 feet. I hope these trees will outlive us all.
Unmute yourself by joining The Buzzing Book Club. Meetings take place via Zoom on the first Thursday of every month at 7pm (GMT). Members take turns to choose the book.
Places are limited. This is a small, informal, lively group. If you would like to join us please get in touch with me in advance through the Contacts Page. Hope to see you soon!
Unlike any previous generation we live in an age of obfuscation. We grapple with new concepts such as post truth, fake news, alternative facts, propaganda and conspiracy theories. We can no longer be sure of anyone or anything. We have lost trust in institutions and systems that previously went unchallenged. Even our lovely new friend on Facebook could turn out to be a catfish! And now, to cap it all we have a Pandemic to deal with. Human interactions have been reduced to digital media, hugs are virtual. We talk to screens and from behind a mask. When we leave home we are no longer greeted by a friendly smile from our fellow humans but an anonymous face covering. So the theme of Behind the Mask for this first edition of The Haar seems to have struck a chord. I’ve been overwhelmed by the quality and variety of submissions. A very big thank you to all the talented people who have sent in their work. It’s been an exciting task reading through everything and putting this feature together. I’m sure it will be an equally rewarding experience for readers. Please keep on scrolling to the very bottom of the page and don’t miss any of the treasures to be discovered in The Haar. Comments can be left below and also on the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/thepurplehermit/
Contents in Order of Appearance:-
Unmasked Masks by Mandy Beattie If the Face Fits by Tom Murray Love Hurts by Leah Davis Survival by Meg Macleod Mask Me…by Magenta Kent Bistable Illusions by Georgia Brooker Ahead by Mass Index Double Bind by Double Bind When Two Worlds Collide by Kevin Crowe Glass Mask by Ian Pearson Canto 99 by Knotbrook Taylor The Immoral Lobster by Toby Goodwin Fold Lines by Ursula Troche Night without Horizon by Ursula Troche Bolted by Alastair Simmons Through the Yew Hedge by Magi Sinclair The Worlds Behind The Eyes that Plead by Ian Tallach Smiles or Tears? by Rukhsana C Denham Pebberdy – Still Alive and Unmasked by A Quiller The Picture Above Your Name by Louise Wilford Beyond by Jenny Bruce Essential Items Only by Emma Mooney Beauty from the Unexpected by Mandy and Alexandrina Beattie This is not a…by Ursula Troche Day 357 by Nikita Shackleton Termination by Nikita Shackleton Like an Angel by Trudy Gritte Dead Ahead by Nikita Shackleton Shhh!…by Crippled Pink
UNMASKED MASKSBy Mandy Beattie
To the chemically-challenged lockdowns are a library of then, now and next where masks are a must — those mole-hills the ‘Auld Alliance’ at the door between two fields of nature and unnatural where you dab poison on pulse points and oxters embalmed alive in wearing-wardrobes of formaldehyde, rubbing alcohol and a smorgasbord of chemicals in a snub of noses unmasked —
Faux-friends sucked Soorags in a guddle at being chemical-free around me and others’ muted — now you know a smidgeon more about lockdowns, masks and mole-hills every breath a mirror of bared teeth and chemical spills self-harming skin and self and everyone else while Mother Earth cowns for all nations regurgitating and recycling chemicals and carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide through emery lips in masks and stubble on bones seen only in bubbles and morgues Zoom and FaceTime —
An archeological dig and dicht unearthing my palette of kohl mascara and damson above moss-green and Oil of Attar I AM Scheherazade in A Thousand and One Nights in this clusterburach of a Jackson Pollack painting I AM litmus among lichen foraging for truffles in Microsoft Meeting and Skype — Scotia Primula burrowed below mole-hills I AM wild things resurrecting rising with snow drops wearing a bouquet of Persian Violet Stargazer Lily and Peace Rose
Image by Mandy Beattie
Mandy Beattie, is a feminist from Caithness, with an MA in Social Work Practice & Research. Her poetry is a tapestry of stories and imagery, rooted in people, place & the natural environment, set at home and abroad.
IF THE FACE FITS By Tom Murray
Underwear and socks the top left drawer of the chest of drawers, masks to the right. Each mask neatly folded, and when Joe was younger laid out in order of the occasion. For a long-time the Yes, I’m really interested in what you’re saying mask was his favourite. He remembered the first time he had worn it, the careful lift out the drawer, taking out the pins and unfolding it, careful not to bend the ears, they were particularly fragile, and running a not too hot iron over the creases. Then rolling the mask down his face. That first time he had forgotten one of the pins and it had stabbed him in the mouth. Still, he didn’t let it ruin the day. As he had gotten older though he had begun to see the necessity of carrying more than one mask when he ventured out into the world. This was brought home to him one day when the Yes, I’m really interested in what you’re saying mask had cracked mid listen to a conversation about the history of combustion engines. From then on, he couldn’t quite get a mask, any mask that fitted him as snugly as the Yes, I’m really interested in what you’re saying had. Then one day he read an article on the new improved Weight of the World on Your Shoulders Mask in his monthly Masks for Every Occasion magazine. Our promise: a mask and face truly as one. He didn’t believe that for a minute of course but still he took the plunge and sent away for one. When it arrived, at first, he put it away in the drawer and tried to forget about it. It had been a mistake buying it he told himself. Every day though when he opened the drawer there it was staring up at him. Every time he would ask himself–What would be the harm in trying it on? Then right in the bin it would go. It was a Tuesday when he finally rolled it over his face. He tried not to like it but this new improved mask you didn’t need to smooth and would you believe it, no pins. He was still determined to try it only the once but the once turned into twice and before he knew it a week had passed. The furrowed brow and eyes slightly downcast, his face a snug fit for the mask, and best of all, it kept people at bay. It had crossed his mind at one time of ordering the grumpy mask. He had seen the effect of that though of making other people grumpy, and he was a kind soul really, he didn’t want that. The Weight of the World on Your Shoulders made people slightly sorry for him wondering what could have caused that look on his face! Not enough though to ask him. Worrying became as natural to him as interest in things had been in his youth. One worry was should he order now the Too old to care what anyone thinks mask for when that time rolled around. It would be here soon enough. Getting one now could save him quite a bit of money. He decided not to get one but to worry about whether he was making a mistake not getting one. This decision was made in that time between wake and sleep when he dreamily caught sight of himself frowning in the wardrobe mirror. He couldn’t remember if he had taken the mask off and laid it neatly back in the drawer like he usually did. Or if he was still wearing it.
Tom Murray is a full time writer living in Dumfries. His plays have been widely performed. His stories and poems published in magazines and anthologies in Scotland, and further afield. His website: https://tmurraytg.wordpress.com His Blog: https://tommurrayborders.blogspot.com
Love Hurts by Leah Davis
Leah Davis is a pop portrait artist, focusing primarily on the female figure and self portraiture. Her practice has previously explored psychoanalytical theories on human behaviour, women’s empowerment, Pop Culture and societal attitudes. Davis is originally from Thurso, Caithness. Her website is:www.leahdavis.co.uk
Survival By Meg Macleod
because love is rare and appears without definition she makes excuses she spends hours painting in the gaps sorting through splintered blossoms of her expectations
in the family friendly jigsaw she frames the abuse
everything outside the frame fades sunlight is shaded music is muted points of reference clipped into a perfect thorny thicket behind which she disappears her voice a whisper no-one can hear
Meg was born in 1945 in England. She lived in America and Canada before moving to Scotland in 1974 where she now resides on the north coast in a house looking out over the sea towards Orkney Islands. Meg has a BA in Fine Arts. Her beautifully illustrated book of poems entitled Raven Songs is available to buy from Amazon.
Mask Me…by Magenta Kent
Magenta Kent is a visual and performing artist based in the North of England. She loves to make images with anything she may come across such as dead bees or the charcoal left from a burnt out greenhouse. She will incorporate objects with fabric and handmade paper. In fact, anything goes!!! She also enjoys writing poetry and is working on a book inspired by dreams.
Bistable Illusions by Georgia Brooker
There is always the other way of looking at the young woman in furs whose neck becomes the old crone’s sunken chin, their lines of ink alive in each other’s shadows.
In a world of restless mirrors, can the mind only be in one place at a time? In this uncertainty of surfaces, where the writing’s always backwards, there must be some trembling field of vision which holds it all in focus within that vacillating tryst, between the Mask of Love; the single, blurring face that, unasked, splits in two, and kisses.
In previous chapters, Georgia Brooker has been a teacher, librarian, bookseller, editor, bibliophile, and occasional author of poems and stories. Nowadays, she is mostly mum of two and veg-gardener in-chief, and writes when no one is looking.
Ahead by Mass Index
‘Double Bind’, is a combined self-portrait and a collaborative work by the two artists known as Double Bind.
WHEN TWO WORLDS COLLIDEby Kevin Crowe
They met on the Moor. Neither knew the other, both were seeking someone who was seeking something.
They met, they did what they had come to do, then left, to return to their worlds.
*
Reverend Philip Keeler, scourge of all liberals and humanists and founder of a breakaway free Presbyterian sect, was back at his unadorned desk. In his mid twenties, he still retained the dogmatism of youth. His round chubby face disguised the asceticism he claimed to believe in and wished to impose on the world, an asceticism that was visible on the bare walls of his office, decorated only with plain white paint and dark brown bookshelves containing heavy theological texts.
He had made his peace with the Lord after his most recent instance of weakness. The more his human fallibility manifested itself, the more determined he was to do his best to eliminate evil from the world. He took as his motto: “love the sinner, hate the sin”. He knew God loved him, just as He hated the sin. His faith told him God would forgive him each time he succumbed to temptation, but he also knew God required him to fight immorality wherever he found it.
He proof-read his latest article for the church’s website. He was proud of his ability to present an argument in a coherent and irrefutable manner. He believed those who refused to accept the rightness of his reasoning were blinded by propaganda from the left-wing liberal lobby. The texts were clear: God had created male and female, and to ignore this, to treat male as female, was an abomination.
He made a few minor changes before posting it, and then began his preparation for a meeting taking place later in the week. He was an expert on the science of Creationism, even if he said so himself, having written many papers debunking the basis of evolutionary theory. He was eagerly anticipating a forthcoming reading and book signing promoting the latest blasphemy by some professor he’d never heard of, and looking forward to entering the lion’s den. Like Daniel he was confident he would emerge unscathed. He prayed at least some of those present would see the error of their ways.
His mind wandered back to the events of the previous day. Horrified, he became aware of his erection. He fell to his knees in prayer, asking the Lord for the strength to avoid future visits to the Moor.
*
Professor Stephen Strachan was not best pleased. There were lots of things he should be doing, particularly as later in the week he was going on a speaking tour to promote his latest book “The Insanity of Religious Belief”. Instead, he was having to deal with the minutiae of his professional life. One of his admin staff was sick, so he was having to update his website himself. Not only that but, due to maternity leave, he had to cover some undergraduate seminars. He really didn’t see why he should have to teach, repeating the same facts ad nauseam to different groups of disinterested students. He thought teaching was for those who were intellectually incapable of carrying out original research and he managed to avoid it most of the time, but on this occasion he had no choice.
Oh well, might as well get it over with, he thought. He lifted his thin, slightly stooped six foot frame from his chair and made his way to the lecture room. He smiled to himself remembering the encounter from the previous day. He didn’t know the young man’s name or anything about him, had never seen him before and didn’t expect to see him again. Afterwards he had gone to a favourite restaurant and ate and drank his fill. He took pride in his metabolism: no matter how much he ate, he never seemed to put on any weight.
As he entered the lecture theatre, he noticed a rather attractive young man sat near the front.
*
Lorraine Strachan was having a bad day. The medical research unit she headed was under pressure: it had been made clear her team had to run at a surplus or, at the very least, break even, so she had bid for work from the private sector. Successfully, possibly too successfully. She now had more work than she could cope with, and her request for extra staff had been rebuffed, so in a bid to keep within deadlines, her staff had cut corners, with the inevitable result. She had spent most of the morning attempting to calm down an irate client.
Her day was about to get even worse: her receptionist delivered a large envelope. “A courier just dropped this off. Told me it was private”. Lorraine examined the foolscap brown envelope: apart from her name on the front, there was no indication of its contents. She opened it. A letter, signed “from a well wisher”, said the photographs had been taken the previous day at a gay cruising site, known locally as the Moor. Her hands shaking, she looked at the images of her husband having sex with another man.
She stared into space. She felt sick. She felt like screaming and throwing things at the wall, but she wouldn’t let herself lose control, not here, not at work. She choked back the tears, swallowing the rising mucus. As calmly and steadily as she could, she stood up and walked out of her office.
She had no idea where she was walking. She just pounded the pavement, thinking as she went. Why? she asked herself. Was it me? Don’t I satisfy him? The physical side had never seemed that important to him, and there was a time she wondered if he was being unfaithful. But this? She had never suspected this. Perhaps they’d been photoshopped. She shook her head. She doubted anyone could fake the things she saw in the photographs.
She began to doubt all the meetings he claimed to have attended: the many science seminars and the seemingly never-ending humanist or secularist or atheist events. All the conferences and anti-religious campaigns, all the planning meetings: were they genuine? Were any of them genuine? She rarely showed any interest in his passions and she couldn’t recall the last time she’d attended any of his events.
Well, that was about to change. She didn’t know when she would confront him, but confront him she would. She would begin to attend some of the events – starting with the first of the readings he was supposed to be giving to promote his latest book. She wouldn’t tell him, just turn up. At the very least it would cramp his style.
*
The advance publicity had worked. News of the event had spread across both mainstream and social media and Stephen Strachan’s Twitter account had become even more popular. The hall was filling up nicely. There would no doubt be some who would attempt to sidetrack the discussion in order to defend superstition, but he had plenty of experience of dealing with them.
Copies of his book “The Insanity of Religious Belief” were displayed on a large trestle table below the stage as were his earlier scientific texts, some of which peers had described as ground breaking. Although his work on evolutionary biology was not well known outside scientific circles, he had gained an enviable reputation for his popular books belittling religion, and had even hosted radio and TV programmes.
Among those congregating in the hall was the Reverend Philip Keeler. He had dispensed with his clerical collar and was wearing a shirt and tie. He browsed the books on the trestle table before taking a seat near the front. He hadn’t read the book, nor did he intend to: he wasn’t about to spend money on blasphemous texts. In any case he didn’t need to: he reckoned he knew what would be in it, and anyway the heathen would be speaking and he would respond to his words. The Lord would put the right words in his mouth.
He was busy checking his notes and collecting his thoughts, so didn’t notice the woman who sat next to him.
*
Lorraine Strachan found the venue easily enough, despite the best efforts of her SatNav. She had scanned the photos onto her mobile phone and, in the lobby of the hall, she discreetly looked at them, surprised to recognise the other man in the photographs. The bastard must really think she was stupid, flaunting his queer bit on the side so publicly. Or perhaps he just didn’t care. The divorce would cost him: the royalties from that silly book of his for a start. And what better way to destroy his reputation than a public scene?
She stormed to the front and sat next to Philip. He didn’t even look up. Surely he must have heard her: she had hardly been quiet. Perhaps he was deaf. Or more likely just plain rude.
She coughed.
He looked up.
She smiled at him, and said: “He’s married, you know.”
Philip furrowed his brow, puzzled. “Er. Who’s married?”
“My husband, he’s married to me.”
“Well, of course he is, he wouldn’t be your husband if you weren’t. Whoever he is.” Was she some sort of mad woman? he thought.
“You know damned well who he is. Don’t fucking lie to me. Don’t compound it by lying.” She realised she was beginning to shout. People were staring at them.
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. I haven’t a clue who you are. I really don’t…”
At that moment Professor Stephen Strachan walked onto the stage.
Kevin Crowe is the author of the short story collection “No Home In This World” (2020, Fly-on-the-wall Press), is editor of the Highland LGBT+ magazine “UnDividingLines” (https://undividinglines.wordpress.com/) and has read at the Scottish Parliament, Glasgow’s Aye Write Festival, John O’Groats Book Festival and Highland Pride.
Glass Mask by Ian Pearson
Ian Pearson trained as a scientific glassblower and set up his own studio in Thurso in 1990 where he still works mainly on commissions, one of which is this mask for an artist who is developing environmental and biological art. His website is https://glasscreationsirp.co.uk/
Please keep scrolling to see more wonderful writing and artwork…the best is yet to come!
Canto 99by Knotbrook Taylor
Year by year, the monkey’s mask reveals the monkey: Matsuo Basho
I wanted to be that man. Up the telegraph pole: with the special belt. The harness holding him up. I wanted to drive his truck; wear his rugged mask of efficiency. Saw him as I left the village: braced in a sling; working up a pole.
I paused at a field, to make a note about the cows; wearing masks of consanguinity. Earlier, on the community page, a man was reading actual psalms, divinity his mask. I sent him a message; what is a Psalm?
Looked out from the top of a hill. The forest wasn’t wearing a mask; it was wearing a veil. Beyond; the mountains wore blankets; hiding their slopes and faces. The silent cars, on the silent road, wearing silent silver masks.
I paused on the bridge; was overtaken by a jeep. It stopped, a man got out wearing fighter pilot shades, but even behind his mask, I knew who he was. An old friend. We hadn’t spoken for many years; it’s good to know: that you can still like a person even after such an interval.
Hit the main road for a short distance. Saw two beekeepers; they were wearing all over body masks, (like they do in care homes these days), they were doing something with a couple of hives. At first, I thought they were spraying things into the air. Then I realised it was an impressive tornado of angry bees. Unhappy at the disturbance; their masks, like their gloves, were definitely off.
Knotbrook Taylor is an Angus based poet. His first chapbook ‘Beatitudes’ was published in 2007. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses in Fraserburgh commissioned his second collection ‘Scottish Lighthouse Poems’, published in 2011. In 2014 he won the Erbacce prize for his collection ‘Ping-Pong In The Rain’.
We were sitting on the front steps of Lidl eating pastries. Flakes catching on our jumpers and floating off down Duke St. It was a rare, sunny day and we were chatting about masks. Jimmy thought it was ridiculous. Not the masks themselves, just the way folk were treating them. Letting the nose poke out, or letting the kids go back to school without having to wear them. “I mean it wiz jist so the parents could get back tae work,” I was sayin. Jimmy was a skinny guy. He had Buddy Holly glasses, short hair, and a brown beard that went ginger in the sun. “Aye, right enough,” he said, “but I’ve seen droves ae kids heading doon the road, no a mask in sight.” He took another bite, an apple turnover. Jimmy always had a bit of a sweet tooth, I didn’t. I had a cheesy croissant. I’d enjoyed the first couple of bites, but it was very dry. “I mean, it’s a moot point, Jimmy. The kids aren’t high risk.” I took another bite, unimpressed. Naebody likes a dry croissant. “Aye, I know, but the kids spread it tae the parents. Whit’s the point in having everyone inside if the kids’re gonnae spread it anyways.” We were both in dark clothes and we had washable cotton masks on doubled elastic straps around our chins. We were halfway up the steps, looking out on a large patch of construction across the main road. Men in high-vis jackets were digging and turning cranes. Causing loud, metallic, sounds to thunder down the street. I had my backpack on the step next to me, so did Jimmy. Mine was plain black and his was this ridiculous orange colour. “I’ve got to say I like your new bag,” I said, suspecting that it may have been a gift from his missus. “Oh aye, it’s lobster-orange.” “I mean… it’s no exactly subtle.” He frowned. Jimmy was about ages wi me, maybe a bit older – twenty-six or thereabouts. We were at the age when we tried to stop thinkin about age. “I like it,” he said. “It’s not very practical though, is it? You’d see it a mile away.” “Well…” it looked like a satchel and it had a plasticky sheen on the outer lining. “…yer probably right, but Chantelle wiz pleased at me taking it oot.” “She willnae be pleased if you cannae get any work done.” “Pff,” he took another bite of his turnover. A little bit of apple sauce dribbled out and rolled down his top. He tried to wipe it with a sleeve, but it smeared. We said nothing for a moment, watching the construction, watching the cars. Then he turned to me and went, “Did you know that lobsters are immortal?” “Are they?” “Oh aye, I wiz reading aboot it on Reddit. The life cycle ae a lobster goes roond and roond. When it gets auld enough it sheds its skin and a bigger lobster crawls oot. And, the thing is, when the lobster gets too big it’ll get stuck in its ain skin and it’ll die.” “That’s weird.” “Aye, so the article wiz sayin that, if some cunts took it upon themselves to help a lobster moult every year, then it would live forever. Like, over the generations, the lobster would get bigger and bigger, always shedding its skin with the help of these people.” I laughed, “Like a group of lobster worshippers, like a cult for an immortal lobster.” “Imagine some, fuckin, thousand-year-auld, fifty-foot lobster worshipped by a group ae mad shellfish fanatics.” At that moment there was a sharp sound behind us. Incredulity’s the word; a sound of pure disdain and surprise. I looked over my shoulder to see these two middle-aged lassies by the Lidl entrance – a few steps behind us. There was a baldie, burly security guard in a fashionable, black mask holdin his arm across the sliding doorway. One of the lassies was trying to get past, but his arm was like a tree trunk. “Nae mask, nae service,” the guy wiz sayin. “But the fuckin vaccines oot already, get fucked,” she said. Her pal looked embarrassed. The two of them were in white strappy tops and they had blonde hair flapping about in the breeze. They were about the same height. It’s weird how groups of pals all tend to look alike. Me and Jimmy look similar anaw. “Hen, I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules,” the security guard said. “Let us in, we’re only after the wan thing. Fuckin dobber, man.” The lead lassie went for the door again, but the security guard didn’t budge. “C’mon Jessie, we can go doon that corner shop,” the second lassie said. “Guy in there’s never got a mask on.” “That’s no the point,” the first lassie barked, making her pal recoil. “Am wanting a bottle fae here.” “Hen, it’s no happening,” the security guard said. A small queue started gathering behind them, an elderly couple in masks and a group of teenage boys, also in masks. “A’ve got a medical problem,” the first lassie said. “If you cannae wear a mask, you can always order deliveries – or there’s the personal shopper service.” “Fuckin arsehole.” The girl stomped her foot, turned, and then stormed off. Her pal sighed and followed. They took a right, went down the disabled access ramp behind us and continued across the car park. “It’s no that annoying,” I said, turning back to Jimmy. “I get folk bein frustrated and that, but it’s no hard wearin a thin piece ae fabric over yer face.”’ “Ken, it’s the easiest thing in the world. Can be a bit tricky to catch your breath when it’s hot, and it clouds up ma glasses.” Jimmy took another bite. His turnover was now about the size of a coin. I’d put my dry croissant on my knees, sick ae it. “Aye, but it’s a jist mild inconvenience,” I said. The two ladies continued across the car park. At the far end, there was a huge section of metal, temporary fencing covering a crumbling brick wall. It had presumably been put there out of fear of a collapse. The fence also blocked access to another set of stairs that were a bit of a shortcut onto the street. The lassies strolled right up, squeezed through a gap between two metal sections, and continued around the corner. The fence had been that way for months. You could make the argument that it was for safety, but it was a massive inconvenience. People constantly cut through. The gap between those two fences was widened and slightly bent from so much thoroughfare. “That’s another thing,” Jimmy said, through another flaky mouthful. “I heard some folk dinnae want the vaccine.” “Immoral! That’s, fuckin, immoral as fuck,” I said. “Get yer fuckin vaccines, people. We’re aww tryin tae make the best ae this and some bastarts are jist takin the piss.” “They might be scared ae needles.” “Fuck that, naebody likes needles. It’s immoral, man. Putting your ain comfort before the lives of others is immoral. Doing the right thing is so uncommon these days, man. We need more ae it.” “Thing is, I feel like our generation’s been forgotten aboot,” Jimmy popped the last morsel of apple turnover into his mouth and stood up, brushing the flakes off his legs. “We’re the wans losing our shitey bar jobs, we’re the wans who’re gonnae inherit this economy, we’re the wans with the crippling mental health problems, drug problems, porn addictions.” “I’ve no got a porn addiction.” “Never said you did.” “Aye, and I don’t. Plus, it’s no like we’re goin out of business.” Jimmy grinned, “Speakin of,” he said, and he gestured for me to follow. I stood up, tossed the rest of my croissant for the seagulls, and we walked off the same way those lassies had gone. Jimmy stepped through the gap in the fence, and I did too – looking at that wall anxiously. We didn’t say anything as we continued down Duke St. There was faint nattering from pedestrians and the hum of car engines. Heavy, metallic sounds from the construction behind us. We crossed at the lights and continued east past the barbers, the takeaways, and that lovely mural at Duke’s Bar. “Seein anyhin?” Jimmy said. “Nah, no yet. There’ll be something.” “Aye, we can check that alley further doon.” We continued along through the gentle hustle and bustle. Folks in masks, a group of the elderly in a queue outside Boots, a group of weans on BMX’s. Eventually, we got to the far end where the shops dissolved into tenements and the dual carriageway. “Here, you’d better do something about that bag,” I said. “Why?” “If we’re spotted, it willnae take Einstein to guess which wanker wi the orange backpack it wiz.” “Alright, alright.” He took it off, “Will it fit in yours?” “Maybe,” I took mine off and unzipped the top. I moved my crowbar to the side and pulled the RF Code-Grabber out, wrapping the wires around the receiver. I shoved it in my back pocket and widened the bag’s opening. “Aye, that’ll be fine.” He compressed the lobster as much as he could and shunted it in. It was awkward, but with some elbow grease he managed it. I put the – now bulging – bag on my back and we continued around the corner onto a flat stretch of road lined on one side by scrap land, and on the other side by tenements. The street was empty save an old BMW 8 Series, a nineties one. Glossy, white paint. “That’ll dae,” I said and pulled the Code-Grabber out. “Hold on,” Jimmy said, grabbing my arm, “masks.” “There’s naebody around.” “Might be cameras, you never know.” “Alright, alright.” I pulled my mask up over my chin and nose. I could feel the heat of my breath. I could smell that cheesy croissant on my tongue. “You keep an eye.” Jimmy took a spot by the street corner, leaned against a lamppost, and pulled his own mask up. I strolled casually up to the car and started fiddling with the code-grabber. It was a combined walkie-talkie and a garage door control that we’d jimmied together with the help of a series of YouTube tutorials. It had a sliding knob on the side so we could check all the frequencies. I scrolled to the mid-range; German cars generally sit about there. Tried it, nothing. Scrolled again, nothing. Normally took a while, even with the older cars. Scrolling through every increment until I found the right one. After a few minutes, I got it. I hit the clicker and the brake lights flashed. “We’re in.” “Soond.” Jimmy jogged down to the driver’s side. I got in the passenger door. Jimmy was quick; he pulled a flathead screwdriver out of his pocket and removed the panel under the steering wheel. He fiddled for a minute, finding the right wires. “Careful, these wans lock if you touch the third fuse,” I said. “I ken, I ken.” He reached over and started rummaging around in my bag. Well, in his bag inside my bag. He pulled out a pair of pliers, skinned two wires, and started sparking them. Blue light flashing across his face. “You know, I was reading about this Facebook-Guru this morning,” he said. “Guru?” “Aye, like a wise cunt. He wiz sayin we should be forgiving all these immoral mask folk and the folk who don’t want the vaccine.” “How’s that?” I was looking out the window, scanning the street. There was still naebody. “Well, he wiz saying that we should imagine everyone’s a tree, right. Like, when you’re walking aboot a forest, some trees aren’t as well-developed cause they’re no getting as much sun. Maybe a few branches are warped, or the leaves are a bit dry.” The car sputtered and stalled. He twisted the bare wires between a thumb and forefinger and tried it again. “And we don’t hate those trees, they’re jist fuckin trees, man. So, we should feel the same way about people, ae? Like those lassies outside Lidl, they’ve jist no got enough sun, ken?” “That’s a nice thought,” I said. The engine shuddered into life. Jimmy released the handbrake, put it into first, and revved twice. “Let’s sketch.”
Toby Goodwin is a twenty-five-year-old musician and writer based in Glasgow. He mostly writes contemporary fiction, but also dabbles in crime, memoir and sci-fi. He likes going for short walks on the beach, and he loves cheesecake. Here’s a link to Toby’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TobyGoodwinWritesStuff/
Fold lines By Ursula Troche
Story was overhung folded too, it hadn’t really started instead it was just hanging there until it fell off from the top
then it lay there, long, stretched, strong unmistakably moving, something is going on in the field outside where it had walked, ahead of me
that’s where I learned about directions they line up when you least expect to read between the lines, trying to make a point instead
but there it was, like an animal casting me in its outlines, still holding on to myself I wondered if that was me now, migrated.
Photograph by Ursula Troche
Night without Horizon By Ursula Troche
The night has no horizon, earth and sky look undivided now, in this large, vast, dark and sparkling space amplified and limitless, as if eternal, over and everywhere again. The scant light on us a combination of street- and moonlight so you and me become outlines to touch, our faint surfaces become sources of depth, down to inner regions
whereas during the day I walk the edge and try not to fall, it’s such a thin line to cross before there is a place to stay in, to find space in, and even with- draw, and draw your outlines, then read between the lines of you, find poems in the spaces that arise in turn, here I find an oasis, at last, here is a place in the light, too, for the two of us
then a call emerges: I stumble across earth deeply, along parameters and miles of consciousness untouched, unnoticed like a palimpsests below concrete
upon this massive moment I encounter textures of time turning upside, then down and tumbling, from this edge to the next, finding everywhere a threshold, in need of metamorphosis and I begin to understand the cause of change: For if space transforms then time will do so too. We are here, for better or for beauty, embedded into the dimensions that hold us across borders, between countries, with a sense of promise that we might know one night.
Photograph by Ursula Troche
Ursula Troche, writer, artist, and double migrant on the Irish Sea Coast in West Cumbria. Inspired by space and (translation) places and the in-between, inner lives and hidden stories. She has work published in English and German, and a collection is being translated into French. More details at: About | ColourCirclesite (wordpress.com)
Bolted By Alastair Simmons
Inside our minds there are horses Wild galloping the moor The stable door never bolted While we sleep Black eyes sharp in the white moonlight To the land we can never name But always know
Alastair Simmons lives on the Northeast Scottish coast, finding inspiration in the landscapes of Scotland and Northern England, and also it’s cities. And the gardens he creates, working as a gardener. “Poetry is about finding connection and expressing that feeling, whether it’s people, nature or worlds we find ourselves in.”
Drawing by Magi Sinclair
Magi Sinclair writes about her piece:- “This is a small, mixed media image of a yew tree /hedge that had been cut through the middle to make a path in Langwell Gardens, Berriedale, Caithness. I was shocked and intrigued by the colour of the severed branches and limbs. It looked like they were weeping blood, cut through to reveal the bones of the tree”. More information about Magi’s work at http://www.magisinclair.co.uk/
The Worlds Behind the Eyes that Plead By Ian Tallach
Vessels branching from an optic disc -too fragile, almost, for the too- brisk coursing of the too-strong blood -convulsing, molten, pushing up the crust and pulsing with the thud of every new command to live, to be, to stand above the dust
as transient as this- as permanent as this-
Vessels growing from an optic disc -fluttering images, inverted on your retina, like frightened birds with no escape, ensnared behind the shutter of your memory, with disconnected quivering and shards of fractured landscape
as violent as this – as delicate as this –
Vessels coursing from an optic disc -around earth’s core the pressure-flood of magma multiplies veins thrust up through the quaking ground. Above, the too-strong blood is still constrained by aching flesh – this incidental miracle of dust and love
as arbitrary as this- as undeliberate as this-
Vessels wander from an optic disc -uneven as the branches of a tree, fragile as the veins inside a leaf and scattered as the stars -the universe at peace- but still, inside, the too-strong blood is crying for salvation … for release
Ian Tallach worked as a paediatric doctor for seventeen years. He became medically retired with Multiple Sclerosis in 2015. The two positives arising from this have been time for his children and the opportunity to explore writing. He also loves Toucans.
Denham Pebberdy – (Still) Alive & Unmasked By A. QuillerSteve Allinson Investigates…
GREAT EXCITEMENT HERE at The Benchcombe-Worthy Advertiser – it’s not every day a music legend comes out of retirement… but that’s exactly what Denham Pebberdy III is doing! Yes, Denham Pebberdy – singer-songwriter with prog-rockers, Harmonic Spittoon… though many may remember him best as the voice of Mr Broom in the popular 1980s’ children’s TV series, Nothing’s Too Dirty For Jim The Janitor. So, grab those flares, fumigate the Kaftan and get yourself down to the Benchcombe-Parva Social Club on Saturday 28th. Billed as an evening of Music – From When Music Was Music, expect intricate keyboard-driven opuses, anecdotes aplenty and, for the first time in over 40 years, a live performance of Spittoon’s so-nearly-a-hit single (it reached Number 53 in the Charts), The Nomadic Aggravation Of The Libertine Oracle. In anticipation of Pebberdy’s return to the public stage, I went to interview him to find out more… Arriving at his home – an unassuming semi-detached cottage on the edge of a village – I am greeted by a Fedora-wearing, exuberant fellow; mustard cords, jade shirt and crimson waistcoat. I ask if this is Pebberdy’s new look. He smiles, then explains matter-of-factly these were the only items in his size at the local charity shop. Apparently, they’d thrown the hat in for free. I consider it prudent to move on; both subject-wise and locationally. Pebberdy shows me through to his living-room. Even a Spartan would find the place… spartan. No TV. No sofa. Nor any other furniture… but for the single, threadbare chair beside an open fire-place; inside which, incidentally, appears to be the half-charred remains of a broken piece of skirting-board. A quick glance round the room confirms the absence of such woodwork. It’s suddenly very humbling to realise just how some people have to live to make ends meet. It’s then I notice the small conservatory off to one side. The difference couldn’t be more pronounced. A keyboard, two guitars and an amp take pride of place. Whatever else Pebberdy is prepared to sacrifice in life, his music is clearly sacrosanct. I suddenly feel a new-found respect for the man. ‘I would offer you a drink,’ he says, ‘but… well, I’ve not been down the shops in a while…’ I reassure him it’s fine. I certainly don’t want to cause embarrassment. I ask if we can begin the interview and he obliges, indicating that I should take the chair. I politely decline, insisting he sit while I stand. He asks if I’ll be taking notes. It’s my turn to smile now. I show him the hand-held digital-recorder I’ll be using to capture everything we say to one another. He whistles in approval; genuinely interested in the advances in recording technology. I make a mental note, I’ll send him one in a few weeks’ time – a thank-you for agreeing to see me; he’d not wanted any payment… We begin by covering familiar ground – First, his moniker. An affectation. There’d never been any Denham Pebberdy the I, nor II. It had just somehow seemed right; fitted with the times. Next, the band. He’d co-founded what would later become Harmonic Spittoon with Eustace Bathurst at art college in Hove in 1968. Then, they were known as The Bathden Twins; a folk duo. Despite their posh-sounding names, neither had come from well-off families. By day they studied, worked evening shifts, then took whatever gigs they could find in the small hours. Pebberdy was employed in a local abattoir. Bathurst drew an income from life-modelling; posing nude for (mainly) ladies of a certain age. Pebberdy told me he never enquired too deeply what other arrangements Bathurst might have had in place… but I do wonder about this, as there’s a track on Spittoon’s 1977 album, Deputised Permission, called Meat. Ostensibly about Pebberdy’s abattoir experience, it’s tempting to read more into it. Consider the chorus, You’re led to your fate, No time for hate, You took our bait, To us you’re just meat… After college, the pair relocated to London. More part-time jobs. More gigging over the next five years. It was during this time they began to experiment, to develop their progressive sound. They took on a bass player, ‘Bernie the Bass’ Corrigan, as well as a drummer, Ian ‘Sticks’ Munroe; leaving Bathurst on guitar and Pebberdy playing keys and singing. 1976 saw Spittoon formally launched; Pebberdy confirming the name was his attempt to portray sonic harmoniousness, alongside his distaste for the antics of the embryonic punk movement. Signed by Kudos Records – also in 1976 – Spittoon released their first LP, Accidental Adventure, towards the end of that same year. Thanks to their by-now heavy gigging on the London and Home Counties scene, the album sold sufficiently well for Kudos to promise a second album release. Accidental Adventure peaked at Number 74 in the UK charts but, unusually, proved a top-five seller in, of all places, the Catalonian region of Spain. Pebberdy informs me their then-manager, Freddie ‘Fingers-In-The-Till’ Worthington, attributed the success of the album to its cover… a toy pistol firing one of those flags with the word ‘Bang!’ on it. Said flag bore horizontal yellow and red stripes. Seemingly, it had been taken by Catalonian pro-independence supporters to be a thinly-veiled reference to their Estellada Vermella (red-starred flag). The band, perhaps sensibly, avoided visiting to play live; no doubt fearful of sedition charges being levelled against them by the Spanish government. That didn’t, however, prevent their manager, Freddie, from capitalising still further on their new-found success; a re-working of track three on side two, ‘Going Out With A Bang’, was quickly released. Had the national government not banned all air-play, it might have helped Spittoon get a foot-hold on the European continent. Freddie and the band parted company soon afterwards – Freddie disappearing; together with all their royalties. Undeterred, Spittoon began recording their second – and what would be final – album, Deputised Permission. Pebberdy recounts how he and Bathurst chose to produce the album themselves. I ask if the title is a nod to this. He says it might be, but he can’t remember. In fact, he confides he can’t remember much about the recording sessions at all. It’s ‘elephant-in-the-room’ time. I prepare to ask Pebberdy about the break-up of the band. Just two weeks after the album was released, the members went their separate ways – not even the almost-successful, aforementioned Libertine Oracle single enough to keep the four-piece together. In previous interviews I’ve read (granted, the most recent dates from the 1990s), Pebberdy has reacted in one of two ways to such questioning – violence towards the interviewer; or towards himself. I’m ready to make a dash for it… But Pebberdy takes it in his stride. ‘Drugs… women… and more drugs…’ He sighs. ‘One of those things… you know.’ I ask if he’s seen any of his former band members since 1977. He says he hasn’t. I ask if he’s interested in a reunion. He says he isn’t, and that The Eagles had it right… ‘When Hell Freezes Over’. I point out, as politely as I can, that The Eagles did actually get together again; that they embarked on a highly lucrative tour under that very name. He shrugs, then mumbles, ‘Sell-out’. I’m not sure if this is a reference to The Eagles’ success, or to their – in his eyes – lack of musical integrity. I choose not to pursue it further. I check my watch. We’ve been talking now for over an hour. Time for the ‘big one’ – the reason for Pebberdy’s come-back. I ask him when he first discovered he was trending on social media; that he’d become ‘a thing’? He replies that the counter assistant in the local pharmacy brought it to his attention a couple of months ago – he’d only popped in for a tube of cream to soothe a particularly-intimate area – asking him if he was ‘the Dirty Broom guy?’ Near enough, he’d thought. He confirmed he was. The assistant had asked for a selfie, had posted it on Facebook… and all this had stemmed from that. Little-known fact, readers. Pebberdy wrote the theme tune to Nothing’s Too Dirty For Jim The Janitor. It was released as a single, climbing to Number 28 in the Charts. But it’s the B-side that interests us. In homage to John Cage’s ‘4:33’– the song commonly mistaken for mere silence… when Cage intended the music to be the listener’s audial environment itself – Pebberdy composed 33:4… as the name implies, just over thirty-three minutes of one continuous D chord, played on a Hammond organ, which terminates with the sound of him clearing his throat into a spittoon. Conceptualised and recorded in 1978, it was his way, musically, of drawing a line under his band-days. I ask Pebberdy how this piece – or, rather, the final three minutes or so of it – came to be included as the B-side of the Jim the Janitor single almost a decade later. Again, he can’t recall. What he can recall, though, is lawyers for the American-owned Reality Media Inc contacting him recently to apologise for the company’s inadvertent sampling of the end of ‘33:4’ on one of its market-leading, shoot-em-up Virtual Reality games; the snappily-titled Drop Down Dead in DodgeCity. The scene in question allows players to test whether they’re quicker on the draw than the feared outlaw, Long-Breeches Madigan. The shoot-out takes place in a saloon. If the player wins, the D chord commences, swelling in volume as a bar-tender slides them a whisky along the counter-top; after which, a buxom good-time-girl who’s chewing tobacco projects said baccy into a spittoon… and all to Pebberdy’s original sound effect. Pebberdy tells me that, from the discussion he’s had with their lawyers, Reality Media Inc clearly wants to avoid a costly legal case. I ask Pebberdy if they’ve made him an offer. He confirms they have… though he declines to talk figures; nor when he’ll actually be paid. He adds that it’s thanks to this he’s now acquiring a whole new generation of fans. Plus he’s getting to do the come-back gig he’d secretly always hankered after. Just the one, I ask? We’ll have to wait and see, he replies. For now, this new generation – these Dodge Cityers, if you will – may only equate Pebberdy with being their Spitter… their Dirty-Broom Guy… but I’m hopeful, in time, they’ll find their way to Harmonic Spittoon’s back catalogue and come to appreciate his wider, genuine talent. All together now – and be careful where you aim – Hhccch Pttiiingg!
The Picture Above YourName By Louise Wilford
The self-conscious tilt of the hat-brim screens half your face. Camouflage. The scarf, climbing your neck and cradling your chin, composes your anonymity. There’s no revelation in the grainy curve of lines down each thin cheek, from the gloom of your nose to the passport smile. You’re concealed, lost in plain sight. Cheerful wit sculpts your online chat. There, you cloak your courage in irreverent wit – you consider your words with care, hiding your caution, controlling your discourse.
But when we talk, alone, in the sleepless hours, connected by a mobile mast somewhere out on the hills that lie between us, your voice is rough as water falling over rocks – and much deeper than I guessed. Your words waver from cool to hot, veined with an electric wire that flames against my ear. Your talk is woven of folktales – goblins and were-folk, the forested landscapes of your living and your life. I can feel your laughter in my veins.
When we meet, will I know you still? Will you smell of grass and clay, of the trees you climb, and the stone walls you build, of the wind rattling through reeds at the water’s edge? Will your face be puckered with squinting at poems, skin coarsened by outdoor life, pale eyes narrowed from staring at the clouds? I know the hole you make in the world. I might not know your face, your flesh – but I know your midnight voice, the mask-less dreams that hold you tight when you cannot sleep.
Louise Wilford’s work has been widely published. In 2020, she won First Prize in the Arts Quarterly Short Story Competition and the Merefest Poetry Competition, and she was awarded a Masters in Creative Writing ( Distinction). She is working on a fantasy novel. Blog: https://louviewsnewscues.blogspot.com/
Drawing by Jenny Bruce
The natural world and history have always intertwined in the execution of Jenny Bruce’s artwork. Archaeology, both ancient and industrial, and engineering likewise play large parts in her expression of the visual world through the creative mediums of painting,writing or poetry. Social media. Facebook sites:- Jenny Bruce or Sharing Art with Jenny.
ESSENTIAL ITEMS ONLY By Emma Mooney
Helen swings into a space in front of the D.I.Y. superstore, giant orange letters inviting her in. She lifts the face mask from the passenger seat, hooks it over her ears and looks in the rear-view mirror. Today’s the first time she’s worn it and, Jesus, she barely recognises herself. She scans the car park, checks and double-checks that no one is nearby before getting out of her car and walking to the entrance. Stepping onto the yellow circle on the ground she remembers a game they used to play in the school gym: sharks and islands. She looks at the concrete shop floor in front of her no longer sure she wants to be here. But too late. A young boy wearing an orange apron raises his hand and beckons her to come in. Helen looks over her shoulder at the small queue that’s already formed behind her, each shopper standing on their own island. It’s probably safer to go forward. Inside she follows the one-way system, scanning the signs above her head for the plumbing aisle. The drip, drip, dripping has kept her awake every night since lockdown and, if she doesn’t fix it soon, she fears she’s going to go insane. The tap washers are hanging on hooks at eye level, but she never thought there’d be so much choice. And nobody warned her that wearing a face mask would steam up her glasses. She takes out a tissue, wipes her glasses, and then folds it into a small square and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans, making a mental note to bin it as soon as she gets home. Thankfully the packets are labelled on the front so she doesn’t need to touch anything. Nylon, polythene, rubber. How is she supposed to know what kind of washer to choose? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. She unhooks a packet of nylon washers and, trying to handle as little of the packet as possible, she carries it in a pincer grip toward the tills. She stops. The automatic doors to her right swoosh open and she gazes in. Empty shelves and pallets stare back at her but her eyes are fixed on a single weary plant in the corner and her cheeks sook inwards as she remembers… All the kids in her street would congregate together, dirty faces and dirty knees, cap guns stuffed into the pockets of cut-off jeans. They’d make their way down to the bottom of Jimmy Jackson’s back garden at the end of the row of terraced houses because that’s where, among the jaggy nettles and the long grass, the rhubarb grew. The plant was ginormous and they’d take turns breaking off a stalk and dipping it into a poke of sugar. Helen steps forward and, once again, the doors to the garden centre slide open. She slips the tap washers into her pocket and crosses the threshold. The air is warm and still and she pulls down her mask to breathe in the sweet scent of honeysuckle. If she’s imagining the smell she doesn’t care. She picks up the potted rhubarb with both hands and laughs, already imagining her granddaughter’s face as she takes her first bite.
Note:- Rhubarb can’t be harvested until a year after it was planted.
Scottish writer, Emma Mooney is the author of A Beautiful Game and Wings to Fly, both published by Crooked Cat Books. Emma graduated with a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Stirling and is currently working on the edits of her next novel. Checkout her work at http://www.emmamooney.co.uk.
Rag rug made by Alexandrina Beattie
Sometimes there is beauty from the unexpected. The vibrant flowers of this textile piece have bloomed from humble beginnings. When Mandy Beattie moved into her house which was built in 1880 she found a pile of old potato sacks in the attic. They may have been up there since the year dot. Her mother Alexandrina was inspired to use one as the foundation for this fabulous rag rug, a special gift for her daughter. Mandy says that it is now one of her most treasured possessions. Thanks to both of them for sharing this personal story and image.
This is not a… By Ursula Troche
‘Ceci n’est pas une bouche’ – ‘this is not a mouth’, I wrote on my mask, paraphrasing Magritte’s ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. Magritte’s point was that this was just an image, not the real object. So there’s a dimension of unreality to images which we so often overlook. Reality then, is layered, and images and objects aren’t the same. And now, in pandemic times, it seems we have to make do with layers. When we meet, we often meet online, and see each others’ images on zoom – and when we meet in reality, we have to put a layer between our mouth and ‘the real world’. It’s unreal somehow and at the same time our new reality. Things are not clear or direct, everything has to happen in roundabout ways. It’s a dull, fuzzy, foggy picture – but not like the haar which is physical – now we are not exposed to anything we can touch or feel! It’s a surreal situation. We are exposed to the virus, which we are trying to protect ourselves from with our masks, but the danger is impossible to see. It sounds like another episode to the old film ‘The Invisible Man’: now it’s this virus that we have to hide from – try not to let it catch us, in the absence of a sign.
We are on the run. We might have been on the run from ourselves before. Now the past emerges too! Then it was us, now it’s a virus. Or both! This pandemic is so symbolic – though it’s worse too. We have to deal with us as a collective as well, as we are all exposed to the effects of what went wrong – and that is to do with environmental degradation, deforestation. The virus has hit us like a nuclear accident, and is a sign that our system is cracked – and so are we, with it.
Behind the mask, our inner life might spill out. The past lies there in pieces, as therein lies the truth? What does each layer that we have to carry on our mouths and noses do to us? Ironically, with the mask on, we are more exposed to ourselves than without. It’s as if now, behind our physical mask, we are more naked than we had ever been with any mental masks that have been part of us before. Or maybe it’s now that all our previous masks are coming out. The painfulness of not being able to connect freely is revealing things that had been hidden before. The mask, our paper curtain, like a little tiny Iron Curtain, but battling not only with ‘the other side’ but with ourselves too! I remember, at the beginning of our lockdown, remembering one of my favourite songs, with the title that now acquires another meaning This Masquerade!: “Are we really happy with this lonely game we play, looking for words to say… We’re lost, in this masquerade.”
Masquerade! Maybe we can only identify it now, forgetting what masking had been going on so far, some of which so inbuilt into our society that they have become normal. The dangerous normal: environmental degradations, deforestation, practices that have made this world ill, and so the virus is just a sign for us to stop. Metamorphosis in need. And yet the lockdown is hard.
Unrealities of life revealing deeper realities of the subconscious, and there comes out life again, but not as we expected it. Questions. What will life be when this is over? When we can take the ‘lockdown masks’ off, will we replace them with our masks of old? Look out, the answer my friend, may be blowing in the haar…
Ursula Troche, writer, artist, and double migrant on the Irish Sea Coast in West Cumbria. Inspired by space and (translation) places and the in-between, inner lives and hidden stories. She has work published in English and German, and a collection is being translated into French. More details at: About | ColourCirclesite (wordpress.com)
Day 357
a strange dawn uncurls oyster pink I am breathing alone in my shell
Haiku and image by Nikita Shackleton
Termination By Nikita Shackleton
I am squeezing my Self into an empty crisp box. Guards wearing smiley masks watch from three rifles distance. Muted comrades observe from a perspex Zoom
box. Guards wearing smiley masks watch my hands tremble as I clear out my desk:- driver’s license, a diary with twenty-twenty visions, a framed photo of a kitten in a tree.
My hands tremble as I clear out my desk:- a notebook full of redactions, a wee feisty cactus, a broken compact mirror, tampons, lipsticks, tissues and a stained pair of pants,
a notebook full of dictations, a wee feisty box of Black Magic, a blunt pencil with teeth marks, my first draft of an Utopian Manifesto, A Dummy’s Guide to Democracies, an empty
box of Black Magic, a blunt pencil with teeth, an eraser shaped like a penis, a list of dreams, an emergency jam jar and a wedding ring. In the bottom drawer I find the forgotten;
an eraser shaped like a vagina, a list of dreams, the one who truly loved me, the candle burned at both ends, the first rainbow ever seen, secret wishes, a rope bridge with the missing link,
the one who never loved me, the candle burned the dirty girl I hated at primary school, the key to the midnight garden. Shushing faces observe while I squeeze my Self to an empty crisp.
CONTENT WARNING! Racism, racial slurs, hate speech in the following story which may offend.
LIKE AN ANGEL By Trudy Gritte
Doris stumbled out onto Dulness High Street in a state of humiliation. Her English rose complexion flamed an unflattering shade of tangerine. Like a statue she stood in the middle of the pavement hindering the tidal wave of Christmas shoppers. Snowflakes tumbled from a grey sky but Doris never noticed. Her brain was in overload. She was struggling to comprehend what had occurred within the dimly-lit interior of Kaleidoscope Gift Shop and Café.
Doris was tempted into the shop by the cute rolling pin in the window display, hand-painted with images of Santa and his reindeer, it would have been perfect for making her mince pies. She loved Christmas so much. She could never have enough tinsel, baubles and fairy lights. So she ventured into Kaleidoscope for the first time and was astounded by all the beautiful Christmas decorations and gifts. But when she looked at the label on the exquisite rolling pin she was dismayed to see it was made in China. So that was that. Derek wouldn’t tolerate anything Chinese in the house. Doris browsed the shelves admiring the jewellery, notebooks, pictures, cards, porcelain and knick-knacks. She fell in love with a jade bracelet but that was made in China too. Derek was quite right. They were taking over the world with their rolling pins and jewellery. The last straw was the cat calendar. It was the sweetest cat calendar she’d ever seen. Doris simply adored cats! But that was Chinese too! Can you believe it! Didn’t they eat cats in China? Or was it dogs? She wasn’t too sure now.
The amount of foreign garbage for sale in this shop was unacceptable so Doris marched up to the counter to complain. Well, not so much marched as shuffled because there was a long queue of people with happy faces and loaded baskets. She had to wait her turn and that was unacceptable too. The woman in front was fat and smelled of garlic. Three small children were hanging onto her coat, faces smeared with chocolate. Riffraff. They really need to stop these people breeding.
At last it was Doris’s turn. She looked up and there was a tall black woman smiling down at her with one of those veil thingies wrapped around her head. A hib-jib or was it a hobnob? Something like that. ‘How can I help you, madam?’
‘I want to speak to the Manager, please’, said Doris.
‘Well, that’s me. Is there a problem?’
‘Isn’t there someone else in charge, who is the owner of this establishment?’ asked Doris.
‘I am the proprietor of Kaleidoscope. Please tell me what the problem is Madam because I have customers waiting.’
‘You have too many foreign goods in this shop. I am proud to be British and I only buy British.’ Doris straightened her back and tried to look imperious. She heard a snigger from the young woman standing behind her. Doris cast a dirty look over her shoulder noticing purple hair, a nose stud and an orange coat. What right had she to laugh, some tart who didn’t even know how to dress properly.
‘I’m sorry you’re disappointed Madam. My stock comes from a variety of sources and I’m sure much of it is made in Britain.’
‘Such as what? Show me’.
I’m sorry but if you don’t intend to buy anything will you please step away so I can serve this lady.’
Doris grabbed a carved wooden goose from a revolving display stand. It was wearing a festive garland. She waved it in Hobnob’s face. ‘Is this British?’
Hobnob checked the base of the ornament. ‘No, this one is made in Germany.’
‘’Germany!’ Doris snorted with disgust. ‘After everything they’ve done!’ She realised that people were staring at her.
‘I really must insist that you step away, Madam. If you don’t like my shop then please leave.’
Doris suddenly noticed cakes and pastries for sale in a glass cabinet by the café area. She quite fancied a nice cake for tea. It would be a treat for Derek, take his mind off being made redundant.
‘Have you got any Victoria Sandwich Cake? ‘ she asked.
‘We have Baklava, Key Lime Pie, Apple Strudel, Belgian Chocolate Cake, Tarte au Citron and Panetonne, all very delicious but no Victoria Sandwich Cake I’m afraid’.
‘’Key Lime Pie, that’s a Yankee dessert, isn’t it? Well they’re a bunch of big mouths. And I wouldn’t eat Baklava if I was starving. I don’t swallow anything unless it’s made in Britain’.
Hobnob and Purple Tart started laughing. A man wearing a Santa hat and holding a Winter Wonderland jigsaw, piped up. ‘Hurry up, you racist bitch’.
‘Yeah, clear off Mrs Fancy Pants,’ shouted a woman wearing a beret who looked like a Communist and they all started laughing. At her. At Doris. How dare they!
She couldn’t remember actually leaving but abruptly found herself outside in the cold, the smug tinkle of the door chime still echoing in her ears. Crowds of shoppers swarmed past, ignoring her as if she was a nothing, a nobody.
She couldn’t think straight. Now concentrate Doris. What else was on her list of chores? She spotted the Building Society across the road and recalled Derek’s instructions to make another withdrawal from their savings account. The money was going down faster than expected since Derek lost his job. Her hands trembled as she pressed the button for the pelican crossing and waited for the little green man.
Doris could see herself reflected in the building society window opposite; a slim figure with blonde hair in a pony tail, wearing a coat with a fur collar. She was not a racist, she said to herself. She was a good person. She went to Church every Sunday, she was kind to animals, she donated to charities. As she watched her reflection the snow stopped and a shaft of sunlight broke through the overcast sky. It beamed down on her like a blessing. Her figure was illuminated by an unearthly light. She was an angel descending from heaven. Her face radiant, white and pure. Mesmerised by her own image Doris walked forwards into the road too soon. Needless to say, the car that broke her neck was not made in Britain.
Dead Ahead, photograph by Nikita Shackleton
SHHH! ByCrippled Pink
Can you keep a secret? I have a guilty one that I’ve never told a soul. So I hope you’re sitting down when I tell you that a small part of me is enjoying Lockdown.
Along with the fear, boredom and grief there is a sense of empowerment. For the first time I am the one at an advantage. Covid has levelled the playing field. Stay at home, avoid people, protect yourself….easy peasy….what’s so difficult about that? For once, the tables are turned and the non-disabled are having to learn some resilience, self-sufficiency and come face to face with their own mortality. It’s about time, I say. Along with thousands of other disabled people that’s what I’ve had to do for as long as I can remember.
Historically, disabled people have been excluded from full participation in society by a non-disabled majority. We had to fight and struggle for years to win our rights as equal citizens but even in 2021 barriers remain. There is discrimination and prejudice everywhere. Despite the Equality Act of 2010 not much has changed. There are improvements in physical access such as ramps and lifts but in practice the environment is still largely inaccessible. Building regulations are not enforced. Hate crime persists. It is still more difficult for a disabled person to get a job or go on holiday or go to the the theatre. Many live in poverty particularly since the introduction of PIP. Whatever your disability, going out into the world each day is hard work, it require guts and determination to keep facing the endless challenges. Some are forced back into their own homes, existing in isolation and sometimes in chronic pain, on a low income and with minimal support from Social Care. Staying at home is the norm for many as they grow older. As for missing jolly trips to the pub…there may well not be an accessible pub within twenty miles of your home. Lockdown or not, meeting mates down the pub might be as likely as a trip to the moon.
If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. In this Pandemic age there is a new normal. Disabled people have acquired survival skills that are proving useful. We are more resilient, emotionally self-sufficient, adaptable. We are accustomed to planning ahead and being alone. Disabled people tend to live on the cusp of crisis mode. There is no certainty so we learn to cover every possible eventuality. I bought respirator masks, hand sanitiser and extra food supplies a month before the UK went into the first Lockdown. Since a botched up NHS operation in 2018 I can no longer drive my car and must rely on Internet shopping. Lockdown doesn’t feel that much different to me but in some ways it is better. The miraculous advent of Zoom means I can catch up with long-lost friends, participate in meetings and online events I was previously unable to do. People have more time for each other, more time to talk, to care. People are learning to appreciate what really matters in life; the importance of loved ones, of the natural environment and the interconnectedness of the world. So when we surface out of the Pandemic I sincerely hope society will not return to the ruthless rat race of the bad old days. I hope, for once, we will be better.
Thank you for exploring The Haar at The Purple Hermit. I hope you enjoyed the treasure in the mist. The Haar will return with a new theme when you are least expecting…so keep watching this space!
Kind thoughts to all readers, writers and artists from Nikita Shackleton, 7th April 2021.
The Haar is the name for my new bimonthly magazine slot. I’m inviting writers, poets, artists, photographers, cartoonists or anyone with something different to say to send in contributions on a theme. This is an online community feature and everyone is welcome so long as the work is original. All work will be clearly credited to the author who retains copyright. Please use the contact form to get in touch if you want to submit a piece. There are a limited number of slots. I want to keep this feature small scale so sadly not all work will be selected.
The word limit for short stories is 2,000. Poems must be no more than 40 lines in length.
The theme for April’s The Haar is ‘Behind the Mask’
The deadline to send in your contribution is 31st March.
I’m looking for the broadest interpretation of the theme, not just Pandemic related. Who are we when we remove our masks? What lies behind the personas we create to survive in society. We are all different people in the privacy of our own homes and we behave differently according to where we are. We all try to fit in one way or another. I’d like to see and hear what happens when we let our hair down and truly open up…our loves, fears, jealousy, anger, hopes, worries, mistakes, secrets…
Looking forward to receiving your contributions.
For those who don’t know, as well as being a cool name for my creative arts e-zine, Haar is a special type of fog that suddenly rolls in from the sea transforming the world into a mysterious dream. Even on a sunny day in Scotland nowhere and no one is safe from the Haar!
The Purple Hermit 