Month: November 2004

  • I think that the amazing response I have received from Xanga will last me through many a day, I have been overwhelmed and deeply touched by it all. You have more than given me a reason to keep right on till the end of the road. I am sorry now I posted this poem, yet the warmth I’ve received will keep me in hope-logs for all of this winter.

    Terry

    _______________

     

    Falling.

    ______



    i



    One does not go into a nervous breakdown

    Wanting one,

    Or even knowing that you are having one.

    You are just told one day that you are mad,

    Or you start to lash out

    Or burst into tears

    Over almost nothing.



    Perhaps someone says something

    Or writes something

    And instead of laughing off their ignorance

    You take it as an insult

    And start smashing things up.



    I am writing this because

    I myself is on the verge

    Of a nervous breakdown,

    From someone who steals from me,

    Threatens me, bullies me

    And smashes up my flat.



    I am nearly at that breakdown point.

    For behind my calm smile

    I am breaking up

    And breaking down

    And soon they will have to put me away

    And then what?

    What will become of my blogs,

    Loved by many

    Hated by a few

    Ignored by most

    For being what they are

    The notes of a failed writer

    A versifier pretending to be a poet.



    I am not on the verse of a nervous brakdown

    Actually wanting one,

    But it is happening,

    The signs are all there

    I can see dead people

    I can see colours on white

    I can see things that do not exist

    I can see the sunshine at night.



    I would not even know that I was having a nervous breakdown

    If the signs were not there

    And I had never had one before

    And so know what the signs were.


    ii.



    If I could get away from here

    Live with somebody

    Or start a new life somewhere

    Somewhere with a computer,

    Because sadly, you are now

    My only friends,

    You whom I cannot touch

    You whom I may never touch

    You whom drift in and out of my life

    So aimlessly.



    I am having a nervous breakdown,

    I feel it in my skin

    I feel it every time a certain person

    Pinches something else of mine

    Or threatens me with their fist.



    I wish I could run away,

    Take my CD’s, a few clothes…

    I’ll leave everything else behind

    For I can always print off the stuff

    From my site

    Whilst it is there

    By the curtesy of my pocket.



    If I vanish suddenly,

    If I do not appear on-line

    Do not think I am dead

    (Though I could well be)

    Just see me as mad

    In some hospital chattering, either to myself

    Or to an invisible three-headed bird,

    Else I’ll be on some bitter city street

    With only my broken mind as comfort.



    I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown

    And if you think I am lying,

    Just you wait and see

    See me licking the paint off the walls

    Whilst writing poetry that no one else will ever read

    Nor ever want to.





    —

    Terry Cuthbert.

    Any comments will be answered on the LordPineapple blog

  • One always hears funny stories from people when one is a reporter, some of them are made up, but sometimes you know that someone who always tells the truth. I heard this from a phone call, then our cleaning lady, (who couldn’t have told a lie to save her family) confirmed it. Both were passengers on a Chesterfield-Clay Cross bus, when this little boy kept putting his thumb in his mouth, his irate mother constantly told the boy, “remove that thumb!” only to it being back in his mouth in seconds. In the end the Mother smacked the boy’s hand, and in a loud clear voice the boy said “When I looked in your bedroom ‘other night, you had daddy’s willie in YOUR mouth!”



    I can just imagine the other passengers trying not to laugh, my cleaner said the driver nearly crashed the bus.



    ___________



    My editor was a progressive person and like I, wanted all races treat equal, but not so many of the more vocal readers. “Who cares about a lot of Africans? I want to read about my village fair!”



    We did a lot of international stories, which is why I got to Bosnia, but were they respected? Not really. Pictures of wounded children aside, I felt that no one cared about the Balkins, why? They weren’t English lives.



    In the end the paper folded, people wanted to read about how their little Harry won the sack race, not about “some “*****” in some god-forsaken rat-hole”. Morons.



    _________________



    (Also on racism)

    A left-wing female councillor was getting romantically attached to a right-wing racist business-man; (I called them “the strangest pairing since the owl and the pussycat”). Anyway, the business-man sued me for calling him a racist, and he took me to court.

    There I was, surrounded by a law team from the National Union Of Journalists, when the judge walked in, got on his high seat, looked at the business-man and said: “I remember you, I was at an hotel with my wife, you were there, and I heard you call a black waiter a “filthy little n*****”.

    My solictor whispered to me “you’ve won already!”



    ________________



    Yes, as a newspaper reporter for a one-horse town paper I had a job to find news, but old people always had stories, and often old photographs too. I gave them their moment of glory (and they were paid too) and I filled up my paper with the most beautiful pieces. “When I started down pit, I got sixpence-halfpenny a day, and there were no bonuses just twelve ruddy hours a day six days o’ week…”



    Some of the folk died not long after telling me their stories, I liked to think they died feeling a little more worthy than they had.



    __________________



    I placed a piece in my paper about a small village police station being manned by a new constable straight from training college.



    Two days later the “rookie” (not called them in those days), was at his desk when this man came in and said he had come about the typewriter and gave a letter-head from a well-known local firm.



    The constable let the man take away the typewriter before ringing up the firm to check. The firm hadn’t a clue what the constable was talking about.



    Neither man nor typewriter was seen again. In the aftermath I got a nasty “warning” from Derbyshire Constabulary, to say that I had six faults on my car and had a week to put them right.





    (One for “Charlie The Copper” there!)



    ____________________





    Proofing. As my editor used to say “Ok, so the word is foreign, but if you are too lazy to check the spelling and the proof-reader is too lazy, you can bet your bottom dollar (sic) that one thousand bloody readers are not too lazy!


    ——-

    picture: Well-dressing, from a village near Chesterfield. (my work-town).

  • My last blog-entry was rather mis-understood by Portia and others, it was meant to reflect the lies I was told at the time I did not even know that people could lie in that way.



    My father NEVER discussed the war, he just said he had to kill people and he would never want to kill again. He was angry when a son of mine joined the army.



    Anyway, from a blog where I keep some comments, largely because my memory of events comes and vanishes, I would like to repeat some of my newspaper-story pieces.



    ____________________



    Ah, I remember calling at an old ladies house once, to seek comments for my “Day’s Of Yore” page, and she said to me “my toilet’s blocked, can you unblock it?” Sure it was blocked, that hadn’t stopped her using it, fancy cleaning out a toilet full of s***? It took me twenty minutes. Then the old lady refused to give me the interview saying she never read local papers.



    —–

    The media in the United Kingdom is only “free” when the government and it’s bogeymen wish it to be so.



    Newspapers need firms to advertise, firms give money to the government, criticise a firm or upset a government and advertisers pull out. The only papers that do try to get away with the truth are the alternative lifestyle press, and years of trashing such papers and sueing them and raiding their offices have forced them all to the wall.



    I once had a lot of my private papers taken away merely because I had troubled someone high up in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and asked them awkward questions about an army-led killing.



    —–

    a reporter from another coal-area newspaper found proof that some of the so called scabs were not strike-breaking but going in to wreck the coal-faces and pit-heads, so when the strike was over the coal miners would be laid off. The reporter was knocked over by a hit and run driver whom the police seemed rather uneager to search for, and at the reporter’s funeral, his house was broken into and the only things missing were his notes and the “proof”.



    ( note, the above was true. They can kill me if they like. Screw CGHQ!)



    ——

    I learnt language as a reporter, if a woman is telling you how she got beaten up, you can’t just guess what she said or re-ask her.  You have to get it right else you will upset her more (and your editor) “be teff ‘e wanted mon fair tallyman lad” I had to write in shorthand as “To be truthful, he wanted the dept-collectors money sir” though in the paper I would put her saying “tally-man” and “lad” but not as saying “teff”.



    ——-

    Before my stroke I could type at least 60wpm, though my copywriter did most of my typing. Now I am down to one finger with another ready for the capitals.



    —–



    Our paper was a small one with few staff, we had dedicated amateurs writing for us, but because the pay was low or non-existent, they never bothered to write most weeks, so Joe Muggins here became all sorts of people, old-young-male-female… (which is why I can write as a blackie fortuna one day, A Rev Toby another, Tiffy Witherington another and Sophie Morgan another. The newspaper trade demands it in both verse and prose!) Quite often I wrote the gardening column, the Prayer for the week column, (so much for being an athiest) a children’s column (which I’ve wrote about before) as well as country matters and “stories”.



    —–

    (To be continued)

     

    Poems of mine are on my LordPineapple site

  • Your generation are lucky, you don’t know how much we suffered in the fifties and sixties here in the UK, every bugger had “fought a war for you.” And if it were not for them, “we’d all be speaking ruddy German!”



    It used to drive us batty. The bullshit we had to hear, like some old geezer telling us how he had met Churchall who had said to him “Thou deserve the VC lad!” (VC=Victoria Cross, the highest awarding medal given to British soldiers). And we found out later he had been in the catering corp!



    Some men were like the yanks in “saving Private Ryan”, they and their friends had single-handily won the war, killed thousands of Germans and saved all their comrades lives, as well as getting laid wherever they went.



    It drove us all crazy!



    One bloke used to tell us that he shot at Hitler, escaped from a German Prison Camp and destroyed several tanks…until his misses let on that, throughout the conflict, the lying old sod had never even left England.



    Gordon Bennett! I hope when I die I don’t meet all these old idiots again. Though if I do, I have one advantage now, I can speak “ruddy German”!



    —

    The Clown From Clowne.

  • As I sit down to a plate of fried spam (the meat!) and three giant leeks, I reflect on how many lovely replies I got for my last entry here. Thank you all.


    I like strange food and drinks like peppermint pop and Whittards flavoured fruit-powdered tea, and beetroot with sardines and so on. I also like good English fare like steak and kidney/oyster pudding, lava bread, parkin-cake, and my obsession when “pubbing”, fish & chips.


    I am off work this week and next as I regain the movement in my left side, or at least move my neck without severe pain. But my paid work today as a store clerk is crap to what I was, a reporter.


    Some of the better (non-Sarahs’) comments I leave around including comments about my past life and comments and blogs from here, can be found on http://theclownfromclowne.blogspot.com/


    That blog is full of who I am, what I think, where I’ve been, and is nearer than this one to how I tick.


    Terry.


    elsewhere: Three_Headed_Sarahs  begin to pee people off with their British sense of irony. Americans rarely GET irony! They think it’s being insulting rather than poking general fun as an outsider. They don’t do satire like us Brits. Sad, because it’s all meant as harmless fun wrapped up in deadly truth. (Reading that Ohio?)


    And   LordPineapple continues with the poetry, the entry there now is of poems all wrote in two mornings at Florence Park Oxford. Next? Not decided yet, maybe The Rev Tobias Trontby needs a look in.


    Thanks again Terry.

  • A lot of people on Xanga does not seem to get me, come on, you are clever people so you can at least try.


    I have Aspergers that mean I am an outsider to the human race, and as I have seen first hand what the human race can do to each other, I am glad. if I could fully empathise after seeing a new born baby with a knife through her vagina, after seeing a raped woman hanging from a tree, after seeing a two-year old shot dead in front of me, after seeing a couple dying in no-man’s land still holding hands…if i could be empathic I would have a nervous breakdown.


    I do not do rude, I do not do hate, I do not do nice, I do not do false lies, baseless compliments, no I do the truth. I can not hide my feelings. If I love your poem I say so, if I think your poem is crap I say so or do not comment knowing I will say I do not like your poem.


    That is me, if you do not believe me look up “Asperger’s”.


    It is a general belief that because I write under various fictions I can lie and am lying now, that is not true, I can do fiction only in the confines of fiction and all my personae are from the outside looking in, knowledge. I knew a Rev Toby, I knew a Sophie Morgan, not as those names of course. Even The Sarahs’ are based on someone, myself.


    They are only fiction with what I give them from my mind of memory. That is me.


    I do not lie, I am not rude I do not hate, I only say what I think.


    Sorry, but there is nothing I can do about my condition other than to kill myself. Terry.