March 30, 2005

  • THE CLOWNE ON TOUR.



    Woodstock.



    In a week when I’ve gotten my first American book published, and in a week where I have been updating my bizarre Surname lists, despite sneering guest-book comments…and in the first week I am in serious gear about going to Texas, one would think I’d have enough on my plate without taking my blog for a tour.



    I’ll post a LINK about Bleinheim Palace as it’s the park and not the palace and gardens I’m off to visit.



    I have been here five times, all with kids. I have seen the house, the secret gardens, the butterfly museum, the little railway, the maze and everything else, but I have never toured the large park. I know that Autumn would be more romantic with fancy-coloured trees and delicious mushrooms, but I felt I wanted to come here today. (One of my photos -link-)



    I have photos but my scanner isn’t working, got one somewhere on my site, have to find it.



    A couple of addiums: Colin Dextor’s first Inspector Morse book was called “Last Bus to Woodstock”, and when there was a pop festival inside Bleinheim Park, it was billed as “The OTHER Woodstock”.



    Woodstock itself is a quiet typical English large village with it’s thatched cottages, pubs, old tea “shoppes”, and gift shops. It is very expensive to buy into. Woodstock has a dullish museum and not a much better church, though I might have felt down when I visited both.



    To come here alone might at least give me a good monoblog of sorts. The main street has it’s stocks and it’s lynch-gate, but is spoilt by also being one giant car park. Now I am not anti-car, but this is absurd, fumes and slamming car doors can’t be very poetical.



    It’s six quid to look around the park but once an Oxford reporter told me that the park itself is free to journos so I took my lifelong press-card with me. It costs me nothing to update, and being poor I see no reason to pay such a bossy entrance price, I wonder if American parks charge high entrance fees,



    I’m in, and I ignore the castle area and walk stright into sheep-land.



    I walk into a pine-wood, I find a quail feather (if I run out of biros it’ll be very handy!) The wood is split into two, on the outside are firs with pine-cones everywhere, inside are newly budding oaks and elms and chestnut trees. This is where mushrooms will sprout in autumn, that is on those parts not covered by nettles.



    I do not linger long in the woods, just stay long enough to soak it in for my poems, especially for a Sophie poem.



    In a poem called “Culver Cliff” I mentioned the Duke of Yarborough’s monument in the Isle of Wight, here I am by the Duke of Marlborough’s monument, but it’s too open for romance.



    I just manage to cock my screwed leg over an electric sheep fence. Geese and moorhens are on the massive lake (too big to see the far side, though it is rain-misty). There is nothing like water to calm the nostrils. It might be the womb, the everlasting desire, that men have more than women, the desire to get back inside their mothers… or it might be the blame of William Wordsworth, but water is calming.



    I write two Sophie Lucy Morgan poems, but as neither is about this, I’ll put them into the present LP blog.



    It might be the end of March but the grass is still covered by brown dead leaves.



    Been in the Gardens for over two hours, not wrote much but had a great walk. It’s only the third time I’ve used my card since I “retired”, better not take it to Texas, they might demand a visa!



    Into Old Woodstock, (map) and there is a zebra crossing with belisha-beacons LINK, something one no longer see in cities. I turn off to walk alongside the River Glyme and it’s water meadows. The Glyme is more of a babbling brook than a river in reality. A sign: Danger, Hidden Ponds. I close my eyes on a bench, there are planes flying into Kidlington (Oxford) Airport, two miles down the road, then the now heavy rain is

    splashing in my face, other noises include the wind, geese, pigeons, and of course traffic, but the main sound is water going down a weir.



    What better place to end the journy with a sorjoin in the 14th Century old coaching inn “The Duke of Marlborough”. A lovely pocketty old building.



    On THE SARAHS’ site The Goliaths are taking on religion, trying to get an intelligent quote that could change their life for ever.



    —

    The Clowne from Clown.

     

    Three_Headed_Sarahs Where their sons, after ignorance from a Christian and rudeness from a Muslim have joined Zen Buddaism to the ff % 243 religion of the Goddess of the Egg. (Don’t read unless you are nuts!)

     

    LordPineapple with three poems “by” Sophie, two wrote at Blenheim Park (though not about the park.)

     

March 27, 2005

  • The 3 Sarahs’ 
    are leaving for
    GOOD. Say ta-ta
    to them at the
     Three_Headed_Sarahs 
     

     

    G’day,

    Let me with thought and music try to remember more that is lodged somewhere in my memory.



    Josephine Baker, singing mostly French, got that Flubucket?*



    *fauquet  of Xanga.



    La Petite Tonquinoise first. (I Know this as La petite tonkinoise“)

    Remember trying to sing this once, but can’t remember where. Not in school. Think it was a picnic once in the Peak District of Derbyshire. I lived only a few miles from it and the Ficticious Rev. Toby lives in it.



    From the dams used in The Dambusters film and in 633 Squadron to The Shivering Mountain, which really does shake in the wind, the place is magic for anyone with a car, a family, and a sun in the sky.



    The Blue John Mines, described in a previous blog (umm, perhaps not, will do so another time. MEANWHILE LINK (without my personal bits) and well-dressing with flower-petals and other natural objects. (ditto previous blog) If you think I am searching for the links, too bad, might one day, might by the time you read this, but I want to write not link.



    J’ai Deux Amours! Ah yes, know this too, forgot much of my sabbatical in Menton, but sure this was part of it. As Dis-Moi Josephine. A wonderful song!



    Anyway, I am drifting. Derbyshire. Tintwistle Moors, added to the county since my birth, yes, we went camping there with a Chief Superintendant (re: of the police) and his family. Between us there were 7 under the age of 7 and 4 between 7 and ten. His grandchildren and my children, camping on a lonely moor! Amazingly, we never once got a “this is SO boring!” as we expected, though they did bring a sheep back one evening, saying it looked lost. As if they didn’t know anything about sheep*. The senior copper took it back and met the farmer who said “Agnus loves people!” I asked the Super did you charge the farmer for bestility? (It’s a old farmer’s tale, partly true, that sheep that has been shagged grow to love humans).



    Please don’t ask!



    *In those days we let kids between 7 and 10 roam lonely moors by themselves, now I won’t even let my 6 year old grandson go to the shop by himself and I live above the shopping mall!



    Yes, that was a great week, rained twice, once when we were in Holmfirth, where I inteviewed  (another time) the stars of the TV hit series about bored old men who acted like big kids. “Last Of the Summer Wine” has been running now for 34 years. Most of the original actors are now dead. Peter Salles, has been there from the start and is going strong. He was the voice behind “The Wrong Pair Of Trousers” and the follow-ups.



    Anyway, stop rambling with no boots on, at Holmfirth we met

    Charles Aznavour of all people. He was amazed that three adults and one child knew him in a South Yorkshire town.



    Hey Flubucket, you met him? He was there to see a collection of saucy postcards! Bamforths made these British humour cards of fat women, timed men and rude puns and sold them at seaside places. Typical one: Fat lady to timid husband. (She is looking in a seaside rock shop, he at a young skimmy-glad blonde lady) “I’m thinking something hard will be nice to eat”



    Don’t ask! Wondered where Bob Smartass got his ideas from!



    Anyway, there is some wonderful countryside in the Peak, I expect America can do ten times better, but the children loved being brought up there even if three of the five now live nearish me now, in Oxford!



    Bakewell Pudding, also in my blog, never Bakewell tart! It’s really a pudding to eat with a spoon, and for a couple of whiles, I lived 15 miles from the original shops (web-site will say more). Yes, I miss that pudding, if I had the money I’ll get it sent to me, mind, if I had the money I’ll go back to Derbyshire and be a full time writer.

    Couple of whiles, because I lived in both Matlock and Hathersage, both about that distance away.



    A book of poems out thanks to The_Queen_Of_Swords, and so check this http://www.cafepress.com/assortedfruits site. And this site For_Terry too whilst you are at it.



    Links links links, like a bleeding golf course. When my putter broke, I said to my friend Bob Hope that I need a new golf club, so he brought me St Andrews.



    Been busy on my SURNAME lists, insane I know, but compelling!



    My mind has gone blank, so this has better be it!



    Terry.

March 21, 2005

  • Link to my NEW book http://www.cafepress.com/assortedfruits


    Link to well…check it PLEASE! For_Terry


    “The Clowne at University Parks Oxford.”



    I’m walking past the Natural History Museum here at Oxford, with the dino bones loved by children, the skull mentioned in Philip Pullman’s “his Dark Materials” and the dodo bird famous from Alice in Wonderland, and also by me!



    I am now in the University Parks. It’s been many moons since I first stepped in here. The cherry tree I sat under is, I think, gone. The tree I wrote poems under when I was supposed to be reading about harmonical progressions.



    But I am not Casanova, not some grand figure, just a poor writer, so I will keep this is moderate terms.



    Beyond is the cricket pitch I once saw the University play Derbyshire on, and I cheered for my county! Beyond that is the rugby pitchs where I also played on.



    I am sitting on a bench on the grass, and it’s back to reality as a man let his dog shit not far from me. Where are The Sarahs’ when you bloody want them!



    The cold dry start to the year means the flowers are not plentiful, and the cold day means that the flowers I can see, (from daisies to daffs) are half-shut, and who can blame them? Knight to Queen’s Bishop seven. Check-mate.



    Beyond here also is a duckpond where once 50 ducks followed my terrified grand-daughter even after I had picked her up, they were wanting more bread. I felt a cross between St. Frances and the Pied Piper!



    I don’t know why I am writing here, nor why I mention say, the flowers, but not the sweet papers, or hear the birds but not the traffic. It is not as if my writing is going to bring me immortality, and it’ll most certainly die before me, not that any writing is immortal, no matter what certain Americans may think, even the Bible will die with mankind.



    Still, there is nothing I can do about it all, I write I suppose to keep me sane, for I am slowly going insane as many of you might have realised. Pain and heartache, loneliness and the lack of money all is taking me down, as is the mind I was born with, a child I raised, a child I raised only for a short time, and the lack of a holiday.



    What will make me sane? Packing up work of course, but I can hardly live on my writing! Holidays in Texas and elsewhere will also keep insanity at bay, but I will end up like John Clare and Robert Lovell, I am sure.



    Maybe insanity will make me a better writer, I doubt it, for every Lovell there were a thousand madmen scribbling away their lives, unread, unloved and unaccounted. I wonder how much poetry has gone up in smoke in Asylum boiler houses?



    Ah well, if this is to go on Xanga, I must not down myself any more. Too many readers have stopped visiting my site because I am too depressing!



    —

    The Clowne From Clown.


    ______

    A poem I wrote aged 12 (and it was all true)

     

    I have a black cat

    I call him Mr. Keats

    He is big and fat

    And never eats meat.

     

    He has two yellow eyes

    And forgets to purr

    He hollers when he cries

    And has very soft fur.

     

    He loves this and that

    But loves the warm heat

    He is a bad-tempered cat

    My old Mr. Keats!

     

    Terry.

     

    ——–

    My little pain-in-the-arses are being near the edge again with letters to the American Defence and poems by The Immortal One.


     

    And LordPineapple  has 2 poems by The Rev Toby (quite religious) and Poor Ingar has another poem on her dying so young.

March 18, 2005

  • The Clown Speaks.

    This Text is being wrote as I think, my rapid rabied mind dances like this all of the time, as if stoned (when not). Hunter Thompson or Ginsberg or the dadas had nothing on me when in I’m free fall



    “Anyway” was wrote like this as were some of my poems as re some of my teeth. Wrote without really thinking. I can write good like this, but most of the times you only see bad, this may be bad, if so will I revise it as I do most of my poems (exceptions though are many for it’s said poets do not write poems, the poems write themselves).



    It does here. A bit of a cheat, got Buddy Holly on the turntable, er, cd player. That’ll be the Day.” I love “Heatbeat”, they used it for a British country policeman series. The books were better, the books by Nicholas Rhea were better. It took place in the sixties between the end of Jesus and the moment the Beatles went mad.



    That’s upset two lots of readers! Yup, when I am in this zany stroking mood, re: part of my brain, it’s nothing to do with stroking Big sandra’s tits or any other kind of stroke. Once I patted a piller-box and let it sniff my hand, I thought it was a breed of dog. It seems people born with different brains have different reactions to mind-strokes my limbs are not too bad now, it’s my neck and above that suffers, my mind should be dead by now, it makes me a sad little funny honey, (“Baby-Baby”) it has even brought me back some of the empathy, what was always just what I learnt, is now natural to me.



    Why do you miss a beat when my baby kisses me?



    I write as good, some may say better than  have ever. Now I no longer create for a living, I have only poetry (and prose like this) left to create and I have few friends so a lot of time. Mind, most of my poems are wrote half-way in the night or before I go to work in the morning, or in these moods.

    I can’t write natural.  I’ve done everything and I’m sick of trying.

    (Sorry, that was Buddy, (not bud, can’t get any anymore!)



    It’s raining in my heart. See, I write as some conversations go, which helps me to write under various personae as I write it against “The Times” code for correct English. (An editors whim!) persona to everyone else.



    Bo Diddley with a love for will not fade away. Concentrate. is that right? My spelling was never my strong point. “If it get’s passed the piss-artist” (the often drunk sub-editor proof-reader) “then it’ll get into the paper. And “check your facts, if someone famous died in 1690, then make sure they did not die in (*******) 1692! No matter how obscure the silly old sod is, some schmuk will know when he died!”



    I slipped up more than once. It was on a gravestone I read the year that a long-dead famous Chesterfield builder died. (can’t remember the dates and as checking is even easier now thanks to google…DIDN’T HAVE GOOGLE IN MY DAY! MOAN MOAN! then I’ll say 1860, just an unchecked fact as I can’t be bothered to google cos I’ve forgot the person’s name!)



    “Well, all right!” Anyway, say the gravestone said 1860, well maybe, but everyone knew he died in 1862 except for myself and the drunk proof reader jumped-up-sub-editor, a funny balding little man who lived in terror of his wife. Female reporters used to answer the office phone when he was not there and say “stop it …..!” (the dots are for the sub-editor’s name, remember it, but the poor sod might be dead by now). Inside half a hour his wife would storm unannounced into the paper and DEMAND to see her filthy cheating husband.



    There was then a big inquiry, we ALL knew who answered the phone, the editor too, but no one wanted to tell poor little baldy who did it. Thankfully, revenge was rare. He was too proud of his job to turn our articles into surreal nonsense in which we get to call the Chief Constable of Derbyshire that something that King Cnut didn’t have on his body.



    He could have screwed us all, poor devil, only he stood between our cock & bull stories (Some wrote drunk in “The Cock & Bull” public house, not the famous London one though!) and the great sneering public, most of which we could hear in the street saying “Paper’s is a load of bumfluff this week, don’t ken why we gone buy’i duck!” “Aye, royt ruddy daft of us, tha’s bloody Cuthbert again, I ken he’s behint us lass!!! HE SHOULD HEAR, can’t he get his ruddy facts royt?!”



    But that was then.

    And this is now.



    And this is it.



    For now.



    —

    The Clowne From Clown

     

    WILL ANSWER COMMENTS HERE WEEKEND COS New POEMS ARE NOW ON THE LordPineapple  SITE!

     

    Note: Many of my personae fails, I don’t have enough in them. The latest being “Charlie The Copper”. In the next Pineapple blog I shall put poems of three of the names that never quite made it into double figures in the number of poems.

March 13, 2005

  • The Clowne in London.



    This was the sort of thing  had planned to write, for I went all the way to London to meet Halie, (Becca’s daughter) and some Spanish guides. I turned up. I TURNED UP.

    I had planned a lovely blog similiar to…



    London is the capital city of the USA state called “Britland”, it is the home of Mr. Bean, Tony Blair, and the Three-Headed Sarahs’, but only one lives in the state-capital Bushland (formally London).



    “If you tire of London, then you are tired of life.” says the famous saying. London has more suicides per-person than all the rest of The South-England County of Britland State.



    It is the home of Sherlock Holmes, El Cid and Margaret Thatcher, only one of which is still living (just). It is my journey for the day, meating (sorry, hungry!) Becca’s daughter and her family and a lot of young Spanish Girl Guides. (“Mama, this loco hombre met us, I was so miedoso, he parecerse (sure that’s right Sarahs’?) SO viejo, and SO el gordo!”)



    From Oxford, it takes the train one hour to arrive and plonks one in the middle of nowhere. Coach is better, takes it one and a half hours outside rush-hour times. I am to meet the poor unsuspecting saps (I mean, I have been driven insane by a three-headed pet!) at The Hard Rock Cafe in Old Don Quixote La Mancha Park Lane. Couldn’t find it on the map, so I phoned up the Late Bob Hope, and he told me it used to be called “Old Park Lane.”



    I have to carry a board with my name on it! “Lord Pineapple”.



    I get my sign out and I am mugged. “Sorry your Lordship, culo toffs!” I try again and am arrested because I boiled the egg I found, the egg the Sarahs’ popped out of and made me have an attack and die. “No Mordo Senior!” They brought me back. Anyway, I was under arrest for helping illegal aliens. The Sarahs’ bodyguard “Zac” sorted them out. I waited again, and found myself mobbed by angry cat-lovers.



    I am getting there! In time as well as in place!





    ———————

    But of course my lack of confidence was justified. It hurt me to go there, hurt me without my walking stick, hurt me to quench my fears of rejection that I have felt since my son turned on me. I hate rejection, why do you think I don’t send my stuff off to be published now. My stroke had taken more than my mind and mobility, it destroyed my hope. No wonder I am not telling anyone in Oxford that I am going to Texas, my confidence is that low.



    Hurry up death, life is shit.



    —

    I did get to see the London St. Patrick’s Day Parade, very impressive, children on stilts for example (I’d been shit scared of them falling were they mine!). Women dressed up and riding swans. I stood outside the Hard Rock Cafe and waved an Irish flag I brought. I went into the cafe had a beer and snapped my credit-card. good job I had taken money out of my bank first.



    Pissed off, I walked to China-Town and had a curry meal, wasted the tiny bit of money I had because I was so, well…



    When I am in a better mood, I’ll write more about London, it’s strange little alley-ways and it’s pokey little shops (for example.)



    Meanwhile, I’ll leave this open for comments but will return to my LordPineapple blog to answer there. Interesting enough Tiffy has a poem there called “Blind-Date.”



    Next time anyone from America wants to see me in England, they’ll have to come to Oxford.



    Terry. The Clowne from Clown.

March 7, 2005

  • Anyway, Sunday it’s London with the Spanish! Will write more then!

     

    P.S. Sorry for some of my comments on this site, I am afraid pain makes me feel lonely and unloved, as of course it does. It’s hard to have off-line friends when you moan about your limbs hurting all of the time!

    Terry.

     

    In an Oxford College. (Wrote June ’04.)



    I’m sitting in an Oxford college quadrangle, soaking in the magic of this city.

    It is dusking, and in the gloaming where a pale blue sky turns to grey: bats glide from tower to tower, and in the room above me, a student is practising on a flute.



    Oxford is a great place to write without people smerking and asking silly questions, for people are always writing here, writing down maths, essay-notes, or even the names of students for tomorrow’s “eights” (LINK).



    This is not “my” college, I would not get the same peace there. It is a college of crickets, not only the ones that rub their legs together, but two students practising the game, ball cracking on willow.



    On the other side of the quad, where the purple mysteria hangs down from light brown limestone walls, a girl opens a window and calls to a boy below.

    She is no Juliet. “Don’t forget the “f…… tonics this time!” she laughs, and in the same happy banter, he gives her back the two fingers.



    It is getting darker and lights from the hall flicker behind a massive tree, and a gentle breeze tickles the pages of my note-book.



    If there could be a heaven, it would be somewhere like here. Perhaps they’ll scatter my ashes here and my dust will cling to the college walls until they are cleaned.



    I was once one of these beautiful people, once I believed that one day I would become a famous poet. It seems I was just not good enough.



    Still, in the past few years since part of my mind closed for ever, I have found a niche writing under various personae on the internet. t’s not much, and my fans are few, but I am proud of it, and sometimes I even forget myself that I was born without any understanding of other people.



    I suppose I had better move or else I’ll have to ask the lodge porter to open the front gate for me!



    A moth just misses my face as I walk past the smells of the college kitchen (chillie con carne! Ugh!). I retire to a nearby pub and drink my beer in it’s walled garden in silence.



    I am alone as usual.



    —

    Terry Cuthbert.

     

    LordPineapple for new poems Monday 7th. this site updated end of the week.

February 25, 2005

  • Nothing special today… Been writing poems and prose, so the truth doesn’t get much of a look in!


    Notes from Lord Pineapple.

    LordPineapple =Now. Tiffy Witherington Spotlight.


    Monday: Story by Sophie Lucy Morgan, aged ten.


    The Three_Headed_Sarahs are away. Their sons just put a blog up, but the Sarahs’ won’t be back yet.


    __________


    First snow of the season this week, not much snow here, but the north of England has been hit badly with sport fixures canceled and some terrible deaths.



    ___________



    Could go out somewhere this weekend, weather permitting, but not sure I have the stamina in me, anyway, I have so much shopping to do it’s unbelievable. But where to go? Bleinheim Palace? It all sounds so naff when there is a world beyond my reach and a passport full of dust.



    _____________



    About fifty years ago I set myself a list of things to do. I was always writing and collecting lists. The internet alone stopped a lot of my lists like Surnames ending with such “Suffolks” (as I call them) as “-by”, “-field” and so on. I put Some of them on the internet even. At http://3sarahs.homestead.com/surnames.html though a lot of the pages are now missing. Common names of proper stars, horses names, names of roses… Of course the internet have all of these, I have even printed off pages, but it’s not the same.

    Anyway, I made a list of 100 things I wanted to do with my life. A lot of the on this list now seem fanciful, the rag-to riches ones, the dying-famous ones. But one thing on the list was visiting America. Will that happen? I have been invited, though heard little since, but I won’t harp on this, for doubts about me not  going is not down to lack of trust in the inviters, but the fact that things on that list no longer come true. Since 1996, not one thing on that list has come true, however mundane, and it’s hard to believe for me that any will.



    _________

    Other hobbies I had were all childish in a way, and my interest in them vanished after my stroke, which was also the time my kids became to be teenagers and older. Origami is the big one. My son Darren now has my books and he’s the master now, making them for his betroved’s little boy from a failed marriage plus his nieces and nephews. Word-games also, I made up tons of Tom-Swifties and laddergrams, and even added to some internet sites since. Limericks and clerihews too.



    _________

    I See People who I am visiting are not visiting back, despite their updating their blogs. The list contains some people I thought were my friends, so to you all from New Zealand to Kent to Iowa…Sorry if I offened you, not that you’ll read this!



    ____________

    Only bits and pieces today. I have not got this blog of truth worked out yet, so it’s still very self-centured and conceited, but I’ll try in time to be less introverted.

    Meanwhile my LORD PINEAPPLE Blog is up with a spotlight on Tiffy Witherington, and on Monday there will be a story by Sophie Lucy Morgan.



    I am beginning to realise that I am not all that good at this. There must be out there a page or two on “How to write successful blogs” But if I did that I’ll be inviting you all by subscription only, say 200 dollars per year. That’ll cut the reading of it down to zero!



    ____________

    Been looking at Google, when I started out as Lord Pineapple, there was only me, now he’s the name of a fruit shop in South America and the name of someone in an on-line game, and characters in two different other on-line games!



    ———

    Terry. The Clown From Clowne.



    _______________

    P.S.

     


    To Becca: ( LittleEgypt  )


    I have named one of my plastic daffodils
    After you.

    That might seem an insult
    But it is not.

    For the daffodils are the last things I see
    At night,

    And the first things I see
    In the morning.

    So you will be there
    Next to me

    All night long.


    Terry, Lord Pineapple.

February 19, 2005

  • Clown From Clowne.



    Some of the eccentrics I have worked with. Part one.



    I worked with some amazing people on the newspaper. Here are a few.



    William, the compositor.



    William was a retiree who was one of the first British soldiers to discover the horrors of a concertration camp. He said that that experience had deranged him a little, and though he was a good husband and father, it was true, he was slighty deranged.



    William was a keen gardener, but about the only thing he ever grew was what he called “cowcumbers”. Each of us on the paper must have had a fridge load of rotting cucumbers, and on location our loved ones always gave us cucumber sandwiches in a desperate bid to use them up. I used to give the cucumbers to old ladies, one of whom told me where to stick it.



    William was great at half-told stories, for example, he’d ramble on about something, stop and tried to think who had told him the story, by the time he had worked that one out, he had forgotten the story or finished the wrong story. “Another few minutes off my life!” I sighed to him once.



    The last I heard, William was still going strong at the age of ninety and his local shop stocked all fruit and veg bar cucumbers as there was a glut of them in his village.



    —

    Winnie, the cleaner.



    Winnie was a female cleaner who was scruffy, rude and awkward, even her union refused to acknowledge her. Her retarded daughter walked into the offices from time to time to eat and drink our meals and raid our fridge. We tolerated Winnie for a couple of months until another daughter arrived with her five year old daughter.



    Winnie and her daughter soon fell out, after rowing over money, and the women started fist-fighting each other. The poor child had hysterics.



    Of course Winnie got the sack then, but we often saw her in Chesterfield calling one or other of her grand-daughters a little cow, a little bitch and even a little c… Loving grandmother she was not.



    —

    Gordon, the picture editor.



    Gordon was also a retiree, though he retired at 53. He was a former GP, who actually was still a qualified doctor. Gordon had a nervous breakdown when he diagnosed his nephew as having a cold three days before the boy died of meningitis.



    A good photographer and cartoonist, Gordon was a pain in the neck at times, he had a dread, a phobia of medicine. And woe to anyone who titled him “doctor”, he would not find pictures for anything medical, nor anything to do with hospitals. Gordon was always in the editor’s office being threatened with dismissal, but of course we all felt a little sorry for him, a bachelor, he seemed to have no interest in either sex, and lived in a flat that was like a pig-sty.



    —

    More another time, but there is one eccentric reporter I won’t cover, he also wrote the children’s page, was the religious expert (though an athiest) and was the science “spokesman” (having a first in physics.) He also took on other jobs, all these under assumed names so as to keep the NUJ happy For example the gardening columnist never got his copy in on time and was always demanding more money. William took it over but all he ever seemed to write about was cowcumbers. So in came to pass that the reporter-donkey ended up the gardening expert too.



    I wondered what happened to Terence?



    —

    Terry Cuthbert.



    __________________

    My user name Bob Smartass started off as a pee-take on

    an awful poet called Terry Smart. At communal poetry

    readings he used to read a children’s comic (and laugh

    out loud) whilst other people were reading, then read

    his stuff (the only lines of his I remember were two I

    stole “He made love to his girl/Till the cows came

    home”.)



    As soon as he read his stuff he went (so we put him on

    first, and all turned up five minutes late!) I soon

    started to make fun of his crap poetry which was all

    about sex and contained a lot of f and c type words,

    the trouble was I could not write true crap and my Bob

    Smartass poems were entertaining, one night he had

    left his comic behind, returned, and heard me recite and

    realising I was taking the pee out of him walked on

    stage and thumped me on the nose!



    Later “Bob Smartass” became successful on the punk circuit and I mixed with some famous punk rockers!



    ___________

    The Metro thingie is a waste of time, everyone I contact that lives near me either do not reply or give a kurt sarcastic reply, even the fellow poets. Oxford Xanga writers NEVER reply though I try to be as nice as possible, for example for the under 18′s stressing my age so they don’t fear me a preditor. Even the Oxford University students never reply to me!



    ____________



    One final thing. Ben asked about pubs with funny names. I grew up in Clowne opposite a pub (now sadly long gone) called the “Pig & Whistle”. It had three bars, “The Pig” “The Whistle” and “The Ampersand”. The landlord had two alsations (german shepherds) and at closing time used to cry “get the dogs out” (the modern pop song reminded me of him!) The two alsations used to snarl and froth at the mouth and people ran out of the pub. In the afternoons my sister and I used to play ball with the dogs, they would not hurt us, but they turned flipping nasty if anyone else (including our parents) got too near them!



    Another Derbyshire pub (still open) is “The Quiet Woman” in Rev Toby’s neck of the woods. The swinging post deplicts a woman with no head!

     

    Terry.

     

    ___________

    As I am not sure when I’ll have time updating my Lord Pineapple site, here is a poem to go on with.

     

    At the funeral of a child.

    _____________________



    Another soul has passed away

    On a cold and forgetful day.



    And all that’s left with the loss

    Is another windswept cross.



    And he who was a child at play

    Will not see in another day.



    For God alone will atone

    He who was once flesh and bone.



    —



    Jacques du Lumière

     


    ________________



    hahahahaha. Keep up the brilliant replies! I’ll get to visit you all after I’ve wrote the next “Clowne from Clown” blog-entry. It contains an angel and a message, don’t let my “weird mind” go to waste, use it for my own type of writing, write how I have ALWAYS thought, with asides and dispassages. They loved me on the paper, I only kept the job because (a) I was a charmer, with old people and old women including the bosses Jewish mother who escaped the holocaust with her children by knocking out the soldier leading them to the train to death.


    Oh, and (b) I could write like anyone from Shakespeare to the bosses Mother! The Boss feared if I left, the boss’s mother and myself will get their revenge on the boss who hated his bullying mother with a fear that sent him into being a nervous wreck!


    Who says this world is boring? Now of course eccentricness is going from us Brits, and so is the fun out of life. I knew a man who collected pictures of man-hole covers, so I copied him, couldn’t help it, I was a mimic of lousy ideas! Bet I have as many pictures of man-hole covers (metal designs some quite beautiful, others with names of long lost iron firms and builders yards) as that other dotty man.


    Better shut up! See yer!





February 14, 2005

  • Thursday: NEW poems on LordPineapple ‘s site

     

    “Shotover Woods”



    On the edge of Shotover Woods on what was once the main road into Oxford, a dirt path full of water and mud.



    On Summer saturdays children dodge 4×4′s and dogs eat people’s picnics, but today,  the 12th of February, the place is quiet.



    Down into the trees to see the wind creak their old dry bones, for it’s a strong wind today, the sort to send apples into worm’s mouths. This reminds me of West Wales except there is no beach near this muddy lane.



    There is a sand pit for the kids, though not much else for them except hide and seek and nature lessons, yet kids love Shotover.



    Alone, I just keep to the old road, the magic of beach and sand pits at present a thing of my past.



    In the spiky brambles and bracken copses, I can get lost in my heart as clouds dance in the blue skies. The trees are bare and showing old blackened bird-nests. There are very few flowers about, and up here, none. I bet Iffley woods is already celedined and cotsfooted.



    But it is not what I perceive that matters, it’s how I write, write to stop this from being boring, for it’s only about a walk along an old dirt track through an ancient wood.



    A man on a race-horse.



    I stopped writing when people walked past, not that I’ve ever been self-conscieness about writing in public. I’ve known writers who would rather forget their next mastepiece than get out their note-book on a crowded bus or woodland walk. Not I, no wonder I am considered an eccentric!



    Plenty of wild bitds to make up for the lack of flora as I carry on jumping over the mud pools. Did write “rock pools” for I love rock-pools, the bladder-wrack and the jellyfish and the crabs and the little water-insects. Sadly, I need a child with me to look at them unless I act the mad professor and call things by mock latin names like “wow a threesarah clepities!”



    Walking down into Wheatley village for a drink and a bus home. A lot of cars now, so I’ll escape into the woods for a while, to see the holly-bushes and the moss on stones and the broken tree branches. The first shoots of harebells! The beauty is spoilt by a moron with an air rifle. Suppose one gets a lot of that in Texas, “Hey guys I just shot a bigfoot!”



    I can barely hear the traffic in the wind. There is something romantic about trees though god knows what!



    Once again my childhood memories return via Matlock Moor and Cresswell Crags. Climbing tress with Ian Payne, chucking water-bombs at each other. Once Ian missed me and it landed on a man who actually got out a horse whip for us, Ian and I stayed up that tree for a hour before the fool gave up.



    When I was a child there was a lot of hitting of kids. The only “no-no” was the hitting of a girl by a man, so I used to hide behind my sister who was in fact a lot worse than me. She used to say “touch me and I’m telling my dad, he’s a copper!”



    What has that to do with this wood? Nothing. So it’s time to regain the road into the village. Off of the plateau, flowers like snowdrops crocuses and daisies start to appear. A seat! By a post box. I always remember the post box right outside our house in Boughton Cottage, Clowne. I used to put my sweet-papers in it, not through naughtiness but because I was told never to throw them onto the ground.



    Had stopped writing, a pretty girl walked by, no more than twenty. Of course they no longer look at me, but I still look at them, trying not to show my hunger or appear sexist or frightening.



    A house called “Two Hoots” I love house names and as a child collected them. Names then were more important to me than people.



    Went into “The Sun” PH for a pint of Hookies. The toilet-doors have pictures of a ram for the men and an ewe for the women. When I was there, the bar lady just stopped a small girl from going into the wrong toilet. It IS a little confusing, esp for someone with bad eyesight like me!



    —

    That’s all for now. Don’t let the bed-bugs bite.

    Terry.



    —–

    Terry Cuthbert.

    ——–

    P.s. It’s nine years now since I received a valentine’s card, and you say I must not call myself a loser.

     

    After my unsuccessful attempt to close this site down I am going to spend more time on it, and I have already wrote the next blog, prob to appear on Saturday, it is about some of the eccentric people that worked on our provincial weekly newspaper.

     

    Terry.

     

    ————–

     

    Plays on Three_Headed_Sarahs site
     

February 11, 2005

  • Update: Monday Night. About a walk in the woods!

    ——————–

     

    The people on Xanga who want me to believe in a god mean well, but I do not fear death. Because I consider myself mortal does not mean that death frightens me. Too many people far more worthy than I have died younger than I am now, in many cases over 45 years younger.



    I do not see religious people as sad or misguided, true athiests like myself do not sneer at those who seek out other truths, we just carry on our lives not caring all that much.



    I do believe in evil. I believe that the taking of another life is evil, because we are all unique, all irresplacable. That is why the death of a child is such a loss, they have died before they had a chance to enjoy life.



    The Bible, The St. James version that is, is a beautiful book, it is full of wonderful stories and great poetry. But so are the other great fictions based on facts, Shakespeare’s historical dramas. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that (to take one example), King Richard the Third did NOT say in real life: “My kingdom for a horse!”



    —



    Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are to wed. Like the Iraq war I as a taxpayer, is paying for something I do not believe in. And as for the war, don’t believe the bumfluff about elections, the only thing most Iraquians want is for America and the UK is to get the eff off of their land. The Americans alone have killed three times more people than the insurgents. That is not to defend a people who hangs a 12 year old girl for talking to British troops or cut off people’s heads for “God”, not at all.



    I don’t care about political correctness, Islam is a religion of murder and uncaring and no one will ever convince me otherwise, no matter how kind and warm and gentle most Islamic believers are in reality. (And the Northern Irish can be as nasty as the insurgents).



    Anyway, did you know that “camilla” is Greek for “camel”? So that is why Charlie has been humping her!



    —



    Someone asked me why i no longer belong to Mensa, simple, too many people there think they should run the planet, and too many of them are FAR more right-wing than the team of George W. Bush.



    It was hard to leave Mensa, I told them they were like some seedy cult, I just wanted to say goodbye, but could I? I ended up ostracized, and my name struck off their historical records. And the Sarahs’ were not even part of my mind at that time!



    I do love my Three-Headed Sarahs’ personaes, they give me a chance to relax. Empathy is hard for me because it is not natural to me, the Sarah’s have none, they are vain, greedy and self-centred, in a way, that is the real me, the one behind my mask. Yes, I love poetry and  love the uniqueness of people; nevertheless, my id is bigger than that of none autistical folk, big enough in fact for three heads!



    That’s enough for now.



    NOW ON:

    On LordPineapple ‘s site: Poems by






    And






    On The Three_Headed_Sarahs ‘ site: A play and some small poems.



    On The “I am sane” site: Nothing, it can not exist!



    —



    Terry Cuthbert.



    (c) ff percent 243.