Floods, The Comfort of Things and the Poet John Lyons' Cooking

A wet Sunday but nothing like Cumbria where people must view the rain, any rain now, as an enemy, a taker of homes, possessions, livelihood, lives. Our local river still remains within its banks but the floodplains near the town look sodden as if just another jugful of rain will tip them over the edge into fen mere where no dog walker can pass and the swans and Canada geese float on a memory of meadowland.

I have an 8 minute radio piece up on the Audiotheque website about water and the draining of the fens, it’s called Isle ( scroll down to find it, I can't guarentee this link will work after more updates have been added to the site). This is a experimental sound website run by De Montfort University which has some short play pieces like mine but also some interesting soundscapes etc. Having lived in the fens for many years and been fascinated by it’s history, water, its encroachment and its loss, has been at the core of its social and economic history and still is. There are attempts being made now to return areas back to its original mere and marshland state. Such projects are valuable but they only show you a gnat’s bite of how the area would have looked in the sixteenth century and earlier, pre-drainage. It was a huge undertaking to drain the fens and in fact was never truly successful until the steam engine’s invention that allowed water pumps to be more effective. Windmills were never really up to the job but for a while covered the countryside.

As you drive beside the dykes now the roads are raised up due to the shrinkage of the land once it was sucked dry of water. It always seems odd driving across the fens at night beside a raised drainage dyke on one side and a huge dark drop on the other down to the fields. Sometimes, as it did the other night as I drove back from Ely (The Isle of Eels), it feels as if the world is almost tilting as the camber of the road veers towards the drop. The road snakes across the landscape sometimes letting go its grip on the raised drainage dyke and meandering off to follow old sheep tracks and ways that existed through the meres long before they were drained. As you snake around late at night you can see headlights appearing and disappearing way ahead as they follow the road. The road does indeed resemble an eel more than a snake I feel. eels were once prolific in the fens; one medieval scribe noted that at times they were so plentiful you could almost walk on the backs of eels for three miles across one stretch of the fens. However whilst the snake has been turned into a verb the humble eel hasn’t , although 'to eel' sounds as if it ought to merit a verb especially in wet or sodden landscape. Even in a downpour in the city one has a sense of the mass of people on pavements twisting and turning like eels to avoid each other, shopping bags, umbrellas. They eel down the pavement sounds right to me, it also conjures up that knotted mass of eels and the flow of water. I must find out what the collective noun is for eels, I presume there is one.

I was driving back through the fens from Ely because I had been to the launch of John Lyons’ new book published by Peepal Tree, a great press for all Afro-Caribbean writing. Cook-Up in a Trini Kitchen is joy of a book if you like poetry and food, it contains great recipes for all kinds of Trinidadian dishes, many with a twist on them . John did the launch in a bookshop whilst also cooking some of the dishes. The smell was heavenly, although the smoke detector did have a moment when hit by a waft of steam from sizzling onions herbs and spices. The book contains some of John’s artwork ( he originally trained and continues to be a visual artist of some repute) as well as some prose pieces about his childhood in Trinidad and some poems that speak to the recipes. As John said Trinidadians take their pleasures very seriously and food and having fun is high on their agenda. I tried some of the dishes and can personally recommend the Christmas cake recipe but suggest you don’t eat too much as you may be well over the limit given the amount of rum, cherry brandy and port it contains. It was one of those joyous occasions when poetry nestled so easily into the other delights of the senses and the poems John read just added to the flavour of the evening.

What else have I done this week, well I’ve started reading a wonderful book given to me by a friend written by a social anthropologist who just writes so well that his material jumps off the page at you and some pieces almost make you want to cry at their poignancy and insight into peoples lives.. It is called The Comfort of Things by Daniel Miller. It is book that investigates the things 100 people in an ordinary London street surround themselves with in their homes and what significance these things have for who they are and how these things give meaning to their lives. It is so glib to say materialism is a bad thing, this book shows how stuff or even the absence of stuff can be heartbreakingly meaningful and is not simply an indicator of how a person rates their standing by possessions. The first chapter contains a piece called ‘Empty’ and shows a man 74 years of age who lives in a flat surrounded only by furniture and items that have a functional necessity. The sterility of his surroundings is so marked that when he is asked questions about his past life it is no surprise that his story is quietly desperate and devoid of any real human contact and warmth that began for him from birth. I started to cry as a read it.
The next piece in the book is called ‘Full’ and gives the chaos of an extended family whose possessions are simply an extension of their love and warm contact with each other. The description of their house and all its many decorations at Christmas and all the laughter and stories each decoration and bauble held for the family may seem like some sugary Dickensian Christmas card. However I was left with permission to gaze round my house full of books and objects that many would deem ready for the jumble or Charity shop, from whence some of them actually came, and feel absolutely ok about it (not that I have ever felt not ok but now and then moments of life laundry do creep up on me).

It is that time of year so I have baubled up the willow canes I keep in a pot of sand in the living room and have hung gold and red bunches of grapes and extra cherry red Christmas lights to go with the ones that bedeck it all the year round plus other ornaments that are old friends at Christmas. I have a feeling, as the cherry red lights look so warm and comforting, they may stay up there now past Christmas and add to the stuff of my life. That’s ok. I’m not going anywhere and the Boo will have to clamber over all this when I go or am shuffled off into accommodation for the bewildered and dazed. I have however promised not to collect old newspapers and milk bottles or anything that might attract rats a la Miss Haversham. The Boo is equally squirrelish about some stuff, as was my mother, so this genetic trait may be passed down through the generations. I can travel light when needs be but home for the past twenty-eight always has a sense of people and warmth about it that some stuff of mine signifies. It may be an age thing but I think it is a stuff thing. Ask many of those who have lost things in the floods in Cumbria and on their faces you will see it is not always about the monetary value of possessions it is about all those things that gave home its meaning.

Real floods, real money and real trouble coming

Sarah Hall's dystopian novel The Carhullan Army has just won the John Rhys Llewellyn Prize and its plot is starting to unfold. The waters are starting to rise. The heavens have opened yet again and the flood meadows around my small fen town have become a peaceful lake, punctuated by the odd tree and swan. I have had to take detours as roads are flooded, Ely is denied me, except by a roundabout route. The ditch gouged out of the meadows to help the eels is submerged and no doubt the eels are busy swimming across the fields. The winter world is fast becoming not one of snow and ice but rain and floods. I have looked into the face of global warming and seen the fens returning to marshland, the dykes becoming an old archaeology to be explored by divers in the future. My resolution about water did not mean this.

As per another resolution I went to pay the paper bill yesterday and the Huckleberry Hound newsagent behind the counter was somewhat mystified. “You only paid last week.”. “Yes I know” I replied, “ but I’m trying to keep up”. “Keep up?”. “ “Keep up with the payments so I don’t get behind and then discover that The Guardian and the TLS cost a fortune if you let it slip.” “The Sun can mount up too, if you let it, debt is no respecter of readership.” He responded gloomily, circling my account in his big black book with a red biro. “The pensioners used to pay when they came into get their pensions on Thursday and the Mums paid when they got their Family Allowance but people are having it paid straight into their bank account these days. Stamps and parcels seem to be the only reason these days why people come in, that’s why they forget to pay their paper bills, it’s a special trip in for them." The newsagent's shop, I should point out, for those that haven’t yet twigged, is also a sub post office. He carried on circling my payment in the book for the third time , as if to ensure this momentous moment of promp payment should not be forgotten, "My wife misses the little chats she used to have with people when they came and got their money but it’s a no cash world these days.” I gave him a real fiver and he seemed almost pleased.

Money is becoming more and more virtual is seems, payment by credit card, direct debits, standing orders, switch cards, pay pal. I note that even PayPal is advertising that it is acceptable on Facebook now. The purchase of new friends by pay pal would be good, they don’t seem to sell friends on Ebay yet , although with my luck I will probably be outbid on a particularly good type of friend in excellent second hand condition ( the photo will show someone smiling and not too attractive as to be disheartening or intimidating in mixed company) , with excellent listening skills, super social contacts that I can piggy back on into great dinner invitations, parties and week-ends in the country and a holiday home to offer me in Provence. Luckily when I received their e mail invitation to use PayPal on Facebook I was aware that I had excellent friends already and did not require more, in fact I needed to spend more time with the ones I already have and not acquire more.

So this use of virtual money didn’t appeal but as with the newsagents sad wife I do rather miss the whole real money exchange. I do know someone who refuses to use cards of any kind relying solely on a cheque book and cash. He has had to accept that work deals in virtual money only and that the concept of the wage packet, with tenners and the odd coin in, is now out of the question in his line of work. However when he retires he tells me he intends to do little cash in hand jobs in which real money will be exchanged for his services which he will keep in a secret teapot in order to pay for small treats, the odd bill and carol singers.

I can see the allure and the common sense of real money. Would the build up of huge credit card debt occur if people had only cash to make purchases with? I sense that the whole economic world of Western Europe and America would crash should people return to having teapots full of cash instead of bank accounts. There would be a shortage of notes and coins. Tills in shops would groan under the weight of it, On-line stores would fold and people would be left with unsold second hand Beswick figures or Next dresses, the old pawn shop would become relevant to all strata of society again. Those in real poverty may not be the only ones counting out their change at the till in order to see if they can afford a loaf of bread and some beans, if the all powerful world of the credit card disappeared. It would be interesting if, just for a week a month, people committed themselves to cash only transactions. Virtual money perhaps leads to the concept of virtual debt; if you can’t see it, touch it, smell it, does it really exist? Taking a caseload of money to buy a new car, a new house or a holiday would at least make you think twice about handing the money over. Do I really need to give them this may be more of a real question to us if we physically beheld the cash or felt its weight?

I am becoming the grumpy old woman, the economic Luddite, the queen of the teapot misers? No, just a grumpy old hypocrite because I write all this knowing I have used my debit card four times today, that bills have been paid on line this week and that something I wanted but didn’t need has been put on the plastic. Put it on the plastic. I wonder whether we are busy putting the world on the plastic.

Live now pay later. My carbon footprints yesterday and today; tomorrow the floods at my door. Move over Mr Gore is there room up on your soap box for a woman with a teapot, my feet are starting to get a little damp?

Graduating to floods, Hopkins and being unselved

It was the Boo’s MA graduation this week. As she commented herself whilst donning the cap and gown there are endless comedy moments to be gleaned from such garb which she said was essentially much like male genitalia ..a great deal of stuff dangling down solely for display purposes. Having been to her first graduation I was well prepared with tissues and patience as I watched countless bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young people being clapped by fond family. ‘Probably at least half a million quids worth of student debt in this hall’ said the man next to me. He said it in a rather wistful, puzzled way. I suspected he might have privately wondered why on earth his child was doing art instead of something useful like engineering or pharmacy but had kept it to himself, not being the sort of man to want to cause trouble or tread on dreams. I noted when his son strode across the stage to have his hand pumped by a strange man for graduating in Fine Art he clapped vigorously and his wife cried. Behind many an art student is often a puzzled but supportive family.

The Boo had been at Hull Art School as an undergraduate and had lived for three years near the areas where the current floods have struck. We therefore watched the television coverage with personal interest and then there was that endless concert to draw out attention to the state of the planet. Global warming is of course far more serious than some sopping wet houses in Hull and Sheffield but, as in poetry, from the particular we can sometimes access the universal. A woman crying at the state of her new carpets and the steady loss of a glacier in the Himalayas seem to be so disparate as to make the connection ludicrous, indeed opponents of the Al Gore School of thinking would vehemently say so. There have always been cycles of warming and cooling, the world has always blown hot and cold, ice ages come and go, the desert was once a sea, the sea once a desert. But then I wasn’t scurrying around in a metal box on wheels or flinging myself through the air in one now and then. I wasn’t there, wanting to keep butter cool in a fridge, buying dates in plastic, washing towels at 60 degrees, keeping the computer on stand-by. It is much more useful and relevant to say I; the particular to the universal. We spend a lot of time trying to embrace our individuality these days, learning to love ourselves as Oprah would say; we want to be the ultimate particular. Now all these particulars may be bringing the universal down about our ears.
Gerard Manley Hopkins battled with the universal and the particular both in spiritual and poetic ways. In Binsey Poplars of course he speaks to our times in almost prophetic terms
We are making an art out of hacking and racking the growing green these days. He uses the odd word unselve in this poem, being unselved by an act. I tend to be an optimist, I am far too big and particular to be unselved by a few ecological problems; unnerved maybe, a few sleepless nights, a slight twinge of guilt, a fridge magnet that exhorts me to save it. What would being unselved feel like? Hopefully for me it won’t ever feel like watching my home disappear under three feet of water.