the Burton Road Strip
Can we stop off
On the way home
From school for sweets?
We can stop off
On the way
To the pub for fags!
(If takeaways aren’t on
Tonight’s menu)
Load up on the way home
From a libation
@ the Strugs or the Vic.
June 11, 2009
Westgate Stores
June 10, 2009
Overheard phone call in Kings Cross waiting room
Hi is that Rafi? This is Marcel here. Marcel Sartre from ballroom dancing. I’m just ringing to make sure that you got Dorothy’s message about ballroom dancing being cancelled. Oh you did, good. I’m going to run an additional class the week after next. Thank you. Bye.
Tip on how to keep jury service to a minimum
When I was small my dad had to do jury service in the village of Dolgellau in North Wales. The last case on the Friday was a small time poacher who everyone on the jury knew and who they all knew was almost certainly guilty.
The judge informed the jury that if he was found guilty then they would have to all return the next day, Saturday, for sentencing (we are talking 45 years ago here).
Dad was refereeing a school rugby match the next day, someone else had a hairdressers appointment etc etc.
Funnily enough the decision was “not guilty”.
If you don’t want the jury service to go on longer than necessary…
June 8, 2009
Single parent Saturday or Anne is away
8.00 take tom to kayaking 8.40 take hannah to help out with baby ballet 11.15 pick hannah up from ballet – go to newark to pick up car left after beer festival 13.00 take john to tennis lesson 14.00 pick john up from tennis 14.15 take hannah to dance class 16.00 pick tom up from kayaking 17.00 pick hannah up from dancing 18.00 take tom to party in Normanby by Spital 19.00 take hannah 2 babysit drink wine
June 7, 2009
British summer
The strong summer breeze cracks the flags on the two flagpoles above the cricket pavilion. It is cold as we wait for the others to turn up. The building is locked and there are few people around. This is real summer weather as opposed to the artist’s impression.
Later the rain comes and the wind drops. A vertical soaking in prospect. A downpour of the sort that characterises the typical British summer. It is still cold but out and about and dressed in shorts and waterproof coats we stand underneath the large umbrella being fairly relaxed. We buy two bunches of asparagus fresh cut this morning before the weather hit.
At 4pm the boys arrive and we head for the Morning Star for a luxurious late afternoon beer. The pub is surprisingly full of refugees from the rain. One rare hour of liquid hedonism.
The noise on the conservatory roof is deafening and we have abandoned our ambitions to have a barbecue. We cook on the stove in the kitchen and move into the conservatory to eat. The children are a credit and impress our visitors. We should have dinner guests more often.
Later still the cacophony of birds in the back garden is loud enough to compete with any of the noises we have heard today. Mostly blackbirds I think and I wonder if I am hearing this year’s brood.
Finally, sometime towards the end of the day, the heavy, random drips of the water from the trees onto the glass roof. I recline on the sofa pondering the days climatics.
June 4, 2009
Through the Office Window III
There are eight lovely little blackbirds enjoying themselves in the sun on my small patch of meadow. It’s a very safe place for them. No one goes out there, and the landscape contractors are not due back for a while. They fly off every now and then towards the trees in the car park. They’re great, big trees; eleven of them, in a strip of grass left untarmacked. Someone once told me that the trees represent the eleven players of a cricket team, and that at one time the factory car park was the first cricket pitch in Wales. I think that’ll be a factory myth. A cursory google proves nothing. Looking through the trees I can see there’s not much activity across the road in the SPAR distribution centre; it’s all quiet. It’s quiet here too as most people have been bussed up to London for a company Barbeque to celebrate its centenary. So I’m having a quiet afternoon watching life go by outside. And I was right about the buttercups, they’re all starting to emerge again.
June 1, 2009
Through the Office Window II
It’s a beautiful, still, sunny day outside. The hot air is trying to move the branches of the trees, but without much success. It’s the sort of day that when you’re indoors you want to be outside in the sun, and when you’re outside, you want to be indoors because it’s too hot.
The landscape contractors are back, and have obligingly parked their white van by the ‘Contractors Parking’ sign. There’s a man driving a lawn mower around my patch of meadow. He’s sporting a yellow, sleeve-less, high-viz top. I feel like asking him whether he’s got any suntan lotion on. We used to make it here, and there’s plenty in the staff shop. But I won’t disturb him. He doesn’t look particularly friendly. The daisies and the buttercups are gone, which is a shame as I was enjoying them. But they’ll be back very soon – the irrepressible force of nature will keep the contractors in employment all summer.
There’s a growing mound of freshly-mown grass in the back of the van. There are probably thousands of landscape contractors all around the country, right now, contributing to the nation’s freshly-mown grass mountain. Where does it all go ?
May 31, 2009
A work of sculpture by Tom Davies and James Geary
“How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence?”
Benjamin Disraeli
Throughout history there have been countless examples of man flexing his technological muscle. Yet, despite all our progress we are still to become the planet’s dominant force. The fact, which the human race seems incapable of comprehending, is that man can never conquer nature, and it is this what we have tried to portray in our work.
The apple is a gift to man from nature and fruit is a core part of our existence. Without his five a day, man would suffer from not having a balanced diet. This said, it is typical of him to wantonly disregard it. When the nail is driven through the fruit it begins to decompose, typifying the destruction of ‘our’ natural world. The fruit becomes inedible and sustenance must be sought elsewhere. If left long enough, the apple will rot to the extent that it completely disappears. Though nailed to the board, the fact remains that it cannot remain there forever. Mankind will never pin down nature.
OR
We wanted to nail an apple to a bit of wood and see if it would win the House Arts and Craft competition at school.
The green wall of summer
The green wall of summer,
Birds in evening chorus in the park,
New growth ripples along the hedge,
The light remains,
Though sense says it should be dark.
Rays filter through the canopy,
A rose commends its lovely presence,
Its colour in delicate harmony,
Without the wall,
Pink beauty conferred with deep fragrance.
May 28, 2009
When was the last time you used a phonebox?
When was the last time you used a phonebox?
Freedom is going out without
your mobile phone alone.
When was the last time you used a phonebox?
Only the strongest constitution
can take this liberation.
When was the last time you used a phonebox?
Blow a raspberry to the Blackberry,
real men don’t need email on the move.
When was the last time you used a phonebox?
The text message
The phone goes ping, ping. Someone’s poking me.
Oooh, a text. Who can this be ?
A thought, a plan, or maybe just a wave, which
I save, because it has enriched
My day. Then I send back my reply, and try
To be witty, and clever, but mostly it’s meant
To return their compliment.
May 27, 2009
The Burton Road Strip Launch
This is an advance notice of a local arts project being launched on Burton Road. It is entitled “The Burton Road Strip” and is centred around a series of poems and photographs published on this website on the subject of some of the shops, eateries and pubs on Burton Road.
The work is being displayed at the Gainsborough Festival on Saturday 6th June and is being showed at local studio No10 Burton Road the following weekend on Saturday 13th June.
The Lincoln event will be announced/covered on the Rod Whiting Breakfast Show on Radio Lincolnshire on Friday 12th June.
On Saturday the Studio at No10 Burton Road will be open from 1pm showing “The Burton Road Strip” together with other work by local writer and poet Tref. At 4pm on this day we are planning some readings together with a glass of wine which you are very welcome to attend.
May 25, 2009
What to do on a bank holiday Monday
A no pressure potterday,
None of this making hay,
That’s what you have to do,
On a bank holiday.
May 23, 2009
Nothing exists outside these four walls
Nothing exists outside these four walls,
The light is reflected on the windows and
All is black beyond the glass.
My access to the external world
Is a mobile phone which is used
To send text messages,
And Facebook.
It is a virtual world.
I finish a bottle of red wine
And have nothing but my thoughts
And the tick of the clock on the kitchen wall.
The kitchen
A sirloin steak, rare, 2 minutes on the first side and 1 minute on the second, coated in crushed black pepper.
A simple salad , lettuce, vine tomatoes and spring onions with olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar dressing.
Caramelised red onions and whole button mushrooms cooked in their own juices.
Salt, pepper and Dijon mustard.
Wolf Blass, Yellow Label, South Australia, Cabernet Sauvignon 2007.
Crusty white bread with butter.
Blackness outside.
Silence.