Charismatic Megafauna

Called round to Tricky’s last night to help with the ‘Charity Gig’ web site. Jak cooked up some tuna steaks and new potatoes. Jamie turned up so we divvied the two portions of fish into three and he joined us. I didn’t get the site finished as there was more to do than first seemed. Most of it is up there though, and it’s not looking too bad. The Eight Bells is hosting it this year, and me and Sparky are doing a couple of poetry slots. I have also been press-ganged into putting in some time on the B-B-Q by the pub landlord. Not only out there annoying the public but probably poisoning them as well! You are all, whoever you may be, welcome to come along. There should be some good music, food and fab people; if the weather turns out to be good it will be an added bonus.

I got back to the cut and dropped in for a couple of glasses of wine with Caliope on his boat. Em checked in, she had just got back from a lightening visit to Barcelona. I had been looking after her cats while she was away. All that consisted of was putting a fresh bowl of water down for them and making sure their food hadn’t gone off in the heat. Blossom and Billy, cute little killers! The ‘green corridor’ within which runs the canal is a refuge, a wile natural habitat for may of our fines birds, insects, reptiles, fish, flower and fauna (Charismatic Megafauna?), and none of this is safe with the likes of Blossom and Billy. No insect too small, no bird too tall. It is their sport but the kill count gets disturbingly high at times. Multiply that by every pet moggy in the country and you get the begings of the UK’s contribution to the EU’s Death Mountain. But they are nice little things, those two, and they know no better, it’s in their genes. Em had bought back a pack of incense from Spain for me as a thank you. A timely gift.

As I was opening the door on the boat my phone bleeped. It was a text from Special: “What is the smallest country…” I remembered she had said she was going to a quiz night at her local pub. I guess that was her ‘phone a friend’ life wasted. One of the Banshee's new friends also sent me a badly spelt and constructed text. It didn’t make much sense and what sense it did make was utter bollocks. I deleted it and wiped it from my mind, checked the string of garlic I’d hung over the door (just in case), and entered my sanctuary. I had a bit of trouble sleeping, lots on my mind: there was the leaking calorifier that still needed attention; a new problem with the toilet tank, it’s getting near time to make a pump-out trip, I haven’t seen or heard from Keefy for a while so I will probably do that trip solo; the Screaming Banshee tried to get into my thoughts but I managed to block that; shirts needed ironing; water tank needs filling; another visit to London coming up; washing; sorting out my new poetry book, artwork etc.; the date with Special; Special; Special; Special ……Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Too Much Blood

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far
one can go.

T. S. Elliot

It has been a strange few days. I am still reeling over the events with the Screaming Banshee and the Hells Angels! The last thing I need is that whirlwind of destruction in or near my life. The landlord of the Rock said last night that she would be back. Maybe I will move my boat.

I have had a few long telephone conversation with Special Needs and she seems like a lovely person; really easy to talk to. I haven’t yet told her that I live on a boat and I wonder how she will view that. People, I have found, have mixed reaction; some love it: “Oh that must be wonderful, so peaceful”, other think immediately that you must be ‘trailer trash’ or ‘water pikeys’. The mildly interested ones always ask the same questions: “Doesn’t it get cold?”, “Isn’t it damp”, “how do you wash?” etc. So, one can never be sure of how someone else will react. It is part of me though; it is the way I live, and I will never pretend to be what I am not. I believe that if someone likes you it should be for who you are, not how big your house or bank balance is, or how you earn a crust. I hope Special doesn’t turn out to be that shallow.

I am damaged goods and she probably is too. I think most of us are that have lived any life at all. You learn what the important things are about people and about life in general, what your values are, what you want from it all. However, that doesn’t stop us making the same mistakes over and over again. We are not a very bright species in reality. Take me for example; I invited the Screaming Banshee over to the boat. Now I knew what risks that entailed, I was warned by my friends that I was risking so much and so close to home, but I still went ahead and did it. How stupid is that? Now all I can do is a damage limitation exercise but I don’t have much control over things in that direction. All I can do is hope and try to learn. I suppose the Banshee incident has unsettled me a little, and that coupled with natural apprehensions about meeting a new person has made me a bit nervous of what will happen with Special Needs on Wednesday. Why do I always have all these self doubts?

When my marriage broke up, nearly 5 years ago, I swore to myself that, from then on, I would always be truthful, especially to my self. I think I lied to myself during my marriage, I supposed I wanted it to be OK and built a false reality that it was. I also lied to everyone around me, made them think the marriage was a happy one, everything was all right. Maybe that is what a lot of us do. That is living a lie in my book and I made a sworn declaration to myself that I would never do that again; I would never lie or live a lie. It’s a cliché but life really is too short. I met the Banshee about 8 months after I had split with my x-wife. I was vulnerable then and had very low self esteem, a very poor self image. That relationship was short lived but damaged me even more. Being an optimistic, positive thinking survivor at heart, I got over the hurt and the wounds healed. I still have the scars though, as they say.

Now I don’t know what I want really. Well I want to be happy, I know that much, but relationships? I have been very happy on my own these last months, the best I have felt for years. It has also been a productive period. I have written loads, had lots of ideas, and felt the old creative juices flowing again. No one to answer for other than myself; no one to be concerned about; I have been able to be as open as I have wanted. It is always difficult for a writer to be involved with someone. Most of us write from our own experiences and even the most fictional pieces have their roots in autobiographical experiences. If you are involved in a relationship, events, dynamics, feelings, etc., will undoubtedly find their way into your writing. Depending on who your partner is, this may or may not upset them, which in turn causes problems between you both. Once you are aware of this there can be a tendency of holding back on what you are putting into your work. This in turn takes the real edge off your writing and can make it loose its credibility, impact, strength, reality. Note to self: ‘try and keep all this in perspective’.

At the end of the day you have to take risks to find anything other than the mundane. Another cliché but, you have to experience sadness to know what happiness is. I like to think I am prepared to take risks to find better things. Keith Richard once said: “Someone needs to see how far this thing can go, it may as well be us”.


Too Much Blood

Too much blood
when you ripped out my heart
Too much pain
right from the start
Too much gloom
now we're apart
Fresh tracks in the mud
is all that's left
Fresh tracks in the mud
and too much blood

Oriental In My Continental World

I did my usual Thursday drive up to London to see my mum in the home. She was brighter than she had been the last few visits I had made. As it was a nice sunny, but not too hot, day I took her out for lunch. She can’t get in the Prelude because it is too low so I wheeled her to the local shops in a chair. There was a café at the end of the small parade of consisting of: a hairdressers, a small grocery; a tobacconist; a mandatory bookies; kebab shop; second hand white goods emporium; florists; and a post office that doubled as a second tobacconist/newsagents. The café was run by what I think were Turkish people; they had adopted the theme of ‘greasy spoon’, well it was pretty close to that in all aspects, including the menu. I opted for an all-day breakfast and mum took the sausage, mash and peas, holding back on the onion gravy; she has never been a fan. We both went for large mugs of tea. Mum had a good appetite and ate all on her plate bar some of the mountain of mash. She said it was good, and mine wasn’t too bad either. We sat there for a while and chatted about a few articles in the day’s paper then headed back to the home. We sat in her room for a while, had a go at the crossword in the paper and she nodded off. It was mid afternoon by now and time for me to go, try to avoid the evening rush hour traffic. I woke mum up and kissed her goodbye. She smiled, told me to shave, then fell back to sleep. Love you mum!

I got back to Oxford by 5pm. It was Thursday but I didn’t really feel like going to the Half Moon, I needed a break from the poetry night for a week. I sat on a bench in the Marston Road and called the South African barmaid (SAB) to see if she was free and fancied doing anything. All I got was her voicemail message. I went back to the boat and laid on the roof for a while looking at the evening sun, terns catching fish, moorhens with beaks full of nesting material, and the crop of what ever it is in the field opposite, now tall enough to move in the breeze. I had things to do: I had been carrying around unopened letters for a week or more, stuff that needed to be dealt with; there was the writing, three projects on the go and I had slacked off on all of them; the leaky water pipe on my calorifier and the shower filter that needs cleaning. It was too nice an evening to stay in doing those things and after giving the matter some thought, whilst cooling off in the breeze; I grabbed a jacket and headed off for the Half Moon. I got about half way there when my phone rang. It was SAB. She was doing nothing except about to be watching the Brazil v Japan World Cup game on TV. I have probably already said that I am not really interested in football, but needs must. I asked her if she would like me to pick her up and go to a bar in town and watch the game. She said OK and I changed the direction of the Prelude and pointed west towards the 8 Bells.

The trendy bar opposite the Westgate centre was heaving with Brazilians; I never knew there were so many of them in Oxford. It was was a fantastic latino atmosphere in there and Brazil went on to win four one. Even the sprinkling of Japanese fans were hugging and congratulating the Brazilian fans at the end. That bit I liked to see. SAB had said she wanted to go straight home after the game but now that moment had come she seemed keen to go for a drink someplace else. I realised I still had the key for the half Moon and asked her if she would mind if I popped in there for five minutes just to say hello and give the key back to Joe. I didn’t think it would be her kind of bar and said we wouldn’t stop and that I knew another trendy bar down the Cowley Road that she would like. As it turned out she loved the Half Moon; in my mind, really, it is hard to think of anyone that wouldn’t. She was very happy to stay there and didn’t even mind if I did some poetry. Joe called me over and said he had some domestic stuff that had come up unexpectedly and would I mind running the bar at 11 and locking up at 2:30 am. SAB surprised me by saying she would be happy to stay there with me and even help behind the bar if I wanted. So I agreed and got the key back from Joe. It was just before I got up to do my first poem that I noticed three women sitting in under the window at the front of the bar. One of them had a beautiful smile. It was Special Needs! I was really pleased to see her, then realised I had a situation going on, a clash of interests! I told special not to leave without speaking to me and got up and did my first poem, Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys. I introduced in the same way I usually do: “This poem is a love poem. It is about that intense period when you first meet and fall in love, when you can’t get enough of each other, and you can’t keep your hands off each other” I dedicated it, as always, to Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen saying “I hope in their very short life they did this at least once”, I know I have.


SID AND NANCY DO SAINSBURYS

Nancy stares into Sid's glazed eyes
Sid lets his hand stray across her thighs
In the cold meat section
You can hear their sighs
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys

In frozen foods the air is cool
And Sid presses Nancy up against the wall
Its not the Haagen Das making them drawl
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys

In the aisle marked coffee and teas
Sid looks at Nancy and drops to his knees
To taste the difference, Nancy's pleased
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys

In the warmth of cooked chickens
Next to the deli
Sid puts his hands on Nancy's belly
CCTV gets it all on the telly
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys

A stack of toilet tissue falls to the floor
Nancy stares at Sid
begging more more more
Sid sticks his tongue into her jaw
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys

From fruit and veg to check out till
For Sid and Nancy it's thrill thrill thrill
If it wasn't for closing time
They'd be there still
When Sid and Nancy do Sainsburys


I did a few poems but was careful with my selection, more than I normally would be. I had guests! Fortunately I was behind the bar straight after my performance so I didn’t have a chance to get bombarded with awkward questions from anyone. Jamie turned up and chatted to SAB and briefly to Special Needs. Special came over to the bar just before she left; I gave her my number again. She suggested that we went out together on Wednesday. I started to say that it was Aunt Sally night but my senses kicked in (Aunt Sally or a night out with a beautiful woman?) and I quickly said that it wasn’t important for me to play as we had plenty of team members at the moment (true, actually). So Wednesday it was to be. Jamie stayed and talked with SAB all night, which was good because she didn’t know anyone there. The evening got busier the later it got but it was never too much, not like the night I had worked on Woodsy’s birthday. I called last orders at 2am but it took me until nearly 3am to persuade the customers, who had all by this stage reverted to a primate disposition and mentality, to move on. I dropped SAB at the Bells at about 3:30am. The last I saw of her was her hand waving goodbye over the top of the tall gates at the side of the pub. I drove home under a spectacular, early new dawn and thin sliver of a waning moon.

Friday morning I sat on the bench by Baker’s Lock with Jamie. Two hen parties were going through on hire boats and we passed an hour or so chatting to them as they struggled with the windlasses, then went to Kidlington for Brunch. Jamie and I were supposed to be working on some sketches that we had talked about but we were finding all sorts of excuses for doing what amounted to nothing much. Brunch was good though. We sat in Sami’s reading the newspapers and drinking mugs of tea. I got stuck into an article on the demise and near extinction of many of Britain’s insects and found the phrase ‘Charismatic Megafauna’ for the fist time. For a while we thought we had the name for “the band”! Jamie expanded his opinions about an article on the sentencing of two gay foster parents that had been imprisoned for the molestation of children in their care. Six years they got, only six years.

We went over to see Alice, Jamie’s daughter and watched about two hours of the Mighty Boosh on DVD then went back to the boat. Another hard day! It’s the sunshine; I just can’t seem to get my arse into gear.

On Saturday I had invited an ex-girlfriend from about 3 years ago, around for dinner. She was having problems with family and stuff and I thought she would like the break. Also thought it would be nice to see her. However, the evening panned out strangely. She sank a few house doubles in the Rock and turned into the Screaming Banshee. She got mouthy to bar staff, and then went off with a couple of Hells Angels and their mates that she had just met in the bar. You can’t make this stuff up! That was the last I saw of her until the next day when I went to the Rock with Jamie for a lunchtime pint. She was with one of her new friends and completely ignored me. I appreciated that gesture and reciprocated. A close shave I saw it as. Beware of the Screaming Banshee!. Or, as my nephew said when I told him about it on the telephone: “Sounds like things have gone oriental in your continental world mate!”

I had to get away from the Rock, it was all too close to home for me and I needed to distance myself from it. Strange the way some people suffer from severe drink problems and personality changes. “If the water was whiskey, I’d be a diving duck……”

+=+=+

Jamie came back to the boat with me and I cooked the spaghetti carbonara that had been abandoned from the night before. We sat on the Poop deck of his boat, munching away in the sun. I had forgotten about the garlic herb bread I had put in the full-on oven to heat up! When the smoke had cleared Jamie took me back over to Alice’s and we watched more ‘Big Boosh’. I was tired. It had been a long week with its ups and downs that had left me stirred but not shaken. Back at the boat I fell asleep thinking about Special Needs and listening to hyperactive ducks flapping around my hull. Beware the Banshee....

Hung on a Line

I had forgotten just how good it is to touch and smell washing that has been hung on a line and dried in sun and breeze. It is wonderful!

Ferret and Teen had invited me to Gloucester for the weekend, for a BBQ at their house. I had told Teen that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it as I had a load of laundry that I needed to catch up on. Teen said I could bring it with me and do it at their place; something she would later deny (probably on account of how much of it there was!). I had driven down in the morning, did a Cava run to Morrison’s, and was now throwing Boules with Ferret and Paul; my washing flapping on the line, drying in the mid afternoon sun, that was beating down with no mercy.

Ferret and Teen’s garden goes slightly up hill and, as a consequence, it is stepped in places. During the game, occasionally when a long marker was thrown, one or more of the boules (weighing over half a kilo) would drop over the ledge, to where Teen’s tortoises were obliviously eating lettuce and slices tomatoes on the lower level, tucked out of sight at the bottom of the drop. What charmed lives they have, every stray boule missed them. I am not really sure how you could have told if they had been hit, except by a crack in the shell or something, as they display no detectable signs of intelligence. All they seem to do is tear at lettuce with their little beak like mouths and mount each other with great regularity. That has to rate as one of the most disgusting sights ever, a beaky tortoise with its wrinkly neck stretched and straining upwards, cracking together shells as he mounts what ever it is. I am not a fan.

I won two games and we went to sit in the shade and have a cold beer. Ferret asked me what I had been up to and I recapped on a few things; my mum's latest scares; the girlfriend I hadn’t seen for 23 years; the text from the South African barmaid; the ‘no show’ from Special Needs at the Half Moon on Thursday (I was hoping she would turn up, but alas….); the email from Lisa, the girl from the internet who was a captain in the Zimbabwean Army in 1990 and wants to meet me but I am having cold feet; and Sylvie, who did turn up at the Half Moon on Thursday evening and wants me to play Harp on a couple of track of an album she is making, but it is beginning to look very much like that is all she wants. I told Ferret that I was rethinking my game plan about everything. I told him that I am very happy at this moment in time and I can’t believe that actually meeting and getting off with any of these or any other women that collide with my life, or though bringing elements of pleasure and maybe some positivety, it would inevitably bring an end to my current happiness. He said he could only do a long weekend in Transylvania.

Dave and I played guitar and harmonica around a brazier in Ferrets garden until 2 am then went to bed. I got up early, showered and drove back to Oxford in the sunshine. I had to open the Half Moon at 12 midday for the Sunday session. It was a very quiet one and when I finished at five I went home, ate some food, and fell asleep reading a book. The last thing I remembered was thinking ‘I must give up smoking’.

+=+=+=+

When I met 'Special Needs' the other Saturday, I wrote my number and the address of the Half Moon on the back of one of my poems. I went to hand it to her but her mate grabbed it instead. This was the poem. I like it, it's a love poem.

You Make Me Cum

You make me cum in colours
Like a Jackson Pollock canvas
Like Van Gogh's skies and his starry nights
Like Yves Klein's blues
Picasso’s hues
And Warhol's shoes
You mix me up
and lay me down
You make me cum in colours

Sparky The Mighty Poet

He does exactly what it says on the tin

Like epoxy resin and hardener

He is Sparky the mighty poet

And England’s greatest gardener

No job too small

No tree too tall

No middle-class poetry malarkey

Just real poems

For real people

From the one and only Sparky

He's shaping the landscape with Excalibur

Drinking last orders at the bar

And when you slip through his rip

in the fabric of time

Sparky will be there with his vodka-lime

Spoken acrobatics and high wire tricks

Under the Half Moon's giant marquee

He's the ring master of the Flying Circus

The gifted visionary Sparky

He's an historian plotting the life

of the now extinct tyrannosaurus

He's the worlds hardest working poet

He is another word for thesaurus

Not a mediocre man

Nor a shandy-sipping academic

He's a forward thinking protagonist

The poetical polemic

Skilful with weeds as he is with words

The horticulturalist that could have been a parky

But lucky for us and the spoken word

A poetic career chose Sparky

Be you rich or poor

Be you Whitey or be you darky

He's the egalitarian poet

(Maybe not always politically correct)

The mighty poet Sparky

Special Needs

Again another week went by with me hardly noticing. I didn’t make it to Aunt Sally on Wednesday because Joe had asked me to open up the Half Moon and run it for the night. He told me he was expecting it to be a quiet night and he had his daughter over from Australia, who he was taking out for the evening. It was Woods’ birthday so there would be few musicians in and a bit of party food; should be cleared up and away by 1:30am, and home by 2am. I opened up at 5pm, filled up the ice bucket, stacked the fridge and the shelves, and stared out the window for about 3 hours, chain smoking roll ups out of boredom. There were one or two customers; in fact I was one of them as I bought a birthday drink for Woodsy, a large port. Woodsy would go on to drink about two bottles of the stuff throughout the night. By about 10pm a few of the musicians had turned up and started playing at the end of the bar, with Woodsy joining in on vocals every now and again. I am not particularly into folk music but they played and sang sweetly and were all excellent musicians so it was hard not to like it. At about 11 pm someone bought all the birthday food down and a good crowd had gathered. The night was getting busier. At about 12:30, some thirty or so luvies from the Creation Theatre Group turned up and suddenly both bars were filled to the gills! By 1 am the place was fucking mental! I didn’t stop pulling pint’s for next 3 hours. As glasses were filling I was emptying the washer and loading up the dirties, non stop! I did a glass collection run, difficult in such a crowd, and all I could hear were luvies talking about them selves to other luvies that weren’t listening but talking about themselves at the same time. The musicians were moaning because it was too crowded and noisy to play, and I was just sweating (it was like a sauna) working my bollocks off, trying to keep everyone served. I managed to get rid of most of them by 4am; just a few of us stayed for another hour or so and I played a bit of harp.

Thursday morning’s sun hit me in the eyes as locked the pub door and headed to my car. I managed to get a few hours kip in then drove to the home to visit my mum. She wasn’t in the best of spirits when I got there. We watched a bit of TV together, did some of a crossword and talked about things she remembered. Her short term may not be too good but she has good pictures in her mind of things from yesteryears. She cheered up a bit but I think partly her blues was because she was tired; she said she hadn’t slept well the night before. I left her at 7:30pm and she was going to bed for an early night. Sweet dreams mum.

The flying Circus had drawn a different crowd in this Thursday. Sparky was sober but knackered. He told me he had done 80 hours hard graft that week. As well as a fine poet, Sparky is a gardener. I did a session and went to the back bar for a cigarette. I sat at the end of the bar talking with Joe when I spotted a girl I used to go out with 23 years ago. I hadn’t seen her since that time. When she came through the back bar, to go to the toilets, I said hello. She recognised me immediately and we talked the next hour away. It’s amazing how you can catch up on 23 years each, 46 years in an hour! In short: Me, divorced, still writing poetry, currently single; Her, married, three kids (one doing his driving test soon), still living in the same house, working at the university. She looked much the same as she did then. A bit of aging but that’s life, not aged as much as me though. It was nice and a bit strange to be talking to her again. She was one of the people that I have never forgotten; she was one of the good ones.

It was another 3am finish at the Half Moon and the real moon was nearly full when I left. I was really ready for my bed! On Friday night I was cooking for some friends and would have to spend some of that day shopping. It was still warm and small creatures of the night plopped into the canal as I headed back down another moonlit tow path mile to the boat. I was in bed within moments. Dream soup flooded over me as I sank into a deep sleep. In the morning I could have written it all down but I didn’t and now I can’t remember one single bit of any of them, but it was soupy stuff.

Tesco’s, Sainsbury’s and the Co-Op, all used to sell fresh lemon grass, the same with loose red chillies; maybe Friday is a bad day for shopping but I tried all three and came up with nothing. I would have to make the Tom Yum soup without lemon grass and use the green chillies I had instead for the red curry. Fresh, uncooked prawns were another thing that seemed to be nonexistent on a Friday. I got back in time to catch some late afternoon rays on top of the boat. I kept waking myself up by snoring, that’s how tired I was. However, the siesta did me good and I had all the cooking under control by the time my friends arrived. The food turned out well and we ate, drank, listened to music, and talked. Mostly I don’t remember what we talked about because of the wine that had been flowing all evening. I think I impressed The South African barmaid who works in the Bells, who had come along with them. She had only ever seen me propping up the bar and trying hopelessly to chat her up when I had drank enough. Now she saw another side of me: a domestic god, a gentleman’s gentleman!

3 am by the time they left. I used to do it all the time when I was younger, but now I need my sleep! I woke up mid morning, still tired and a bit hung-over, both as a result of the wine. I was good for nothing. It was a day for doing nothing. I took a throw up onto the roof of the boat and wallowed in the sun, drifting in and out of dreams and daydreams.

I hadn’t had a signal all day and it was only when I walked up to meet Ratty that I got the voice mail form my sister. My mum had passed out and been rushed into resuscitation at the hospital with a suspected heart failure. I called the hospital and managed to speak to sis. Mum had recovered and was sitting up smiling and talking but had scared everyone else half to death in the process. There was no point in me making the two hour drive to the hospital, she would be asleep by the time I got there, so I went out as planned but found it hard to her off my mind. Ratty drove me to the Flowing Well in the Bel Air. It was Phil from Redox’s birthday gig. I sank a few Ruddles and got into the swing of things. A special needs teacher asked me where I was from and I asked her out. I wrote my mobile number on the back of one of my poems but her friend snatched it off me before I had a chance to pass it on. They said they would turn up at the half moon on Thursday so watch this space. We got back to the cut at around midnight. A big moon filled the sky. There was the a few drunken pirates sitting around a big fire, the leftovers form a b-b-q party. Marcus, who was having trouble standing, talking, and walking, decided it would be a good time to try out a coracle for the first time in his life. A coracle is a one person boat with an ancient lineage. Coracles (from the Welsh "cwrwgl") have a history dating back thousands of years. The coracle was originally covered with animal skins and in some countries they are still made this way. In Wales they are now skinned with calico which is waterproofed using a bitumastic paint. Marcus was under water in no time. I stayed and had a few glasses of cider with them, played a bit of harp and went home to bed. It was nearly 3 am again.

Sunday lunchtime I did 12-5 in the Half Moon. It was quiet as a mouse. I made a sign up for the window: “WATCH THE FOOTY HERE”, but no one did, not even me, I have no interest in the game. It’s all about stars and money now, not really my thing. I called the hospital and they said mum was being released back to the home, she was OK. It hadn’t been a heart attack but a TIA, a Transient Ischaemic Attack – a ministroke. I now know that a transient ischaemic attack is a type of stroke where symptoms last less than 24 hours. It is due to a temporary deficiency of blood supply to part of the brain. It starts suddenly, and may cause weakness or numbness in any part of the body. Symptoms may involve the face, arm and leg on one side or just one part of the body. Vision may be affected, often in just one eye. The attack usually lasts between 1 and 6 hours. Also, most TIA’s are caused by clots blocking small arteries which supply blood to the brain. These clots often do not form in the small artery itself, but are carried there by blood flowing from a diseased artery closer to the heart. They can even come from the heart itself. They may consist of a clump of red blood cells or other cells called platelets. These block an artery but then break up so that blood flow to the brain is soon restored. Some people have TIAs as a result of spasm in an artery or a sudden fall in blood pressure. My sister had said that mum looked terrible at resuss and her eyes were all over the place. The heart nurse later told us that the clotting may have been due to mum being taken off warfarin, one of the cocktail of drugs she has been on to control her blood and heart and to balance her life.

At five I finished my shift and drove the Prelude to London. Mum was in remarkably good spirits when I got there. She didn’t remember anything about the TIA but she seemed happier than she had for a long time. She could have so easily died but I don’t know if she really understood that, or perhaps she did and was happy because she had pulled through once again. Mum, still scaring the life out of everyone at 91!

Teen rang me as I was tooling back down the M4, heading West into an almost set sun. Her and Ferret were at Tricky’s, sitting in the garden drinking white wine and eating the last of an earlier b-b-q. I got to the Baron’s house at about 9:30, I needed a shot of friends after all the problems with mum. My Friday night dinner guest were also there but not with The South African barmaid, and still no feed back from her. We chatted and drank and laughed; it felt good. I was asleep in my bed by 1am, the earliest night for nearly a week.

Monday I was back at work. At eleven I had a call from my sister telling me that mum was back in hospital. She had gone to the toilet without her walking frame and fallen over. She had hit her head and her side and the hospital were checking her out for other injuries. I rang A&E after lunch and they said mum was fine and she was going back home again. I rang the home when I got back from work and they said she had settled back in and seemd quite happy again. Ozzy John came over to the boat in the evening and we finished off the remaining Thai Red Curry and went to the Rock for a few beers. We sat in the pub garden and I pointed out to Ozzy John the spot where Marcus had his falling out with the coracle. As Ozzy John cried his way through a continuous hay fever attack, I filled him in what had been happening over the last week: the mental Wednesday night; The South African barmaid coming to the boat; meeting the Special Needs teacher on Saturday; and the fright of what happened to my mum. A new week now stretched out in front of us; what would it bring.

Hardly At All Like Dan Blocker

The Devils Day 6/6/6. If I was a mathematician I could probably tell you how often that number occurs in the calendar, when the last occurrence was and how long before the next. But I am not a mathematician; I am a poet, so you will just have to be impressed by the fact that I noticed the date at all! Of all days it was the perfect day to get a call from my old friend Hoss (the old Devil). It must be at least 3 or four years since I heard from him last. We worked together years ago and used to take long liquid lunches on a regular basis, but we work hard and well! We chatted for a short time, he updated me on his life with Frosty and his work situation and we made a tentative arrangement to meet next week. Hoss said he will try and make it to the poetry gig on Thursday.

I have to tell about how Hoss got the name ‘Hoss’. He is a big geezer and at the time sported a slightly chubby round face which made him look hardly at all like Hoss from Bonanza. Hardly at all but enough to get the tag, has which stayed with him over the years. Last time I saw him he had just started working again after taking a year or two off to take photographs and concentrate on his water colours. I never got to see any of this work but he assures me he did a lot of it.

Yesterday I was back at work after my holiday. Eleven days went by without me hardly noticing. I managed to do practically nothing; something I am almost proud of. I did have some plans of moving the boat into the centre of Oxford for a few days, but the week started out with shite weather so I gave it a miss. By the friday the sun had cranked up and I spent Saturday sitting with Jamie in the shade of a Californian Fern tree in the square at Gloucester Green, watching the world go by. Well, to be honest, mostly we were watching the women go by but it was hard not too, there seemed to be so many! After about six hours of that we got bored and headed home, only to return later with Ratty drinking in the Eagle and Child. C S Lewis and J R Token may well have drunk there and it may well have been a good pub, but now it’s two bob! A few students, a few lost tourists, no atmosphere, and us three. Not a Saturday night to remember.

Sunday afternoon I was in the Eight Bells. Tricky was away up north, but all the rest of the crew were there. We sat out in the garden taking in the sun until a short burst of rain sent scurrying back into the bar. I did a bit of poetry, drank some cider, talked for a while and went home. M gave me a knock at about nine; it was still light and fairly mild, could this be summer? M said she had been for a trip down the river with her friend who is in a bad way with breast cancer. The friend has been having chemo and everything so it was amazing that she managed to make the cruise. We drank a bottle of cold white Australian wine that Ozzy John had left in my fridge a week or so ago. I really could have done without more booze as it was my first day back at work in the morning, but I have the will power of a gnat when it comes to any form of hedonistic pleasures. I went straight to bed once M had split and soon I was pushing out zeds over the cut, sleeping deeply.

Paper Dosa

Mum was a bit down when I arrived at the home. She hadn’t seen anyone for a couple of days and was feeling a little rejected. But it was more than that; the realisation that she had lost her home, her way of life, her health, her youth and much of her short-term memory, all contributed. It would get to most of us at times and, on the whole, she doing well, being strong, knowing that she is coming towards the end of a very long strange trip. I sat in her room with my arm around her and we worked on a crossword together. She did better than me and cheered up a little before I left. I felt helpless, guilty, sad, and a mixture of emotions.

Before heading home I called in to see my sister, then went for a Southern Indian meal with my nephew. We had Paper Dosa for starters; nephew went for the set vegetarian meal and I opted for a wonderful regional chicken curry, all washed down with large bottles of Kingfisher. Nephew noticed that the Kingfisher, ‘India’s Finest Larger’, was brewed and bottled under licence in the UK by Shepherd and Neame. Still, they are a pretty good brewer and the beer lived up to its Indian reputation.

It was getting on for 9pm by the time the Prelude and me were curving our way around the North Circular, heading west. It was a particularly traffic free interlude in the day and we made the M40 in less than an hour. I was back in time for a few games of Pool With Gollum in the Rock. We only played two games and left it at one all as Buffy, who had drunk a little too much again, insisted that the entire pub play Killer. Gollum and me will have a decider another time.

It had been sunny most of the day and the world had warmed up. A quarter moon in a patch of mist in a clear night sky. Fish and river rats jumped as I strolled slowly back along the towpath with the smell of a new summer, at last, approaching.

+=+=+

BA, £89 return to Bucharest, so Ferret tells me; Count Vlad I hear you calling. I may be there soon.

Pumping Out

Keef crewed for me and did most of the locks. We were heading for Lower Heyford to get a pump out. He didn’t mention showers or anything like but instead contentedly worked on his Times cryptic crossword, pausing only for locks and cups of tea. Then, at some point, he sprang into action and started washing the roof of as we cruised up the canal. Ducking trees and bridges as we went, he still managed to make a good job of it. Unfortunately he had uses wooden floor cleaner as a cleaning agent and it left streaks down both sides of the boat. They will come out, well at least Keef says so, but may need a lot of elbow grease; a job for another day.

The weather was predicted as starting off cool and gradually warming up during the day. Incorrectly it stayed cool most of the day, just the odd pocket of sunlight. On the way back Keef started to tell me that the missionary position, favoured by our Victorian ancestors, was in fact not the way the human body was designed to procreate; things pointed in the wrong direction for that. The natural position was, and I know no other way of putting it, ‘doggy style’. Well, I didn’t know that Keef! I’ll be blowed!

After dropping Keef back to ‘Keefy Cathederal’ it was too late to make the Flying Circus at the Half Moon. Realising I hadn’t eaten all day I bought some mediocre fish and chips in Woodstock and went straight home. I watched the sunset behind a few late-run mayflies that had stuck and died on the window and went to bed. Dream soup bubbled all night: water, boats, strangers, trees, rooms, and Transylvania.