Out with the Old?

Here endeth a month of unremitting partying – for my parents, at least, who have spent every weekend in July celebrating their Golden Wedding Anniversary with friends, neighbours and family.  I attended two out of the four Occasions, before returning to the Festival City, which has been warming up for a similar month of partying.  In fact, if you include Film, Magic and Jazz, we’re already half way through.
 

For many, The Fringe is the festival, while others come here purely to see the Military Tattoo, which isn’t a festival as far as I’m concerned. It’s a far cry from the spirit of the original Festival, conceived as a ‘platform for the flowering of the human spirit’ after the horrific events of World War Two.  Nevertheless, as the hoards arrive, one thing is certain: there’ll be lots to celebrate, with plenty of drinking going on, and maybe an extra phone box or two on the menu.

Axed

Recently I “bumped into” (okay, I know, no need for the “fingers” thing) someone I used to “work with” (this is getting cryptic now) who once asked me, ‘What’s with the phone-boxes?’ – or words to that effect. I never got round to answering her question, so I took the opportunity to direct her to this year’s bloggage. 
Around the time of that unanswered question, she sent me a load of phone-box pictures, one of which adorns my desktop. God knows where it came from: consider it pilfered.

This month’s poem is about another friend with whom I lost contact. I cannot post the picture in question – that would not be fair – but I think the above picture sums it up.

Don Giovanni and the Phone Box

Somewhere in a farmer’s field
in deepest Devon this one stood,
a little battered, tattered paint
and tractor-spattered with mud,
but the panes were all in place.
One caught a glint of January glare.

It was just another in a long line of photo
Opportunities. You said it was too scruffy,
but I insisted, and you stopped the car.
Of the many boxes I have shot, I have
lost count. But of un-numbered
female friends you pilfered, I would
put the count at one too many.

Testament to our friendship, I let you
pose beside it – even though I like
my phone-box photographs au naturelle –
much like you prefer your women –
one in particular, to whom I can’t refer.

She was just another in a long string
of women I unwittingly provided.
Leporello to your concupiscent Don,
each village that we drove through;
every town, I took a phone-box while you,
driven by testosterone or libido, or both,
took whatever you could chat up or talk to.

I was never sure, my former friend,
exactly what you were trying to prove.
My heart was like that phone-booth:
slightly battered, but unbroken, red,
and still receiving in-coming calls.
Yours was shattered; devoid of love,
awaiting disconnection or removal.

Enlightenment

There’s nothing much to say about this month’s picture. There’s not much to say about this month either.  A small matter of a Royal Wedding inspired me (if that’s the right word) to slough my Republican tendencies and jot a little ditty.  Sadly it went right over many ignorant heads – even supposedly educated, intelligent, privileged people – perhaps suspecting an anti-royalist agenda.  From me?!  Maybe they just don’t read Shakespeare, or wouldn’t spot a pun if it kicked them up the bum.

Windsor Wins Her

To tame a shrew,

He said, ‘I Will’

She said, ‘I do,’

– they did.

I’m only assuming that this happened, because I neither saw it on the TV nor read about it in the papers.  Whatever one thinks of this antiquated system, I have to admit that the present monarch is the best alternative to… well, whatever the alternative is. And of the future, as the trend of watering down both the Germanic and aristocratic blood continues, we are made to believe that the Royal Family is moving with the times.  Very enlightened, I’m sure.

Which brings me to the next in my sequence of pictures, Glasgow School Days.

One of my Dad’s old schools is now a pub, and this old lamp is not one of the themed fittings that adorn the bar.  It’s tucked away in a stairwell that leads, one way, to the pub kitchen, the other, to the classrooms upstairs that look much as they used to when my father was educated.  My father is one of the most knowledgeable people I know.  And the great thing is, his schooling didn’t cost him or his parents (at least, not directly) a penny. 

Now that’s what I call privilege.

Eggs is Eggs, surely?

Yesterday, while the Lord was yet entombed in His three-day prison, my new-found Turkish friend was asking me what Easter Eggs were all about. So I explained all the lovely Christian Symbolism that must seem anathema to someone from a Muslim country, but it still didn’t wash. ‘But Chocolate Eggs?’ she questioned: ‘Why do you have eggs of chocolate?’ And that I couldn’t answer; it must seem a little like re-inventing the wheel. Why not eggs made out of, well – egg!

This picture is equally perplexing, since I know nothing of the news story, and can’t be bothered to search. All I can say is, whatever that shifty bloke has got in his rucksack, they’d better not be confectionary, ornithological, or anything to do with the alignment of the planets, and all its connotations – taken up (or stolen) by those Christians.

A Crème Egg (Caramel or
Twisted) to anyone who can locate this phone-box.

Happy Birthday to Moo!

Today was the birthday of a particularly special friend of mine, whose love of cows not only helped me to blag our way into the launch party of the Edinburgh Cow Parade, but also inspired me to write this poem (about her, perhaps, or another friend, both of whose names are disguised by epithets in the dedication.)

Triolet for a Cowgirl

For ‘Cassie’ and ‘Ethel’

The day the painted cows paraded through

you wore your hair up in a pony-tail.

This isn’t how I pictured you

the day the painted cows paraded through

beside our chosen bovine Vettriamoo¹.

I swore, for sure, you wore your hair in pig-tails.

But no: the day the cows paraded through

you wore your hair up in a pony-tail?

Note:

¹ For fun, the final syllable of ‘Vettriamoo’ should be given the fullest stress. This cow, based on Vettriano's painting, ‘The Singing Butler,’ stood outside St John's Church, on the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road during the Edinburgh Cow Parade of 2006. (My picture was taken at the Launch Party - note the glass of wine by her left foot!)  The artist who designed and painted it wanted to name her cow ‘Vettriamoo’ but her sponsors wouldn’t let her.  My poem pays homage to the artist, Ginie Naisby, and so many happy (but fading) memories. 

Switches

This is the second of my Glasgow Schooldays pictures: old-fashioned light-fittings found in the Scotland Street School Museum.  The title of the picture, you might spot, is a play on words: doubtless the pupils in those days may have been subjected to a different sort of switch. 

Today, as the clocks spring forward, I marvel at how everything can suddenly change at the flick of a switch, or at the perilous press of that button marked *send*

Happy Birthday to Me!

On this inauspicious day, perhaps I should consider where it all began. No, not my strange little life; my even stranger obsession with the phone-box.  And what better than to post a picture of the first red phone-box that I would have seen, at the top of our little cul-de-sac in a quaint little village in the Home Counties?  Except that I can’t – and this is the point – because it is no longer there.

Besides, it wasn’t even a proper one; it was some distance from the award-winning Gilbert Scott with square windows and, for ventilation, a perforated crown in the semi-domed top.  The only thing linking our box with the London Classic was the smell of piss: it was one of solid 1970s jobs, with single-glass panels on three sides, vandal-proofed, with a door so heavy that it rendered an emergency-call a trial. 

When BT took over the GPO in the ‘80s, our village got chrome-and-perspex replacements, while the next village down the A1 managed, somehow, to hold on to a little bit of our Great British Aesthetic Heritage and kept their Red Box.  I believe it still stands.  At least, it was there last time I passed through, just a couple of years ago.  But a lot can happen in a couple of years. 

The phone-box is a potent symbol of the past; what the future holds for it, who knows – except the usual death and decay.  But I’m okay with that. The present, however – even on my birthday when it ought to be a welcome gift – it’s the present that scares me the most.