THE BEACH REPORT : Facts of Life

I'm crouching in the sea, ready to catch, more a slipper than a wicky though it changes from ball to ball, but I'm waiting for it, left or right, head-high or wide --m'girl says you're like a dog, ready for a game, make something out of nothing. That's life, I say, sage in the waves, less of a chop than last swim (--as I write this down the old Greek gent, elegant in shades, black cap, white T, black shorts, all-over tan, flicks at the flies with lavender, rosemary?! --maybe twig-stem of gum-leaves? --his swatch -- m'girl says frankincense so immediately imagine black robed priest, the blessing-swish of his censer --golden church of sand & sea), but 'before' or 'last' wonderfully lost in the continuum, banished --continuum imposed by the elements --petty time crushed (--it's saltbush! --someone else strolls past with same soft grey article --all along the coast, every coast in the sunbathed world) --deep hush of the universe around & about the mush of the world notwithstanding distinguishing graces & blasphemies, thought of which makes one blush! --did i say that? do that? think that?

Prelude to leaving kiosque-table, the old guy says in English to his woman friend, it's impossible to read the newspaper in this wind! She's managed the gusts  throughout with her magazine. Suddenly realise he isn't Greek! --urgent need to correct first impression. I think he's speaking Hebrew interspersed with English. 'Talking' not accurate either --now & then he addresses his partner with slow, sure phrases. Audible but mostly indecipherable. A deep, low voice. Russian? Israeli? He's in his own space, not talking, sipping his coffee, occasionally flicking salt-bush fan at the summer flies. Then I see, nose in my notebook, the pair have gone. Others spot the empty table, take it over. Like anyone, anything, only temporarily there but the impression of this old guy pervades. (Description of the actual is demeaned in the Avant-garde as the so-what of commonplace. Contextualised by big blues of sea & sky, we enquire relation of cliche to archetype.) 

Old guy, younger wife or older daughter. All the news he needs is knowledge now. Visceral, corpuscular. The rest is around him, the basking seal, absorbing what observer calls the facts of life.


[Elwood, 3/6-1-16]

HIGH & DRY

‪The dramatic 'weather events' in Australia, on the Victorian south-west coast, and in the North of England, have shadowed everything we've thought & done since Christmas. I thought it valuable to retrieve a conversation with Glenda George on Facebook and a letter from Peter Riley forwarded by Paul Buck to preserve on the blog. Additionally, correspondence from Libby Hart.


oOo


Kris Hemensley :‬

Happy New Year, Glenda x (please say youre high & dry?
[January 2, 16 at 10:29pm]


Glenda George :‬

 ‪Kris‬, thanks for your concern but - and fingers crossed against omens for bragging - we must be one of the few parts of Scotland that have had reasonably acceptable weather when all about us are suffering floods and hurricane winds. We have even missed for the most part. And I was thinking about you down in Melbourne when the bush fires seemed pretty close....Guess extremes of weather are going to be something we will have to adjust to in 2016 and beyond....I think the El Nino effect wears off for us around February but then there's always the possibility of El Nina bringing the opposite! Don't you just love Nature? Showing us upstarts who really rules the world!
[January 2 at 10:39pm]


‪Kris Hemensley‬ :

Hi Glenda... good to hear your report... just now looked at pics of Hebden Bridge & Mytholmroyd on Anthony Costello's Facebook page... had no idea... had heard but not seen... And, as you say, the Victorian coastal forest & towns had the fires at Christmas... quietened down but not yet all clear...


Glenda George‬ :

Lots of serious flooding about....the Calder Valley pretty badly hit (though most folk that we know not subject to the worst) and there is much water about up here in NE Scotland. There is wisdom in living on a hill! We are 750 feet above sea level, though not totally immune to spates in the mountain burns which can gouge out huge chunks of land from their banks and cause landslips. So far in our 25 years here (that long huh?) we've only once been in a slightly dodgy situation but with two major burns running either side of our land, I have had occasion to shore up the banks with posts and netting and we have planted lots of trees on the gully edges to both support the banks with their roots and absorb more of the water. Seems to be working thus far.


Kris Hemensley‬ :

25 years, a life... Awe-inspiring to city slicker like me what you describe of your Scotland... and yr special lingo : 'spates' 'mountain burns' 'shore up the banks' ... Good luck, Glenda...


Glenda George‬ :

"and your special lingo"...oh ‪Kris‬, you have no idea how that feeds into my eternal shame that I have lived here so long and not once utilised the many wonderful words that describe natural features in a piece of writing....even though I love using those words everyday....(and we haven't even gotten into the local dialect of the Scots language that I have taken many years to understand properly - spikkin the Doric is a hale spleet kettle i fish) ...I really cannot understand why my joy at living in the landscape has not translated across into my work at all (yeah, I know I would more largely be defined as a language poet of sorts but all the same.....)


oOo


‪Paul Buck‬ :

Picking up on earlier, Peter Riley now lives in Hebden Bridge, and not on the sides or 'heights' as we did. No, he lives right in the valley, beside the water. He was flooded -- three inches deep. Not too much damage as they moved things upstairs. I will send you a letter he sent round.



From: Peter Riley
31 December 2015 14:12:45 GMT 
To: David Ainley  
Subject: From the flood zone

Forgive me for sending a group e-mail to those who have asked how we've fared during the floods. We've been without electricity, therefore e-mail not to mention heat and light, for four days and sleeping at Kathy & Richard's house which is up a hill and safe and dry. So yes, we did get flooded. But compared with a lot of people in this town we have nothing much to complain about. We've still got a house to live in, we haven't lost our livelihoods, we haven't had to throw out all the furniture... In fact we had about three inches of water on the ground floor and by the time it got here most of the things that mattered had been moved upstairs. I must say it was worrying watching the water approaching in the form of a swift river running through the garden, which it wrecked, mainly be bringing with it a lot of floating woodwork of various kinds, and two poppy wreaths from the Memorial Gardens a quarter of a mile away. It reached a total rise of over three metres, exceeding all previous records. It was also worrying when the canal at the back of the house started overflowing, which we thought it couldn't do, and started climbing up our back windows, but they held. So now we're comfortably encamped upstairs and getting on with drying and cleaning, with a lot of help from the family and neighbours. In fact the local co-operative spirit in Hebden Bridge has been amazing. Here the neighbours turned out and worked on all the gardens one by one, then got to work on the stone-yard next door. There's now an enormous heap of wood across the road. The town centre is more-or-less wrecked and it looked like the end of most of the independent businesses including our one bookshop and the cinema, mainly because they were uninsured due to the recalcitrance of the insurance industry following the 2012 floods. But volunteers came pouring in with mops brushes and spades and worked day-long day after day. The town hall's been open 24 hours distributing free advice, co-ordinating workers and technicians, linking needs and offers and running a free cafe. The three or four restaurants capable of functioning have been giving out free meals and drinks, one of the two surviving pubs handing out free pints of beer. A restaurant in Bradford sent the town hall a hundred chicken curries... We've had army helping, and a troupe of Asian men from Halifax mosques, bikers patrolling the streets at night to prevent looting, and a lot of people wandering all over the place knocking on doors and asking if any help is needed. We felt we'd come to live in a real town. I'll get round to answering particular questions in some e-mails before very long. Everyone's solicitude has been heartening.
Peter


oOo


LIBBY HART

 [7-1-16]

Dear Kris,

Further to the comments between yourself and Glenda George...

I love the word 'burn' in the Scottish sense. I saw quite a few of them during my travels into the Highlands. Here is a small 'postcard' poem from the middle of nowhere (in the Highlands) that uses the term ...


A postcard from Kinbrace


Burn and bend. Cloud and cloud-mountain.
A snow-scatter of sheep as a train encroaches.
Bird-scramble above the scribble of tree.

Then I turned to the wet-lipped God, as if to greet you.



oOo