Close to the realities of the age?

20 8 2010

I've been in Moreton-in-the-Marsh on holiday, with a day trip to Oxford for old times sake walking round the Parks and spending book tokens in Blackwells, the Blackwells in Oxford has an incredibly helpful and knowledgeable staff, it's a joy to spend money in there. I save most of my book buying until I can go to Blackwells in Oxford, if I want to find rude unhelpful staff I can go into the retail outlets in the shopping centre here where there is a bookshop of sorts but it's there to shift commodities so all the staff need to know is how to work the tills, or into the clothes shops where I can be sneered at and have comments passed about me till I'm bright red with self consciousness and I can get that on the streets. Finding staff who have heard of the book I want to buy and will help me find it in the Norrington Room is my holiday treat. I wouldn't live in Oxford, as Gunter Grass said of Berlin during the Cold War and the days of the Iron Curtain, this north east London borough is closest to the realities of the age, and for another bookish reference, like the Garden House of Suleiman the Red, the ends of the earth meet here, migrants from every continent on the planet can be found in the queue for kebabs at Seth's Spice Hut in the market and many many languages can be heard. Seth's is closed for Ramadan the blessed month of fasting and prayer for Moslems, Seth's has a notice blessing us all before it shuts in a true spirit of multiculturalism, trade has always broken through barriers.

Moreton-in-the-Marsh had a sharp reminder of the realities of the age, a drunken group of young locals in the flower of their youth and strength stupidly mocking and reviling an elderly couple who were minding their own business and out for a stroll, their mothers would have been proud I'm sure and they were so drunk they could barely stand, the young men I mean. Then in the big garden of the Bell a family of small boys were playing the most imaginative games in a sort of hut designed to be child height. It was an outpost of an embattled army, a secret society and protection from wicked monsters in turn, a fat small girl on a bike joined in tentatively, at first she was outside the game but when she fell off her bike one little lad helped her up and let her join in in case she had hurt herself and was unhappy. The parents of the lads let them play but checked them if their play looked like getting out of hand, the lads were biddable, not cowed by parental authority but kept civilised when they got wild, so they played riotous games and enjoyed themselves and their parents could talk adult talk, a far happier arrangement than drinking so much ale it made one stupefied and bestial enough to insult the elderly. Both of these are subjects for poems, not from me as omnipotent observer thinking Great Thoughts but from one human being watching others, like journalism watching and thinking and reporting, every one of us is at the cutting edge of the realities of the age, we only have to keep our eyes open.

I am free to be ignored, of course. My chapbook Alice Wore a Red Dress has been twice and glowingly reviewed in Awen and Carillon, it costs £3 inclusive of postage and packaging, cheques payable to Anne Rees to be sent to said name, 23 Cassiobury Rd, London E17 7JD and you'll receive a copy by return of post, but no-one has asked for a copy. The poems I revised out of their skins have all come sorrowfully home except for the three I sent to The Rialto, they are out with other magazines now and I've started using the notes I made in Moreton-in-the-Marsh to write more and I've departed from the "little" format I've used, anything under the sun or stars can make a poem so I am expanding my range. Bugger it, I'm both free and ignored so I'll follow my bent to the utmost to satisfy my own instincts for what is true and I'll set down what I see as dramatically as I see it! You can't beat the drama of the streets lit fitfully by neon, the copper chopper directly over head beating down the air and sirens screaming out of Tottenham and Leyton and I can flit that path walking fast and come to no harm although I exchange banter over my shoulders with youths as carried away as I am. Who wants temporary status when the drama of the twilight streets is at hand? And that's why I'd never live in Oxford, it'd be like fossilised youth when there is so much more to be seen and experienced at the age I am. On That note I'll leave you and since this is Ramadan God bless. |Anne Rees.