Hands

If you’re a real Sherlock Holmes, you can learn a lot about people by looking closely at them. In the old days, of course, you could always tell miners by the coal-dust ingrained in their skin, and weavers had bad front teeth because of what they called “kissing the shuttle”. It even applies to some trades today: an antique dealer once joked that he could always spot his fellow-tradesmen by their baggy trousers, caused by kneeling down to take a closer look at the furniture. But hands are the main thing for clues.
Manual workers’ hands look quite different. There’s a story from the Russian revolution that the Red Guard used to patrol around Petrograd stopping strangers and examining their hands. If a man had hard hands, he was a worker and they’d buy him a drink; but if he had soft hands it meant he was a bourgeois and they beat him up. But Lenin had to put a stop to this, because so many of the Bolshevik leaders had soft hands!
My wife once managed something on these lines. She was brought up on a farm, and when she told this to a chap we’d just met, he said he was a farmer too, on the Surrey-Sussex border; but after he’d gone she said to me, “Did you see his hands? He’s never milked a cow in his life!” He wasn’t THAT kind of farmer, you see; the sort who has to milk his own cattle. I thought Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of her.Now where was I? Oh yes. I think you could apply this to a whole lot of different professions if you knew what you were doing. You could probably spot musicians, for instance, and even guess the instrument. The fingertips and nails for playing stringed instruments would be a dead give-away And teachers would always have chalk underneath the fingernails of the hand they used to write on the blackboard, though I don’t expect this applies any more.

People who’ve played a lot of sport can also be distinctive. Yes, I’m trying to come to the point. Everyone knows that rugby forwards tend to have horrible cauliflower ears from all that time in the scrum. Olympic throwers will have overdeveloped muscles on one side of the body, and so will tennis players and fencers. And footballers have often had knee operations, though of course this isn’t easy to spot when they’re just walking around.
As regards hands: I remember a reporter once telling the American gymnast Kurt Thomas that people could probably stub out cigarettes on his palms and he wouldn’t feel a thing. Cricketers also have hands like old boots. Do you remember when Darren Gough was on “Strictly Come Dancing”? In one of the early rounds, a judge complained that he had big thick hands that looked inelegant. He must have felt like saying, well of course I’ve got big thick hands; I’m a fast bowler, what do you expect? It didn’t stop him winning in the end, though. And cricketers often have broken fingers: I’ve known one or two with fingers sticking out at ridiculous angles. And if you do a lot of bowling you develop calluses on the spinning fingers, and these can get ripped and be very painful.
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the point, officer. I know I’ve been waffling away,but that’s because I’m just as upset as you are: I’m sure you’ll understand. As regards this particular person, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before; in fact, I couldn’t tell him from Adam; though of course when the body’s got no head, you can’t be certain. But I’m prepared to bet that he was a slow-left-arm bowler.

Winterwood

Jinna scrambled over the stones of what had once been a wall and looked down the slope to the snow-covered wood below. Not a single print of any kind disturbed the whiteness, and only a gap in the trees like a low arch showed her where the path ran. The light was lowering and gloomy beneath the leaden sky, and the prospect filled her with deep uneasiness. But she patted her coat and felt the slight bulge from the inner pocket. There it lay, the great jewel. She must carry it safely through the wood to the other side, and whatever her fears, she could not turn back now. Setting her face in determination, she half walked, half slithered downwards, and, ducking under the laden branches, entered the winterwood.

Inside it was very quiet. The trees were packed so densely that there was little snow underfoot, but the darkness was greater. She could trace where the path wound itself, and there were dimples in it, as if feet had already passed that way: feet too small for a human, but making patterns unlike any animal that Jinna had ever seen. The path continued to run downhill, until she reached the bottom of a valley. Jinna found she had reached a frozen river which she must cross. She listened carefully for the sound of trickling water, which would mean thin ice that might break under her weight: even if the water was shallow, if she got her feet wet, they would freeze. But there was no sound. Jinna realised that since she had entered the winterwood, the utter silence had been broken only the crunching of her boots in the snow, and her own breathing. Somehow this was even more oppressive than the noise of things moving around her. She sensed that here in the wood it was always winter, and nothing lived. Fighting back her mounting fear, she crept carefully across the ice and up the bank on the far side.

The path rose now, until she came to the summit of a low ridge where the trees opened out. There was nothing in the clearing except an immense log, the remains of a fallen tree, half-covered in snow like the body of a frozen dinosaur. The light was slightly better here, and Jinna paused for a rest. For reassurance, she again patted the lump on her coat, and then, acting on sudden impulse, reached into the pocket and pulled out the jewel. She held it up, and even in this dimness it glowed and sparkled with its internal radiance. Never had she seen anything so immeasurably beautiful. She must save it, at all costs! But its glory only made her surroundings seem more threatening. The trees appeared to close in on her. She sensed that the winterwood hated and feared the jewel; would smother its radiance if it could. Over to her left came a sound, and then another: the first she had heard in the winterwood. Maybe it was only the soft thump of snow falling from overburdened branches, but Jinna feared it might be something
far more threatening, though she knew not what. She realized she had made a serious blunder.

Quickly she returned the jewel to her pocket, and pressed on. Now the path twisted round to the right, and then to the left. Fear stalked behind her, and she walked faster and faster, her breath panting with weariness and mounting anxiety, never daring to glance back. Then, up ahead, amidst a thicket of smaller trees, she saw another low archway, and knew this was the end of the wood at last. With her escape now in sight, panic at last overcame her. She ran. Through the archway she ran: branches clawed at her face and snow cascaded over her head and back, but she had escaped now, out onto the open plain, freed from the winterwood for ever.
For a while she simply stood there, panting with relief. Then once again she felt her pocket. There was nothing. She tore open her coat and plunger her hand into the pocket. It was empty. In mounting desperation and terror she searched each pocket; every inch of her clothing; once, twice, many times. Nothing. There was no doubting it: the jewel was gone.
Gradually she managed to subdue her terror and steeled herself. She knew what she must do. Somewhere, somehow, she had dropped the jewel, and now she must find it again. Slowly, reluctantly, she forced herself back to the archway through the trees and re-entered the winterwood, retracing her steps, examining the snow on each side, stumbling with weariness, tears frozen on her cheeks, until at last her strength gave out, and she fell forward on the snow, and she died.
　
　
But then the clouds rolled away and the snow melted. Flowers blossomed in the grass. Jinna felt the warm sun and looked up in wonder to see birds playing on the budding trees. Then a Voice, so enormous that it filled the horizons but was at the same time gentle, spoke to her.
"You have done well", said the Voice.
"But I failed", said Jinna, "I lost the jewel in the winterwood".
"No. You were victorious. There never was a jewel. There never was a winterwood. But you fought to the very end. You have triumphed. We can now proceed to the next test".

Romanticism Fails Again!

When I was a boy I found a book in a cave.
It was up above Ullswater.
I clambered down over huge boulders
And groped my way along a dim passage
Then in complete darkness
By touch alone I found it
My hand met something clammy and damp
But I knew it was a book
I could feel the pages.

I took it up.
It dripped as I bore it to the light
- not without trepidation
since had this been an H. P. Lovecraft story
I would have found
A tractatus of occult knowledge
Of nameless secrets from beyond the grave
Ancient, arcane and damned
Or, if written by M. R. James,
I would look back to see
A figure, dark, but oddly indistinct,
Following me from the cave.
This was how horror stories began!
I steeled myself for the supernatural
As I opened the book.

But it proved to be an electricians' manual
Scarcely occult even to the least technically-minded
and I thought, well,
how it came to be in the cave
so far from any power-source
might make a story in itself
but it wouldn't be the same!
Why bother?

As for the book
I can't remember what I did with it.

Picture

Jill dropped her suitcase on the bed. The room was sparsely furnished, but looked comfortable, and in any case she couldn't afford a better hotel. She felt she could do well enough there; but then she saw the picture above the bed: an old photograph of the seafront at Rhyl.
      Rhyl! What on earth was it doing here?

Her first thought was that it had been hung there deliberately: someone was getting at her. Then she realized this was ridiculous: she'd only made the booking yesterday: no-one could possibly have known she would be staying at this hotel. She then tried to laugh it off as an absurd coincidence, without any deeper meaning. An old picture of a seaside resort; a place which had seen better days and was now looking a bit battered. "Just like me!" she thought ruefully.
     But even so .........

Why did it have to be Rhyl, of all places? She'd gone there with her parents as a little girl, all those years ago, and they'd met the man who ......
     For most of her life she'd been trying to suppress the memory, but now, thanks to that picture, it was surfacing once again ......

 

Spring Chorus: April 2013

American frogs say, Ribbet, ribbet,
Greek frogs said, Coax, coax,
But my frogs just say, Gaa, gaa, gaa,
Each spring I await them
When the daffodils open.

















This year they were three weeks late,
But at last one morning I heard them,
Singing, Gaa, gaa, gaa,
Meaning, We’re here again,
The ice has gone,
The sunlight’s warm
And it’s time for sex!
And soon the pond’s boiling
With mass copulations
In threes, and fours, and fives,
And tomorrow the water will be
A jelly soup of frogspawn
And so life is renewed.
So, Gaa, gaa, gaa,
The happy chorus of spring!

Memories of my grandmother

I never knew my father’s parents, who died before I was born, and my mother’s father is only a very shadowy figure, since he died when I was five; so the only grandparent I remember is my mother’s mother.
Her name was Mary Anne Midgley, but all her friend called her Polly, and to us she was simply “Nana”: she never even signed letters any other way. Her home was at Keighley in Yorkshire, and I don’t think she ever left there except to see us. She and her husband, Thomas, had a house which they had bought freehold just after the first world war: something which must have been most unusual then. It was a small terraced house, two rooms upstairs and two downstairs, with an attic and cellar, very small yards-cum-gardens at front and rear, and an outside lavatory: being built of stone it was likely to last forever, but is the sort of house nobody wants nowadays. My father explained to her how it would be easy to get a grant for an indoor lavatory, but she always ignored him: I suppose she considered it an unnecessary frivolity. Similarly we had a gas fire installed for her in the front room (the Parlour, to which only the most important of visitors were admitted), but she hardly ever used it, preferring to live in the kitchen and fetch coal for the kitchen fire up from the coal-hole in the cellar. Beyond the coal-hole and the outdoor lavatory ran a little cobbled street, with washing lines strung out across it. I always thought this a self-defeating exercise by the housewives, because on the other side was the railway, and when we visited her, back in the days of steam trains, we contrived to get dirty without even venturing out of the house, so it couldn’t have done the washing much good either.
Apart from us, Nana only had one blood relative: her sister, Aunty Maria, who lived with her husband, Uncle Percy, nearby in Haworth. They were childless, and we were always given to understand that we would eventually be their heirs. But when Aunty Maria died, uncle Percy, who was well over seventy and extremely deaf, promptly remarried. Nana never forgave him for this, and they never spoke again. Thomas Midgley, by contrast, had numerous relatives around Keighley (plus at least one who had mysteriously “gone to the bad” and was never mentioned). They all seemed to be much better off than him. (My father said that Thomas was considered, unjustly, he thought, the stupid one of the family). Most of these Midgleys were in the Yorkshire wool business; a sure sign of which was a tendency to feel people’s lapels and say “You didn’t get that at Burton’s, did you?”. I have a photograph of Thomas and Nana early in their married life, both looking highly respectable. They bought good quality furniture for their house, some of which I still have, along with the piccolo that Thomas played in the town orchestra, and part of his collection of books: the Sherlock Holmes stories, Alexander Dumas, Walter Scott and Thackeray; all with his names stamped inside. It goes almost without saying that they were pillars of the local Labour Party in its early days. Nana said that she had known Philip Snowden, a local man, one of the earliest Labour M.P.s and the first-ever Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that Ramsay MacDonald himself had stayed at their house; but unfortunately by the time I was old enough to be interested in such things, Nana’s memories were getting confused, and my mother believed the MacDonald story was imaginary. Nana was also a lifelong vegetarian, with an interest in fringe medicine, which must have been very unusual for those days. Clearly she and Thomas could be classified as serious-minded working-class intellectuals: a category probably hardly existing amongst young people today.
I remember Nana as seeming very old and deaf, and frail-looking, but fiercely independent and hating being patronised. We used to drive out to see her, arriving around mid-day. “What have you come for?” was often her opening question. “We’ve come to make you lunch!” my mother would announce brightly. “I’ve had mine!” Nana would reply; quite often adding, “Your hair’s a mess!”, or even, “Tha’s getting to be a gurt fat podge!” Because of the wool connexion, I always had to be well-dressed for these visits; otherwise I would be told I looked like a “top o’ the town kid”. This meant nothing to me until my mother explained that in Keighley the top of the town was where the Irish lived, and they were certainly NOT respectable! She could remember a time when the Irish children came barefoot to school, and the babies slept in orange-crates. The need for working-class respectability also led, I was told, to the only doubts Nana had about my father as a prospective son-in-law; namely, “He drinks!” This referred to the fact that he occasionally had a glass of beer at a local pub on Saturday lunchtime, when he finished work. The problem here wasn‘t teetotalism (Nana cooked up some lethal homebrew in her cellar) but the pub: pubs were also most definitely not respectable places.
She had a very strong Yorkshire accent, and naturally identified strongly with her county. Just about the last thing I remember upsetting her was when Brian Close was sacked from the England cricket captaincy. “They’ve only done it ’cos he’s working class and Yorkshire!” she exclaimed. She didn’t actually say “southern MCC pouffs”, but I’m sure that was the gist of what she thought.
She had plenty of friends in and around her street, few of whom I remember meeting. This once created a problem: when we visited her for her 80th birthday, and her neighbours were invited round, my mother was put in charge of handing out the drinks. Nana gave her a bottle of standard sherry, saying “This is for my friends”, and another of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, “And this is for my SPECIAL friends!”, and left my mother to decide for herself which category any visitors might fit into. She compromised by giving everyone Harvey’s until it ran out.
My parents had hoped that when my sister and I left home, Nana would come and live with them. But she always refused to do so, and eventually she died in her own home, which was what she wanted.

Writing Poetry

A friend quoted to me a remark of Emerson's on the difficulties of writing rhymed poetry. Emerson spoke of a poet who had thought up a "beautiful line" about stars, only to find he couldn't think of any good rhyme for "stars", with the result that his poem had to be abandoned.
I do not accept Emerson's difficulty in finding a rhyme for "stars" (see end), though his point is a fair one.Of course, the problem can always be avoided by writing "vers libre", with neither rhymes nor scansion (what one literary critic described to me as "prose that doesn't reach the right-hand margin"), but it is obvious that any clumsy, contrived or unsuitable rhyme kills a serious poem stone-dead: bathos is fatal. Even great poets are guilty of dreadful lapses at times. Consider the following from the first verse of Wordsworth's "Simon Lee", about an aged man:-

"Of years he has upon his back
No doubt a burden weighty
He says he is three score and ten
But others say he's eighty"

This can hardly fail to raise a smile, and as a result the serious message of the poem, which is intended to evoke sympathy for the old man's difficulties, is irretrievably lost.

In writing comic verse, by contrast, the more improbable or contrived the rhymes, the better, since ridiculous rhymes can add greatly to the humorous effect. For Exhibit 2, here is the opening of "Lord Roehampton", by Hilaire Belloc:-

"During the late election, Lord
Roehampton strained a vocal chord
By shouting very loud and high
To lots and lots of people, why
The Budget, in his own opin-
-ion should not be allowed to win"

You can't get much more contrived than this, but as comic writing it is highly effective. Furthermore, the scansion is perfect and the poet is clearly in total command of his material: he has composed it all quite deliberately.

One doesn't need to be a great poet to know the answer to Emerson's problem, which is simply this: if a line is going to end in a weak or contrived rhyme, then the weak line must be placed first, not second. We don't have to investigate major literary works to find that natural poets know this by instinct. Take the example of this anonymous Border Ballad from the 15th century, which tells of how Henry Percy of Northumberland (Shakespeare's Harry Hotspur) rides forth from his stronghold at Newcastle to challenge the Scots raiders under Earl Douglas:-

"But oh, how pale his lady looked
Frae off the castle wall
When down before the Scottish spears
She saw proud Percy fall"

The second line is actually rather weak, but you don't notice, because the verse builds up to a climax with the word "fall". If you recite it out, as would originally have been the case, then you can anticipate the final word coming, with sinister effect.

Take an example from pop music. There are few really striking rhymes for "bridge", but Chuck Berry had no problem coping with this in "Memphis Tennessee":-

"Her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge,
Round a half a mile from the Mississippi bridge"

Nobody would pretend that this is great poetry, but think how feeble and contrived it would be if "ridge" had been used in the second line of the couplet rather than the first!

The use of proper nouns can be effective if they fit naturally and provide a suitable climax at the end of a line. As an example, here is the chorus of an old Scottish song about the whaling ships of the 19th century, operating out of ports like Peterhead and Dundee:-

"The wind is in the quarter, the engine's burning free,
There's not another whaler that sails out from Dundee
Can beat the old "Balaena"; she needs no trial runs,
And will challenge all, both great and small,
From Dundee to St. John's."

Here we have two rather weak rhymes, concealed by each being placed first, with two place-names used to provide a climax. ("St. John's" comes as a surprise: it was the port in Newfoundland where the whalers called in on their way up to the icy waters west of Greenland)


To finally illustrate the point, and refute Emerson's case of the lack of any really good rhyme for "stars", I offer the following two and a half line of impromptu, meaning nothing in particular:-

"..... and still she hears
In distant echo through her prison bars
Ancient eternal music of the stars"

"Bars" remains a weak rhyme for "stars", but its weakness has been concealed.