Sometimes the impossible does happen. Okay,it's not like Thea Gilmore is up for a Mercury Prize (not quirky enough, songs not self-indulgent, been around too long and doesn't sound like Kate Bush). It's not as if Merthyr Council have suddenly named the Civic Centre after that great leftwing prophet from Dowlais Gwyn Alf Williams!

   But enough has happened to make me believe. Thea has actually been played regularly on the radio : her excellent new song conveniently entitled 'You're the Radio'. Above all, Craig Bellamy has signed for Cardiff City. The 'gobbiest footballer ever' as Bobby Robson dubbed him, has returned to his native land and the club he supported as a boy.

   When this was mooted at the beginning of the close season, I thought it was sheer footie fantasy ; an attempt to cheer us all up after the Wembley doldrums. I never thought........

   And what a summer it was, full of winding up orders, transfer fees unpaid from last season, Chopra threatening to quit and a transfer embargo which meant we couldn't sign anybody, let alone the captain of Wales and one of the best players in the Premiership last season.

   I was clicking text buttons and mouse in the hope of finding the embargo lifted, but nothing happened for ages. Rumours of manager Dave Jones's imminent departure to Fulham, West Ham or any job going, including litter- picking in Merthyr, only added to the misery.

   The worst close season for decades turned around with the signings of players like Olofinjana and , above all, one of my all-time favourites Jason Koumas (or 'Special K'), one of the most skillful players I've seen at CCFC.

   When Bellamy finally signed it was like I'd been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature :for once  fantasy became reality. Yet it made total sense : he was coming home to be with his family, Man City were paying half his wages and he wanted to lead us to promotion.

   Moreover, 'Bellers' first game of the season was also mine, at home to Doncaster. '39 Bellamy' shirts were everywhere, with no sign of throwbacks to past-it Fowler. This wasn't a crocked or ancient Premier player we'd picked up on his way to retirement. This was total class cast off by Mancini, but feared enough not to want any rivals to possess.

   And a 'Roy of the Rovers' debut it was. Bellamy scared the shit out of the Donny defence every time he had the ball, even when he fluffed a few passes early on. He made Burkey's goal with an astonishing 60 yard pass and scored our fourth with an unstoppable free-kick from 35. He blew kisses at the fans. What a homecoming for a boy from Kaairdiff and on a day we mourned the loss of one legend, Brian Clark, we witnessed the birth of another : 'Bellers of the Bluebirds.'

                                      THAT DEFEAT

At Wembley my phone broke.
When Chops scored our first
I leapt and yelled and bounced
like a kangaroo celebrating
the retirement of Rolf Harris.
It fell and imploded on concrete,
the screen a snowy blur
resembling my brain as they scored
from a free-kick -' It'll be worth it
if we win!' I  cracked.
When Ledley shot us in front
nothing was left to break
except my vocal chords.

In the first half our defence fell apart
like a house made from balsa wood
and our previously immaculate keeper
flapped like a one-flippered seal
which had been bingeing on tuna.

The silence after that match
was like some hero had died,
Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits;
the long walk down Wembley Way
with the wreath of my scarf
and Blackpool chants stabbing my skull
like woodpeckers thought my skin was bark.
I couldn't face anything orange for weeks:
juice, fake tans and even the sun,
hiding in the shade of that defeat.

  

   Imagine my pride when my 10 year-old daughter had her story published in last Friday's G2 Kids section of the Guardian and her main character, Goby the Alien, was actually featured on the front of the newspaper! I've never even made the letters' page and only once had a mention in dispatches by Owen Sheers saying how much he liked my work.

   My wife was gobsmacked and shouted 'Bloody hell!' in the foyer of our holiday hotel, so uncharacteristic my daughter was more interested initially
in her expletive - 'You said a naughty word!' she kept repeating.

   Maybe there'll be another writer in the family, who knows? My son was always destined to become a cellist, but ended up as a TV journalist and my elder daughter loved drama but became disillusioned when she was picked for bit parts like a chicken in the stage version of 'Animal Farm' and is now a politician. So who can tell?

   Nobody in my family was particularly interested in writing, though my father did once acquire a pseudonym and try to publish various things. He even changed his real name to that nomme de plume at one stage, so it must have been serious for a while. But I also recall him being into painting, photography, gliding, judo, sailing, horse-riding......... My mother was the poetry fan in the family, first Dylan Thomas and then Gerard Manley Hopkins and she did encourage my interest, giving me a paperback of 'New Poetry' which included Lowell and Berryman.

   My young daughter enjoys reading and writing funny poetry especially and had a recent Limerick phase, which she found was ideal for insults and crudity.

   It's hard to predict which way she'll develop and certainly there's no point pushing her, but she could well be inspired by seeing her story in print. For me, the moment of truth came when I won a school poetry competition and was later published regularly in the school magazine. It was recognition for a solitary pursuit. I'd hide my poems away in drawers till, in the 6th form, I remember showing some to my sister, who was at uni.

   She was suitably baffled by their obscurity and I relished it when she responded - ' I can't believe it, my little brother writing poetry which I can't understand!' A follower of James Joyce, I took this as a compliment.

   My young daughter reads as avidly as my wife. I only wish I could devour books with their appetite ; I tend to nibble at them like a mouse on a diet. It stands her in good stead when writing no doubt, yet she's the antithesis of a studious person, preferring instead to be playing with her mates on the streets.

   Up until the 6th form (when I became immersed with T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Ted Hughes and Thom Gunn and the music of Soft Machine) I was exactly the same. Homework was my last priority, sport and friends my first. I was a gregarious roamer, enjoying the kind of independence it's hard to envisage for kids today.

   This is a poem about that first flash of fame : - 


                                   ONE SECOND OF FAME

A poetry competition run by Flash Harry, our English teacher
(nicknamed 'Flash' because of 'E-Type' reading
not looking up as we chatted at the back,
saying 'Jenkins out!' without a full-stop).

The theme was 'First man on the moon' :
it was topical, it was Neil Armstrong,
it was my chance to take one giant step
in the airless craters of free verse.

I popped my entry into the box in Flash's room
one breaktime, making sure no-one was following
and it was take-off till results time,
my mind zooming with possibilities.

Then I recalled Flash's love of animals
and the story I'd written when I'd 'kicked the cat';
it was fiction but Flash didn't see it like that,
wrote an appalled comment at the end.

To be fair to Flash, he'd played us a tape
called 'Modern Poetry', read us Owen and Sassoon:
with my mother's tattered Penguins
it showed us whole new species of verse.

Amazed, I triumphed, landing on Planet Poem
with my cynical warning - 'And trees still stood...'
published in the school mag.,my mate Lart
complimenting so profusely I thought it was mockery.

Learnt afterwards there were only two entries
and the other one was by 'Anonymous'
with the title 'Flash Harry Loves Sheep'.
I was a poet: one second of fame, years of disappointment.

   'Aberystwyth Mon Amour' was one novel in Malcolm Pryce's series of modern Chandler-type detective fictions about that town way out west, at the end of the line.

   Aber, for me, is the place where most things began. I was born there and first went to school at Penparcau Infants. I had my first accident, almost run over when a car clipped an ankle. I later died there for the first time.......well, it felt like it.......on my 21st after imbibing noxious home brew and realising the meaning of 'blind drunk'!

   I first spoke and wrote there and my first poem (owing much to R.L.Stevenson) was put on the classroom wall for display. I learnt to swim in the icy waters off Tanybwlch storm beach.

   Much later, I signed up to fight in my first war at Freshers' Fair. I very naively put my name to a spoof militia to go to Chile and take up arms against General Pinnochet.  It was there, near the police station I was arrested for the first and only time for drunken trespassing; released without charge, but not before my bootprints had been taken.

   In Aber, I had sex and smoked a joint for the first time (though not simultaneously), swallowed half the joint and brought it up half way down Bronglais hill. Most importantly, I read poetry in public at the Miners' enefits organised to support the strike of the 70's. I attended my debut demo and occupation of the Education Offices in protest at Healey's cuts : a Labour administration controlled by the IMF.

   I made my first 'friends from the north' who shared many interests, music, football and a distinct aversion to Neil Hamilton (then editor of the Uni. magazine 'Courier'). Amazingly, some of us still meet in Aber to pursue our other mutual interest, alcohol.

   It's a place frothing with ghosts of myself and family. I can't pass Caradog Road without thinking of my grandparents' flat and down town the shop where my grandpa worked for years as a clerk, always greeting me with - 'Hello, young shaver!'

   The pier resonates with the occasions when, as mere 6 year-olds, we'd wander off into town and raid machines, sliding our small palms up openings to extract the chocolate bars for free. The small arched shelters under the castle summon up days of courting , when my wife and I were doing teacher-training. So many streets and buildings pull me back in time.

   I've written about Aber sporadically over the years, but more so in my last collection of poetry ' Walking On Waste', which featured a number of sonnets about both student and childhood days. Poets Paul Henry and Herbert Williams both hail from Aber and have conjured it in diverse ways.Herb has a fine poem about the distinctive memorial I mention below, a poem inspired by Thea Gilmore's song 'Inverigo' and a visit to Aber a few months ago.


                                     SEA    ROOM
                         ' There's the moon and the tide
                           And old songs not written yet' ('Inverigo')

I woke to find
that even with the windows shut
on drunken revellers,
the sea had found a way
into our bedroom.

'Beca, Beca!' a young man
called out to the moon
hidden behind cloud-cover.

Of a sudden, the years
slipped from me
like a seaweed cloak
and I was driftwood taken
in and out with the tide.

There had been fires
on the shingle, fed
with old fences and boards,
students close around barbeques
like families in hearth-huddles.

The naked woman
of the masthead memorial
on look-out for galleon or wreck.

And the years were ashes
and she did not move;
yet the sea filled our room,
my head and bones,
my jagged worries smoothed.

                    

   David Cameron's notion of a 'Big Society' was dropped rapidly during the election campaign. One Senior Conservative Minister described it as 'Total bollocks!' I liked Steve Bell's cartoon in 'The Guardian' where this Minister was being punched to produce the 'Ooomph!' sound (Cameron wants oomph from communities, of course).

   When our rubbish accumulates because the binmen are on strike due to cuts in their pay, workforce numbers, pensions, union rights , no tea-breaks for the next ten years etc, we'll organise our own collections. Better still we can round up the local rats (what price a modern Pied Piper?) to get rid of the food waste.

   When our local schools aren't rebuilt or refurbished and our children knee-deep in water, we'll simply take over the chapel, convert it into a 'free' school and call it St. McDonald's, with obvious sponsorship. No need for a private catering company and the school badge will have the ubiquitous 'M' on it.

   When the doctor can't come out on a house visit because he has to travel from Germany ( sounds familiar!), we'll make our own cures from foraged plants like doc leaves. We might even invest in a street 'witch doctor'.

   I can understand the arguments put by Alex Andrews in 'The Guardian' last Tuesday about the Tories 'opening a crack for real activism'. My friend and comrade the late Jack Gilbert was a great advocate for and participator in community organisations, from village groups setting up allotments to the more widespread Credit Unions. I'd like to think Andrews' idealism is not misplaced when he says - 'Perhaps we can create networks of solidarity and mutual aid that will allow people to survive austerity and job losses.' However, survival is one thing and creating a genuine alternative another.

   I cannot imagine the ConDems tolerating fullblown co-operatives which could challenge the hegemony of large companies who are strangling and dominating society. Of course, what Cameron has in mind is the shift of services away from public sector and onto voluntary bodies in order to destroy what he sees as dependence on the State. The tragic reality is that many people will be neglected and abandoned because charities won't be able to cope (just as homeless people are now) and only where it's seen as lucrative (as has happened with Care Homes) will the private sector move in for the killing.

   I sincerely hope that the 'communities of dissent' envisaged by Andrews will emerge. However, Mayor Boris has just cleared one (the Peace Camp) from Parliament Square : not a promising sign for the future.


                                          A BIG PARTY

S' we decided to ave a Big Party
t celebrate-a Big Society
(it woz-a best way
t get on-a telly).

Better still,this bloke up-a street
woz comin back from Afghanistan
with a small wound on is leg,
so summin else t celebrate.

First time since-a Jubilee
and even them Thomases Welsh Nat's
Welsh-speakers never turned up 'en,
sayd they'd come along this time.

Ev'ryone ud be there cept Dirty Dick
number 69 done f flashin
all over-a local paper ;
if ee come ee'd ave a good kickin.

It woz all ready, booze n buffet
(even cold pizza f'r the veggies),
journalist from-a 'Merthyr' with a camra,
but telly coverin a Big Orgy up-a Rhondda.

Never seen tha soldier before,
is mam wore a t-shirt sayin
'MAM OF A TOTAL HERO',
ee limped bard,toasted-a Queen;

Thomases started complainin in Welsh,
s' this eero Shane ee tells em -
'Fuck off ome t wherever!'
They jest sayd -'We woz born in Merthyr!'

It did get better arfter tha,
we ad a Big Cake we all shared
and a Big Larf when some o the boyz
pissed all over Dick's garden.

Shane showed the kids is scars
an got to autograph a few girlz t-shirts;
it got barkin as the evenin wen on
with Big Drinkin Competitions.

Then Alan up-a road puts a dampener
on the whool bloody evenin,
stan's on-a table, one foot in-a cake remains
an gives off t ev'ryone -

'Big Fuckin Party!' ee shouts is ead off,
'yesterday I gotta Big News,
the Council's on'y laid me off
an now I feel like a nobuddy!'

Shane yells out - 'Yew should join the army!'
Thomases start singin 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau',
I done a Big Spew in-a drain
an a Big Party become a Big Pandemonium.  

   Our Close is quite remarkable. We have been living here, above Merthyr, for over 30 years and a good number of the residents are the same ones who were here when we first moved in. It's also quite unusual that, in a village where many houses are up for sale, so few ever go on the market in this street.

   At present, there are many retired couples, widows and widowers. When I first arrived quite a few worked for nationalised industries: a bus mechanic for Merthyr Corporation next door, fitter for British Gas up the road and Welsh Water manager opposite. During the 80's these were all privatised and now only the manager has moved out to a big house not far away.The few new residents tend to be self-employed, reflecting the inflated price of property even in Merthyr.

   It's hard to work out why so many have stayed. It's not as if there's a great community spirit, indeed there have been serious disputes about left-open gates and even an assault case brought before Merthyr Crown Court last year, involving families who had previously been friendly!

   Some families are chatty, open and laid-back, while others are sticklers, not giving balls back and moaning about kids playing on the street. Last weekend, my young daughter and her mates decided to go car-washing along the Close, to make a few bob. While some were generous, others shooed them away like stray dogs.

   .....or sheep, cows, horses......all of which used to wander into the Close and remain in gardens, because of our proximity to grazing land, which is no longer fit for animals and signed as a DANGER!

   The stability must be down to other factors. For one, the Close is on its own, not part of any sprawling estate like nearby Shirley Gardens (a friend from there is always bewildered how a once great iron town could have such a prissy estate name). On the map our Close is a question-mark, without the dot.

   The answer also has to be its nearness to the Waun, an area now overgrown, but once cropped short by the aforementioned farm animals. The Waun leads out from the long curve of the question-mark, opening the street onto moorland of foxes, wild flowers, streams and oaks.

    Though there's a new Primary school built directly onto the backs of some houses, the overall atmosphere is one of prevailing quiet. People do turn their cars at the bottom  and parents park to pick up children, but it's nevertheless a haven.

   It's a Famous Close as well, as evinced by this week. I met the film actor and former presenter of 'Soccer Sunday' Jonathan Owen standing outside his parents' house, where we discussed Cardiff City for some time. X-Factor runner-up Lloyd Daniels walked up the Close last weekend holding an acoustic guitar and heading for local pub The Red. Rock band The Blackout ( who hail from Heolgerrig) played an acoustic set the other day at their old school's fete within hearing distance, if it hadn't been pouring!

   There are a few fanatical car-cleaners and one made me think of my old mate Pete 'Doc' Smith, who lived on the main road up here while teaching in the same school as me in Merthyr. He was a public school educated leftie who'd attended the same school as Attila the Stockbroker. He wore Doc Martens to school when they were banned and trousers torn at the knees. He got away with it because his posh accent always impressed the Deputy Head. He once read a poem of mine about car-cleaning and ( as a Freudian) declared - 'It's obviously about masturbation!' I dread to think what his thesis on R.S. Thomas might have come up withup with.


                                   CAR-CLEANING

All day and all evening
he has rubbed and shone
from hub-cap to roof
with his sponge and chamois.

My Freudian friend 'Doc' Smith
would've relished interpreting
this shiny-headed policeman,
this multi-gym body-builder :

what his wife would've done
for all that attention,
from purple-painted toe-nails
to spring catch of tongue;

how he stooped and bent
to alloy wheels, how he swept
his cloth across the windscreen,
how white foam flowed down the drain.
        

   Alzheimer's is my greatest fear: it even beats the Bluebirds losing to Swansea in the Play-off Final at Wembley, or a return to teaching as a Supply. It's in the family and each year whenever there seems to be a breakthrough in its cure ( I think the tincture of daffodils was the last one), I am filled with hope.

   At the age of 18 I returned to Wales by accident, to find that my Gran was beginning to suffer from it. My mother had decided to join my stepfather on his work travelling abroad, which left me with no home to return to over the holidays when at Uni. She hadn't really explained what I was supposed to do.

   They'd fixed me up with a summer job at a three-star hotel near York. Almost all my belongings were crammed into the caravan the hotel owner put me in ( shared with a thousand spiders who crossed my face at night). When the owner finally asked me to bury the contents of another caravan's toilet in the hotel's grounds, I'd had enough. The job was shit (literally!).

   I stood in York station without a clue where to go (actually, it was between grandparents in Weston and my Gran in Barry), when 'Cardiff' came up on the schedule. That was it!

   My Gran had been one of the first women in Wales to attend university, but had to leave prematurely ( because of the First World War, I believe). She was a Primary teacher for most of her life, so teaching's in the family as well as the dreaded illness. She also had a great love of poetry and I enjoyed reading to her from her 19th century verse anthology, especially the expansive , daring poems of Whitman, so unlike her own preferred Keats and Wordsworth.

   Initially, there were only a few signs of Alzheimer's. She coped reasonably well despite her serious eye condition ( I may have inherited that as well). She completed the 'Daily Telegraph' crossword every day and was sharp with her many sayings, like - ' Speak clearly if you speak at all. Carve every word before you let it fall.' I imagine her pupils in Rutland must've become accustomed to that one.

   But soon her mind began to deteriorate faster than her eyesight. Her recent memory disappeared and she'd do things like bake sponges, put them in tins and forget about them. Her large larder was full of Victoria sponges in various states of decomposition. She began to ask the same things over and over again. She became very depressed, having moments of lucidity when she fully realised her condition and its inevitability.

   Her sister Alice ( my Aunty Al) had suffered greatly with it, so she knew what was to come. She'd wandered the streets in her nightgown and had failed to recognise anyone, even her closest kin.

   My Gran's descent into this utter abyss of the mind and eventual incarceration in a psychiatric hospital was so harrowing. I've written poems and stories about it, but never really come to terms with the tragedy.

    The following poem is about a one-time friend and colleague who isn't much older than me -

                                      CAVE  EYES

See him on television in a wheel-chair,
programme about carers and Alzheimer's.
Shock knocks me : brain-quaking.

Years ago, in a circle in the Staff Room
and he was Head of Geography,
sharp as an arrete at lunchtime quizzing,
friendly comments, open as a plain.

Now , on the screen, his wife pushing him,
his features first seem unchanged ;
yet his eyes are terror-dark caves
and his mouth distorted into a crevice
all his thoughts fall down.

   I am used to recycling material. After all, my latest book 'The Climbing Tree (a novella aimed primarily at teenagers) was recycled from 'Waste' : a full-length stage-play of that name which no theatre showed any interest in performing.

   At present I'm busy turning a long narrative poem I wrote for teenagers (apparently, they don't read long narrative poems) into something else.....a balloon perhaps? In the process, I really hope I'm improving it, just as I feel I did add much to the play as it gradually became a story, not least a sense of hope at the end where there was utter despair.

   I believe I grew up in a fairly progressive household. After my parents separated, I lived with my mother in a small village. She was an expert at recycling the bricks we 'liberated' at night from the nearby builder's yard and our long garden path was made from them. Also, we always had many exotic plants in our garden, courtesy of the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge. My mother would recycle these with much aplomb. Above all, I recall the early days of plastic, sandwich bags and how she'd wash them out and hang them on the line to dry like small, transparent sails. She was very advanced, but also (having spent most of her life as a 'Cardi') adept at penny-pinching. 

   All this brings me to the project I've been involved in all this week. I've been visiting Primary Schools in the Pontypridd area as part of the Envirovision scheme.

   My role was to get the Year 5 pupils to make up song lyrics and next week they'll be putting them to music. Hopefully, they'll be able to adapt the words to different forms, such as rap and R & B. I began with the idea of products made from recycled materials, but soon found that inventing their own Superhero was a better idea, especially when they drew it first, with all his/her/its special powers.

   I wrote two poems especially for the workshops, but the second was to provide the stimulus. Some writers don't like working with younger pupils and I can understand that if they aren't used to it. However, with a 10 year-old daughter (whose pencil-case made from old tyres I nabbed to demonstrate)  I was used to their 'level' and  found the children very enthusiastic and imaginative.

   It would be great to hear the results of their words put to music and it may all be the start of a future Tom Waits or Thea Gilmore. Below is the poem I wrote, complete with 60's hippiedom in its finale.


  


Recyclo Ms. & Recyclo Man
 

 

Here he comes

with his arms of cans –

he’s the one and only

Recyclo Man!

 

 

Here she comes

her body’s food waste –

she’s the one and only

Recyclo Ms.!

 

 

If they could get together

they’d make a great pair -

putting the world to right,

no need for landfill sites.

 

 

He’s got bottle-top eyes,

she’s got food-carton feet –

both are full of energy

with the plastic bags they eat.

 

 

No smoke to choke,

no water full of cack –

one day flowers will grow from their palms

with the  love of  Recyclo Ms. and Man.

   Years ago, at the time of Citizen's Band Radio, Merthyr was known as something like Washingtub City or even Hooverville. Now, the town where the red flag was first flown at the Waun Fair, could easily be dubbed Tescopolis.

   While most town centres suffer from out-of-town retail parks (when will they be called 'malls' or, at Sales times, 'mawls'?), we manage to be attacked by a deadly pincer movement of such parks (especially the newest, Cyfarthfa) and a Tesco Extra in the middle of town and dominating like a huge vacuum cleaner,sucking in shoppers.

   People actually visit Tesco and not Merthyr now : students up on the train from Trefforest and , attracted by the 2 hours free parking, shoppers who never see the High Street, or what's left of it. Take away take-aways, mobile phone shops and cheapo Pound Shops and there's little left.

   I can recall when Tesco was a mere food store, wedged on the corner by the bus-station, the scene of an infamous gangland battle when machetes were wielded between rival families and one old woman pushed her trolley between them demanding 'sliced meat'!

   It was the scene of the arrest of the entire Cor Cochion Caerdydd in an anti-apartheid protest. We often picketed this shop and I remember once saying to this young woman - 'Don't buy South African goods!' To which she replied - 'Too right, love! I wouldn touch anythin andled by them blacks!'

   The new Tesco has taken over. Our last independent baker has long gone and only market days bring people into town in numbers. You meet people in Tesco and it becomes the focal point that the precinct once was. Merthyr's ambitious 'Cafe Quarter' exists on a sign, but not in reality.

   This megastore has been the scene of high drama and I always seem to just miss it. Not long ago, a woman deliberately set fire to clothing in order to get herself imprisoned, because she was so poor she needed decent food and shelter. She set off the whole sprinkler system and alarms and was badly burnt.

   Tesco treats people with all the compassion of a multinational profit-machine i.e. none at all. Like Macdonalds, KFC and the rest of the junk food industry it feeds fat on the unhealthy lifestyles of the poor, with sheer shelves of pasties , pies and fizzy drinks.

   The best form of preventative medicine in one of Europe's unhealthiest town's would be to close it down. Yet I shop there and add to the problem, longing for alternatives and wondering if they'll ever happen.

   The poem below deals with another true drama and one involving a young man accused of shop-lifting...........

                                     SOOPERMARKIT DRAMA

Yew wouldn bleeve it,
I woz in-a soopermarkit
jest by-a frozen peas n carrots
when ev'ryone started goin mad.

'There's a bloke by there,
an ee's strippin off!'
'Ee's off of is trolley!'
(In is case, ee never ad one).

I followed crowds an securitee
t where there wuz jeerin an jokin.
This young fella, beard an long air,
woz standin at-a top o Wines an Beers.

Too trew, ee wuz takin is clothes off
an urlin em down at-a crowd
oo cheered an clapped is striptease :
somebuddy sayz - 'Do-a Full Monty!'

Ee grabs old of a coupla cans
pops em and starts slurpin,
then ee wuz yellin - 'They charged me!
An I wern doin nothin!'

Before ee got down to is goolies
ee'd bin dragged down by eavies.
What a protest against shop-liftin,
ee wuz pissed with all ee'd bin drinkin.

   Read Finch's 'Zen Cymru' deep into the night accompanied by the sound of vuvuzelas. Compulsive reading. Recommend it. Master of staccato wit.

   Turned off computer. Put out blue speaker-light. Contemplated writing poem beginning -
              The computer needs to be put to bed
              just like a human child.
   Never got round to finishing it. Probably good job. Too many Leffes. Woke up middle of night. Wrote this instead.

    Yes, it has been Biodiversity Week in Merthyr and Thursday night's reading by Peter Finch from his new book, plus old stuff, plus daring new poems, was the final event. It was also a poetry and music Open Mic., the first time in three years of such nights at The Imp, Pontmorlais, that we've actually had a real mic. (well, two in fact!).

   Maybe that's what put off the regulars. Terrible chest. Bad back. Low as you can get in Penywaun. No wheels. Work and workshops. They didn't show up.

   We did have a 'tidee' audience though and the Council's Biodiversity Officer must've been pleased. Jim Davies, who is a regular ( Merlot, small bottles) read poems by his friend Mike Williams, a much underrated poet , who has been suffering a lot of ill-health of late.

   I enjoyed local singer-songwriters Mike Morgan and Karen Moore and after playing a burst of the ol' blues-harp to follow the poem below, Mike (not everyone's called 'Mike' at the Open M__) asked me to join him for a jam, which was enjoyable, but not high on the Biodiversityometer.

   The previous Sunday had been 'Woodlands and Wildlife Day' at the Wildlife Garden tucked away at the outer reaches of Cyfarthfa Park. My young daughter got to watch fire made with sticks, make a bangle from reeds, be stared at by inscrutable owls and , best of all, draw pictures on slices of tree. She was very proud of these ( a bat, butterfly and dragonfly) and took the latter to school the next day.

   One person at the Open Mic. looked up 'biodiversity' on the internet :it's really a fancy word for Nature. Brings me back to the never-done computer-poem. What do computers dream about? Becoming human? Like we dream of flying or of breathing underwater? Hope they'd have more sense.

   Blackbirds have nested outside Chateau Jenkins for generations (blackbird generations, that is).We first had a nest in the rapidly-growing conifers a neighbour (possibly Owen Money) planted next to our patio. It was so low that when my two eldest were young they could get on a step-ladder and observe the eggs turning into chicks. When it was abandoned I used it as an aid to creative writing. It's still in the garage somewhere.

   A blackbird once made up a remarkable trio when those two played cello and viola together. It sat on the fence and sang. Star turn. Should've been booked for Glastonbury. Who needs U2 anyway?
 

Hey, Mr. Blackbird!

 

 

Hey, Mr Blackbird,

who said you could join in?

 

As my wife plays piano

through the Spring-wide window,

you start singing.

 

 

Hey, Mr Blackbird

who do you think you are,

some Charlie Parker

of the old oak,

some Miles Davis

of next door’s cypress?

 

 

My wife’s tune takes off

and flies across our garden.

You’re on a perch

and that’s your stage,

you reed –man, you bebopping,

claw-hopping, yellow-beaked

jammer of the hedgerows.

 

 

Hey, Mr Blackbird,

I could listen to this duet

for hours on end.

You sing the sun descending,

reply in moment’s melodies.

 

 

Hey, Mr Blackbird,

you are The Man!

 

   Last Monday , I went to the Cardiff City Stadium to conduct poetry workshops there with two visiting Primaries, taking part in a Literacy Scheme.

   It was a bad start, as workmen had pulled up many of the bricks on the walkway leading to the gate entrance on Sloper Rd., including mine with 'Bluebirds' Poet' on it. Hopefully, they'll soon be re-laid.

   Moreover, the only trace left of Ninian Park was a pile of rubble once the Bob Bank, where my old seat used to be. The streets of the new housing estate built on it have yet to be named after the likes of Phil Dwyer or Brian Clark.

   Approaching our stadium, there was litter all over the car-park and a few litter-pickers making little impression on the discarded cans, bottles and food cartons. I recalled that Stereophonics had played the first ever concert there the Saturday before.

   I'd hoped to meet a hero of mine, Scott Young - now one of the main people behind the Football in the Community scheme - but he was off on holiday. As I waited in their office, one of the workers burst in with the news - 'I've just heard......Stuart Cable's dead!' No-one could believe it.

   I remembered meeting him not so long ago at the launch ( in a microbrewery, then a pub) of the local anthology 'Merthyr Writing!' He was very down-to-earth and approachable. Then again, back in 2007, when we were invited guests in his area of the Liberty, as his band supported The Who. No doubt there were a few of his fellow Bluebirds there, who found it hard to keep their gobs shut after a few pints.

   The workshops went well and the pupils (from Valleys' schools) were very responsive, but looking out on the stadium and the stage being taken down after the gig, only increased my sense of melancholy.

   The Phonics first album 'Word Gets Around' was by far their best, with every song rooted in their upbringing and community and Cable's drumming was fundamental to the sound. Moreover, he was a Moon-like character in a group who came over as too mundane.

   In the last few months the Valleys has lost two super rock musicians. The death of Micky Jones should've brought equal tributes at the very least. Jones was one of the finest guitarists ever and his band , Man, will one day get the plaudits they deserve.

   Cable and Jones...........don't know if they ever met each other, but their backgrounds are very similar. Both were Valleys' boys who grew up in small terraced houses, one listening to AC/DC, the other to the likes of Quicksilver Messenger Service.

   Stuart and Micky........I dream of a Rock School, somewhere between Aberdare and Merthyr ( maybe Llwydcoed?) which bears their names.


                          STUART CABLE'S NO MORE

Flowers on the roadside,
flowers on his car :
all quiet in Llwydcoed
and shocked in Aberdare.


There's nobody up there,
so it's no use speaking :
thunder booms its bass drum,
lightning's cymbals clashing.


Car-park's flooded with litter,
broken bottles on the floor,
barrels empty, stage dismantled
and Stuart Cable's no more.