pencilnotes

Gardening DIY – hedge demolition- in response to Telegraph gardening article advising people to be lazy.

2026-08-24T03:44:49.065-07:00

How we (I at 76 yrs) removed a 13ft hedge (after being quoted £400 to trim the top and sides!) and roots, dug out an area of soil and rubble filing 90 rubble bags (1/3 full each) to enlarge our seating area, moved fencing back and laid paving (help with the fencing only).

Tools – a long handled pruning saw, spit, log-spitting axe and large hoe.

Starting with the garden when we moved in. Professionals cut down the tree and removed the huge ivy on a derelict garage end on other side of boundary encroaching on our garage. But even they – using a grubbing out machine – only grubbed out to just below the surface – I had to use a spit, log-splitting axe, saw and hoe to dig out and remove all the roots from the holly tree - massive roots all left in by the professionals!

[NB. Clue – Click once on picture to see whole pic. click again to return to the story!]

When we bought in 2021 – wild and semi-derelict garden – and you haven”t see the huge hedge yet!

Stage one – trees removed – initial seating area – huge hedge

Stage two – trellis (professionally) installed - huge hedge

Initial garden plan

Seating area swamped by huge hedge (with Rosie).

Stage Three – extend trellis fencing to hold back huge hedge – FAIL.

Stage Four – chop down huge hedge (winter) with pruning saw.

Looks OK from the outside – but stumps and roots and higher ground block extending the seating area.

Stage Five – stumps and roots out (Spit, log-splitting axe) clear for digging higher level soil out.

Plan for extending seating area / moving and expanding trellis fencing.

Stage Six – new trellis installed – just soil removal to go before laying new paving.

Stage Seven – Amazing how many rubble sacks (1/3 full) it takes to dig out this area to below paving level – it’s dammed thirsty work – even in winter!

Stage Eight – All paved and worth the sweat in the end – with up-cycled (painted black) old garden seats found in a back alley. But what to do with that extra paving (a pallet easier to buy than a few pavers)

Stage Nine – Why not enlarge northern sunny side seating too?

The end – views of a small garden – was it worth it? Up-cycled jardinieres (another back-alley find).

And the House from the garden *after all windows/doors painted ‘Castle Grey’ F&B. (and Rosie again)

CURD THE LION STORYBOARD

2026-06-27T05:35:11.917-07:00

Random thoughtsa on housing, construction, transport, employment, etc..

2026-04-17T08:55:00.000-07:00

On construction goals, logistics transport and office commuting.

Rather than critique the fumbling of politicians, I venture to suggest that answers to all these lie in much deeper forward planning.

One thing that may emerge from the mess we are currently in is the realisation of several strategic shifts that I (among others) have been advocating for decades (shouting into the hollows of my mind of course because not one listens, everyone speaks).

I suggest, forget adding one’s voice to the professed moral indignation of the virtuous and turn instead to trying to visualise what might be done in the much longer term than the crisis of confidence that has erupted with COVID-19, which, in strategic terms, through its sudden disruptive power, may be the stimulus that changes the mindset.

In random order: -
The devolution of work (that proportion of the economy that is information based) from city hubs to local micro-hubs (or home based work).
The replacement of many tasks (and occupations) by AI.

Think Apple. This is an analogous tale,
In the early days business IT philosophy was based upon central processing (big computer in the control of IT experts) and dumb terminals (Atex for instance) to keep workers ‘in-house’ where their performance and behaviour could be most easily monitored. Apple computers are ‘intelligent’ thus able to function irrespective of the core IT setup being viable.
At the Telegraph I demanded that my graphics unit was Mac based (IT tried to argue but failed). When the central system broke down as it frequently did, we were the only section able to continue working.
The ‘federal’ system of business (Apple) had no need of centralisation because each terminal (worker) works independently and communicates with fellows and central systems when the need arises (this is becoming increasingly a norm for publishing where the content providers work remotely and only production workers (editors etc work in-house). It is a hybrid of old and new.

Communication has long ago reached the point when those latter are not needed to work in-house most of the time if at all. In-house workers waste massive amounts of time in meetings, formal and informal But bosses are happy because they can see them.
They also waste massive amounts of time ‘commuting’ to their hives.

It is this perceived need for oversight that drives the whole city centre tower block worker ant syndrome.
Bosses cannot get their heads around the concept that people cannot be persuaded to work unless they are physically under the thumb of their overseers.

The ‘shared office’ concept, now increasing for freelance workers is one that every information based company could tie into.
Workers (those who cannot work from home due to space / interference) commute only locally to their shared micro hubs (with secure links to head office and parallel micro hubs.

City centre commuting - end of.
Long car journeys and traffic jams - vast reduction in.
Vehicle pollution - smashed.
Train journeys - minimised.
No need for better faster trains. ie. HS2 - end of.
STOP THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL TRAVEL.
Time wasted in both - end of.

City centre tower blocks - end of (many will have their footing underwater anyway soon if sea levels rise as predicted. Meanwhile award winning architects keep building ever more elaborate and fantastical edifices without a thought of how they will be serviced when the land upon which they sit is inundated.

Instead all that cash can be injected into local infrastructure enabling a cross section of companies to work in micro-hubs securely and for workers to be enabled to work from home (through secure personal hubs with audio visual communication with their colleagues and bosses - hi-tech garden sheds for instance.
All paid for by the companies out of the savings they make from NOT having to rent or buy office blocks in city centres or subsidising their workers commuting costs through grants loans or higher wages.

The Northern Powerhouse concept to be spuriously enabled by fast train links so that bosses can whizz back to London will instead come about naturally (as will the Welsh Powerhouse, the Cornish Powerhouse, the Everywhere Else Powerhouse) by virtue of installing the most advanced internet technology (paid for by the savings on HS2).

Pollution levels will plummet as ‘essential travel’ becomes mental (ultimately by augmented reality communications).
Cars will become ‘unessential’ - and electrified - before being replaced by technologies that are just now in their infancy.
Necessary long distance journeys will be essentially the transportation of goods by electrified lorry, an enhanced railways goods network, vacuum tube pods linking distribution hubs (not necessarily in cities).
The now mainly redundant city business centres can be re-peopled as living zones of a much higher quality (because created for the more wealthy middle classes) accommodation. This assuming that all the measures above have not slowed the advent of sea-level rise inundation of the world’s major metropolises (some large percentage of which lie in flood prone plains).

Revolutionary housing construction methods will have taken into consideration the changing needs of society and be constructed in such a fashion as to NOT ‘despoil the soil’ upon which they sit. They will be as easily removed as constructed - ‘by design’ by unskilled workers or their own future inhabitants - with no concrete foundations, elevated to remove flood vulnerability while ate same time allowing that area of land that would have been removed from the water-absorption equation by concretisation to perform its natural function.

Building regulations that are frozen in concept the methods not much improved since Roman times, will have to be overturned to accommodate such methods.

It may well be that the Tarmac-ing of Britain may have become to some extent unnecessary by this time as transport modes evolve beyond the rubber -tyre phase (and rubber is under threat worldwide from disease just as bananas are - Continental are exploring ways to commercial produce rubber from the only other source - Dandelion sap!

In a moment of reflection, I wrote this ‘philosophical’ piece.

2026-04-17T02:45:00.000-07:00

I cannot, in all conscience, believe in any higher being, causal principle or end purpose, teleology if you will.

No guiding principle shaping the world or its beings, no redemption from sin or misdeeds.

The concept of love, caring, extends as a human concept from the fundamental groupings of mate and family that, with society’s increasing complexity, was extended to include interdependent groups, then tribes, then cultures, then nations, then groups of nations adhering to common codified mores, those having arisen in the ‘spiritual’ sphere (if one may call it that) from the shaman, through cults, to priest and religions, in parallel to, in the physical sphere, head of family, chief, law-giver, ruler, king (where the ruling concept is still quasi-religious) to national leaders (increasingly divorced from their god-given rights to secular ascendancy, through force of arms, then wealth) as presidents, prime ministers, dictators, oligarchs, and supra-national business heads, etc..

The corollary of inclusion, as I described before, was exclusion by dint of curse, excommunication, imprisonment, torture and death, either individual or, en masse, as conquest followed by coerced inclusion or its threatened opposite, or annihilation, pogrom, genocide, usually in the name of a God, but, secularly speaking, for the purity of the (chosen) race.

In the face of the undeniably ‘evil demi-urge’ deeply ingrained in man to remove all threat to one’s (group) survival, it is the challenge of every man to overcome that base instinct to conquer, subjugate or destroy, and sublimate those powerful negative desires into their opposite, first respecting (the right of others to live), then caring and ultimately loving that ‘Other’, stranger, foreigner, infidel...

Exclusion, or the ‘selfish’ principle derives from the need to ensure survival of the family unit and one’s personal ‘future’ in the shape of one’s offspring. It is the desire for ‘eternity’ through this. Extended to societies it is manifest in architecture, music, song and poetry defining a culture that its adherents hope ‘to God’ will survive their transient mortality.

There will never become a time when man will become ‘good’ - his inalienable fate is to struggle for the good in the certain knowledge that his struggle will at times, in personal life and through history, prove futile in the endless cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, races, and even species, including humans.

It is that determination to work and even self-sacrifice for the benefit of his fellows and humanity that defines courage and fortitude, though a strong caveat comes in the form of ‘certitude’ that ‘right’, as he sees it, must be ‘absolute’.

When his definition of ‘right’, and ‘good’ proves not be the ‘righteous’ from another man’s point of view, how does the virtuous man conduct himself in the face of denial?

Does he seek to persuade, proselytize, impose? If so,the endless cycle begins again, from virtuous intent to evil deed.

SUB or OVER Stacked?

2024-06-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I somehow found myself accidentally ‘subscribed’ (sucked into) to a new ‘literary?’ blog-like medium (like X – but long-form), called ‘Sub stack’

– which I am coming to think should be called ‘Me-me-stack’ (listen to ME! and pay ME for the privilege of hearing my VERY IMPORTANT musings, prefaced of course with a self-deprecating “I am so grateful to you (suckers) who make this possible (for me to make money advising you).

The peculiar thing is that, unwittingly, I have given my email address away to this blog site so that I now am inundated daily with the opportunity to read daily opinion columns or diaries pontificating on an ever-increasing rage of subjects coupled with requests to dive deeper (into my wallet) to benefit from the treasure trove hidden therein

and join communities of like-minded ‘seekers’ who may even gain the privilege of communicating with the said Guru on occasion or participate in ‘events’ that will leave me assuredly more wise, knowledgeable and impecunious.\

But with so many Gurus, so many invitations – and so little time – I am at a loss as to which to choose?

Is there a Sub-stack blog on that?

Agents, dontcha luvvy-luvem?

2024-04-23T02:34:00.000-07:00

Watching ‘Job Lot’ – a series about life at a British Job Centre – when the thought suddenly occurred to me that approaching agents is a bit like that – but without the humour.

So, to lighten my mood, my pea brain came up with this Limericked look at the imagined process.

There once was an agent, call her ‘Kirsty’,
Whose ‘site’ was for new talent ever thirsty,
When an old geezer applied,
She hastily replied,
Oh Dear, but my lists are all full to burst-y.

When he stubbornly fetched to query her ‘pitch’,
She said, in a bid to be rid of the wretch,
My lists are replete,
So let me repeat,
I’ve no room for old farts: Life’s a bitch!

(Ain’t that not the Truth?)

Naturally, there is no reality I could arrange

To correspond to such a ridiculous exchange.

The sign reads: ‘The Sorry Lot of the Unpublished Writer.’

If you can’t read it, it is because it is un-published, stupid!

WOK HAPPY

2024-01-13T06:26:00.000-08:00

When he looked up at me on heat 9 (max) I knew I had to capture the moment before the onions made him cry!

CURD the LION KIds appreciations (and adult / professional)

2023-10-07T05:24:00.001-07:00

Here is a page with some of my lovely kid readers’ views on my nonsense adventure for children of all ages:

(and a few adult professional reviews following)

Professional Reviews for Curd

HiT Entertainment: "We really enjoyed the inventive, witty narrative and surreal humour in the book. We can see that Curd the Lion might work very well as a family feature film."

tfou (children’s arm of France’s TF1 TV): "I think it should be a film but we don’t make film at tfou.”

Lovereading4 kids review. Louise Weir, April 2009 (biggest promotion ever given to single book by this website: 7+, 9+, 11+, Book of Month, Debut of Month):
“Reminiscent of the writing of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, this brilliant debut children's novel is completely unputdownable as well as being almost uncategoris- able. The author has succeeded in delivering on a book that incorporates a terrifically funny yet mysterious story, full of larger-than-life highly improbable characters that I couldn’t begin to do justice to by describing them here, other than to say they are wild and wacky and completely original. He’s also delivered a story that is full of tongue- in-cheek humour and skilful wordplay. It’s 174 pages of pure unadulterated pleasure and deserves to be huge.
…this book will be loved by anyone from 7 to 107.”
Dec. 09. Made one of their Books of the Year and Debuts of Year. Was top of their chart in the week before Christmas. Prime personal choice of co-founder.

Professor John Gray, philosopher & author of ‘Straw Dogs’ and ‘Black Mass’. “Alan Gilliland's Curd stories are the best thing that have happened to children’s liter- ature since Alice went through the looking-glass. I was particularly taken by the Labyrinth chapter. The whole book seemed to me delightful - in the magical tradition of George Macdonald, but with an extra dimension of nonsense and wit of its own.
Gilliland’s mix of upside-down logic and serious whimsy is nonsense of the highest calibre.”

Tony Benn has written: “a lovely story book with super illustrations for children of all ages”.

Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, of the illustrations: “excellent work…” (He ate my lunch at Hay Book Festival)

Chris Bond, Yorkshire Post (extracts from full-page review/article, 7 Nov. 08**): “His wonderfully crafted debut will enchant children and amuse adults in equal measure.
Improbable characters leap from the page amid a sea of riddles and rhymes as the tale unfolds and, like so many great works of children’s literature, Gilliland wrote it for his own children. The whimsical story is beautifully illustrated by Gilliland’s own pencil drawings, which hark back to a time when children’s books weren’t part of some huge merchandising drive.”

Steve Craggs, Northern Echo (extracts from review, 21 Oct. 08***): “There’s a hint of Hobbit, a touch of Alice in Wonderland, an echo of Lear and even a nod in the direc- tion of Terry Pratchett in this phantasmagorical fantasy quest which is an epic enter- tainment for both children and adults alike.
Nonsensical and whimsical – and beautifully illustrated – this story is as delightful on the eye as it is dazzling in the imagination.
Go with the flow and you’re in a magical world in which impossible creatures leap from the pages, riddles have to be unravelled and a mighty battle looms ominously at the lair of the Great Raven.”

Andrew Ffrench, Oxford Mail (extracts from full-page review/article, 5Dec*): “Gilliland’s tale, of a bunch of soft toys that go on a fantastic journey to recover a precious brooch nabbed by a raven, is pitched just right for children of a certain age who are bound to ask: "Do they get the brooch back?"
In the wrong hands, a story about a bunch of soft toys going on a great adventure could be sickly sweet, but Gilliland succeeds in making his story funny and mysteri- ous.
The grandfather from Billinghurst, West Sussex, has produced such a distinctive story, both in terms of presentation, and imaginative reach, that I feel convinced he has a hit on his hands.”

Margaret Mallett, teacher of teachers, in ‘Choosing & Using” (winner of 2011 UK Literacy Society Award):
(section preface) “In a necessarily selective account, I have been concerned to pick out some of the best writers and most memorable titles which have survived over the years and which I think are likely to continue to be read.”

On Curd (excerpt): “Four soft toys go off on a journey to to find a stolen brooch. Sounds cosy? It is not. In fact this is an exciting addition to fantasy novels for chil- dren from about seven years, although it is also a most engrossing adventure story.
The pencil drawing by the author fit the written text perfectly and add atmosphere and often energy to the story.
It is not surprising that this story has been compared to the work of Lewis Car- roll and Edward Lear: riddles and word play, mysteries and surprises are won- derfully interwoven. The play on names is superb.”
She wrote to me afterwards: “In ‘Choosing and Using’ I wanted to help student teach- ers know about some of the very best books for children after my lifetime in teaching children and students. Your book about Curd the Lion is hugely original and imagination stretching. My grandchildren are all 4 and under, but I will be getting them each a copy to treasure in the future. I wonder what you are working on now.
You deserve every success.”

John Cohen, Editor, Reading Time (journal of Children’s Book Council of Australia, Feb. 09, extracts from review)
“This is an extraordinary book from a former graphics editor of The Telegraph, UK.
What Gilliland has done is to lift what might have been another toy story onto a lit- erary gold plate. His ability to play on words as well as to keep the story moving is a rare skill.
The result is that the story can be enjoyed as a simple adventure as well as for its tongue-in-cheek word repartee that is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.”

“Brian Sibley, author & broadcaster, WINNER of BEST ADAPTATION for The History of Titus Groan in the BBC Audio Drama Awards, 2012, wrote in his Ex Libris blog (excerpts).

“For some time now, I have been meaning to blog about Alan Gilliland's delightful book for children (their parents and the young at heart in general) The Amazing Ad- ventures of Curd the Lion (and Us!) in the Land at the Back of Beyond.

It is a heady mix of the tried and trusted format featuring nursery-toys-come-to-life with riddling, punning, nonsense in the style of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear punc- tuating a twisting, turning roller-coaster adventure story filled with dangers, out- landish encounters and weird and wonderful beings.

There are a mass of subtexts and literary and historical allusions within the story (it is not accidental, for example, that the creature encountered named the 'Dodongs' is an anagram of that Carrollian alter ego, 'Dodgson') and readers armed with the map be- low can trace the route of Curd & Co's adventures in the real location of Brimham Rocks in the Yorkshire Dales.
With delightful illustrations by the author, this a perfect read-aloud book for bedtime readers – and their listeners!

Visit Alan Gilliland's website for more information about this and his other books. And you can read many more glowing reviews of this unique and wonderfully quirky book on Lovereading4kids.”

Parents in Touch review Jan, 2011:
“Thank you so much for the lovely book. It certainly lives up to all the reviews.
I have put the review at http://www.parentsintouch.co.uk/Book-reviews-fiction-5- to-11
Best wishes Sarah“
Alan sent me some fantastic children's reviews of his book, so I couldn’t wait to read it! I wasn’t disappointed - this is a really striking book right from the first look. In large format, lavishly illustrated in black & white, it is hard to categorise this book, which will appeal to all ages, including adults. With undertones of Alice in Wonder- land and Edward Lear, this is a really funny as well as mysterious story. The twins are blamed when the Great Raven steals their mother’s brooch. If they can’t find it, their party will be cancelled and their 4 animals given to the Charity Shop. Can the animals rescue the brooch? This is a really gripping, unputdownable book, with a plethora of wonderful characters. Here’s just one of those reviews:Emily aged 9, of Fareham, Hants. “WOW!!! what a book. i couldn't wait to finish it! [and as i finished it in 24hrs you can see how desperate I was!!!] It had a surprise on each page. The illustrations are fab and made the characters jump out of the pages. It is the best i've ever read and i've read… the whole of Harry Potter.”

National newspaper children’s critic (letter to the author):
“I’ve enjoyed reading it enormously and certainly it has that quality vital in a chil- dren’s book, if it is to last, of appealing to different levels of understanding and, onion-like, revealing a little more with each reading. …that’s the beauty of a text
such as yours, one which at the same time informs and extends the reading experi- ence. I really like your drawings, with their shades of Heath Robinson, E H Shep- ard….”

The Book Depository Website Review (Dec 08):
“Alan Gilliland both wrote and illustrated The Amazing Adventures…. It is a won- derful fantasy quest, surprisingly set in Yorkshire, for both children and young adults.
Happily, Gilliland’s writing is as strong as his illustrations are delightful. If you like Tolkien, Pullman, Pratchett or even CS Lewis then you’ll enjoy this magical, fantasy adventure.”

Literary consultancy: in depth report. (Opening paragraphs):
“I have really enjoyed reading this story. It’s witty, lively, amusing and extremely original. Comparisons that come to mind are of the highest order, such as the ‘Alice’ books by Lewis Carroll, the ‘Oz’ books by Frank L Baum, and ‘The Phantom Toll- booth’ by Norton Juster – books in which a central character makes a journey through a topsy-turvy land where wit and wordplay assume transformative powers.
The many puns, allusions and conundrums scattered through the story are ingenious
… (you have the sort of mind that seizes on double meanings and juggles with words to dazzling effect). And the illustrations are simply excellent.”

Katherine Langrish | March 15, 2011 at 10:53 | Reply to BookWitch blog
I agree this is a really unusual book – with brilliant illustrations, too. Think Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, lots of wordplay and paradoxical fun, and you’ll be there. Not for every child, perhaps, but any budding chess players or crossword puzzle fiends will have a whale of a time. It demands something of the reader, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
Curd the Lion and friends
Posted on March 15, 2011 by bookwitch| 7 Comments
I’m in agreement with Tony Benn and Derek Walcott. The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion and us in the Land at the Back of Beyond (phew, got there at last…) is pretty good. Alan Gilliland, who wrote the story and illustrated the whole book him- self, has been hard at work getting people of note to read and comment on his book. Now he’s targeted the bookwitch as well.

It’s, well, it’s about these four soft toys who go on an adventure to the Back of Be- yond. Once you’ve decided that soft toys do these things, it’s perfectly natural. After all, what is Winnie the Pooh if not a soft toy?
Just the idea of calling a toy lion Curd the Lion requires a sense of humour, and the book is riddled with puns and other playful twists of words and phrases. Most of them will pass over the heads of young readers, but an adult will have fun. (‘What is pon- dering? It’s what you do by a pond.’) And I reckon that reading this book aloud to a child would be the most fun. It’s quite long, at over 150 pages, and the pages are large to accommodate all the pictures.
Curd belongs to Henry and so does Pilgrim Crow, whereas the hyena Sweeney the Heenie and the snake O’Flattery are Henry’s twin sister Henrietta’s toys. The Mum’s brooch has disappeared and she is angry. If not found, she will take the toys to Oxfam (or similar) and have them sold.

Obviously the toys love their children, so they set out to find the brooch, because Curd actually witnessed it being taken by the Great Raven. They encounter many creatures and many dangers en route to the Back of Beyond, but Curd’s bravery and wisdom gets them there and back. Naturally.
The black and white illustrations are magical, although I have to admit to being slight- ly scared by the man in the moon on the cover. Alan seems to have a long and solid background doing this kind of thing, and he has wisely formed his own publishing company to look after his books, as well as a blog. It might mean that it’s more diffi- cult to get the books into the shops. I don’t know. Alan seems to work hard, doing signings all over the place, and I’d say that as long as the book gets to children, it will be popular.

I surprised myself by wanting to read about this cheesy sounding lion, and also by enjoying it as much as I did. But now I really do want a piece of Brie.

Wednesday of Whimsy #1- Curd the Lion
March 17, 2010 by 5minutespeace
2 Votes (5 star)
The first to feature in ‘Wednesday of Whimsy’ and in competition for one of the longest titles in children’s literature is The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion (and us) in the Land at the Back of Beyond by Alan Gilliland (author and illustra- tor) …sound confused? Yes I was too.
9780955548611 published by Raven’s Quill
I think if I explained the story to you, it’s safe to assume you would still be confused but I will tell you this; it is a fantastic book where you really can escape into another world with pets Curd the lion, Pilgrim crow, Sweeney the heenie and O’flattery the snake. I bet you can’t offer any better pet names.
The tale follows twins Henry and Henrietta who live in a cottage near the land at the back of beyond…the sort of place you know nothing about yet stop and stare at every- time you go near. This place is a place where dodongs and emperors live and promis-
es to offer a wealth of dreams to the children who enter it through Gilliland’s illustra- tions.
I truly believe the illustrations really set this story apart from others. Because Gilliland is the author and illustrator he has the scope of understanding for what needs to be shown through his drawings. His illustrations fill every page and make it a joy to look through. A most wonderful, inspiring book. The kids will dream for days about far away lands with talking insects and things with two heads.

Egmont Publishers asked for Curd the Lion. This was their response:
Curd is wonderful - very much in the grand tradition of Alice and The Phantom Toll- booth, and the illustrations so evocative, but again we felt that the prose style and el- ements of the story arc, whilst enjoyable and fantastical, would need to be more ac- cessible to appeal successfully to children, rather than as a more adult-orientated gift purchase.
The Flight of Birds and its intended sequels make up what is obviously a very ambi- tious project, but after much discussion our editorial team felt that in some of its themes, and taking into account the literariness of its prose and complexity of its structure, it might be more suited to an adult publisher, or perhaps a teen imprint that is part of an adult publishing house.

Death – tribute to victims of all oppression.

2023-04-20T02:48:00.001-07:00

Night

Follows day,
Another night.

Death plays his bone whistle.
They gather round.
Their low notes of mourning
Subsume the shriller octaves
Of his precocious assumption.

Another day,
Another night.

His lurid skull rises
Above the Eastern horizon.
Hand joins hand, clasped tight,
And limbs, with sweet flesh enflamed,
Crackle his ascendance.

Another day,
Another night.

His hollow shin-bone beats
Upon the quaking marrow of the world
The slow chime of their macabre minuet
Stamping their seven steps in time
Upon the living dead.

Follows day,
Endless, endless night.

Novels remaining in my library (for my children’s benefit – easiest way to view) and philosophy, poeytry and other literature

2023-04-12T05:56:00.003-07:00

‘The Door – a mysterious Gothic Tale’ – a Gothic ghost tale / historical mystery ( here reviews garnered under its previous title: The Flight of Birds)

2023-03-13T02:43:00.009-07:00

It was well received by many:

Googled by Google

2022-11-17T02:53:00.001-08:00

I keep getting emails from Google telling me I will be shut down soon because I never use my Google account.

But isn’t Blogger owned by Google?

Only recently I created a Photo blog showing my Evenening DEspatch photojournalism work - a large blog post it was too!

Why then does Google keep intimating I I am dead or something?

Answers please?

CAUSEWAY COTTAGE A FINAL FLING

2022-07-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

CAUSEWAY COTTAGE JUNE

2022-07-05T11:32:00.001-07:00

CAUSEWAY COTTAGE MAY

2022-07-05T11:30:00.001-07:00

CAUSEWAY COTTAGE GARDEN THrough SEASONS

2022-07-05T11:28:00.003-07:00

LAVENDER HOUSE GARDEN samples

2022-07-05T11:12:00.001-07:00

CURD THE LION ON 32,000+ WORLDWIDE. (Oh, and an old Alice in Wonderland poster)

2020-07-22T07:03:00.004-07:00

No news is good news, right?

Well, if you class being ignored by British publishers as being no news, and iff you class that as good news, well then...

(But at least some kids are buying and reading it, somewhere in the world)

So, to keep my multitudinous blog readership happy, as Delia Smith would say: “Here’s one I prepared earlier...”

Poster drawn for my kids’ school play in 1986? Now suitably aged?

Which character is your favourite?

I thought Alice is big enough already and doesn’t need to be blown up!

The old twelve ball conundrum

2020-07-22T05:52:00.002-07:00

I was just reminded of my ‘triumphant’ [ ;) ] solution to a mathematics puzzle while at the The Daily Telegraph!

It had evaded a young man (80+) ever since since uni days and he wrote to the paper asking to know the answer before he popped his clogs.

Normally solved algebraically (which I can’t stand), I solved it in my lunch break at the D.T. visually.

Checked by proper mathematicians and approved - this was published the next day (along with an algrebraic solution on another page)

FIRST - the LETTER TO THE EDITOR.

(Obviously, click on each to see whole image)

THEN, MY VISUAL SOLUTION:

This is for the delight of all those who don’t get on with algebra!

Amelia

2020-04-10T02:59:00.000-07:00

I do not post frequently anymore - given that it is pointless speaking to an empty auditorium - and social media are so full of garrulousness that the resulting cacophony constitutes white noise, a cavernous emptiness.

But here is a short story that forms both a stand alone tale from my AnaThema (poems and short stories) and the opening chapters of the White Edition of The Flight of Birds.
I put this story here because both books, under my alter ego Alan Howard, are almost impossible to get hold of.

AMELIA

   Amelia looked out of her bedroom window overlooking the square. Small clouds were playing across the grass under the watchful eye of the sun. The trees solemnly whispered their secrets into the deeper shades fringing the square, only to have them snatched away by the inquisitive shadows of the clouds flitting through and thrown in careless asides to one another across the bristling manicured lawns designed for the gentry of years gone by.
   What secrets these trees could tell, she thought; whole histories of laughter and pain, as generations of people sped through the square with their triumphs and tragedies, as fleeting and impermanent to their greater lives as these playful petulant clouds.
   And of her own secret? What did they know of that? What did they whisper in their strange rustling tongues about Amelia Pegler and her so-fleeting presence here?
   Children, now, were playing out of school on this late spring afternoon, careless of all but the moment, as hers had been not so long ago. She remembered folding her own little Katie into her arms as that mother over there was now doing; healing her with a kiss, just as she was.
   It was as if she, Amelia, and Katie were revisiting the square as it was then; as if she was reliving this past now from her elevated perspective, up here on her verandah; as if the opening of these French-doors with their soft lace filtering the vulgar glare of reality, as if this act of itself could, in a blinding instant, transport her to see what she would see, what she willed herself to see: herself, Katie and John, her husband, in those happier times when there was hope and simply a future to be taken for granted.
   The sudden squalling of a child on the green, rising to a wailing crescendo; the sight of her squirming in her mother’s arms and pointing a blaming finger at a little boy nearby, of their rising and approaching the boy; the mother’s gesticulations, so obviously angry, so blatantly defending her little darling, despite the perplexed protestations of the little fellow, sharply awoke Amelia from her reverie. She rose slowly from her chair in the window and walked to the railings.
   She looked along the road edging the square, then diagonally across the square itself to the point where her daughter, Katie, returning from school, would cross at the Pelican crossing before making her way either round or across the square.
   She kept this vigil each day: Kate’s rounding into view, the raising of her eyes towards the balcony, the breaking out of her smile and the shy wave of recognition. She lived for these moments when, separated, however briefly, they were reunited once again.
   Amelia waited until Katie appeared and waved, as always, before re-settling herself in her armchair in the sun.
   How many more days, she wondered? She was blowing her nose clumsily as Kate stepped into the room and Kate’s vision of her was of a half-silhouetted figure in her armchair, her head stooped against the brightness outside.
   “Mother, you shouldn’t sit so long in a draft like that; you’ll catch your…” Kate stopped.
   “Death of cold?” Amelia chuckled. “Would it were so easy, my dear. I would welcome it.”
   “How are you today?” Kate knelt before her, taking her hands and kissing them, before placing them back in her lap and looking up into her grey-blue eyes.
   “Oh, alright. So-so, you know. I’m still here,” Amelia replied, “Make me a fresh cup of tea, will you darling? Mine’s gone cold,” and then, silently, to herself alone: I love to see you move about me, Katie, my darling; so young and lithe and guileless. Your every gesture, the angle of your wrist as you pour from the pot, the tinkling circles of your stirring, the way your eyes glance up to meet mine as you hand me my cup, the mellow purring of your conversation, recounting the day’s events, which falls upon the nape of my neck like a gentle stroking in the twilight of my attention, inducing bliss…
   “Careful, Mum, you’ll spill it!” Kate leaped forward to steady her mother’s cup.
   Jogged out of her meditation, Amelia said: “I’m sorry, dear, I seem to nod off so easily these days.”
   “Perhaps it’s the medicine? Shall I reduce the dose?” asked Kate, “Are you in pain now? If not, I could reduce it a bit.”
   “Yes, you could try that for a while. It might help keep me awake. I don’t like falling asleep when you are here. It seems such a waste.” Amelia smiled. “I stay awake when you’re not here, you know, because I worry for you. And then, when you are here, it’s such a relief I suddenly seem to relax and nod off, just when I least want to. It must seem as if I don’t care.”
   “Never mind, Mother. Shall I put some music on?”
   “If you like. You choose something. I’d like to listen to what you like. It makes me feel as if I can come closer to knowing you, from within, so to speak.”
   “Ok. You asked for it.” Kate picked up her laptop and picked an album. A raucous dissonant music reverberated from the speakers of the hi-fi they had set up in her mother’s room. “Is that loud enough for you? I think I’ll shut the doors now, before the neighbours complain.”
   Amelia watched her as she went to the French-windows and looked out. The world would be continuing much as it had half-an-hour earlier, with little regard for their domestic tableau. As it would long after their small charade was done.
   The light became diffuse and hazy where the sun shone through the lace, and waves of subtle hues flowed across the room with the slow motions of the curtains. Its dreamy peacefulness contrasted sharply with the bellowing issuing from the speakers. Amelia smiled as she watched her daughter. Her intense green eyes like sea-grass, the fleck of pale grey that ran through Kate’s auburn hair above her left temple was as if a single shaft of sunlight had crept through the closed curtains to shine onto it.
   “Strange,” thought Amelia, “I wonder how she came by it? She has always refused to dye it out. Maybe she regards it as a badge of honour, marking her out as somehow unique.”
    Kate’s feet were tapping furiously with the music as if impatient of this enforced companionship.
   “You can go, if you like,” Amelia said, “Dad will be home soon.”
   “It’s ok. I’ll stay till he comes,” replied Kate, “but do you mind if I do my homework here for a bit? I’ve got rather a lot to get finished tonight.”
   “Of course not. I’ll just listen and watch,” replied Amelia.
   Kate fetched her books and set to at the writing desk near the window.
   Amelia watched her daughter hunched over the books, writing furiously, pausing, looking up into the air and then resuming her scribbling.
   “Such purposefulness,” she thought to herself, “such concentration – as if there were some meaning to it all.”

2

   Kate Pegler and her father stood arm in arm beside the simple gravestone in the tiny churchyard of her mother’s childhood home. They looked out over the Wildbrooks towards the downs as the clouds in the east turned pink and mauve, reflecting the sunset behind them.
   Refusing cremation, Amelia had wanted to be buried here, in spite of the fact that she was not religious, because these wild meadows, so often flooded, saw the autumn transit of immense flocks of birds in migration from the cold north where they bred, to the warm south in winter, and their return passage in the spring.
   She had always regarded these water meadows as a sort of spiritual nexus, a symbol of the passing from one existence to another. She had told her ‘darling Katie’, that the flight of the birds through this place somehow embodied for her the endless cyclical transformations of the universe. She had told her that she felt more in harmony with the idea of an eternal recurrence than with the hard arrow of time that epitomized the idea of the irreversible progress of man.
   She had told them she wanted to be able to look out over this scene for eternity and feel herself a part of this great rhythm of renewal and rebirth.
   “Ironic, isn’t it,” she had said, “that I should be buried in a Christian churchyard in order to enjoy a very unchristian eternity. But beggars can’t be choosers, and I can’t just go demanding to be buried anywhere. This is the nearest I’ll get to where I want to be.”
   Kate and her father had travelled down from their two-story flat on the tree-lined square in a once well-heeled part of London that morning, after seeing off the removals men and locking up. She had gone back in for one final look round, straight to her mother’s room to fix in her mind that vista that was her mother’s last, from the balcony of her bedroom.

   Kate had been awakened suddenly one morning by a strange screeching noise followed by cry for help from her father.
   Kate rushed in to find her father, John, struggling to hold her steady. Amelia had, with her husband’s help, got out of bed that morning, taken two paces into the room and frozen, wracked with pain.
   Amelia, though as thin as a bird now, had suddenly seemed to take on a deadweight that even his strength found difficult to bear. Every slight movement was accompanied by an uncontrollable scream from her mother.
   Kate took Amelia’s other shoulder, and the pair of them manoeuvred her back to the bed and laid her as gently as possible on it.
   Kate couldn’t help herself bursting into tears in sheer frustration at her helplessness as she whispered endearments into her mother’s ear, stroking her hair. She looked across to her father and saw tears running down his cheeks as he fiddled with her morphine drip.
   “Could you help me with this, Kate,” he said, “I can’t see properly.”
   Kate rushed round the bed, wiping away her own tears and hastily increased the rate of the pump’s infusion.
   Only a few days before they had cut these back because Amelia appeared to be undergoing a phase of remission, experiencing much less pain and being able to go downstairs and walk around their house for the first time in months.
   Soon the muscle-spasm that arched Amelia’s back relaxed, and she subsided into a morphine-induced sleep.
   “I’m afraid this looks like the end, Katie darling.” Her father whispered. “The oncologist said it would reach her spine soon and that that would signal the final phase. We just have to accept it and make her as comfortable as possible.”
“It can’t be, can it?” cried Kate. “She seemed so well yesterday, walking about. She looked so happy as she looked at everything in the living room.
   “It often happens. Remission. Though not so short,” replied her father. “Perhaps she was storing memories, my darling, for when she goes.”
   The Macmillan nurses called an hour later, changed her and made her more comfortable.

   Amelia slipped slowly away. In the first hours she would open her eyes and look lovingly at Katie or John, whoever was keeping watch, swabbing her brow and cleaning her mouth of the saliva gathering there and spilling over as she turned her head in a hopeless attempt to communicate. The only words they understood through the wheezing rattle of her attempts at speech were: “Thank you, thank you.”
   Later she just laid passively, eyes closed, whimpering when any attempt was made to move her. When Kate removed her oversized nappy to change her, she peed like a baby in the sudden rush of cold air.
   She ceased eating. Kate and her father made numerous attempts to force teaspoons of water between her lips.
   Towards the end her frail chest heaved in spasms as she took tiny gasps of air, three or four at a time, and then relaxed and didn’t breathe for what seemed an eternity to Kate. Then she would repeat the process. Her eyes were sunken in their sockets and her cheekbones and nose seemed to grow as the soft tissue dissolved beneath her almost translucent skin.
   Seeing her mother visibly waste before her was too much for Kate, and it was almost with relief that she obeyed her father’s instruction to “nip down to the shops to get us some dinner, or we’ll starve.”
   When she returned, she saw her father standing quietly at the top of the stairs, looking vacant and lost.
   “What is it?” She cried, running straight up the stairs to him, “What’s happened?”
   “She’s dead. She died a few minutes ago. She just opened her eyes wide, took a deep breath and then collapsed back, giving a long sigh.”
   Kate ran in to her mother and was about to fly to the bed to hug her, when she saw the strange expression of surprise in her mother’s wide eyes and open mouth. She seemed beyond reach, now, untouchable. An involuntary shudder shook her to the core.
   Kate approached and looked down at the corpse of her mother, this cage in which her spirit had dwelt. It looked so empty. She gently pushed Amelia’s lower jaw shut and closed her eyelids. Her mother’s expression looked more peaceful now. More like her living self as she was in sleep.
   But Kate would never forget that awful vision of life departed from this hollow shell, that had, in a different guise, borne Amelia through life and brought her, Katie, into being, now lying prostrate before her.
   She leaned forward and kissed her mother on the brow, cupping her face in her hands, as Amelia had so often done when she thought Katie was asleep when she was a little girl. Through the memory of those secret kisses Kate saw her mother once again as through the eyes of a child.
   She turned to her father, hovering in the doorway as if the room had suddenly become strange and frightening to him. She rushed to him and they embraced. Kate’s father hugged and hugged her, as if by doing so he could somehow bring them all together again, bring his own dear Amelia back to life.

A gentle tap on her shoulder interrupted Kate’s recollections. “I think it’s time we left. We have to get to our new home tonight.” Kate’s father squeezed her hand and started as if to leave.
   “A moment. Just a minute more. I’ll catch you up.” Kate replied.
   “Ok. But don’t be long. We really must go. We can always come back.” Her father turned his back on her and she watched him walk into the sunset towards their car.
   Before departing, Kate knelt by her mother’s grave and, with one hand on her tombstone, made a solemn promise: “I will return, dearest mother, and tell you of our lives. I will watch the flight of birds and though your body is imprisoned in this cold earth you shall see through my eyes and through me live on.”
   Kate stood and walked back to the car and her waiting father.

………………

Privacy in the Age of Surveillance.

2020-02-18T06:16:00.000-08:00

“Anything (and everything) you write, or say, or do, will be taken down and used in evidence...”

We’re all on trial, here, in this Age of Surveillance.
No Blakean Songs of Innocence and Experience. but that we will be led ultimately, like lambs to the slaughter.

However, despair not, ye citizens of the New Jerusalem!
Be ye not overheard in your cups or in discourse with intimate friends!

The Bracelet of Privacy is at hand, or wrist, enabling discretion to be your watch-word!

No snooping smart phone, watch or speaker may overhear your most private moments shared..
With this amazing Privacy Bracelet, today’s must-have wearable Jammer!

This handy wearable gadget blanks out all such with white noise, inaudible to the human ear, preserving your indiscretions or intimate desires from the Google-eyed gaze (well. -eared) of the Bezoses of the internet of all things, with its multi-speakered, omni-directional shield, enabling you to speak as you may have done twenty years ago without regard for the consequences (assuming, of course, you have no ‘leaky’ friends).

Photo: credit Chicago University.

You can find out the technical wizardry behind this gizmo developed by Chicago Uni tecchies here:
https://newatlas.com/wearables/ultrasonic-wearable-jammer-smart-speakers*

But, fear not, ye of little endowment (financially), we have the answer for you, too!
Just nip down to your local pet shop, buy one of these, and fool and amaze all your friends with your wearable “Snoop-Dog Jammer’!

*But seriously, a few years down the line and with a bracelet sized device, you will be able to even tell off your kids without fear of the Thought Police a knocking on your door.

Curd the Lion book at over 30,000 copies sold

2019-09-04T00:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to China.
At least twice as many Chinese as English have now bought and read the book - a small irony for a story with plenty of word play, riddles and stuff!
Are English publishers /agents too sniffy or hung up on Lewis Carroll (it had been ‘likened unto’ by various commentators - which apparently raises some hackles) or reluctant to take on a story that does, some say, require a modicum of intelligence (LCD), thus would only appeal to parents not kids themselves?
That latter flies in the face of all those kids at my signings (before they were brought to an abrupt halt late 2012 by the then new MD of Waterstones) who, 80%+, literally begged their money bags to buy the book, sometimes without success, such as the two in Durham who sat reading my book for over half an hour before their mum returned, loaded down with fashion shopping bags, only to hustle them out of the door despite their pleas! Two kind old ladies a moment later, when I asked if I might tell them about my book, replied, “No need. We have watched those children for the last half hour not lift their heads out of the books, so we will have four copies, thank you!”
Such tales cut no ice with the case-hardened risk-averse gatekeepers of the publishing industry, however, denying the next generations of kids the opportunity to try this 176-page nonsense adventure with its 80 plus pencil sketches by the author.
Just for fun, here are some of those who WERE allowed to try it!

And here’s a sweet girl who went all the way back home in Redhill to collect every penny she had and returned to buy my book!

And the lovely lady who bought it for her baby...

And when “The White Knight on his charger” came to visit...

And possibly my very last signing before I too was “signed off” by Warblestones.

Oh, nostalgia! When the re-invigorated chain’s manifesto announced...

There was this!

Well any statement may be open to Fifty Shades... of interpretation!

CURD THE LION BOOK REACHES 28,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE!

2018-02-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

How, you may ask?
Because it has sold 19,000 in China and South Korea. The Chinese publisher has just renewed the contract for a further five years!

It had sold £135,000-worth in the UK before the ‘dashing’* James Daunt put a spanner in the works by banning all-day signings in Waterstones - my forte - talking kids into the story with illustrated storyboards.
*(my hopes and sales)

Here’s a belated (received last week) email from one of my customers in Waterstones Windsor in August 2012, aged 9 (now 15):
“We met up, a few years back in August of 2012 when you were signing books in Waterstones and we talked for a while. I read the book, completely enthralled in Curd And his adventures and recently picked it up again, and read just as enthusiastically as before. I’d like to thank you, for meeting me back then, and signing my book and talking to me, I Never did contact you before now, like you had asked, but I hope this makes up for it. Thank you.”

And belated response to my second, Gothic ghost/horror story, The Flight of Birds (under my pen name, Alan Howard):

“First I owe you an apology for the promptness of my email, be it over a year overdue. Call it the curse of being a disorganized teenager.

I wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not being the greatest reader I wasn’t sure how long before I would get distracted, but I couldn’t put it down! Truly a grim tale that had me gripped at every page. By the end I found myself holding back tears of emotion I was so engaged in the story.”

#SuicideAwareness. The Tale of Boy-who-was-Fish.

2016-12-31T03:21:00.000-08:00

Here is my parabolic tale told in the style of a Just-so story on the ‘expunging’ of emotional vulnerability in men. It may not resonate with many, but I offer it for what it is worth.

“The Tale of Boy-who-is-Fish”

(a tale told somewhat in the style of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just-so’ stories by Alan Gilliland.)

Boy-who-is-Fish is swimming, as fish do.
He is swimming in Sea, who is clear, blue and very, very warm.
She and he are closest.
Sea caresses his skin with rippling strokes, tickling his skin as he swims through her as fishes do.
She has been there always, like this, carrying him warm and snug in her belly. Her belly so huge there is no end to it he can see.
He flies weightless in her caressing warmth and she lets him do as he pleases.
Sand there is below: white, white Sand. And Sky above, bluer than Sea. Through Sky scud little patches of Cloud, which sometimes fill Sky, rippling just like wavy ripples in Sand below, so that Boy-who-is-Fish sees above as below, Sand as Sky.
But Boy doesn’t care as he spins and turns and flies hither and thither, free and weightless, for it is all the same to him: up and down.
Boy-who-is-Fish sometimes burrows in Sand, so that white Clouds follow him just like in Sky, but burrows not so deep as to lose Sea, his Mother.
Other times Boy tries to burrow into Sky, but Sea follows him into Sky, reaches out with many silvered fingers to fetch him back with laughter splashing all around.
So they go on, Boy-who-is-Fish, his great Mother Sea, Sand and Sky, from day to sunny day.
At night, Sea strokes him to sleep and purrs, “Shhh..., shhh...”as he slumbers on her shoreline. She laps about him and rises to embrace him.
Always, when her fingers stroke the nape of his neck, Boy awakes and drowsily lets him be taken into her huge warm belly.

Bye and bye, Boy-who-is-Fish crawls further out of Sea-who-is-Mother, out onto Sand-which-is-White, and leaves her fretful lapping behind.
He learns to stand, and finds himself in Sky-which-is-Blue with his toes in Sand, finds himself somehow with a heavy Heart, something like regret, leaving Sea behind, if only for a while.
But this new feeling too excites Boy, and he wiggles his toes into the hot hot Sand and stares up at the bright yellow eye of Sky watching him as he feels the last tickly caresses of Sea as she trickles down him into Sand.

As days turn one into another, a whispering is heard among the Green-that-is-Leaf on the shoreline between Sea and Sky, a soft whispering in the winds:
“Oh, look at Boy-who-is-Fish,
How Sea drops away from him like Scales.
See how smooth and white is his skin, smooth and white like Sand.”
And they whisper this, these Leaves-in-Wind:
“How like Palm tree he stands, so tall and erect, how like Palm his hair grows thick and bushy.
Strange, his hair, so white upon his head.
But see his eyes, strangest of all. Not Blue like Sea and Sky, nor White like Sand; not Green like Palm, nor yet like Coconut, fruit of Palm, Green.
Not bright colour, like these, but Brown. Brown like old Sea-worn-Coconut, fallen and all dried up.”
And this strangest-of-all brown, Brown Eyes betrays him to his Mother Sea, who cries to herself softly, “Am I losing you, my son?
Where are your silken scales a-shimmering with lights?
Where your sleek tail swishing freely through my warm belly?”

One day at dawn, as Boy-who-is-Fish slumbers at the shoreline as he always does, neither in nor out of Sea, strange Creatures happen by: Man and Woman, arm in arm.
Seeing Boy-who-is-Fish at the shoreline, neither in nor out of Sea, Woman cries out:
“Oh, look at that beautiful Boy, half-in, half-out of water! Oh, Man, rescue him before he drowns!”
And Man leaps bravely into Sea, right up to his ankles, leans down and snatches Boy from Sea, who murmurs angrily, and Man shouts:
“He’s alive, thank God. He’s alive!”
This sudden snatching and loud shouting wakens Boy-who-is-Fish, who cries out in alarm and struggles to be free of this iron grip and return to Sea, to the warm womb of his Mother.
But Man will have none of it, and holds firm onto Boy, while Woman coos:
“Our own little beautiful Boy, it’s a Miracle!”

So Boy was taken away from Sea, from his warm mother, and taken far from there.
Man and Woman, they took him far away to a cold, cold land, far from Sea, and called him their own little Boy.
Boy-who-was-Fish became Son-of-Man and Child-of-Woman, who both possessed him because he was theirs.
They brought great Fuss with them to take care of Boy in the best manner of that country.
Great Fuss was called Nanny, who looked after him wherever he tried to go and brought him back and up.
He was brought in daily to show Man and Woman and Man-and-Woman’s friends and relations what a Good Boy he had become. Boy was much admired for his beauty and his never-speaking-out-of-turn.
But Boy’s silence was a great hole in his heart - was a void of longing for the warm caress of Sea, his Mother.
He was burned by Eyes all around him, which touched him like hot pokers, prickling his skin with their hard scrutiny.
Because he was their Prize Possession, their Pride and joy, Boy was sent away to be with his own kind who were not, but were cruel and hard, whose prying was harsher than Eyes.
Boy cried at night for his mother, Sea, and his tears trickling warm down his cheek brought him briefly close, feeling her soft caress.
His own kind didn’t like Boy’s tears, which frightened them, so they rubbed them harshly away and handled him like rocks in a storm of bruises, dark clouds across his Sand-white skin.
When Man and Woman, who called themselves Father and Mother, came to inspect Boy they were proud of their Son, who was learning so well to hide his feelings.
But one day his yearning and longing for his warm mother, Sea, swept away all his learning and impelled him to return.
He was found and brought back and his Father said: “You belong here and here you will stay until you learn to forget this foolish Childishness.”
And Boy’s mother, when he tried to touch her and hug her and have her run her fingers through his hair all trickly down his neck, started and said: “Don’t be silly Dear! You’re a growing Boy now and that’s not how we do things here.” And she looked away from him, as far away as possible to hide her own silly Weakness-of-Woman and made an end of it.
Boy behaved.
He behaved so long he grew to learn to forget and became for All-the-World like every other Young Man.
Except in that space which he kept secret: where his Heart beat, “Sea… sea…” which he could hear when it was dead-of-night and all was quiet around him.
Thus he carried Her within him, rhythmically surging through his arteries and veins, washing warmly through every part of him - invisibly all though him - Sea.
He learned to adapt to the cold ways of Man. He learned to “measure up,” and to measure others, too. He acquired Talent, Success and Possessions, as all Men in that country want to do.
One day he found himself an Asset: he acquired a Wife, as most Men do, and Family to go in House, which is called Home when fully equipped with these Possessions.
He had Happiness, which was measured by Success and Wealth, consumed by Family, and so on.
To all outward appearances Boy-that-was-Fish had become Man-of-Substance.
He was entirely Normal, just as he should be, Praise be the Lord.
But deep down a worm gnawed. A little Sea-Worm, such as burrows in Sand-below-Waves, hungering for Sea and all her Gifts.
Worm burrowed into his Heart a tunnel, always in the direction of Sea, down which poured a torrent of yearning for that pure Grace in which he had once swum free.
Then one day came Other-woman, who carried with her something of Sea.
In Her he tasted Saltiness-of-Surf, smelled Fish-of-Sea, felt in her rhythmic caresses, his once playful Carefreeness.
He knew he must follow Her to the far sea-girt land from whence she came.
He was sure she could lead him Home.
Her home was a Land-almost-sea, formed of the lapping of waves on sand, and its sea grasses rippled in the breezes like blue-green waves of the sea.
Other-woman too, he thought, was born of Sea.
She swam in Surf’s surge with an ease born of Nature, and joyful Ecstasy broke over him in waves.
As he watched her run and dive, disappear and re-appear in that grey choppy swell against the grey-clouded sky he laughed.
She emerged, laughing too, and skipped over the wavelets towards him and dragged him, so willing, towards the great Sea swell.
He felt “Now, at last, all will be well.”
Ice.
Icy cramp seized him, dragged him from her.
Its grip tightened on his chest like a clamp and its claws dug deep into his heart.
It suffocated him, strangled him, bloating him purple like a corpse.
Monstrous!
His own Mother Sea!
Frigid, cruel, winterblast counterfeit!
Breaching the waves, he clung desperately to her surface, crying out for release.
In the distance, he saw Other-woman, sitting on a rock, perfect in form, in substance perfectly remote, remote from his comprehension.
Mermaid, Ice-Maiden, impenetrably smiling, looking out far away, oblivious to his agony.
He slipped beneath the waves, icy fingers dragged him down, heart growing cold.
Suddenly she was lifting him to the surface of the grey icy sea, guiding him gently to shore.
He lay on the shore, bloated, burning with cold, gasping for breath.
Other-woman looked down at him with Pity in her eyes for this Man-who-could-not-swim and she could not help him.
She slipped quietly into the waves so icy and her wild hair in the frothing surf was the last of her.
Man-who-was-once-Fish left the cold unfriendly shore of that Land-almost-sea and returned to his place.

But from that moment on Despair took up residence under his roof and ate his bread, starving the Hope that sustained Yearning.
He never recovered from the cold shock of that day.
His breathing became short and laboured as if the air in which he swam was alien, choking him.
From that first cold swelling of his body, eruptions volcanically spread in crusty flows across his skin, slowly encasing him as he withdrew inside himself.
All around stared in awe at this Transformation in him.
Doctors came to inspect and name its parts. Cold Urticaria. Chronic Asthma. Psoriasis.
These were some of the names.
But their naming of parts did not drive out those demons of despair.
As the days dragged, wheezing, one after another, ever slower, he withdrew entirely.
His last breaths gurgled, a gentle bubbling, whispering, “Sea… sea…”
And, as they covered him over with a sheet, one doctor was heard to remark to another:
“His skin – so scaly – almost like a Fish.”

Selling my 1973 Holdsworth Equipe OPEN TO OFFERS

2016-05-15T03:35:00.002-07:00

I am selling my 1973 Holdsworth Equipe, owned from new and bought from their Putney shop.

Make me an offer. I think it is probably one of the most easy recognized colour schemes of that era, riding on the back of the professional team’s successes (that’s what made me buy it).
My bike had a recent full service at J. E. James Cycles, Chesterfield, with parts replaced as listed below at a cost of over £200.

It is now fully operational, but unfortunately I have discovered I can no longer ride in a sustained crouching position after a lower spinal disk was destroyed.

I am reluctant to part with it (as are my kids) as it has been a part of my life since adulthood but would be happy to see it giving pleasure an enthusiast.

SPECS.
Holdsworth Equipe 1973.
Colour - orange / blue-green
Frame 60cm
Frame number 39438
Rear derailleur - Campagnolo Valentino Extra
Front derailleur - Shimano
Gear shifters - Campagnolo
Gear cogs - two front ; six rear (new) ie. 10-speed original replaced by 12-speed.
Brakes - Weinmann 750 Vainqueur 999, centre-pull, front and back.
Tyres - Schwalbe Active Line K-Guard (new)
Frame - Reynolds 531 steel, I believe.
Pedals - steel, original, rust marked.
Chain - new
Handlebars and pillar - GB, with wreathed images on bar-tops.
Condition of frame paint - good for age, usual scrapes, marks etc.
Frame condition - good, straight (no accidents)
Old wheels etc. - kept in case enthusiast wants to restore.
Owners - one, from new, bought at Holdsworth’s Putney shop, 1973.

Contact: Alan Gilliland on 07950-469186 or alan_gilliland@yahoo.com

Here is a link to more pictures: HERE