I wake in “my” bedroom also my dressing room and study to my right, from a huge shelf hang my unenclosed clothes a subdued rainbow – a male palette with chests of drawers beneath for more clothes and craft materials
Two bookcases bracket the bed their shelves double stacked with precious books and on a pile of storage containers my to-be-read are perilously perched next to my desk – the space beneath full four ukuleles lean against a bookcase yearning to be played one shelf above them loaded with music
The ceiling is high since horses once resided here and through the window our cobbled yard is packed with plants and trees in containers their aspirations to growth also kept contained Mock Orange, Olive and Winter Jasmine now struggling with alternating Yorkshire rain extended and sun and wind induced drought
Rising I go to the spacious though windowless bathroom also given grandeur by the high ceilings where I had to lower the light for effective illumination and after some time checking emails and doomscrolling on the throne I shave and brush my teeth before breakfast as per the latest thinking…
I look in on my partner asleep at last, in the other large bedroom where I began the night falling asleep as she listens to her talking book and enjoys moments of snuggling up to my back safe now the day is over cut off from the world by an evil disenchantment forced to lie in bed like Brian Wilson she may be asleep now but she knows I am here and will feel safer for it…
I climb the winding stair to the living area once the hayloft where two doors into open air allowed the rapid transfer of horses’ hay at harvest-time Now made safe with Juliet Balconies from which we can survey the backstreet below or the strange sight of our garden yard seen from above at night all a-twinkle with sun-powered magic
The landing at the top of the stairs is a library where recipe books compete for space with novels and therapy books and all open-plan blends seamlessly into dining table kitchen and sitting room all traversed by a great King-post beam in the centre of a roof rising to twelve feet above me I breakfast to the awful news from Al Jazeera garnered from around the world and enough to make me as depressed as my partner if I were not able to take action in polemic poems…
And so I descend to my study and open the computer and work at what the day provides en route I note the cobwebs and dust on the stairs and when they get too bad I will sweep them away but not today our house is upside down in more ways than one…
My first time here on Ten Things of Thankful – introduced by Misky to this space…
One. My partner is in a deep depression which has closed off many of the things we used to do but on Saturday we managed to set out for Whitby which used to be a regular excursion. We stopped halfway at Helmsby and after having lunch, decided Whitby was too far, too busy, so we spent a liitle time in the excellent bookshop before meandering home on the smallest roads I could find…
One. My partner’s friendship bracelets taken as we had coffee in Helmsley…
Two. The book on Friendship from Helmsley Bookshop…
An alternative to buying a card – a ten poem chapbook from Candlestick Press
Three. Given that I spent 20 odd years as a hand-painted Signwriter, I am always delighted to see good examples of the craft which I am sorry to say are few and far between in the UK these days…
Four. One of the landscapes on our meandering route… I sometimes take pictures with a view to later making paintings.
Five. We also stopped in Risplith at G & T’s Ice Creams (they genuinely do make a Gin and Tonic ice cream) and whilst eating our cones in the car, I photographed this weathered paint which may one day come in useful for a background in some graphic work…
Six. For the last two months I have been taking part in the Postcard Poetry Festival challenge which is a project run by Cascadia Poetics in Seattle, Washington. The idea is to write an Epistolary style poem to 31 poets whose address list you are also on – to write about the picture on the card and to relate it to the person who you are writing to, who is of course, a complete stranger. This develops quick improvisation. This year I decided to make postcard-sized paintings and at a rate of 4-6 per weekend I have finished all but four this weekend two of which are below.
Two paintings from photographs taken in Crete during lockdown in 2020.
Seven. I still work 2.5 days a week for which I am thankful both because I need the money and because it keeps me abreast of things I would otherwise slip away from…
I love to photograph repeated items… There is nothing to give the scale of these San Sebastian Cheesecake (otherwise known as Burnt Basque Cheesecakes) but they are full-size cakes awaiting cutting before packing in our factory.
Eight. Barbara and I have booked a holiday for two weeks next month down in Cornwall – what the weather will be is anybody’s guess…
Nine. It was cloudy this morning so the watering of containers in our yard (we don’t have a garden) can wait till I get home this afternoon after my half day work – we have a hosepipe ban so it will take about 60 litres by watering can..
Ten. Healthwise, I am going to get a Lung Health MOT and have also been invited to take part in a Diabetes study out of Oxford University all knowledge is great at 70…
Welcome to TToT (Ten Things of Thankful) blog hop! Join bloggers from all over the world as we come together to share those things that we are thankful for. Ten is in the name, but no one is counting; feel free to link up no matter how many (or few) you can list. Make sure to go read and comment on the posts, too. The TToT has always been big on making this a friendly community, and getting to know each other through posts and comments is a huge part of that. We’re thankful for you!
There are songs too sad for me to sing to sing that is, without tearing up and who can wait for the singer to recover and compose themselves sufficiently to continue…
At first there was just one song I couldn’t manage Elvis Presley’s “In the Ghetto” – I could listen but when I tried to sing it -my throat closed and my eyes watered – I could not perform
As years go by more songs are added to the canon of those I cannot get through without weeping and often I cannot listen either – are they songs of mourning, laments, requiems
nothing so formal, but tales of the human condition the mere brevity of which is tragedy enough, or the near impossibility of finishing a shared life at exactly the same moment…
Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colours” might be considered kitsch if it were not true or true enough and I weep to hear the sweetness of her sometime collaborator Linda Ronstadt who has lost her voice to Parkinson’s and sings only within the loving circle of family. The exquisitely sad songs of Charlie Dore – a woman pretending her lover lives on the other side of the world in “Australia” so as not to acknowledge his abandonment – he must be sleeping while she endures the day… The rubato moments when Patsy Cline’s rich voice almost catches, falters, as it lays down the tragic tales of loss, longing and betrayal sung to cheerful melodies that belie the sentiment. Joni Mitchell wishing for a “River” to skate away on surely the saddest Christmas song Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” a lump rises in my throat even as I write and to think of all those who left us too soon their lives driven, and driven down, by the need to perform, entertain, be loved… Janis Joplin, Nick Drake, Prince John Lennon, Jim Morrison Ian Dury who sang of “Sweet Gene Vincent” “Young, and old, and gone…” so many more…
These are the singers and musical moments that undo me…
I used to say that I listened to sad music when I was happy and that happy songs could elevate my lower moods but boundaries blur and I see poignancy everywhere and there are songs too sad for me to sing…
Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Poetics invites us to write about music and this is also the theme for next month’s meeting of my “in the real world” local library poetry group…
Since January this year, my friend Melissa Lemay, has been publishing her online journal Collaborature. As the name implies, it is a place for collaborative writing and other forms of creativity to thrive. You can find out more about Collaborature and how to submit work here.
Melissa also interviews some of her contributors and I was recently the subject of just such an interview. Amongst the many things we talked about, was our own collaborative project in which we are writing an epic saga called Shipmates. It was inspired by “The Golden Gate”, a novel by Vikram Seth, written entirely in sonnet form in the 1970s. He, in turn, was inspired by Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, though I only found that out well into the project. We don’t know how far this project will carry on – it will publish in chapters, mostly around seven sonnets each, every two weeks. There follows, the first two verses of Chapter 1…
Shipmates
Whale Struck and Love Struck
1:1 Mid-ocean is a lonely place But some seek there to sail The Pacific is the greatest space But not to run into a whale As Kate found snoozing in her bunk She woke to find her whole world sunk With barely time to don Mae West And swim out leaving all the rest Before her precious yacht and home Dove downwards to Pacific deep Kate left ringed with flotsam and foam She searches but finds nought to keep Some way off the whale’s spout she espies And though a tough cookie, Kate just cries…
1:2 Alas, the salt, it dries her skin And oil it overcompensates Causing blotches, discoloration And what of it if true love waits O’er yonder past the waterspout? She thinks perhaps a whale to mount Could be an achievable task Should she calculate around the blast Choose wisely time to take the reins Lest end up shot to Port of Spain Though, admittedly wouldn’t be so bad A holiday in the Caribbean Kate snaps back to reality In just the nick of time to see…
Bradford is this year’s City of Culture and as one of the events of the festival, this morning, in time to greet the sunset, except it dawned cloudy and cooler than of late, some 300 people assembled in the quarry next to the Cow and Calf above Ilkley and on the edge of Ilkley Moor for the start of The Bradford Progress. However, far from the popular song in the title of this piece, we were treated to Handel’s ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine performed by 27 members of Paraorchestra and a Counter-Tenor, the falsetto song commanding absolute hush. Mindful that one can’t fully appreciate or be present for live a performance whilst videoing it, I took only a short sample of the performance.
Then, the Commoners Choir took over. Based in Leeds and led by Boff Whalley, former guitarist in Chumbawumba, the Leeds punk/anarchist band catapulted to unexpected fame with their chart hit “Tubthumping“, which is not a song about drinking but the resilience of the Working Class (“He gets knocked down, but he gets up again…”). I was too taken with listening to the choir harmonies this morning to really take in the lyrics but I heard a reference to Noam Chomsky…
The choir were then going to walk across Ilkley Moor to continue with a series of performances across today and tomorrow culminating in Millenium Square, Bradford.
In other news, my friend and poetry collaborator, Melissa Lemay, who runs an online Journal called Collaborature, published an interview with me that we recorded a few weeks ago. As an experiment, she recorded our Zoom call and then had the AI integrated with Zoom, transcribe it. This worked in so far as it kept track of our separate voices, and was surprisingly accurate and yet there were many misheard words that made editing quite arduous for her and she had to refer a few passages back to me for clarification. You can read the interview here.
This year my A to Z theme was to construct a memoir heading each post with a photograph of something significant from my life and tacling the memoir thematically rather than chronologically. You can find the complete list of links to the 26 posts at the end of the post.
Each time I have participated in the A to Z since my first outing in 2020, my posts have grown longer and more layered, for example, last year, I was tackling Commodities which I was afraid might be a little dry as a subject, so I decided to add a poem in an alphabetically matching poetry form. This year I was afraid that my Memoir, would not be sufficiently rivetting in itself and so I decided to lead each post with a photo of a significant object for the topic of the day. I included 10 pictures that were “Knolling” style and of course, nobody likes to be overfaced by swathes of text, and as there were several topics on some posts, that meant a lot of pictures to break it up – 169 in all! Since even my phone camera takes large pictures, each one had to be opened in Photoshop and tweaked and resized – a rod for my own back. At the time of the Theme Reveal, I only had five or six posts finished and on April 1st I had two weeks worth “in the can” but by the final weekend, I managed to complete the last 3 posts so technically, no “pantsing” it!
A “Knolling” picture from Carol, Cars and Cooking
Since adding poetry had worked well last year, I added nine poems this year (C, E, J, L, M, O, P, T & V) too, as well as a few videos, one of me working in 1995 and a number of music videos. All of this seems to have worked and I attracted a number of regular readers to whom I am most grateful for their encouraging comments. In no particular order:- A shoutout to Csenge (Tarkabarka) The Multicolored Diary who was first to comment on day one and also an A to Z committee member and consummate, epic storyteller. Anne M. Bray of Pattern Recognition an old A to Z friend – everything you ever wanted to know about Fluevog Shoes… Tamara of Part-time Working Hockey Mom another old friend since 2020 who this year guides around the cities of Switzerland with her cutomary aplomb! Ronel is another Comittee member and supplied the colourful graphics for the A to Z – you can find her at Ronel the Mythmaker… Deborah A Logophile’s Ludic Musings continued her exploration of unusual and interesting words and hardly missed a post Lisa of Tao Talk, is a friend from my other habitual haunt – dVerse Poets Pub… Donna McNichol was another frequent flyer and her own offerings are at Just call me Froggi Kristin Kleage has been sharing her family history with the A to Z since 2013 at Finding Eliza… Anne E.G. Nydam is a fabulous printmaker at Black and White: Words and Pictures Holly J. of A More Positive Perspective Samantha of Balancing Act Linda Curry of The Curry Apple Orchard
And so, how was the writing itself – what did I learn from doing this year’s A to Z?
Firstly, I quickly realised how much material my life contained so that for almost any given subject, I had to be very selective about which stories I included. After writing about why I didn’t become a fine-artist or an architect, and why I haven’t been very successful as a businessman, I covered my family, my late sister Carol, my Dad, my mother Elsie and shortly after, my sister Helen and particularly in these posts, there was so much more that could have been said. I was trying to stick to those points that had a bearing on me – it was my memoir after all and not theirs – still, there could be a book rather than 26 posts! But as far as it went, I feel like I have made a memoir of sorts and I am not sure I would want to go as far as a book, even if it retained and expanded on the thematic approach rather than the chronological.
Secondly, it would be disingenuous of me to think that I have had an “ordinary” life, I am well aware of the priveleges I was fortunate to be born into, by being born into a “First” World country, to middle-class parents, parents who were both extraodinary in their different ways and who did their very best to offer my sisters and I the best opportunities they could, not least of all a trip round the world and the chance to experience life in a different country at an early age. Were there any flies in the ointment, along the way, of course there were but a life without some adversity would be a life less lived and adversity makes us stronger. Would I do things differently, some I guess, but hindsight is a fine thing…
My daily routine during April, was to start the day by checking that the scheduled post was up, read it through one more time for mistakes before going over to the Official A to Z blog to answer their daily question(s) and leave a link. Because of geography and time zones, there was usually one or two posts ahead of me, with posts from the Americas coming in much later in the day and so I sometimes had the mistaken inmpression that hardly anyone else commented there so I was very touched, when after losing the run of myself and forgetting to follow my routine, I received a comment from Barbie of Crackerberries
Andrew, this is the first time I didn’t see your name above mine on the A-Z page… I had to come see if you were here because that was so odd that you were not there, even when I went back this afternoon. Thanks for sharing the X-Rays and it’s really comical to me that the new hip bone kinda looks like a serrated knife. (ahhh the imagination of writers). Anyways, I’m glad you are here and maybe just didn’t get over to the page yet. Funny how we take people for granted. See ya tomorrow and I bet you will be first with Z post. Cheers, Barbie
It does surprise me how few of the 172 bloggers who signed up, do comment both to respond to the day’s post as well as to see this as their firsl line of promotion. My comment made, I would post a link and a photograph from the post on my Facebook which would bring in a few friends and family. I will put this post on a button at the top of my blog in the hope that future readers will find their way to my story…
Which post did I like writing best, we are asked on the A to Z blog? Frewin, Fossils and Film covered some of my favourite things but it was also fun choosing photographs and poems to showcase for Photography and Poetry – so a toss-up there…
Lastly, it has been gratifying to find that not only was I wrong to wonder if other people would find my story interesting, but it has renewed, once again, my faith in my telling of the story, in my writing. As every one of my A to Zs has been from 2020 to 2025, it has been a marathon and I am glad to have reached the finish line, somewhat exhausted, but I am hoping that, as I am told about giving birth, the memory of the pain of labour disappears (else no woman would do it again) and that at some point in the next year, another idea for A to Z 2026, will pop into my mind, though goodness knows what…
Now that all the writing is done, I am off to catch up on some of my favourite blogs and hopefully find some new ones! You can peruse the whole A to Z list and find some for yourself here.
I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…
A look of grim concentration in this Zoom selfie…
Zoom…
How many are the ways we communicate apart from face to face that is… Phone calls, texts, WhatsApp, messages, Messenger DM’s, Skype and Zoom (not an exhaustive list lol). Zoom and its brothers and sisters from Microsoft et al, came to the front duringthe Covid Lockdown when you could use it to keep in contact with friends or work from home or even have a remote consultation with your doctor. Skype – a Microsoft product was the go-to product for a long time but it is now being pulled because Zoom and it’s compadres do much more – multiple participants, recording and transcribing those recordings etc. One of my favourite things done with Skpe, was a guy who corresponded with lots of people all over the world and then edited themed conversations for the BBC on topics like work or marriage or migration. So adios Skype and welcome Zoom on which I attend a Writing Group, read poetry for the dVerse Poets Pub open mike night, not to mention work meetings, and speaking to my sister in Nova Scotia…
Which is all I have to say about Zoom, which seems a whimper rather than a bang for the ending of what has been as in depth an A to Z as any of the five before it – but at least I have written a memoir of sorts, if I do no other! At the outset, I expressed the hope that you would “assemble an impression of my life and who I am” and I hope indeed, that you have – only you know…
Adios, Amigos – see you on the road…
I leave you with a few photos of myself over the years…
Carol, Helen and I on our balcony in Bondi in 1968
I confess I am not a great fan of autobiographies that begin at the beginning and follow a temporal path up to the present day – not that the person might not have some interesting stories, facts and opinions strung on their necklace, but it just doesn’t appeal as a structure. On the other hand, in my last, extra year at school in Oxford, retaking an A-level and adding a couple more, I was allowed out of school on my recognisance and saw a fascinating Exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery. The Artist had laid out and photographed every single possession of a single person – for example, all the cutlery was laid out in one shot, all the shoes in another. This more thematic approach appeals more and although I am not arranging the objects which I have chosen to tell my story in chronological order, I hope that my writing will be sufficiently interesting to keep your interest Dear Reader, and that on the journey from A to Z, you will assemble an impression of my life and who I am…
From Bottom right, clockwise – Frozen Yoghurt wth fresh fruit, Popping Pearls for Boba Tea, Toppings for Frozen Yoghurt and Frozen Yoghurt in a homemade cone…
Yoghurt (frozen)
After Frewin’s closed down, I was approached by someone who wanted to open a Frozen Yoghurt/Boba Tea bar in Bradford . “What’s Boba Tea?” I asked… I never really understood until some of the supplies for making it arrived – more of that later. Once we opened, the partnership inexplicably fell apart and I was left to run the business on my own – which made it pretty much a lifestyle living.
Of course, I used my signwriting skills to decorate the window, seasonally – from top left, clockwise – the normal window, Ramadan for the first year,Ramadan the following year and Diwali (Hindu festival of Light).
The first year, Ramadan, fell in high Summer, which meant that the predominantly Moslem population, broke their fast very late in the evening with Iftar, a small thing to eat before going to the mosque for prayers, followed by a race home to eat properly. My frozen yoghurt was perfect for Iftar and also as a desert for families’ main meals and so I was doing well enough to employ staff whilst I delivered frozen yoghurts in my car!
Myself and my staff in our Eid suits (Eid is the celebration at the end of Ramadan)
My late sister Carol was visiting that Summer and was responsible for the face-paonting.
After that first Summer, business levelled off and I had only one part-time staff member in the evenings. On really quiet Winter nights, I had my trusty Ukulele out and learned a lot of new songs…
User comments
I got through a lot of mangos and at one particular time of year, the favourite Pakistan mangoes come in and are on sale everywhere in Bradford – this is a collage of some of the distinctive box lid designs…
Not everything was rosy, some months in, three men ram-raided the shop in the early hours of the morning, trying to steal the icecream machine which is what makes the frozen yoghurt. Mine was a double machine (two flavours or a mixture of both) – it was so heavy that it took four body-builders to lift it onto the counter in the first place so these guys didn’t stand a chance – they got two steps and then dropped it! Meanwhile, a neighbour who had heard the crash ran downstairs, picked up a length of two-by-two and broke their car backwindow as they made their getaway! The plus side was that no publicity is bad publicity and if you search for Zezt online, the newspaper article is still there and brought in a flurry of business once the mess was cleared up…
So what is Boba Tea? If you have never encountered it, it’s either a milky drink or a thin, fruity smoothie type drink which has Boba, made from tapioca, flavoured with black tea and about the size of a marrowfat pea. You drink boba tea through a very thick plastic straw and when one of the boba is sucked up, after initial resistance, it rushes up and pops into your mouth. There are many variations of boba tea, in Taiwan, the epicentre of the phenomenon, cafes often make up their own recipes from scratch, but of course, as it spread, commercial powder mixes have standardised the process. Then there are the Boba themselves, the original black tea tapioca balls have been augmented with Popping Pearls – juice-filled capsules that literally burst in your mouth; jelly in all shapes and sizes (as long as they fit up the straw).
A Boba tea concoction of my own devising…
Then of course there were the customers… I grew a very happy and loyal customer base amongst whom was the group below. It’s not often that you can be witness to a moment of profound change in a person’s life, but Connie, second from left, took her friends to an evening of Asian crafts – principally Mehndi, or decorative Henna work. They came, as they did quite regularly, for a frozen yoghurt before going to the event, and for another one afterwards only this time, they had all had Mehndi decorations done on their arms. Connie was so taken with the process that she began practising it and within a year was making the pilgrimage to HennaCon in America and she has never looked back! You can find her on Istagram here.
The fateful night that Connie discovered henna – Connie and friends before the event and later that evening showing of their decorated arms…
I had a little trepidation about opening Zest, a dessert shop, in that location, situated as I was between three restaurants, fearing they might resent me cutting into their trade; however, I needn’t have worried because what I came to learn is this. Molsems don’t drink alcohol and so whereas English people might go for a meal in a restaurant having mains, dessert and then more drinks and coffee – making a night of it in one establishment, Moslems may go to one restaurant for their main course, bur then to spin the evening out, they leave and go to another restaurant for their dessert – so no probs! The shop was too small to develop and grow beyond a one-man band lifestyle choice and with only one afternoon off, midweek, I became exhausted and decided to move on to pastures unknown, but not before, unbeknownst to me, my current bosses, visited the shop and I am sure that having seen what I had managed to create on my own – that is why they offered me the job…
