Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Welsh almost always ask a stranger, a foreigner, “where do you come from?”

Happened to me again yesterday and, caught off guard, I was quite thrown by it.  Truth to tell, I’m not sure I really know where, in a strictly historical sense, I do come from.

Oh, I know where I was born and brought up, of course I do.  Trouble is, my home town is still there but it’s been mostly subsumed within Greater London and, last time I went there for a wander, I had some difficulty finding my way around.

So, generally, I answer that I come from all over, but originally from London.

I seldom think about it.  About Sutton, that is.  Nice, leafy, suburban town it was.  A pretty good place to grow up in, especially when the first few years of that growing up was in wartime and the austere years that followed.

Chilling though the thought may be, I’m not sure that my claim is entirely true.  Where do I come from?  It’s more than mere geography, is a personal point of origin.

Somewhere, in the mass of urban development and decay that stretches from Victoria down to Croydon, and out on all sides, there’s a faint glimmer that is my home ground.  I couldn’t find it if I tried, and wouldn’t know it if I succeeded.

It’s almost as though, one day in the late 50s, I came to consciousness in a commuter train en route between Waterloo and Sutton Common, and lost my feeling of place and of belonging.  Most likely it was between Clapham Junction and Wimbledon.  I had my black covered notebook on my knee and my fountain pen in my hand, scribbling away.  I probably have the notebook page still, bound in age stiffened yellow covers in a forgotten corner of a desk drawer.  I shall not go looking for it.  Wouldn’t know it if I found it, chances are.

Doesn’t matter too much to me, I’ll be honest with you.

To Graham’s mother this morning, leaving himself to go off with a gaggle of old ladies on a shopping trip/day out at Aberavon.  I’ve not been there.  Graham now says I don’t want to.

He’s almost always right on these things, and you may ignore the ‘almost’ if you wish.

It was my day to visit the doctor at my local clinic, my first doctor-level contact.  She seemed to feel less than polite about the level of care she found to be evident in my cardiac medication history, and was positively scathing about the state of my ankles and calves.  The upshot is that I’m now off the diuretic and on to a low-dose–to be followed up and reassessed monthly–ACE inhibitor (Ramipril, for the record) which she feels will suit me better, do the job of a diuretic rather more kindly, and keep a watching eye on blood pressure.

I have some small misgivings about ACE inhibitors but will go along with the programme because I get the distinct impression that she’s determined to establish a good level of care and to improve my general health and mobility.  She actually understands the vicious cycle of inactivity and weight build-up caused by the mix of retained fluid and osteoarthritis.

I’m hopeful but… we shall see.

Returning home, just about lunch time, I tried out our local chippie for cod-and-chips.  Scrupulously clean and well run, and good quality ingredients but, somehow, not quite right as a chippie.  I’m pleased to have the place there but I shall have to start out on the search for a proper steamy old chippie once more.  A good chippie has something of the Thoreau double-warming about it on a winter’s day:  you get warmed while you wait in the steam and the familiar atmosphere, and then once more when you unwrap your fish’n'chips to eat the steam-hot, finger-burning goodies.

Dib, dab, pick and poke, a paper hole,
finger fish flesh with tender care,
white slicey slices all greasy and nice
oh, sizzle fish and stickle chips,
steamy street lamp food delight. 

Then, home, stretched out on the sofa with Dolly for the afternoon while the TV murmured its way through two old John Wayne westerns.

Graham’s mother drove him home in the late afternoon, spending just enough time to inspect the works before driving off to get back before dark.

“So it’ll have to be Porthcawl next, then,” I said when he’d told me of the kind of place Aberavon is and the kind of day he’d had.

“We shall see,” he said.

There was a strong Spring sun today, actually hot on my back as I waited for Graham in the car park.  I ought to have turned round to get the benefit on my chest but, stretching out like a cat enjoying the sunshine, my time slipped away and it was time to get back in the car before I knew it.

Returning home Graham decided it was the first gardening day of the year and the scratty ash tree in the front garden met its fate along with several other [insert escaped word to describe trees of an ill-assorted kind typical of neglected bits of land... ah, yes, 'scrub'] trees, all before they start into proper growth.

There are several low-growing plants in the garden in bloom.  Again, the name escapes me.

All in all, you can feel Spring leaning on Winter’s traces.  While not wanting to wish Time away, it’s my earnest hope that Winter will be quiescent now, leaving Spring to roll in, slow and easy.

I’ve been bothered mightily in recent weeks, between long winter sleeps and longer winter coughs [almost gone now], wondering if my creative coals have slept softly, too deeply, and burned so low that no amount of gentle wafting with my little paper fan can spark them back to life.

I’d got to the stage where I was contemplating getting into collecting stamps and, possibly, painting little Welsh scenes on pebbles.  [Don't worry, both urges are slumbering deeply once more.]

It needed a very special kind of fan, though, and I’d quite forgotten where I put it and how to wield it.

Both things got sorted in my head this morning, seemingly by accident if you believe that such events can ever truly be accidental.

I picked up a slim volume of poems–Public Property, by Andrew Motion–and, following the habit-trails of many years, started leafing through it.  At random I came upon In a Perfect World:

I was walking the Thames path from Richmond
to Westminster, just because I was free
to do so, just for the pleasure of light

sluicing my head, …

… The mouth of the Wandle stuck
its sick tongue out and went… 

and more and more, from triplet to triplet, measuring the way peacefully and in perfect solitude.  A lovely poem, a gem, as are so many of Motion’s poems. Typically, he falls over in the last stanza, with two faulty word choices, the first of them inexcusably smacking of cliché.

And… that’s all it took.  My head is working again, with the fore-brain buzzing from phrase to phrase, picking its way as carefully as I know how, trying to avoid treading too much on sick tongues.  And my left foot, far from echoing the tremor of my right hand, seems to be ticking merrily along in a rhythm that could almost be iambic if it were not for the occasional dactylic stumble.

Yeah.  Home again, digging dogs and stroking the warm backs of favourite cats.

I’ll be fine now.

Graham has decided, finally, that he likes blogging, and is happy to go public.  So I’ve put him in my blogroll and the URL is:  http://vinyldragon.blogspot.com/.  Be gentle, please…