Melting pot 15

• From the allotment - The plot has taken on it's Autumn look now that the temperatures are plummeting at night. However, there are still some rich pickings form the raspberry canes and the runner beans. There were even a few brave courgettes the other day and a whole box full of raspberries. Chard, dahlias, sweet peas that seem to be going on flowering forever and potatoes that we need to dig out before the frost comes.
• On my coffee table - I just finished Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier which I devoured. Fossil hunting. Beach finds have never been that good! Truly! This is the writer of Girl with a Pearl Earring. So, I guess I don't need to say anything else. I was going to say I'm reading lots of poetry at the moment because I'm going to an Arvon writing course in October and want to be in the zone, except I just realized that I always read lots of poetry and might be in the zone already! I'll just mention one volume. Jo Slade The Artist's Room. This is a series of poems based on the life and work of the painter Gwen John. Just beautiful, evocative and touching.
• On my music stand - Brahms Scherzo, the third of a four movement work he co-wrote with Dietrich and Schumann, but this is the famous movement. Slow progress, I feel, but it's been a busy week, reason being I've been doing this......

• On my iPod - I played a half hour set with a new combo last week. Gus joined me on double bass and Monty played percussion at an experimental night called Spirit of Gravity. We didn't think anyone had recorded the night, but last night we were all given a disc of recordings and shots. Sometimes, listening back to a live gig takes away the magic, but that isn't the case with this one. Lost in music. Nothing like it.

By the Thames

Birch trees at the entrance to Tate Modern.

Pulling in the weekend crowds. Great to see a gallery of modern art so popular. Not the best day for browsing, but I was there for something a bit different.

Pascale Petit was hosting the launch of a poetry booklet that arose from a course she holds there called Poetry from art. Browse some great shots of the pieces that inspired the writers by clicking here. And read a couple of the poems that arose out of these workshops on another post here. Thanks to Pascale for organizing such a great evening. (There will be others like this so keep an eye on her blog if you might like to go to a course or a reading.)

What a great event - packed out with one of the most attentive audiences I have ever seen. 20 new poets in one gig against a backdrop of slides of the pieces that had sparked off each poem and with panoramic views of the city behind us.

___________________

It was a freezing cold night, the first this Autumn and I knew there was something else I wanted to try on the river walk back to the train.

The darkness elbowed me down the river steps, walked me too fast for my own strides down the granite slabs, drew me to the black beach of a London low tide where I was hidden and sheltered from the wind.

And so these are a few of the sketches I found in my camera afterwards. Cropped and left with a bit of camera shake from the fact that I didn't have a big coat and hat on! London was breathing hidden histories across the river.

I sat under the shadow of the widest bridge, in the place where the shadows are permanent black, waterproof ink bled across the poor pickings of a river that gets skimmed of flotsam.

And the night drank me in as the tourist cruisers passed by. I watched for the hints of metal cast by a reflected moon on glass towers, for the places where lights fall into mahogany highlights brushed wet in wet, dark copper giving in to the wake, chestnut without shine and worn out golds.

Colours of old wood, worn paint, dusty violins without strings, tarnished metal, tannin on unwashed cups after too many refils of tea, tired out possessions too worn to mend.

Then in the final yards to the station. the moon made the street look like something out of Dickens.

Today I am....

The view from here

Such a quiet tide.

It was as if the sea was resting, being baked into metal plates in the last heat of September. Two finishes ran across the quiet slick. One reflecting the white walls of towering cliffs, clean as new paint. The other dulled to a pale blue matt. Too bright to gaze at for long, I leaned back and watched the cliffs upside down, waiting for the tumbling fall of rooks, who never cackled over the edge.

Little boats fished out in the sky, out near where the horizon would have been. Suspended in the rising haze, they were mascara lines. Wakes raked up the surface, doodled musical scores with a carefree pen.

One boat chugged like it needed to cough, raised nets up high on supports and sailed across the horizon like a falling W, oddly unbalanced. The nib caught in the tooth of the paper, dragged an ink splatter of seagulls behind it.

When no-one was looking

I sipped a Summer's worth of dew

drop

by

drop

but when no-one was looking

I swayed in the ozone rush

of every sky torn storm

let the gale dance me

as I knocked back

every shot of rain

and in between times

I sucked in the blue

through a fine green straw

Summer's end

I burst with bright

They built ships

It must be in my genes. My ancestors built ships, shaped the wood that made their frames. Back in the 1700s, before photographs. The records are giving up snippets of information and my imagination is busy with the rest. Wondering.

The port is very different now, with most goods being shipped in huge containers bigger than a house, but there are some older ships to see in Albert Dock. Tall masts and rigging that I always wanted to climb, reminders of holds full of cargo, and gutsy tug boats nosing the bigger vessels into berth.

I'm always fascinated by the huge coils of ropes, broader than my limbs and by the factory that still makes them, with a boot polished floor half a mile long, waiting to stretch each line out as they are twisted.

Give me water to gaze into and you might not see me for a while.

Marker buoys, port and starboard lights, the patience of a freighter waiting for the tide, an endless horizon running through my mind.

Ullswater

Click and you're there!

Most people wouldn't have bothered that day.

The pointing hand sign said, "Please queue this side," but I stood alone in the rain on the mirror slats of the wet jetty, gazing at the dark bulk of mountains looming at the far end of the lake. Everyone waited inside for the boat to arrive.

Ullswater, beneath a grey symphony of cloud that brushed every peak and stayed there. Quiet, except for the sound of the rain falling softly into the gritty shallows and onto unyielding raincoat sleeves.

Every feature was brushed smooth, something so soft about the scenes made you slow down to look at the steep slopes of meadows falling to the shore, and the grissly dark textures of forests like in fairy tale scenes. Shadows frayed into fragments in the dancing patterns a wake makes on deep water, as the angle of brighter sky down the valley pulled us closer.

We passed close to tiny islands with crooked trees, rocky places just big enough for one tent to camp. A man in a Canadian canoe with festive bunting, laden with all the gear for such an island rendezvous, stopped paddling to wave and wave and wave, until we could hardly see each other any more. His coloured flags blended into the greys. His arms were lost in the calligraphy of water drawings.

The bold pushing line of wake was always drawing with the darkest ink. It forged behind us like a bold signature line, a theme with endless variations across the places where water turns to metal, where the sky falls open to the light.

Melting pot 14

• On my coffee table - The year of the hare by Arto Paasilinna which I'm trying to make last just another day or two. About to start What becomes by A.L.Kennedy and a volume about painter Elizabeth Blackadder at work in her studio.
• On my music stand - I'm rusty and dusty after the Summer, but as always, I begin with Bach, this time his E major Partita. It makes the violin very happy. One day it might make me happy as well. E major, bright like these gorgeous metal blue days we always get this time of year.
• On my iPod - Tapestry by Carole. Just FAB FAB FAB to listen to this. I had forgotten. It shuffles into 5 movements for string quartet by Webern. Rock and roll! Just my sort of back to back choice.
• At the allotment - Just one cardoon (pictured above) burst into short-lived flower this year, amazing given I thought we had lost all the plants to the big freeze. Elsewhere in town, they seem to be towering like thistle trees, still blue and covered in bees. However, I can enjoy the ones in the park while ours fades to shrivelled crisps of old silver and there has been much to be happy about - sweet peas and dahlias, late crop raspberries, salad leaves, still more courgettes, runner beans, french beans, mange tout, baby sweetcorn, and best of all, what's in the next shot. The apple tree has had a wonderful year and we picked the fruits the other day and have them laid out in trays to store over the next months. Autumn is on the way.