I did a pome.

This is a poem I wrote for my sister, about my niece.

"My Niece, September

Today is Hope’s birthday. A pleasing phrase;
One of many which will show up over the years.
‘Can you see Hope?’ ‘Hope makes me smile’
How can hope be gone, or one lose hope

When Hope is in the world? Now we know
What’s in a name. In the darkest corner
Of Pandora’s Box, after the darkest times
There lurked the solution, the happiness-hit.

‘Hope, ta-da!’ as the man said. From the first
That sparky little girl made herself known,
Her personality felt. A birth canal? Don’t be wet.
Coming through the hipbone, that’s a challenge.

And so she entered the world in a manner
Perhaps more complicated (I can use euphemisms:
I’m not her mother) than most, and yet
Utterly characteristic. ‘This is how I do things

And if something seems difficult, that’s the cue
To keep hammering away until crowned
With glorious, hard-won success’. Some Ratcliffe granite
Seaming through the languid Taylorness.

Months earlier, three had become four, and now
Four and a bump became four and a bit, then
Slowly, quickly, wonderfully, five. A person
Grown from scratch, as a dock-leaf for grief-

Not to take it away, but to soothe it, assuage,
And with her newness to make the old less raw.
We laugh with someone discovering laughter
We dress a cut knee with a promise the pain will end.

There is another noun, my beautiful girl,
That folk have turned into a name; like yours
It is a sound to describe something to feel, and you
Possess and exude its name as utterly as your own;

The embodiment, not just of Hope,
But of Joy."

December 2009

Esprit d'escalier

What he (sharp suit, university education) said:

'I don't mind immigration if it's people who want to contribute, what bothers me are all these asylum seekers sitting around on benefits not even trying to work'

What I said:

'Well, asylum seekers aren't allowed to work'

What I should have said:

'Why not get even the vaguest bit informed before you presume to hold forth on something so important, you greedy, complacent, willfully ignorant fucking moron?'

Don Taylor, 30 June 1936- 11 November 2003

My dad died six years ago today. If you click on this link, or this one or this one you can find out a bit more about him.

I wanted to write something a bit more personal at this point, but now I come to it I'd much rather let him speak for himself. When Dad was dying, he wrote a series of poems for my mum to read after he was dead- aimed, I suppose, at consolation, or as a continuation of their forty-seven year conversation and delight in each others' minds. Indeed, one of the poems encouraged her not to visit his grave after he was dead, but instead to read his work, so she could 'look into his living imagination'.

That imagination still lives, and dad would be delighted to know how much of his work is still being performed around the world. Every few months or so I meet someone who performed in 'The Roses of Eyam' at school or with their local amateur group; and Katie Mitchell's championing of his translations of Greek plays have led to more productions of those translations than he, or we, could ever have dreamed of.

When I want to look into his living imagination, I come back time and time again to one of those poems he wrote after the oncologist's sentence had been pronounced. It's called Roses.

'There is a rose garden at the end of the world.
The Old English roses are marvellously scented.
I shall sit there on long summer evenings,
Drinking white wine, and breathing in the perfume,
Marvellously contented.

When the shadows close on you too,
I shall be waiting, if anywhere, in the Rose Garden
Drinking good white burgundy,
At peace with what I have been and done.'


As I said at the funeral six short, long years ago- enjoy your peace, lovely daddy. You have deserved it.

Silence broken, by a bloody great plug.

Well, why not?

You have a week to listen to this lovely programme on the iplayer- Robert Webb talking about his favourite pieces of poetry and prose. He's a great companion in this kind of thing and his choices are fascinating.

In the name of full disclosure, I might mention that I did some of the reading out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00npwhj

On resisting temptation.

Like you, I watched tonight's 'Question Time', and I'm sure that you, like me, were particularly struck by what a singularly weird f


Nah, better not. Not twice in the one week.

Why There Is Nothing 'Natural' About Jan Moir's Weird Face

“The sight of Jan Moir’s weird face in today’s Daily Mail was deeply shocking. It wasn’t just that another hate-filled, frothing journobot was as ugly outside as in.

Through the recent travails and sad deaths of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and others, fans know to expect the expected of low-rank journalists- that the moment someone a bit famous drops off the twig, a weird face like Jan’s will start flapping on about how there’s more to it than meets the eye and making prurient , twitchy, offensive speculations dressed up as moral weariness.

Now look- don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Jan Moir’s weird face. Some of my best friends are Jan Moir’s weird face, although I wouldn’t let it adopt children as they might be bullied. But let us be absolutely clear about this. Normal faces don’t wake up in the morning looking like that. Whatever happened between Jan Moir and her weird face is anyone’s guess. But it strikes a blow against the happy-ever-after myth of loathsome gutter journalism spewed by people with weird faces.”

Bit of a low blow on my part, huh? After all, the poor woman can’t help the way she looks (which, by the way, is HORRIBLE). But if the horrible, upsetting death of a 33 year old man can be poked and pried into in order to further a slimy, bigoted agenda, I don’t see why I shouldn’t point out that the person doing the sliming has a horrible, upsetting face. Moir and her like argue that celebrities forfeit some of their right to privacy when, through their courting of publicity, they ask for our attention. Well, by the same token, Moir has forfeited her right to me not commenting on her weird face by putting a picture of it on the internet. Oh, and by indulging in net-curtain gossiping about someone who never did her (or, so far as we know, anyone) a moment’s harm, before his young body is even cold.

And in many ways, she got off lightly. I could have concentrated on the even more spectacular ugliness of her soul.

A shaming, but honest, admission.

A wonderful Hamlet. A Zerbinetta absolutely nailing it. Bernadette Peters singing Sondheim. Pele passing to to Maradona who passes to George Best who volleys in from 40 yards to win the league for Fulham. A sketch written by Fry, Laurie, Peter Cook, the Pythons and Victoria Wood, and performed by Eric Morecambe and Ronnie Barker.

I have this evening realised- and this is speaking as someone who finds dance basically weird and pointless- that I'd trade any or all of the above for a really, really well-executed tap number.