It's time for tea and poetry

I recently entered a few of my poems into a poetry competition called 'Pop a Poem on a Postcard' (the idea being to keep all poems to 14 lines). The competition was run by the book publishing company Thynks Publications...and three of my poems won runner-up prizes! They will also now be published in a poetry book/anthology amongst other writers' poems later this year. See my *name in lights* here and here and the poems that won runner-up in the below few posts. Note to reader: best enjoyed with tea and cake (preferably of the very chocolatey sort).

Wave

It is time now. Time you must leave;
Uncurl from her greatest current
And surrender yourself; submerse yourself
To the army of readied sand grains on the front row,
Waiting to devour you voraciously.

It is time now. Time you must leave;
Let the wind roughly fold you in two
In a crashing white sneeze -
Your foaming tips will confidently crash
(even if you feel a ferocious fear)
Into a vortex of yellow beach
And some day, I promise you,
You shall sail the seas once more.

Petite Fleur

In a deserted tearoom in 1950s Paris
A man and a woman hold each other and dance slowly
To the edible sounds of a gramophone sitting loudly in the corner
Blowing out Sidney Bechet’s ‘Petite Fleur’ from its brass horn.
Tired patterns on the wallpaper go unnoticed,
Stale pink-iced sponge cakes sitting boastfully on their cake-stands
Also forgotten
As the vibrato notes of Bechet bend around and through the couple,
Sublime wails of clarinet and golden saxophone jazz
Monopolize the walls, the ceilings, the floor; every breath.
Outside a passerby pauses under the damp night, illuminated by streetlamp
But sees only a man and woman gently dancing to silence
And as the song ends the dance continues,
Ghosts of melody still playing out the scene in the tearoom. 

 

Allotment Moment

Look at that sky,
She said, pointing high above
So together we looked up at the untouchable ceiling
Of darkening blues and roses awash with dusk
White wisps of plane tails and spindly purple clouds interweaving
Over our upturned faces
And for a moment as I looked up at the sky
That moment was all that existed
This middle-aged stranger
With her yellow plastic watering-can
and me with my silver aluminum can
Staring out over empty allotment shed-tops and fruit trees
United by the smell of freshly dug soil
And a pink blushed half globe

I wrote this piece a while back now for a client - it's more copywritery (yes I did just invent that word thank you) than most of the more journalistic articles you can find on here, but if you're serious about writing, I think it's good to be able to do all styles... creative, journalistic and professional!

A day in the year of 2100

Fast forward quite a few decades, and I’m living in the year 2100. I’m yet to see a flying house or have a TV set built into my hand, but the world is changing faster than expected. Two innovations that have taken society by storm are contactless credit cards and the subsequent abolition of cash…

World domination of contactless credit cards is by now pretty much complete in this advanced year. These cards where you just touch in, rather than insert, are now used by all, and payments can even be made by some mobile phones. I envisage mobile phone payment rather than credit card payment to be the next big move as we move beyond and into the ensuing couple of decades.

How did all this happen? I guess that over the years, society became apathetic towards the vanishing banknote. Along with this is the disappearance of handwriting; people in 2030 now use keyboards for everything; in fact, in the primary school curriculum, handwriting lessons have now been replaced with I.T. and keyboard learning.

What happened to our affiliation to cash, to our expression through our individual style of handwriting? What happened to the individualism of the British, not to mention the Scottish now-extinct banknote?

Invisible money
It can sometimes feel as if money doesn’t even exist; money you are never actually able to see or hold certainly has its defects plus you never quite know how the banks are using your savings when they are holding your money. That sense of certainty that accompanies the physical, hand-to-hand exchange of cash, conducted between friends, the familiar shopkeeper or banking staff in your local bank branch, rather than online, is a human touch missed by all.

As I walk down a main street in central London, a city that has now increased in size by at least a half in the last half century, I listen to a busker singing for his supper. In the past I would most likely have dropped some spare change into his hat. Now however, it is a far more awkward process. To give to any entertaining busker, street performer or charity chugger, rather than just dropping a hasty but friendly coin into their hand - or chugging-tin - you now have to go through the laborious and awkward process of making a proper stop and giving ‘virtually’.

Tipping cabbies, waiters, waitresses and cleaners is also more difficult and more obvious, plus the elimination of cash also means that all tips and also any kindly street donations are now logged and taxed; nothing escapes ‘The System’. Ladies and gentlemen, Big Brother has finally arrived.

So many retail and entertainment outlets such as funfairs, ice-cream vans and market stalls have now closed down, resulting in yet more unemployment. Those that haven’t have been taken over by national organisations, taking away any of the individual authentication that may have come with visiting the local chippie up the road.

Big Brother Society
Simple and quick exchanges such as borrowing a ‘fiver’ from a friend is of course no longer possible – we have to do it all through online banking. When I do need to borrow from a friend or family member, the whole process becomes more ‘obvious’, and, if you like, rather awkward.

To be honest, I no longer feel like a free and independent person; my every spend is tracked by my card - I am effectively being followed at all times and as a result I find myself plagued by emails targeting consumers who know exactly what I’ve just bought that morning. Even deep in the country, when I’m buying fresh eggs from the local farmer, this also is tracked and most likely stored in some other bank of personal information somewhere.

No more pocket money, no more choices…
My sister has two children, aged eight and nine. She has had to reduce their ‘pocket money’ to nothing, taking away their limited independence; they can’t even choose their own chocolate bar with the odd 50 pence any longer – Mother makes all the decisions. They’ll probably get hugely drunk on sudden monetary autonomy when they eventually hit the dreaded credit card age; the surprise and glee a child may feel at having their own small stash of money when opening a birthday envelope filled with crispy new banknotes has been lost altogether.

If, some time ago, we had all been more pro-cash, I feel almost certain that our friendly neighbour cash would still exist today. Without cash, some of the sense of British identity that goes with notes of different denominations and designs has been lost - cash had an authenticity that is simply not matched by electronic money.

A cash-filled future will be regained
James Woudhuysen, professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montford University in Leicester, says that he always thought that Britons would hang on to the ‘lovely stuff’, partly, ‘out of a desire not to be too institutionalised, too branded, or too virtual’. But also, because cash was not just a store of value or means of payment, but it made a statement as to what kind of person you are: free and not easily confined.

I am now marshalling my fellows to fight back for our right to cash once again. We shall never surrender to the human right for an autonomous society and this quest remains unanimous with the resurrection of cash. A large underground movement to bring back cash is slowly building day by day… Watch this space my fellow friends, for a long-standing cashless society will never hold a place in the hearts of Britons!

My writing...With love from India x

Below is a story I wrote whilst in India a while back now; it was going to be published as a chapter in a book called 'The India Experience', by an Indian travel company called 'Sodha Travels', but very sadly this book has now been indefinitely postponed due to insufficient funds for publishing...Hopefully they will manage to raise the funds in due time, but for the moment, please enjoy!

The Indian Smile

As my plane flew into Mumbai late on a November afternoon last year, I had no real concept or concerns about the country in which I was about to spend the next three months.

I had backpacked around the world before and found my way around the entire of Vietnam, taught underprivileged children in a school in one of Mexico’s largest cities (Guadalajara, incase you’re wondering) and navigated my way across China with an old school-friend. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the hustle and impression of organised chaos as I moved through the arrivals section of Mumbai airport, nor the sheer number of people, all of whom seemed totally unfazed by the small pandemonium taking place around them. 

During my taxi ride into the island-city of Mumbai from the airport, I realised India was, well, just different. Busier and more crowded than anywhere I had ever visited, it held an allure and fascination that was perfectly foreign to me. I was immediately seduced by the blurring night time cityscape and the winking planes losing themselves in the velvety Indian sky above.

The more the rickety taxi pushed along, sometimes with the traffic flow and other times seemingly against, the more I realised that I had travelled to the country with very little knowledge of Indian culture, its people, or their way of life. I had heard of the infamous slums where the poor resided, but nothing could have prepared me for the reality where the streets stretched out into row after row of slum shelters. The flimsy huts were made from bamboo sticks, scraps of cardboard and plastic with corrugated tin roofs, and seemed to house whole families. My bedroom at home in London is probably bigger than four of those huts put together. I could make out pinpricks of small street fires from outside the shelters and at a closer glance, I noticed people huddled closely around them, sticking their bare hands and feet almost into the flames to seek relief from the cool night air.

I stayed in the southern-most peninsula of Mumbai, Colaba, which was traditionally the city’s hub for wandering travellers. However, I started to dread leaving my hostel each morning where I would be greeted by a plethora of beggars, most of whom were crippled, blind or desperately ill. Dirty-haired street children walked barefoot around the streets in ragged clothes trying to appeal to the compassion of tourists for money with their big round grown-up eyes. I reflected back to my own cushy childhood of bedtime stories and hot meals and felt a warm shame creep into my nourished and healthy body.

After a few days in Mumbai though, I started to see past the caricature of sickness and poverty paraded daily by the pavement dwelling beggars. One sunny morning I was walking back from breakfast through a wide leafy street in Colaba and I noticed some street children contentedly playing a game of cards on someone’s doorstep. Nearby some blind beggars enjoyed a meal of fish and chai together. Nearly everyone I passed, whether they be street children, beggars or street vendors would be smiling – either at me or at each other, and they all wanted to talk to me. These people all had one thing in common I realised – they all had big hearts and happy faces. Their hands and feet may not be warm and their bodies undernourished, but their hearts and souls were full and happy, which is more than I can say for my own country’s state of Prozac-filled minds.

During my second week in Mumbai I befriended the owner of a slum-hut. His name was Geet and he instantly laughed off my concerns about their poor living conditions. Geet felt grateful to be living here – this shabby sanctuary protected him from far worse fates. The slum hut was surprisingly clean inside, and, although sparsely furnished, it was clearly habitable and well-maintained. Geet’s next door neighbour Bhadra, both a wife and mother of five young children, cooked us a simple but tasty meal of rice, spicy dhal and homemade flatbreads in some gleaming tin pots above a little fire, which we all washed down with hot, sweet slum chai. This delightful little concoction was far more spicy and pungent than any of the Indian food I had tentatively tasted in the blander tourist eateries. Afterwards, I tried to give Bhadra money, a huge error which I only realised all too late. Insulted, she told me in broken English that I was a guest and now a part of the community in that slum, they didn’t want my money, they wanted my company.

That’s the thing about the Indian slum community; they are a community of the tightest sort, where they support one another so closely in order to survive. I have never seen such passionate concern and love for one’s neighbours anywhere else except in the inspiring and desolate areas of those tattered shelters.

Little by little, my scepticism and hardened British heart started to slowly thaw during my time in India. Every genuine smile I received - and I received at least fifty a day - was like food to my poor and hungry soul.

Next to Mumbai, Delhi stands strong, tall and towering in my memory. The Aladdin-like bazaars of India’s capital could almost be another country in themselves, a behind-time fabled country where you could imagine all sorts of magical and enchanting adventures and stories taking place. India is of course, thousands of years old, and the sights in Delhi, from the majestic Red Fort, to the vast gardens of the splendid Humayan’s Tomb which demonstrate its crumbling opulence and wealth.

Walking down the Main Bazaar in Paharganj, a seedy area in the north of Delhi, is a memorable assault on all of the human senses. Smoking incense sticks poke out from random cracks in broken drainpipes, while skinny humpy cows wander dozily past zooming motorbikes or auto-rickshaws, their drivers beeping at everything and anything that may cross their path, which in a street as busy as this one, is every two seconds. Stray dogs and cats add to the mayhem and every patch of space on this long street is invaded by some sort of wonderful chaos or Indian market store. Neat lines of pashminas and bright rolls of coloured fabric melt into each other and hippy dippy shops catered to the discerning dread-locked traveller float their wares of fishermen’s trousers and tie-dye kaftans. Hundreds of people hum along their own life stories here - amongst these are beggars, snake charmers, cooks, astrologers, pimps and musicians. If I catch the eyes of any of these men or women, they would return my gaze with that huge Indian smile I had by now grown to look forward to as I woke up every morning.

Rush hour here seems to last throughout the day and camels, hand carts, motorcyclists, pedestrians and animals all clash into each other and miraculously, nobody gets hurt. Sweating men with rake thin legs and buttocks of steel pull the three wheeled rusty rickshaws through the human traffic on their bicycles. They hurtle long red strings of spit onto the uneven road and unfortunate feet of anyone passing by. When I looked closely, I noticed that nearly all of the shopkeepers’ mouths and teeth were stained a maroon red, the same red that darkens the bullets of saliva shooting out of the rickshaw drivers’ mouths. This is the magic of ‘paan’, a fragrant-filled leaf that is consumed as a mouth-freshener and, as far as I was concerned, was popular with Indians all over the north of the country.

The streets of this great dirty Indian city made my return home to England to be an unexpectedly eerie contrast. London, my home city, seemed more like a deserted toy-town where everything ran like ordered clockwork. Dogs on leads padded obediently along the empty pavements and cars seemed to positively glide silently along the smooth even roads as though from some futuristic film set. Once a city I used to describe as fast-paced, hectic and noisy, since my return from India in January, I now see London as a quiet place where order remains paramount and imagination is stifled.

What strikes me as most bizarre, is how, for example, in Mumbai, an overpopulated slogging fervency of sixteen million people, I never saw a street brawl or even a fight break out between two drivers. Angry road rage in London however, a city at least twice the size of Mumbai but with about half the population, is common, as are fights between car drivers and muttered swearwords between hassled pedestrians. India is able to live in its overly populated chaos without landing themselves in World War Three because India is a land where the heart reigns and the smile is queen.

I now want a piece of that Indian heart for myself, and what I have discovered I need since this trip, isn’t the latest iPhone, or a job promotion or a new car, but a contentedness that comes from within, rather than from external sources. And if all those huge families with their tiny shrines in all those tiny slum huts has taught me anything, it’s that you need more than just you to survive in this world. You need a supportive family, a power greater than yourself to have faith in, and of course, you need a great big smile.

Change of address

I have now moved over to Twitter; please see here for my updates with the twitterati.

Also, incase you fancy a quick peek at particular types of my articles but don't fancy trawling through the whole blogged process, please click on any of these quick links below:

News feature: Twitter & Iran

News piece: Iranian human rights

News piece: Credit crunching Winter Wonderland

Travel piece

News piece: Alistair no Darling to high earners

India!

I have been writing from India about my travels since arriving in this incredible country. Below is a photo I took when passing through the hectic and over-crowded but unforgettable city of Mumbai.