BOOKS

LIFEAINT WOT IT USED TO BE (continued)

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

Scene 4

Lionel’s flat. Sometime later. Both are relaxing

ALMA:
(pausing)
There’s something I need to tell you, Lionel.

LIONEL:
(stops playing)
Sounds serious. What is it?

Lionel’s flat. Sometime later. Both are relaxing

LIONEL:                                                                                                                     When did we first meet Alma? It was at your flat in Kensington, wasn’t it?

ALMA:                                                                                                                                     Yes, I think so. Tommy Steele brought you along. You had just written Rock With The Cavemen for him and it was a big hit.  Must be five years or more now.  (teasing)
But you’ve written so many hits—Living Doll for Cliff, As Long As He Needs Me for Shirley…but you can’t expect me to remember that far back.

We see her nervously fiddling and twisting her handkerchief

LIONEL:
(looking up)
You’ve been quiet tonight, Alma. Something on your mind

ALMA:
(takes a deep breath)
It’s about John. John Lennon.

LIONEL:
(raising an eyebrow)
What about him?

ALMA:
(hesitating)
We… we had a thing. A secret. It didn’t last long, but… it happened.

LIONEL:
(stunned)
You and Lennon? When?

ALMA:
(softly)
A couple of years ago. It was just after they started getting big. He was… different. Wild. And I was… curious.

LIONEL:
(bitterly)
Curious? Is that what you call it?

ALMA:
(defensive)
It wasn’t like that, Lionel. It was just a moment. A mistake.

LIONEL:
(standing up)
A mistake? You and one of the most famous men in the world? That’s not a mistake, Alma. That’s a headline.

ALMA:
(pleading)
It didn’t mean anything. It was just… something that happened.

LIONEL:
(sighing)
And now you’re telling me. Why?

ALMA:
(because I care about you, Lionel. Because I don’t want there to be any secrets between us.

LIONEL:
(softening)
Secrets have a way of coming out, Alma.

ALMA:
(smiling faintly)
I know. But I’d rather you hear it from me.

(They sit in silence for a moment, the weight of her confession hanging in the air. Lionel walks over to the piano and plays a few notes, lost in thought.)

LIONEL:
(softly)
You’re full of surprises, Alma.

ALMA:
(smiling)
That’s what keeps life interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, now it’s you turn.

LIONEL:                                                                                                                      My turn?

 ALMA:                                                                                                                         What secrets are you hiding? Come on…fair’s fair!

Lionel is silent for a while

LIONEL:                                                                                                                          I can’t read or write music

ALMA: (laughing)                                                                                                   Everybody already knows that! Come on…give!

LIONEL:                                                                                                              Well…lots of people think we are a couple, don’t they? I mean, we go places together, don’t we? And we often go away together for a couple of days… stuff like that.

ALMA:                                                                                                                             Like a married couple you mean? But we not really like that, are we?
(teasing) You know, Lionel, we’d make a great team. Maybe we should just get married and write hit songs together forever.


LIONEL:
(laughing)
And who’d keep us in line? You’d be off touring the world, and I’d be locked in a room with a piano.

ALMA: (jokingly)

I’m serious! (pause) Lionel, you’ve been my best friend, my collaborator, and the one person who always understands me. So, what do you say? Shall we make it official?

LIONEL:
(stunned)
Alma, are you serious?

ALMA: (smiling)

I could be
LIONEL                                                                                                                       N…No, you couldn’t.

ALMA:                                                                                                                       And we both know why, don’t we? (Lionel nods) We’re just friends. Good friends, but still only friends. (pause) Are you happy with that?

Lionel nods again

ALMA:                                                                                                                         Then so am I

ALMA sings ‘A HARD DAYS NIGHT’ while Lionel accompanies her on piano

Song by

The Beatles

It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog
It’s been a hard day’s night
I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you
I find the things that you do
Will make me feel alright

You know I work all day
To get you money, to buy you things
And it’s worth it just to hear you say
You’re gonna give me everything
So why on earth should I moan
‘Cause when I get you alone
You know I feel OK

When I’m home
Everything seems to be right
When I’m home
Feeling you holding me tight
Tight, yeah

It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog
It’s been a hard day’s night
I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you
I find the things that you do
Will make me feel alright, owww!

So why on earth should I moan
‘Cause when I get you alone
You know I feel OK

When I’m home
Everything seems to be right
When I’m home
Feeling you holding me tight
Tight, yeah

Mmm, it’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog
It’s been a hard day’s night
I should be sleeping like a log
But when I get home to you
I find the things that you do
Will make me feel alright
You know I feel alright
You know I feel alright

(They share a quiet moment, the tension slowly easing. The lights dim as the scene fades.)

End of scene

Scene 5

STOLEN WORDS

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

FETCHING THE WATER WITH NEDDY

Where I come from is who I am:
Tangled blackberry bushes
Smoke rising from a solitary chimney
The pine grove in the distance
And Father shouting
“More water in that barrel”
As we bucketed it from our well
To our asses cart,
Creel-less for once.
Other days Neddy would be laden down
With wood from the nearby thicket
Ash trees, young Sally’s, stumps of furze bushes.
Sometimes he hauled sand and gravel
From the quarry at Carroll’s Cross,
Part of Father’s master plan
To build us an outside toilet.
This would mean more water from the well
To feed the tank on its roof,
Unless it rained a lot
Which of course it often did
In our neck of the woods.

451


Ah Montag, Montag, where are you now?
Steeped in your kerosene world
You burnt the books
The houses and even the people.
Then fire seared your brain
And cleansed your senses
Books were made to be read not torched.
So you ran to the river
The Mechanical Hound snapping at your heels.

The sun burns every day
It burns time
The firemen burn the books
They burn them every day
Ah Montag, Montag, time burns everything away.

I HAVE A GOOD BOOK IN ME

According to perceived wisdom
Everybody has a good book in them
I now have a good book in me
I ate one this morning
For breakfast
I am still digesting the contents

RAINY NIGHTS IN SOHO


See all the down-and-out lickers and fuckers
Down the Embankment they tumble
Unable any longer to bear much reality
Too much self-knowledge
And time spent trotting
Between the Tate and the National
Or one of their endless reading groups
Believing they had
A story to tell
If only things had worked out,
If only the monkey had hit the right keys.
Hush! if you listen carefully
You can hear the dead click
Of their keyboards
In the raucousness of the Soho night;
The minicabs, the limos, the rickshaws all screaming
Take me…take me…I’m free
And the hen nighters, the stag nighters,
The whatever-the fuck nighters,
Lingering in pools of their own vomit
Waiting for the paramedics to call;
Shirts open to the navel, skirts slit
From here to eternity.
Late summer, later winter, who gives a shit?
The restaurants are all full
Though nobody is really eating
Just being there is what matters.
Smokers stop the traffic
Inspecting their mobiles
What would a Martian make of that?
No one sees anything any more
Except the lampposts they walk into;
There are no witnesses to crime;
How anybody falls in love anymore is a puzzle
Eyes no longer meet in lingering amazement
Unless they are reflected
In all those infernal hand-held screens.

Some poems from my collection STOLEN WORDS. Available on Amazon.

MY FATHER – a poem by John Osborne

/ gorgeousgael / 1 Comment

John Osborne poet

John Osborne  was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.

In a productive life of more than 40 years, Osborne explored many themes and genres, writing for stage, film and TV. His personal life was extravagant and iconoclastic. He was notorious for the ornate violence of his language, not only on behalf of the political causes he supported but also against his own family, including his wives and children.

Osborne was one of the first writers to address Britain’s purpose in the post-imperial age. He was the first to question the point of the monarchy on a prominent public stage. During his peak (1956–1966), he helped make contempt an acceptable and now even cliched onstage emotion, argued for the cleansing wisdom of bad behaviour and bad taste, and combined unsparing truthfulness with devastating wit.

MY FATHER

My father lived a simple life
But he was a man apart
With gentle ways and humble mind
And an understanding heart

He loved and cared for people
Helping those in need.
He strove to make folk happy
For kindness was his creed.

He never aimed for dizzy heights
Of luxury or fame
But where he walked and where he talked
With love he carved his name.

He was like a rock to lean upon
Each problem he would share.
He found his strength in his belief
And in kneeling down in prayer.

He loved his home and lived his life
With fullness to the end
He taught me much I owe him much
A father and a friend.

Death was peace and joy to him
It was no fearful thing,
His faith was simple and sincere
And God alone his king.

John Osborne

HOME BEFORE DARK

/ gorgeousgael / 5 Comments

SEPTEMBER IS THE LOVELIEST MONTH
September is the loveliest month.
The sky is on permanent fire
The trees painted many colours
Burnished, it seems, with pure desire
In the park, ducks glide silently by
And the always busy seagulls
Resemble sea-planes
Coming in to land from on high
Whilst near the dozing oak tree
The squirrels nutmeg each other
Each acorn hoarded
For the soon-to-come cold weather.
Your arm in mine
We stroll down the park
Heading towards the sunset
Home before dark.

LOOKING FOR GOOGLE

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

LOOKING FOR GOOGLE

Driverless cars

Headless chickens

Oops! mind that blind…

Oh, what the Dickens!

The lingua franca

In Google we trust,

In God if we must.

Look, no hands!

It’s not a boast

It’s a statement of fact,

I don’t drive, it’s all an act.

The phone on my table

Speaks in eighteen different languages if tasked

And can answer questions

(Sometimes before they are asked).

Now they have sent ten thousand

Helium balloons into the stratosphere

Seeking all the disconnected;

Wi-Fi for all – and soon

They could – in theory – I guess

Set up shop nowadays on the moon

This is their ‘toothbrush’ test;

“Focus on the user and all else follows”

Culture and success go hand in  hand;

If you don’t believe your own slogan

You’re already in no-mans land.

PARTING

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

PARTING

The sun also rises over concrete

Over this puff-adder sky

And the pricked-up chimneys

Looking like piss-horns in the stark morning

There are no shadows yet

On this marbled plain

So tender in years

But so sparing with love

I shiver at the bus stop

Admiring this proliferation of granite;

So cold, so hard,

So like you….

SEX, CHOCOLATE AND STATINS

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

SEX, CHOCOLATE AND STATINS

Want to lower your risk of heart disease and stroke?

The answer is to have more sex,

At least two orgasms a week.

This will reduce your risk of a cardiovascular event,

But only if you are a man.

For women – well, you have to take your chances!

Eating chocolate can also reduce your risk

As does listening to music

Though Nessum Dorma might be more beneficial than Taylor Swift.

Moving out of the city, living with others, having a good boss

Also helps;

But men with a high orgasmic frequency do best of all.

So forget about Statins;

Chocolates, Vivaldi, and bashing the bishop

Are much more beneficial

And a lot more enjoyable.

WORMWOOD

/ gorgeousgael / 2 Comments

WORMWOOD

Wormwood isn’t here

The sign said, rather waspishly.

It wasn’t the Wormwood I remembered;

Scrubs Lane on a wet Sunday

The outback in West London

No buses, no cars, no people

Just limp grass, acres of the stuff

And, oh yes, the finest redbrick edifice

Victoria’s henchmen could construct.

No rotting bodies in here, my friend.

Not Newgate, not by a long shot

Though debts must still be paid

And some may still get laid

Lord Alfred Douglas lay here,

As did Charles Bronson,

Keith Richards, Leslie Grantham.

And  George Blake

Scurrying along in his traitor’s gait

Till the day he pole-vaulted to freedom

More or less

Before waving goodbye

To his English life,

His liberty and his wife

And all those Wormwood scrubbers

DAFFODILS

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

DAFFODILS

I saw Christ nailed to a tree

In an East London churchyard

Weather-beaten from looking,

While the adjacent graveyard

Played host to a thousand

Sloping stone soldiers.

There, daffodils bunched together

And it made me wonder

Why the graveyard should display

Such a profusion of yellow

When the churchyard itself

Was barren of colour

LETTERS TO MOTHER AND OTHER DEAD RELATIVES -extract

/ gorgeousgael / Leave a comment

 

LETTERS TO  MOTHER AND OTHER DEAD RELATIVES – extract

Dear Mother,
There weren’t too many occasions when I pleased you in life. My fault not yours, because we both know that I wasn’t what you would call ‘a dutiful son’. I probably pleased you when I got married, and when I gave you your first grandchild, but I think I pleased you most when I became an Altar boy.
I imagine you saw it as a kind of status symbol: because when other mothers boasted ‘my son is going to De La Salle College’, or ‘has a place in the Christian Brothers’, you could now reply ‘my son is an Altar boy’ with a certain amount of pride. And there weren’t that many of us in the vicinity – no more than a handful – which made it all the more gloat-worthy.
Even the Master acknowledged our special status; taking us up to the church several times a week after school for rehearsals before letting us loose on our first Sunday. He took the part of the priest himself; although he didn’t ‘gown up’ for the role. But I guess Fr. Sinnott, the parish priest, would have viewed as sacrilege the idea of somebody rummaging around in his wardrobe. Still, we were put through our paces until we had mastered our roles; bell-ringing, bringing the water and the wine, and, of course, learning to chant the responses in the appropriate places. I can still recite chunks of Latin after all these years – and I still don’t know what they mean.
In due course I discovered the pleasures of wine-drinking. Thomas K and myself usually served together, and as altar boys were responsible for filling the jugs with the water and wine to be used during the Mass. When the parish priest officiated, very little water but nearly all the wine would be used. However, with other priests it might be the other way round, and we were often able to transfer some of the wine to a spare vessel we kept concealed in a recess, topping up the priest’s jug with water.
We returned later and retrieved the wine, then sat amid the gravestones drinking it. Sometimes it made your head spin, and when we added the occasional Woodbine that I had fecked from your box on the mantelpiece over the fire in the kitchen, everything started to revolve. Trees, poles, even the gravestones; whirling around so fast you had to hang on tightly to something for fear of taking off.
Being an Altar boy had other rewards too; particularly when we ‘officiated’ at weddings, funerals and christenings, where, afterwards, you could guarantee that several shiny half-crowns or maybe even a ten shilling note would be pressed into your greasy little palm. Not that I depended entirely on these fairly infrequent occasions; I quickly discovered that the collections during Sunday Mass offered a steady source of income. I am sure you will recall that when the filled collection boxes were placed by the Altar rail it became our job to take them to the sacristy and transfer the money into the bags waiting there. Once inside, I found it quite an easy task to deflect some of the coins into my own pocket. And afterwards I was able to stuff myself with Rollos, Crunchies and bags of Tayto’s on the proceeds. I wonder if it ever crossed your mind that your very own ‘God’s little helper’ had become a thief?
Not all special occasions paid off, however. Do you remember the time that M’s latest child was being baptized and she couldn’t come into the service because she hadn’t been churched? I always thought that being churched was the result of some serious transgression and for many years I wondered what M had done. It wasn’t until much later that I learned it was a purification ceremony that the church carried out on women who had given birth. This is what I read.
‘The woman who has just had a child must first stand outside the church door and only when she has been solemnly purified by sprinkling with holy water and the prayers of the priest is she led back into the church’.
Apparently it goes back to the middle ages when the church decided that women who had given birth were unclean and therefore had to be ‘cleansed’. I had often seen women before, dressed solemnly in black, kneeling in the vestibule at the back of the church after Mass, waiting for the priest to come and attend to them, but it never occurred to me that the church was punishing them for having children.
I still remember how ashamed you all looked when the priest said the baptism couldn’t take place until M had been purified, and you all trooped away to Cullinanes Pub to put down the half hour wait. I suppose you had ‘a small sherry to settle your nerves’.
I had the task of following the priest about with the vessel of Holy water. He placed a lighted candle in M’s hand, and recited the Gloria Patri and the Kyrie as well as the Our Father before sprinkling her with Holy Water and inviting her into the chapel with the words,
‘Enter into the temple of God, that though mayest have eternal life’.
However, he made sure she was veiled before letting her pass, and I have since read that women who refused to cover their heads were often ex-communicated.
I think this was one of the few occasions where no shiny half-crown changed hands.
I never stopped to wonder at the time why there were no Altar girls. I suppose it was to do with the Church’s attitude to women even then (this was the late 1950’s) as exemplified in the ‘churching’.
Thank God things have changed a bit since my youth.
Your loving son
Tom

available in paperback & ebook on Amazon