SHERINGHAM DIARY 48 - Spring Sulks & Refuses To Show Up

April 6th
Well, April arrived, and as I write we've had a dusting of snow overnight. So we shake our heads and wonder when it will not be snow, but Spring that settles in? The weather lately has felt so, unseasonal. It reminds me what Dogen said about examining the change between Winter into Spring or Spring into Summer for the point where one becomes the other. For you'll never find it. He also recommended examining the relationship between life and death in the same way, but maybe that's for another day with more accommodating weather. The beginning of April is the anniversary for when we first moved to Upper Sheringham. That was all of four years ago. Time has flown by, along with its many seasons.

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Bojo gave the thumbs up to reopening our non-essential, but none the less very lovely little shop on the 12th. During this current week we are in there most days, installing in a new ceiling grid over our window, a window display, merchandising and repricing. With a stock take planned in for Friday. We have a lot of new lines, as well as a Sale, for our reopening. The ladies that run the cafe say that every time there is a change in the lock down restrictions trade drops off for a while. So we may not be overrun with eager shoppers.

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We were watching a film on Channel Four. Now Channel Four has developed an unintended humourous quirk. Whatever the last bit of sub titling on a film was, it stays on the screen during the ad breaks.  So we were in giddy fits one evening as each successive advert had plastered underneath it the immortal lines 

'Can somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on here'.  

It's a very apt question for our unsettled unpredictable times.

April 11th
On the last day before we reopened the shop we went for a jolly down the East Norfolk coast. Stopping off in Mundesley, Happisburgh, Sea Palling and ending up in Great Yarmouth. Along the way we went to California, not the state but the Holiday Park, where Jnanasalin once had an enjoyable family holiday when he was about 11. 

Whilst eating cheesy chips in Sea Palling, we sat opposite a closed gift shop, called Sea Palling Gifts. Say it aloud and the placement of one wandering vowel sound speaks the truth of the matter. For your information it was.

We took in a long promenade down Great Yarmouth's seafront admiring some of its grand seaside architecture, often now useless, dilapidated or down on its luck. The local council is, after many years of neglect putting in some dosh to try revive its appearance and fortunes. Currently they are building a modern stylish Marine Centre swimming centre. Plannng to save the very beautiful, but endangered, Edwardian wrought iron and glass of the Winter Garden, and has already restored its fabulous Venetian Waterway ornamental garden and boating lake.

Yarmouth is one of the countries most depressed towns and you are left wondering quite what it will take to engineer a major turn around in its fortunes.  It has some really fantastic buildings, but also a reputation as being a bit of a dump with urban deprivation, drug and alcohol problems and chronic unemployment. So how will they get people with money moving to live there? Perhaps encourage companies who want to get out of London relocating there, develop an arts/alternative sort of vibe going. I could see it could transform itself into the east of England equivalent of Brighton. Oh how we can dream such empty dreams.

April 20th
Well, the shop's opened. Our first week was as busy as at the height of summer season. The sale is going well. Some bargains to be had. We are pricing really low in order to clear stuff that would just hang around in our garage otherwise. Saturday of this week was our best days takings ever. All our new lines have already begun proving themselves. So we've already put in top up orders on most of them. This may all just be a result of the pressure valve of lock down being released and it will settle down subsequently. We enter uncharted territory anyway because we have never been open in April and May before. The shop does look stunning at the moment.

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Retail can throw up odd requests. We currently have a mirror with a decorative fabric surround in our sale. One day a guy came in whilst I was on the phone. He was stood looking up at this mirror. I thought hopefully we might sell it. Once I was off the phone, he said -

'that mirror up there, could we buy just the mirror on it without all that surround. Its the right size for our bathroom.'  

I suppose you have to ask.... don't you?

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One consequence of the various lock downs has been realising how much we need to ensure we have a life outside of the shop and making for the shop. So we intend to continue having our Art Club one day a week regardless of whether we are working in the shop or not. Also, other than high season and Bank Holidays - July to September - we will be closing the shop on Sundays, which is our quietest day sales wise. So Jnanasalin and I can have some quality time off together. We are already excitedly making plans for little jaunts in the car. 

April 22nd
This week has been generally quieter in the shop than the first week after lockdown. We are noticing that even though we have slightly fewer customers they spend more with us, and are seeking us out. Its heartening to get a tangible sense that we are getting better known.

We recently watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the umpteenth time. One can never underestimate the joy it can still bring. You are struck by how well honed the script and performances are, particularly Tim Curry's. As Jnanasalin rightly observed, it is really written and performed to be a panto, with lots of gothic infused camp, double entendre, innuendo and knowing mugging to camera. a stylistic mixture of a music hall and a seedy brothel. We became curious to see Shock Therapy, Richard O'Brian's movie follow up, which had a critical mauling at the time for being truly pants. Despite a few of the same cast returning and the introduction of Ruby Wax, Barry Humphries and Rick Mayell, it does, however, richly deserve its poor reputation. 

It cannot be put down to unrealistically raised expectations either. Despite improved production values and money being put into it, it remains a very boring plod, altogether bit of a dud. There is no central dominant performance that holds it all together. We gave up halfway, tired of the lack of pizzaz, and a script and performances that lacked edge or any knowing camp. It gurns and preens without any affection being present. Whatever it hoped to achieve, it needed to be doing it several times larger and more over the top than it was.

It appears to be an attempt to send up American reality programmes, but manages to mostly miss its targets, by slapping it as hard as it can with a piece of limp gauze. It has echoes of Rocky Horror, but very pale ones. RHPS evolved through many incarnations in development, via rehearsal and repeated theatrical performance, you cannot completely script that mannered archness. You can never achieve consciously what you previously did unconsciously, through instinct. Though its easy to see how O'Brian could go from Shock Therapy to end up in The Crystal Maze. Its trashy, but not remotely classy.

April 26th
Today was Jnanasalin's birthday, his 44th. As is the tradition, I have the occasionally daunting undertaking to make a birthday cake worthy of the cake making supremo.  It always feels more of a nerve racking task than it needs to be, I've made plenty very successful cakes before. This year it was, as per his request, a Raspberry & White Chocolate Cheesecake. I was somewhat dumbstruck by the huge amounts of sugar, white chocolate and glutinous white fat it contained. But, I have to say it was worth it, it looked and tasted wonderful. To hell with the diet for one day.....or two!

As if on cue the vaccine schedule opened up to 44 year olds exactly on his birthday. So he's booked himself in for both his jabs. the nearest available was in Wisbech well over an hours drive away. So we've decided to take a Sunday day trip out to Kings Lynn and explore the old part of that town, on our way back from him being ever so gently pricked by a peripatetic nurse.

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Though the weather is sunnier, and hence generally bright enough to lift any remaining winter blues, the gradual edging upward of temperature is offset by the stiffest and most biting accompanying breeze. The wind chill could cleeve a well dressed eskimo in two. This week in the shop, as it preludes one of the May Bank Holidays and the end of the month, we we were not expecting much from. Whilst the footfall is noticably down, the take is holding up. April has been kind, and in the weeks since we reopened reassuring,  The improved appearance of the shop is being appreciated. We appear to know what we're doing after all. 

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Resistance

 

"Resistance is our way of getting ourselves off the hook.

Resistances provide us with a shroud to hide ourselves behind.

Peace of mind (in relation to resistances) means -
you accept that there are waves in the ocean
that each wave that comes will be different
and that surfing them is the whole point."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

FEATURE - Dry Cleaning - Scratchcard Lanyard

Dry Cleaning are an indie band from South London in the classic arty mode, guitar and drum based with a distinctive lead singer.  The band is solid sounding and more than able to give it some weird, wild, wiry and wacky heft if need be. The singer, Florence Shaw , one should more accurately say intones. She has a wonderfully droll delivery, so dry and laid back as if to sound indifferent to whether you are listening to her or not. The lyrics she writes are filled with disjointed, but somehow fascinating, idiosyncrasies, that make logical sense on some imaginative level, but not on an ordinary one.  Sometimes these include seemingly random extracts from overheard  conversations. I just love them  my favourite on Scratchcard Lanyard is - ' why don't you want oven chips, now?' Its the contrast between the active spiky energy of the band and the steady deadpan delivery of the lyrics that make Dry Cleaning a rather special thing.

Here's a sample of the opening couple of paragraphs from Scratchcard Lanyard

Many years have passed but you’re still charming
Rows falling and exploding
You can’t save the world on your own I guess
Don’t send me it, you keep it
You keep it, you keep it

Weak arms can’t open the door, kung fu cancel
It’ll be ok I just need to be weird and hide for a bit and eat an old sandwich from my bag

I’ve come here to make a ceramic shoe and I’ve come to smash what you made
I’ve come to learn how to mingle
I’ve come to learn how to dance
I’ve come to join the knitting circle
I’ve come to hand weave my own bunk bed ladder in a few short sessions

It’s a Tokyo bouncy ball
It’s an Oslo bouncy ball
It’s a Rio de Janeiro bouncy ball filter!
I love these Mighty Oaks, don’t you?
Do everything and feel nothing
Wristband theme park
Scratchcard lanyard
Do everything and feel nothing
Do everything and feel nothing

from New Long Leg, released April 2, 2021
All songs written and recorded by Dry Cleaning (Warp Publishing)

POEM - Geo-Phys

There are those days,
and these the hours
some empty, some content, some conflicted
when a little technical help might be appreciated
where is John Gater when you need him?
you'll know for yourselves, no doubt
those moments when clarity of thought
eludes you
emotional states remain vague
harder to locate
and pin down - specifically
you need a geo-phys
- when nothing satisfies
you need a geo-phys
- despondent for no apparent reason
you need a geo-phys
- why am I bored?
you need a geo-phys
- not sure what to do next
you need a geo-phys
- when everything just feels way too much
anyone would need
a bit of geo-phys
just a quick scan, to sweep the strata
below the top soil
not a whole complex of fields
we're not looking to find a lost village
or a completely hidden Roman villa here
merely to understand the concealed terrain beneath
this swampy surface clay, the ring pulls, coins
and shattered bric a brac

Mr Gater indeed would scratch his head
after several exasperating hours of work
walking up and down, like a lonely plowman with a headache
to produces geo-phys with - no discernible walls,
- no medieval ditches - no bronze age round houses
not even the sniff of a ruin
nothing to be seen
but a whole load of static, uniform grey scale in texture, 

Dr John might say -

'there could be a vague suggestion of a waste pit here,' 

( a desultory finger gestures )
'but I wouldn't put money on it'
he'll sweat and whimper, attempt a lame excuse
then go off and cry onto his beer
over the unsympathetic nature
of the underlying geology, yet
exploratory trenches and test pits
are a bit random, without your geo - phys
your ground penetrating radar,
your electromagnetic conductivity meter
without them
I'm thinking tails on donkeys here,
for there is a need to know
exactly where best to dig

Oh, yes, these metaphors
they just keep on coming
a gift to the blind poet
mining an archaeological technique
for psychological resonances
emotional resistances, obstacles,
boundaries and foundations
which, put in layman's terms
amount simply
to what lies beneath
the sodden sodding skin
however carefully manicured
ones psychology
maybe, the merest echo
of a robbed out buttress
where three stones in a row
constitute a wall, all these
require in depth analysis
an informed conjecture
for an explanation to be found
for when they were built
for how they were built?
for who built them?
and for why?

written April 2021
Stephen Lumb

CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 27 - Agh!! No!!! A Walnut Cake!!!!

Holt, Norfolk

I will be kind - I will be kind - I will be kind - I will be kind - I will be kind.  But.......sometimes cafe's do not make it easy to be kind. So what follows is my best effort at trying to remain kind.

Hubby and I have during the lock down taken a few longer walks around a country park. This time, because the cafe was now open, we had a coffee and a carrot cake - en plein air. I had no great expectations for either. I was disappointed, but stopped just short of being driven to spluttering expletives. There was something very very wrong about this carrot cake. Quite apart from the cake, which we will come to soon enough, it was the butter cream, it had the most peculiar flavour. Hubby had the same cake and reliably informed me that the buttercream, rather than being made with butter which its name you would have thought made it obvious what the main ingredient of it should be, was substituted with baking margarine. Yes, I was shocked rigid too, if not jaw droppingly appalled. Hubby is sure it must have been done purely for reasons of cheapness, because its flavour was truly one of the most awful things I've placed in my mouth in a long time.

When we come, as we now do, to the cake I'm aware that it doesn't get any better I'm afraid. The predominant flavour was of walnuts. The texture was sort of OK ish, but I'd say a carrot had been magically waved over it in a homeopathic ritual. Then a carton of mixed peel was thrown in, because it certainly needed something to bring it textural ecstasy and satisfaction. 

If I was reviewing a walnut cake then this would be quite a nice walnut cake, with walnut brains decorating its bizarre tasting frosting. But as I'm supposed to be reviewing a carrot cake, which this most certainly is not, I think they should be pleased they got any carrot score at all. What they have been given, is there purely as a reward for the effort of getting out of bed to make it.

Oh boy, that was difficult, but I hope you are impressed - I kept myself f-----g kind.

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 1/8

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Reassurance

"Reassurance is Futile.

It's futile because the person who reassures us
that its all going to be OK,
cannot possibly know that.

Seeking reassurance is a trap.

What we need to know is
that people have our back,
that when it doesn't work someone has got us
that they will help us try again,
help show us where to go to next."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

FINISHED READING - Thomas Cromwell by Diarmaid MacCullough

This finely written and absorbing biography of Henry VIII's most effective, yet least loved, minister is a compelling page turner to read. Even though the historical story itself is well known. That it should come out now must at least be in part because of Hilary Mantel's heavily fictionalised and Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall Trilogy.

Like Mantel, Diarmaid MacCullough has the unenviable task of bringing the man to life from often such slender sources. For the historical biographer, making up what's missing and going straight for fiction, is not a route you can take. Informed conjecture and supposition, simply putting two and two together, is how you fill in the gaps in the narrative. With Cromwell there are significantly more gaps and traces that need following up and fleshing out, to give a better sense of the man. Other people's recorded impressions are important, Eustace Chapuys, the Emperor Charles Vs ambassador for instance. An unusual level of respect and a friendly relationship developed between them, but one has not to forget that what his communications back to his master will always be slanted towards what he wants to hear.

Immediately prior to Cromwell's fall and execution, it is clear that a large part of his correspondence is disposed of, lest it proved to be too useful to his accusers, by adding to the incriminating evidence for treason. So what is left is only half of a conversation. Mostly of people are either writing to Cromwell, or are people who knew him writing of him to others, or about him after his fall from power. All done with a large dollop of hindsight. From this McCullough skilfully weaves a different sense for what the man may have been like. Cunning - very likely, a bit of a chancer - true, able to improvise policy on the hoof - certainly. But he always semed to have a clear idea of where things might go should he be able to either bend the kings will in his direction or more often take full advantage of Henry's whims or disinterest when they arose.

Henry himself, later spoke of regretting the loss of his most loyal servant. Chosing, as he was often prone to, to place the blame on others for this rather than his own vengeful anger. Cromwell's loyalty to him was certainly there, but also an ongoing and developing religious reformism that he found ways of slipping past Henry disguised beneath the king's own rapacious desire for increased sovereignty and money.

The idea for dissolving monasteries to fund other projects came from his former master Cardinal Wolsey. Once the idea of breaking with Rome, as a way to resolve the King's Great Matter over his marriage came to the fore, the dissolving of these papist institutions was not rolled out fully formed. It evolved in fits and starts, and its clear Cromwell himself was pragmatic and didn't initially think a root and branch fundamentalist removal was necessary. That it went as far as it did was entirely at the King's behest. Though when it came to his worst intentions and actions Henry always appeared to find ways to make them appear to be other people's ideas. Particularly if it went wrong or his subjects disapproved..

Stern portraits by Holbein don't really give you the real sense for what the qualities of Cromwell were. Who rose from being the son of a brewer to becoming the Earl of Essex. He lived close to the edge of disaster many times, surviving - Wolsey's infamy - Henry's marriage crisis - the  Pilgrimage of Grace where the rebels all blamed him not the king - until the arranged marriage to Anne of Cleve's proved to fatefully trip him up. 

One of his main legacies to us in modern Britain is the increased centrality of Parliament as a governing body, beginning to act independent of the Monarchy. The dissolution itself profoundly changed the religious and cultural landscape of England. From which many current day attitudes towards Catholicism and overseas bureaucratic institutions, have their origins.

The English Reformation did not arise out of religious principles, but was driven primarily by the lust of its sovereign, his greed for increased sovereignty, self interest and a pecuniary driven land grab on a huge scale. As a period in history it holds many echoes of the Brexit movement and the divisive atmosphere of contemporary Britain, where 'Remainers' are the equivalent of the Anti-Christ. Increased sovereignty may be what grabs the headlines, when more importantly 'for whose economic benefit' is the question that should really be being asked.

CARROT SCORE - 6/8

FAMILY FRAGMENTS - Part 1 The Dropping Well

The Familial Knife

Brenda remembered how she had listened patiently, made consoling noises etc. For what else could she have done? It wasn't as if she could've just popped round, held her hand or given her a reassuring hug. Her friend Joan needed to off load, relieve a bit of the maternal pressure she felt, the whole gamut of stresses and tensions that had festered and built up over time. That particular emotional dam burst with 

'You wished him on me, you can have him. I'm at my wits end - the limit - I can't cope anymore. - you can have him - just take the little horror away' 

Joan's voice, that had been shadowing the sense of her own upset, cracked and immediately collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing at the other end of the phone line. Though Joan wasn't serious in wanting to dispatch her son Robert for Brenda to bring up, it was not emotionally insignificant either.

Robert in reality, was no harder to bring up than any boy his age would have been. He was six, shy, sensitive, and quite prone to dewy eyed daydreaming. Living the charmed life in a realm ruled entirely by magic. A place where water may overflow, but no lasting harm was ever done. It was the world as depicted in a Loony Tunes cartoon. And yet on this day of the 'bathroom incident' the full naivety of his childish imaginings had literally been torn down.

Leaving the taps running in the bath Robert had gone back to his room. He'd become distracted enjoying playing with his car collection. Forgetting that on the floor beneath a mounting swell of water was about to spill over the boundary of its cream bath ware. This would not even be the first, but the second time, he'd flooded the bathroom.  All human repetitions prove fatal. They create a pattern in the mind of others, a way of judging a person through past behaviour they'll rarely be permitted to escape, let alone transcend. The 'habit' here would forever trap Robert in the absent mindedness of himself as a six year old child.

Harold had just installed the new Formica faced cupboards and surfaces in the kitchen. Being particularly proud of the serving hatch knocked through to the dining room next door. He fitted these home interior improvements into his spare evenings, or whenever paid work went quiet. Joan was on his case, because she was the one who had to cope with preparing meals amidst the dust and detritus of his half completed endeavours. They were then both relieved, as well as chuffed, when this particular decorating project was finished. The near constant pressure from his wife would now cease, at least for a while. Though he knew from experience that Joan would soon be lining up another job for him, just as soon as the pleasure from this one had abated.

The kitchen refit had been finished barely a few days. He'd been out on a job when his customer called him to his phone and said bluntly, 'It's your wife'. At the end of the line Joan was so distraught as to be almost incomprehensible. He'd better return home pronto. Fortunately he was no more than ten minutes drive away. But those ten minutes might as well have been hours, as he concocted all sorts of dreadful scenarios. None of this quite prepared him for what would be revealed when he opened the back door and viewed his kitchen. 

The ceiling had collapsed and most of it had fallen to the floor, everywhere was drenched in plastery water and underfloor detritus hung from the ceiling like dirty washing. Water still dripping down from the bathroom above. It was reminiscent of the Dropping Well in Knaresborough where anything left hanging there would over decades gradually turn to stone. The newly finished kitchen lay drenched and warped all around him. He was to remember the look on Joan's face for a long time, too emotionally drained to be incandescent with rage, yet so internally broken into multiple pieces by despair. 'I don't know what to do. At the moment I wouldn't feel safe to be left in the same room.... I could murder him'  

Joan herself had been brought up a single child, her parents so devotedly loved her they'd unwittingly suffocated her with their care. She was for them this delicate valuable child who they'd striven to keep from harm. If she ate anything that gave her a slight upset stomach, she'd never be allowed to eat it ever again. These small but telling constraints upon her, made her imagine how much easier it would be if she had a sister, someone to take the pressure off being the precious and only one. That sister never came.

Soon after she and Harold had had their daughter Susan, their thoughts went to the next child and what gender they'd like it to be. Joan wanted Susan to have the sisterly companion she'd so missed, nay longed for, in her own childhood.  Harold, who'd been brought up within the competitive rivalry of a mixed brood of eight siblings, professed not to mind, but certainly wanted no more than two children of his own.

The pregnancy that followed miscarried, largely as a consequence of Joan's post natal state lingering on in the form of a heightened level of anxious distress. She worried excessively about not being a good enough Mother for Susan, of getting it right, and feeling the future was pressing down upon herself, due to this need within her for the next child to be a girl too. This emotional strain, surrounded by the circumstantial aura of not really knowing the outcome for a whole nine months, proved too much for the as yet unborn.

The miscarried baby had indeed been a girl, which when she was told had thrown Joan deeper into profound melancholia. She mourned for many months, until she found herself pregnant again. Brenda, recognised that her friend was immediately slipping back into the same unhelpful mindset that had preceded the failed pregnancy. So she tried to lighten the mood by jokingly suggesting, in her characteristically flippant off hand manner, that she was certainly hoping, nay ardently wishing for it to be a boy. A phrase later to be thrown back at her. Haunting their friendship every time Robert did something his Mother disapproved of.

Brenda had just wanted the child, whatever gender it turned out to be, to not have to emerge into the world under any pressure to fill the aching void their own Mother had prepared for them. Harold, as was typical of him, had kept silent agreement with this. For he wanted a son to carry on the family name with, but dared not voice that preference too assertively for fear of the upset that might trigger another bought of depression in his wife.  Then Robert was born. 

Anyone watching gallons of water cascading through a collapsed ceiling and ruining all that lay beneath it, would have had their heart broken. But Joan knew this had happened the instant the nurse told her 'it's a boy'. She hoped she'd concealed her disappointment sufficiently well. Once she got over this sense of loss, she told herself, she would eventually learn to love the thought of having a son. She understood instinctively what it was to be a girl, and Susan was turning out to be such a happy contented child, helpful and kind hearted. Everything you might wish for, Susan had been. She was no trouble at all. But a boy? This left her feeling bewildered - how could she make the best of what she'd not anticipated, but now delivered into the world? 

Harold's busy work schedule and, it has to be said hands off way of being a Father, meant responsibility for upbringing would largely fall back on her. Whenever she needed a masculine presence and guidance about how best to respond to Robert's behaviour, Harold would literally or emotionally, not be there. Even when he was around all he would say was 'Oh, he's just being a boy, let him alone'  Avoiding meeting her on the level of her distress, at the very moment her love for their son felt unstable or challenged. 

It was never wholly true that Harold did not care, because he did. His ability to care was demonstrable, but primarily through the making and physical building of things for others. If unable to do that he was at a bit of a loss, Asking him to hold a conversation rarely worked. It was completely the wrong language, a different, difficult skill set, that he did not have an easy access to. Yes, to a frequently anxious woman this was deeply frustrating at times like this one. But Harold was steady and dependable. She loved him, and married him, full knowing he was temperamentally incapable of meeting some of her needs. That, she imagined, was what her female friends were for.

Whilst it remained a swaddled infant, she could pretend the baby Robert was no different to Susan. It needed to be loved, kept clean, safe and have its nappy changed, this she already knew how to do. Once it started to walk, that was when things started to get trickier when her emotional responses and desire to control and direct kicked in. She found it difficult to stop herself thinking of her baby boy as 'it'. It did things too her. Aged two, Robert liked nothing better than to get its hands really dirty by burying its hands deep in the soil, the muddier the better, of their back garden. Later it loved climbing up on top of the back wall, or any wall for that matter. By the time it was four, it had already fallen from a great height twice and had the hospital visits and cranial scars to prove this. 

The self help books on child rearing they'd read before Susan was born, had encouraged them to be consistent in how they chose to respond to good or bad behaviour, whether the perpetrator was your son or your daughter. Out of a desire not to too tightly control the children's play, they'd decided both children could use each other's toys. Robert could play with Susan's dolls and Susan with Robert's cars, if they wanted to. But Robert not only hurled the dolls across the room, but also ripped off cloths, tore out limbs, decapitated heads and pulled out eyes. This was not taking respectful care of the things the child was given, and this annoyed Joan intensely. Not least because toys were not cheap and the money to replace them wasn't always available.

Robert, however, loved his red metal tricycle to bits, because it was the first thing that gave him an expanding sense of freedom. He filled up the boot with stones and rode it, with great accompanying cacophony, up and down the pavement from one end of the street to the other. Then, most disconcertingly, started to venture further out. A neighbour reported back that they'd seen Robert blithely cycling the tricycle across the broad and busy road junction at the end of their street. Unaware of the risks he was taking, yet single-mindedly following the desire to go on adventures, to explore the world beyond the back streets and snickets near home. Particularly the abandoned railway cutting on the other side of that junction. Robert didn't recognise the dangers or unforeseen consequences. He was a child, inexperienced in the outside world, but led by a curiosity about it.  For Joan, Robert was becoming the living breathing source for every worry she had. And now he had flooded the bathroom - again. 

It wasn't that Joan was completely oblivious to how her attitude towards Robert crinkled around the edges. She knew she felt love, but also a fatigued type of alienation. To counter this, she took herself - her own motivations and temperament and overlay these onto Robert. Now, he would be easier to understand. Repeating constantly to anyone who'd listen, how much like her Robert was, not just in appearance but in sensibility and personality. Re-conceiving him as this cloned replica of herself appeared to work. Though you never needed an expert in genetics to tell you whose son he was.

However, whenever Robert made a mistake or got something wrong in his Mother's eyes, those other less loving resentful feelings towards him re-erupted. Robert often would wonder as he heard his Mother coming up the stairs to his attic bedroom - 'will this be good Mummy or bad Mummy?'  Joan, once aroused by her frustration to a contained anger, would tend to recount the complete litany of Robert's past failures to be 'a good boy', pouring them out in infinitesimal detail to him.

This long lineage of his wrongs and past stupidities could not be interrupted, invariably concluded with the second bathroom flooding. It had become through repetition one of those family stories which, through being so frequently recounted in an almost fond manner, felt as though it had been dealt with, done, successfully neutered. But in reality it just no longer revealed the gremlin that still lived within it. 

For Robert, this story was a familiar but subtle knife that would get stuck back into the old wound, to be given yet another twist. The rest of the family hardly noticing the hurt hardwired into its retelling anymore. So when his Mother retold to Robert the words she'd originally said to Brenda - " You wished him on me, you can have him.' - she never imagined the emotional ricochet this caused.  For it held within it a painful unspoken implication.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Impostor Syndrome

"If you are doing something
that you've never done before,
how can you know if its going to work?
You can't.

If you don't feel like you are an impostor in this situation, you might not be trying hard enough.

Whenever you feel like you are an impostor
remind yourself, you are on to something."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

INTRODUCING - The Failing Institute Recordings of Prefuse 73

It is indicative of how much it has been absorbed into the general techniques of how popular music is made, that you hardly ever hear anyone refer to sampling as a separate thing. Yet quietly and without much fanfare lone individuals, probably in some home built studio constructed in their cellar, have continued to craft and hone there skills as sampling music makers. There are those who use it as just one tool among many that they construct a piece of music out of. Then there are the purists, who make music entirely from sampled elements off past recordings, the radio, the street. One of the above is Prefuse 73, aka - Scott Herren.

Precise 73 is just one of his many aliases, he's a prolific producer and has his skills involved in many musical groups and collectives. He's been producing music under Precise 73 since the early noughties. These earlier pieces are invariably jazzy, hip hop inspired, dance and beat arrangements. Though actually most would be very difficult to boogie to. For Herren music is about pushing that sonic envelope wide, and taking that adventure as far as it can go.

What brought me to his experimental sound assemblages was encountering one of his Failing Institute recordings on You Tube. These I just love. They are so beautifully composed you might be forgiven for not realising they're often entirely made from sampled sources. They strike out a very sophisticated, laid back lounge of an aural landscape. Its hard to really convey just what joy I find in listening to them.  They hover tantalisingly between slow slinky jazz and the undulating flow of a hip hop inflected ambient music. They can both reward close attention and a soft meld into the background. 

There are four Failing Institute recordings available through Bandcamp. Here are the links to them on Bandcamp - with my ratings in brackets.

The Failing Institute of the Sampled Source (******)

The Failing Institute of the Contras (***)

The Failing Institute of the Human Voice (****)

The Failing Institute of Drums and Percussion (*****)

CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 26 - Unadorned by Greatness

Sheringham, Norfolk.

It's one measure of the effects of the lock down on the supply of carrot cakes to review. I'm now reduced to reviewing a loaf!  So here goes. Can a carrot loaf be thought of as a cake anyway? Isn't it just a tray bake by another name? Because if it is I refer you to the Golden Rules, they are not a cake. So I'm struck with the force of a mallet ie not that subtly - that this loaf off the Market is not one either. Plain and naked, without any decoration, no marzipan carrot facsimiles, thankfully. Its a loaf that is sliced vertically, so its certainly not a wedge. Cakes are cut in wedges. Therefore this loaf is not a cake. Move on.

I'm going to proceed as if I've not just said that, and just take this review as an exercise in culinary largesse.  The texture of this 'loaf' was the correct colour - 'Burnt Sienna'  and certainly in the right ballpark texture wise - a soft rubble. The base had the appearance of being slightly under cooked, darker and wetter looking, a bit depressed as if it had sunk from being sat on for a short while. Either that or recently defrosted and the moisture from the thaw degraded the robustness of its texture.

The loaf slice was actually quite substantial, they weren't being ungenerous with it at least. You could see the carrot stranding still and felt the moistness of it between your thumb and finger as you proffered it to your mouth. And when it went in? Well the first sensory impression was of...coconut!...and then banana!!....followed by an after taste of mixed spices. But none was worryingly long lasting. Their fleetingness indicates the flavour balance was not too queered by any one of them. It was a carrot loaf. The texture on the tongue was about right, except for that bit at the base where the unfortunate doughy quality spoiled its rubbling effect. It was fifty fifty between under cooked or defrosted, probably the latter by a whisker.

I can't review any frosting, inner or outer because there wasn't one. But for something that wasn't a cake in the first place, that was OK. Plain, but not offensive....for a loaf.

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 3/8

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Writer's Block

 "Writer's Block is a myth.

Your ideas don't come from outside, but inside you.

Writer's block is a socially acceptable name for -  

'I'm afraid of my bad writing,
and because I'm afraid of my bad writing,
I'm afraid to write at all'

If I say I am blocked,
I don't have to encounter my bad writing.

So what I encourage you to do here
is to get over your fear 
of writing badly

You do that by writing"

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

POEM - Interflora

A poem I wrote a few weeks ago,  about not seeing the natural beauty of things, people and events. Once the pain of any storm, such as a pandemic, is over something positive can emerge out of the apparent ruin.

This is what
you have been waiting for
this weed, its not an aberration
that has sprung up
in your flower bed
but now that it is here
in its abundance
it is transparently clear
that
it was never about the fuckin flowers!
vulgar charlatans, cultivars
and beauty whores cut from our imagination
poetic muses are different
they are things that remain invisible
until the moonlight arrives
to show you
as if never seen before, nor given
a Latin name, nor grown en mass in the Netherlands
these are the things that we don't want
that we often will run miles
to be far away from
the sort of dirt we'll wash
rhythmically and ritually
from our hands, dowsing them in sanitation
because they contain new vulnerabilities
transparent threats upon our skin
that are somehow now 
in the very air we breathe.

Though I may say
that I want this to leave
I sort of want it to stay
as a weird fact or reminder, to let its weeds grow
amongst the carefully manicured blossoms
that I once thought normal
robbed
of their ability to amuse
heaven
out of its morose confinement
to bend a knee, to land at my door
no knocking, to just walk in
with a smile and view my front room
sit down and start
comparing notes with me
on how bitter the tears have been
and on how things
are now finding a way of
bursting up through the fissures
the hopes
amid the helplessness
the tender realm
burnished in the purple, yellow halos
of bruises, now appearing
in places where I have no recollection
of ever having
been knocked.

written mid - March 2021
STEPHEN LUMB