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ectopedia

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Charles Richet could tell you. It’s easy to get distracted.

There I was, writing a short poem about my grandma, smoking (grandma was doing the smoking, I was doing the writing / let’s move on). There’s a bit where I describe how she confuses me with some long-dead relative, then takes a puff on her cigarette and releases the smoke upwards in a way that reminded me of old pictures I’d seen of mediums producing ectoplasm. Quite niche. Maybe not right. I thought I’d better look it up.

Wikipedia is a brilliant resource, but they should rename it. Wastipedia maybe. Procrastinatopedia. Okay, Wastipedia. Because what happens is you go to check up on one thing and inevitably end up on something else. Which is the natural way of things, I suppose, but not at all helpful when you’re trying to get stuff done.

In this case, I couldn’t resist clicking on a link to the guy who invented the word ectoplasm. Turns out he was an eminent French physician called Charles Richet. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on anaphylaxis. He invented a new analgesic drug, chloralose. In his spare time, he wrote books on history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, as well as plays and poetry. He did some useful work in the field of aviation. He was a notorious racist and eugenicist. Oh – and he was interested in the paranormal.

Sometimes it seems as if credulity is a switch you can opt to throw according to how you’re feeling, or how much fun you want to have. The ‘suspension of disbelief’ you employ when you sit down to watch a magic show.

Of course, I couldn’t resist looking up suspension of disbelief on Wikipedia. Turns out it was first used by Coleridge in 1817. Which is interesting, but not progressing this blog-post overly.

Anyway, Charles Richet doesn’t seem to have suspended his disbelief so much as hung it up in the hallway with his cloak and hat.

For example, in 1905 Wikipedia describes him attending a seance with a famous French medium of the time, Eva Carrière. In these seances Eva would invoke a 300 year old spirit guide called Bien Boa. Richet reported that Boa was breathing, and had ‘moved around the room and touched him.’ Unfortunately there was also a photographer present, who captured a cardboard cut-out, and a man dressed in a cloak, helmet and beard.

Now, I’m not great at discovering new forms of analgesia, and I’m certainly not high on the list of people you’d come to if you wanted to know how to get airborne. But I’m pretty confident I’d be able to tell the difference between a spirit guide and a cardboard cut-out, or a man in a helmet. Unless I decided beforehand that it’d be great if there were such things as spirit guides, in which case I might be able to ignore the strings hanging from the ceiling or the washing label in the hem of the spirit guide’s cloak.

The really confusing thing is that apparently Richet didn’t believe in the afterlife. He rejected it as ‘unscientific’. Instead he wrote about the sixth sense, which he saw as an ability to connect with:

‘[…] unknown vibrations emanating from reality – past reality, present reality, and even future reality […]’

which in itself sounds plausible, until a guy in a darkened room brushes past you wearing a helmet.

So what is ectoplasm?

There was a fashion for Victorian / Edwardian mediums who could produce floaty substances from their mouths and ears during trance states. The explanation was that this material was excreted by the medium so the summoned spirit could take on a physical shape. Sometimes these emanations carried a facial image of the spirit. Later on, when the whole thing was debunked, it transpired that the ectoplasm was actually cheesecloth, muslin or other light fabrics treated with egg white and so on, material that the medium swallowed beforehand, or stuffed up their sleeves, or their rectum, and then vomited when the time was right, or had dragged out by wires.

You have to love these photos, though. One of them is of the Scottish medium Helen Duncan, the last person convicted and sent to prison under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. She’s producing ectoplasm that even from here, seventy years later, you can tell is just a length of gauze and a rubber glove. (I think the Witchcraft Act was used as an expedient means of prosecution for fraudulent spiritual activity, but which may, unintentionally, have given some credence to her skills).

Richet certainly wasn’t alone in failing to see the truth of these things. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was another famous advocate of the paranormal, despite being the creator of one of the world’s most rational detectives. Doyle was friends with Houdini – for a while, at least. Doyle genuinely thought Houdini used magic instead of trickery, despite the fact  Houdini would show him how it was done.

They fell out.

So, in conclusion, I spent half an hour idling / researching into ectoplasm, just for one glancing image in a poem.

I think that means it deserves a read – don’t you? Hmm? (He says, suddenly gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forwards, rolling his eyes, and a line of egg-stiffened cheesecloth flying out of his nose…)

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horrorshow

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Of course, I can only talk about horror films as a consumer, not a creator. I have no idea about the practical difficulties of producing a script, finding the right location, hiring actors, where to park the catering wagon and so on. I’ve no idea about the business side of it, the financing, distribution, marketing, the handshakes in boardrooms and backrooms.

And if I didn’t know that making a film was complicated, I could guess by the matryoshka of logos at the beginning. At least it gives you time to bet what the opening shot’s going to be, though. Aerial shot of a city? Children in a playground? Or (worst case scenario), a car pulling up at night and the headlights going off?

Not that I particularly watch horror films. I’m not a genrist (if that’s even a word, and if it is, it shouldn’t be). I mean, if you were invited back to someone’s house, and they said make yourself at home, and went off into the kitchen to fix some drinks, and you glanced around the shelves, and noticed box sets of Saw and Human Centipede and the like, you’d really start to wonder why he was taking so long in the kitchen.

Anyway, I’ve always thought the idea of genres was odd. For example, I recommended Annihilation to someone at work, and they said they wouldn’t watch it because they didn’t like Sci-Fi. They might just as well say they wouldn’t watch The Witch because it was shot in Pennsylvania (which might be justified, I don’t know). The thing is, Jaws and Babe are both good films in the same way (animal husbandry aside). They both have characters you care about, solid, dramatic scenarios, and a through-line that draws you from the beginning to the end in a satisfying way. I’ll get as much of a kick watching Oslo, August 31st as I will High School Musical, although I’ll feel less like singing after Oslo.

By the way, I can’t help blushing at the mention of High School Musical, because of something that happened to me in New York.

As a family we’d won some flights there (which was embarrassing in itself, as Kath helped organise the raffle). One of the things we did was visit Times Square, to see if we could get tickets for a show. Whilst we were standing in the middle of it all, looking round, a guy came over.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Have you seen High School Musical?’
‘Yeah! We love that show!’
He knelt down and pointed across the square.
‘You see that guy over there’, he said, lowering his voice in a stagey, confidential way. ‘D’you know who that is?’
The guy he was pointing to nodded and waved back.
‘That’s Corbin Bleu! Wanna go meet him?’
We said sure. He led us over.
Corbin was in a khaki combat jacket and jeans, his hair cropped short, looking uncomfortable, like someone whose cover had been blown.
‘Hi!’ he said. ‘Great to meet you.’
‘I thought you were great in High School Musical’ I said.
‘Wow! Thank you so much!’
‘Yeah. Really good.’
‘Do you like musicals?’
‘I do. I’ve seen a lot.’
‘Well I’m in one now. It’s called Godspell. D’you know it?’

There are moments in these interactions – markers, if you will – bobbing up and down in the choppy conversational waters, red and white stripes, flashing lights on top. Maybe a bell. The point is, you can’t miss them. And you really don’t need to be a maritime expert to know they mean danger. Pass by here and get wrecked. Something like that.

I mean – I’d heard of Godspell. It made me think of David Essex, for some reason, although maybe that was Evita. Time was passing and the bell was clanging. All I had to do was say I’d heard of it, for Godspell’s sake! But I hesitated. You see – in my defence – I didn’t think Corbin was having such a great time. I couldn’t bring myself to make it all worse by saying that I didn’t know Godspell – although, in retrospect, it would’ve given him the opportunity to say that I’d probably like it because of this or that. Whatever the reason, in the heat of the moment, instead of coming clean, I lied.

‘Yeah, I know Godspell.’
‘Have you seen a production?’
‘Yeah! It was great.’
‘When was that?’
‘Oh – a while ago now. In London.’
‘Wow! That’s fantastic! Who played Jesus?’
‘It was a long time ago now. I can’t – really – remember.’
‘Oh. Okay.’

Corbin’s minder was moving in again, no doubt already having pegged us as no-buy schmucks, and ready with the next couple of punters. We shook hands. Corbin posed for a selfie with the girls. And that was that.

A digression from the opening topic of horror films – but is it?

I mean – The Witch was pretty unsettling, I’ll admit. Particularly when the spooky rabbit stops chewing and stares directly at the lens.

If you ever see the film, take a good look at that rabbit. Because THAT was my expression when Corbin Bleu asked me about Godspell.

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live well for less

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I get to the trolley park just in front of an elderly woman. She’s wearing a Russian style hat pulled as far down as her black and blockish sunglasses will allow, a fuschia red overcoat and grey furry boots, the whole outfit making her look like a well-dressed celebrity bear who doesn’t want any pictures.
I pull out a trolley and pass it to her.
‘There you go!’ I say.
She sighs, takes the trolley, and then stands there fussing with her bags whilst I wait to pull a trolley out for myself. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for – a shopping list written on the back of a utility bill. She hangs her shopping bags on the back of the trolley and then holds the list up to the end of her nose.
‘D’you mind if I just….?’ I say, slowly manoeuvring a trolley out.
She sighs, and shuffles off to the side.

A man and a woman are standing together in condiments.
‘We’re good for Tabasco’
‘Then why’s it on the list?’

A woman pushes a trolley with a baby girl only just old enough to sit upright in the trolley seat. The girl is singing la la la as loudly as she can, and slapping the handle of the trolley. The woman is singing la la la, too, but in a distracted way, as she scans the shelves and tosses things into the trolley.
‘Don’t you just love to hear babies sing!’ says an older woman nearby, but not directly to the woman, more in the way you do sometimes when you absent-mindedly speak a thought out loud. Actually, it looks as if she’s talking to a four pack of plum tomatoes.

I’ve made it as far as rice and pasta. A middle-aged woman strides up, stands next to me, and points with a straight arm and finger to a packet of quinoa on the shelf just above my head. She holds that position, looking off to her right. It reminds me of Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, at the end, when he points and screams.
‘Ah-ha!’ says another woman, breathlessly catching up. ‘You found it! Good!’

There’s a clear plastic rack at the checkout, pretty much empty, with just one copy left of a celebrity gossip magazine. Whilst I wait for my turn to pay, I glance over the front cover. All the insert photos are of celebrities looking depressed. Jennifer Aniston – too upset to go out; Victoria Beckham’s birthday – ruined; Cheryl Cole – devastated to find something out; Louise Redknapp – can’t believe the same thing happened again. The belt moves on. I move with it.
‘How are we today?’ says the guy at the till.
‘I’m okay, thanks! How are you?’
‘Well – it’s Friday!’ he says. ‘Mind you – what does Friday really mean these days…?’

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dogs vs. aliens

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I don’t understand dogs.

I mean, we’ve had them for years. You’d think by now I’d be some kind of expert. And to be fair, there are plenty of things I do know. I’m pretty much the world expert on picking-up, any time of year. Leaves, snow, baked mud, deep grass, roadside – no worries. If Lola dumps five hundred yards ahead of me on the rec, I can fix the place by walking in a line using trees and molehills as orientation points, and come exactly to the spot, bag-handed and ready. I’d as soon go for a dog walk without my trousers as a good supply of poo bags (and I’d only realise I didn’t have my trousers when I went to pull out a poo bag).

So it’s not all bad news. I’m pretty good at cleaning dogs, too. Me and Lola, we’ve got it all worked out. You should see us when we get back from our walks, Lola with her legs black up to the elbow just exactly as if she’s wearing four velvet evening gloves. The whole thing’s as choreographed as Swan Lake (where the lake is a bucket of soapy water, and the swan is a nine year old lurcher): Bucket to the left; and front left paw into first position; and dip; and hold; and up; and a rub to the chest; and then bucket to the right – and so on, all the way round, finishing with a vigorous towelling and a sprint for the food bowl (Lola, not me).

It’s not that I don’t get the day-to-day stuff about dogs. It’s more the psychology of the beast, what makes a dog tick (and scratch, and twitch, and sprawl the way they do sometimes). I know a little bit about the theories behind all these things. C’mon! I know who Cesar Millan is. But the truth is, I still don’t get why they do what they do.

For example. I took Lola over the woods the other day. The moment she ran ahead she was surrounded by a pack of dogs, all of them barking, whipped on by a particularly mad beagle, running circles round the mob like a teenager doing doughnuts on a moped. I thought Lola would lose her shit and there’d be one hell of a scrap. Instead, and against all odds, she kept her cool. She was poised and statesman-like, Abraham Lincoln on the stump, letting all the fuss and excitement whirl harmlessly around her whilst she smiled benignly at the centre, radiating humanity and intelligence. I’m so, so sorry said the embarrassed woman who owned the pack, striding across to call them off. That’s quite alright, my good woman Lola seemed to say, right paw hooked in her waistcoat. No harm done. Vote Lola.

Fast forward a week. We’re just approaching the park when we see George and Ann with their golden retriever, Barney.

Let me introduce you to Barney.

Barney’s as big and woolly as a cut & shut llama without the neck.

Barney’s slow. I’ve never seen him run, or even trot, particularly. He’s happy to pad along at an even pace, sniffing his way through life, occasionally looking up with those deeply sad, llama-brown eyes, and saying: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, (because if Barney could speak, I’m convinced it would be in a soft, French accent)

Anyway – the most important thing to take from this is that Monsieur Barné is without any question at all a nice dog. In fact, I’d go as far as saying he’s essentially benign. You could send him off into a colony of monstrous, predatory aliens and even they would end up roffling his hair, hugging his neck and posing for selfies (then annihilating the marines and keeping a couple for incubation purposes, because hey! they’ve got an image to maintain).

So here we have a dog who may as well be wearing one of those t-shirts that says Hi! How can I help?

So what does Lola do? She curls her lip.

Why?

I have no idea. I mean, I can’t imagine it’s just a lead thing, although that’s the excuse I use when I apologise to George and Ann.

‘It’s just a lead thing. I think she’s just looking forward to her walk and she wants to get on with it.’
‘Don’t worry! Barney’s the same with a Jack Russell,’ says George. ‘Sometimes dogs just don’t get along.’

It’s such an unpleasant look, though, that lip curl. An expression of profound animosity, a hundred shades darker than simply not getting along. It’s the kind of lip curl I imagine those aliens using when they see another ship of marines coming in to land.

(NOTE TO SELF: I should totally watch Aliens tonight)

I was told once that a dog’s lead is like an aerial, a direct line between you and their brain. If you tense up, they’ll feel it immediately and go on alert, scanning the environment, trying to figure out where and what the danger is. So it’s vital to keep the lead slack, and not precipitate the very thing you hope not to happen, whether it’s lip curl, lunge, snap, bark or any other mortifying evidence of social incivility.

Dogs are incredibly sensitive, though. When they’re on the lead they’re like spiders, super-reading the tiniest vibration coming down the signal line. And I’m absolutely convinced they’ll feel those signals even if the line is slack, and even if the signal is merely a thought.

So I’m sorry, Barney.

Pas de tout! Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. (Sorry – I just love hearing him say that).

But I’m trying, Barné. Okay? After all, it’s only been nine years…

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return to el crapado

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There are two places everyone should visit regularly to get modern life in perspective. One is a museum, the other’s a dump.

IMG_8087Especially an old dump. There’s something haunting about this profligate scattering of old paste jars, fragments of pottery with words like award-winning, warmest and proven treatment; something resolute yet pathetic about that old tin bucket with its handle still up, or that chunk of iron machinery with the cogs fixed by rust. And there’s definitely something deluded about that grinning porcelain cat.

My mission today is not to get the world and its problems in perspective, though. I’m simply here to collect as many old Shippam’s paste jars as I can, so we can use them as candle holders.

IMG_8117It’s another craft experiment. Fad wouldn’t be too harsh. For one thing, I’ve never made candles before. For another, I’m not sure the necks will be wide enough. They’ll probably explode when the wick burns down. But it’s worth a go. There’s something pleasing about these little ribbed pots, with their embossed name across the middle like they’ve just won first prize in the paste pageant. I can imagine them in the middle of a table, scented with an essential oil. And it feels good to do some independent recycling, some re-purposing. I want to prove to them – and to me – that all the fuss of that production process in the fifties, from the fishing fleet to the glass factory, the packaging plant to the vans driving up and down the country – that great and energy consuming enterprise could lead to something more than just a limp sandwich on a soggy Saturday afternoon, and then seventy years in a dump.

There must have been a lot of sandwiches, because these paste bottles are everywhere. It’s like a paste bottle plague, lying around in large numbers on the surface, along with bigger, more alluring bottles, Lung Tonic, Sanival, Califig, and look! The leg from an old bisque doll.

I’ve gone prepared with a messenger bag and gardening gloves. (I’d thought about taking a trowel, too, but it would only have slowed me down.) As it is, I fill the bag in five minutes.

Back home, the jars washed and drying by the side of the sink, I go online to look up the whole Shippam’s paste phenomenon. There’s archive footage of the factory in Chichester, shot in 1954. Hundreds of women in white coats and hats, folding boxes, filling jars with a nozzle, packing jars, putting boxes of jars onto a conveyor belt. The voiceover is typical of the time – glassy, patrician, describing the whole procedure over a jaunty soundtrack, as if what we’re witnessing isn’t simply the production of sandwich paste, but the maintenance of the British Empire, the production of the grouting needed for all the building work, the salmon-flavoured gack to keep us all in the pink.

There are two chilling sequences.

One brand of paste is made from chickens, because we’re shown pyramid stacks of wishbones on the benches either side of the entrance. Some visitors are ushered through. We’re not told who they are. The last of them looks quite old and confused, happy to be going out somewhere – anywhere – even to a warehouse of death. For all we know this is Shippam R&D and these people are a trial ingredient. The commentator picks up the story:

‘…a feature of the factory which always appeals to visitors is the great pile of wishbones. There must be a quarter of a million of them, and twelve hundred new bones come in every day, so anyone who calls can take away a good luck token.’

Two points to be made here:
1. Why did they bring in so many bones? If they’re serious about handing out wishbones to visitors, wouldn’t a small tray suffice? Or do they have that many visitors?
2. It wasn’t such good luck for the chicken.

In the next sequence we’re introduced to one of the supervisors, a man who looks like he’s been fashioned with a palette knife out of crab paste:

‘Packing and despatch to all parts of the globe is under the guidance of Mr Twobit. He started work here 48 years ago, packing tongue. Now he has a grown up daughter in the factory.’

I don’t know what’s more unsettling. The thought of Mr Twobit packing tongue, or the thought of his daughter working there.

Still, a happy by-product of two hundred years of industrial sandwich paste making in the south east is me, scrambling around on this dump in a pair of green gardening gloves and a messenger bag filled with dirty paste jars.

I wonder what the commentator would say about that.

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el crapado

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There’s an old rubbish dump in the woods just over the bypass. A furtive, scrag-end, hideaway kind of place. I’m guessing the last Shipman’s crab paste jar was scraped and tossed sometime in the sixties, judging by the depth of compressed leaf litter, and the age of the sycamores that have grown up on top. Maybe it’s because the ground is so steep and unstable here, or maybe it’s because the soil is flavoured by a century of oxidised metal, prussic acid and proprietary laxatives, but the sycamores have grown into contorted, high-stepping shapes, like alien scavengers scuttling over the pile, busily turning a brood of discoloured eggs with their roots.

IMG_8054I work quietly – partly because I don’t want to enrage the trees, and partly because I don’t want to attract the attention of those work operatives, whose fluorescent jackets and shouted conversations I catch periodically, just the other side of the fence.

Not that I think they’d mind me being here, unless there’s something other than bottles and broken dinner plates beneath my boots.

I’m not the only one to have stumbled on El Crapado, though. Here and there I find exploratory test pits, and bottles and jars that have been lined up on rotten tree limbs, little triage stations of value, perhaps, or photo ops.

IMG_8059I’m certainly no expert. I’ve no idea what it means when the glass seam goes all the way to the top or stops halfway. I’ve no understanding of the subtle differences between glass blowing and industrial presses, and it would take far too much research to establish whether or not any of these things are valuable. I’ve got better things to do with my time. So I concentrate on the jars I think might make an interesting container for a homemade candle, carefully picking through the strata of detritus, all the tarnished whites and greys and greens, bottles embossed with the names of cities, exotic coffees and beef drinks, poisonous blues and greens with perished caps, hunks of melted glass, fragments of pottery with ornamental writing, an old bullet casing, a plate stamped 1945, the lid of a flowery teapot, so pristine I wonder if I dug a little harder and deeper I might start to hear Moonlight Serenade, and find a table set for lunch, a family of four sat around it, frozen cup to lip.

It’s a hazardous operation. There are unexpected falls where the surface crumbles and gives way. Cavities open up. There are sharp fragments of glass everywhere. And at the bottom of it all, just the sudden roll of a hubcap beneath me, there’s a rock-filled stream, flowing as fully and freely as – I don’t know – regret?

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doing porridge

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Goldilocks Theory applies to writing as much as to planets.

The thing is, I’m half way through two weeks annual leave, and no way at all through the work I had planned on my next book. Don’t worry though (yeah! – like you’d worry about someone on two weeks annual leave). I haven’t been wasting my time. I’ve been going on long dog walks, taking lots of pictures, posting them on Twitter – hell, even starting an Instagram account. So now I’ve got TWO social media mouths to feed. Oh – and I’ve been writing blog posts and poems. And if I start to get stressed about my lack of focus, I’ve been using the Headspace app to meditate my way back to balance. (What did I do before the internet? Float around in a tepid, amniotic liquor of cluelessness and disconnection? You bet.)

You see, part of the problem – no, scratch that – the entire problem, is that too much time can be worse than too little. No time at all is an out-and-out curse, of course, and no-one wants that. But too much, and you’re like Odysseus and the Lotus Eaters, although a much less noble version, where his quest is to write a book for young adults, but he gets distracted by endless RuPaul on Netflix. Because what happens is that you sit down to write the book, but it’s difficult, so you look up at the calendar, and you’re reassured by the succession of nothing much planned, and you think you’ve got PLENTY of time to get the work done, so you drift around eating lotus or whatever, kidding yourself you’re recharging your batteries, when in actual fact your batteries are not just flat but TAKEN OUT ENTIRELY.

So. Calm, calm. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

And ask yourself. What would Goldilocks recommend? (Other than a measure of self-discipline and a proper appreciation of the benefits of routine). Absolutely. Goldilocks would recommend an amount of free time that was just right. And then ten seconds later, she’d be tearing off her wig, like they do on RuPaul when they’re lip-synching for their lives. She’d be diving across the table, scattering porridge bowls everywhere, grabbing a handful of your funky, unwashed t-shirt, dragging you into her face and shouting: Just write!

I mean, she may be a character in a children’s fable, but she’s only human.

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a rose by any other name

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

I went on a dog walk this morning. For a change, we went to a nature reserve further west. There’s a stream that runs along the bottom of the valley there, dammed in places with branches and sticks and stuff, gnarly old trees with exposed roots along the bank, unexpected encampments in thickets of holly, shrines to dead pets, and – well – generally speaking, if you can’t get a picture there, you can’t get a picture anywhere.

It was whilst I was exploring the woods that I started to think what I might call them. I mean – they’ve got a name already, of course. Blunts Wood, no doubt because a while ago they were owned by someone called Blunt. Unless they were making some more general comment about the place. According to Webster’s, blunt means having an edge or point that is not sharp; being abrupt in speech or manner; straight to the point; slow or deficient in feeling; insensitive or obtuse – none of which particularly comes to mind when I’m watching Lola sprint ahead through the trees.

But whether it’s Blunt the family or Blunt the obtuse, (which sounds like an ancient and not particularly likeable ancestor), I think there might be better names out there.

IMG_7848Many of the trees have fallen over, lost to soil erosion, and the action of the stream that obviously floods quite regularly. And I think it’s that, along with the fantastically contorted root patterns, the thick ivy that flourishes in these dank conditions, the mud and the low light, that combine to give the place a spooky atmosphere, mossy and kind of magical. In fact, today it looks less like a nature reserve and more like a witch’s garden, exactly the secret and sacred place a tree might want to sneak off to when it felt a stirring in its sap. Maybe if I camped out long enough over there I’d see them by moonlight, slithering and rustling across the fields, then collapsing by the stream and throwing their roots into the water.

So thinking about all this, I thought I might call it the Wood of the Wayward Oak. Although there are other trees there, too, so that’s not fair. Maybe Forest of the Beguiled. Although that sounds like the trees were tempted there under false pretences – which may be the case, I don’t know. Lola certainly seems a little lost.

It’s a work in progress.

IMG_7816I have to admit, though – it was easier naming Broken Tree hill. The iconography was so much clearer: a hill with three pines on top – one of them fallen down, one of them standing up (but dead), one of them growing normally. Broken Tree hill seemed to fit straight away.

No doubt it’s already got a name. I mean, I know for a fact the land is owned by an actual farmer. He uses it as stand-by pasture for his cows in the summer, or a place to shift them over to safety when they shoot fireworks in the air in the grounds of the manor house on Bonfire Night. So I’m pretty sure it’ll already be officially catalogued in an office drawer somewhere: Farmer Whatever’s field.

It’s probably worth pointing out, though, that whether it’s Farmer Whatever’s field or Broken Tree hill, neither of them are actually true. Neither of them have anything to do with the thing itself.

For example, my parents christened me James. If you google ‘James’ you’ll find it comes from the Hebrew name Jacob, meaning supplanter or one who follows. Which is an odd couple of descriptions, by the way, because if you look up the definition of supplant in Webster’s, you get to supersede (another) especially by force or treachery. So I’d definitely be feeling anxious if the James of the First definition was doing some following of the Second.

To be fair, I think my parents called me James not because they thought I looked untrustworthy (or lost), it was more because they knew someone called James they liked, and it seemed to fit. (They gave me a middle name, too: Edward. Which together with James starts to look a little delusional, as if they had some supplanting ambitions of their own).

Anyway, truth is, I’m neither a James nor an Edward. In the same way that the parenchyma cells of the living pine, busily trying to stop it going the same way as its neighbours, would do just as good a job without a name at all, in the same way that the osteocytes maintaining my upright position at this desk couldn’t give a greater or lesser trochanter if the whole outfit ending up being called Derek. I’m a composite, an entity, a nameless thing – especially on days like today, when I’m patently using any old excuse to avoid working on the book.

So – to sum up. It’s not Broken Tree hill, it’s not The Wood of the Wayward Oak, I’m not Jim, and who the hell are you?

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the tea of self-transcendence

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There’s never a shortage of things to feel guilty about.

For example, I always thought tea bags were the most perfectly compostable waste product ever. Today I found out the average tea bag is actually sealed along the top with a tiny strip of plastic. So all this time I’ve been slinging them in the compost bin, thinking the worms and slugs were jumping all over them and loving it, when in actual fact they’ve been rubbing their snouty faces up against those strips of plastic and – I don’t know – grimacing?

And if I’m not feeling guilty about tea bags, and the hundred other ways, innocently or otherwise, I’m contributing to the destruction of the planet, it’s more immediately personal stuff, like – why do I still feel so directionless and unfulfilled?

One consolation, though: I’m not alone.

I saw an advert for a personal development seminar today. A famous life coach is bringing his message of self-improvement to a conference centre near here. The promo picture shows him up on stage, head thrown back, arms wide, fingers spread, conducting great currents of change through the wires of his cheek mic. The crowd are up on their chairs, of course, arms in the air, too, clams at high tide, opening up, filter-feeding on the nutrients flowing so fruitfully, aisles A thru’ P.

The thing that struck me most about the picture wasn’t so much the guy’s messianic display of certainty, or even a sense of the complex organisation behind him – a New Model Army of staging techs, transportation managers, merchandising and catering providers, PAs, marketeers, legal teams and accountancy firms. No – the thing that struck me most was the point of it all, the reason they were all there in that conference centre together, which was to answer two simple questions: Why do I feel like I do, and what can I do to feel better?

I remember an English teacher trying to explain to me what metonymy was. ‘It’s like when you say ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ she said. ‘You’re using pen to represent writing and intellectual pursuits, and sword to represent war. So what you’re saying is that negotiating and debate and all those things, these are more effective at resolving disputes than clubbing it out with tanks and guns. But you’re saying it more concisely, more poetically. So it’ll have more impact. Hopefully.’

I wish I was still in touch with that English teacher. I could ask her if it would be an example of metonymy to say this life coach is a poster boy for the disaffected, and in that way sidle-up to the extent of the problem.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s just a metaphor. The point is, though, if it’s true I feel a little guilty for continually passing-up all these opportunities – the life coaches, psychotherapists, self-help books, religious groups and gurus and so on, all these invitations to engage with the problem in a particular way and experience a particular brand of salvation – it’s also true that my guilt is eased somewhat by seeing that I’m in the middle of a great, lost and malcontent crowd, looking around, standing on chairs, wondering what’s going on, and trying to figure out what the hell’s to be done about it.

Another cup of tea, for starters.

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cemetery scene

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Thing was – it snowed overnight. A heavy fall that thickened the line of everything and made the place look alien and new. I took Lola out early, both of us wrapped in our cold weather gear, saying good morning to the few people we passed in that self-conscious way people have when they’re out together in bad weather.

I was keen to get some arty snow shots over the fields and woods. I thought I’d go via the cemetery first, though. There’s a grave there with a large statue of Jesus standing over it, his left hand palm up to receive, his right pointing to heaven. (His weight is slung on his left hip, too, which in his long hair and robes give him a diffident, hippyish look). I figured he’d look great covered with snow, so that was my first port of call.

IMG_7558It’s quite a statement for any grave, to have a statue of Jesus standing at the head. Most of the others are marked with modest stones, engraved with dates and so one, beloved this and that, fallen asleep and so on. The occasional decorative flourish – a dove with a sprig of something in its beak, or a chalice and a few berries. One grave has an enormous block of granite landed on top, like the relatives thought it needed something substantial to weigh it all down. Another is overgrown with an azalea shrub that blossoms blood-red in the spring. One grave has a black granite stone with an enamelled picture of an old Morris Minor, and I can’t help wondering if the occupant is lying there in leather gloves and a flat cap. But a statue of Jesus? I suppose you have to think the occupant was a particularly Christian figure, to the extent that they wanted to lie with one of the key players over them, like a having a poster of your favourite singer in your bedroom. I did look online, though, and it seems that many Christians are buried with their feet to the East, on the understanding that God travels East to West, like the sun, and come The Resurrection, when you rise from your grave, you’ll be standing there looking straight at Him (in this case, with a statue of Jesus at your back, which – with the statue’s right hand in the air, would look a little like someone saying Hey! Over here!)

It’s a nice idea, but I can’t help wondering about the practicalities. I mean, if every grave had a statue of Jesus, what kind of cemetery would it be? Busy, like a January sale, or an auction house, with everyone on tiptoes, bidding at the same time. And then maybe to differentiate – or even in the spirit of customisation, and making the thing your own – you’d be tempted to start dressing the statues, with hats and garlands and bags (which actually doesn’t sound too bad). I suppose it just goes to show, you can’t escape social competitiveness, even when you’re dead. Which is why I want to be buried in a natural burial ground, under a tree, in a woven basket, with only the odd blackbird above me, beaking around for grubs.

I headed for the cemetery.

As I approached, I saw a guy standing in the lychgate lighting a cigarette in his cupped hands. He tipped his head back, blew out a great cloud of smoke, which billowed round his head in the frozen air, then took out his mobile to make a call, the cigarette in his lips whilst he dialled. That done, he took the cigarette out of his mouth again and holding it out to the side, used the phone to push up his woolly hat from his ear, and scrunched through the snow ahead of me into the cemetery.

Everything was so quiet, muffled by all the snow, and with hardly any traffic on the road, it was impossible not to hear him talking – especially as it quickly became apparent he was having a bitter argument. Luckily for me, Jesus was in the other direction, so Lola and I headed that way along another path. I heard him shout: Good! ‘Cos I don’t wanna be with you, neither!

I reached the Jesus grave and started taking pictures. I couldn’t help glancing over in the guy’s direction, though, and when I did, he saw me. I waved my phone in the air as if to say It’s okay, I’m not listening, I’m just taking pictures. But then it occurred to me he might think the exact opposite, that I’m waving the phone to say I can hear everything you say, and it’s very interesting. So I stopped. He didn’t react. He just stood there, blowing smoke, staring in my direction.

I bent down to take one more shot, then left through the gate on the other side, towards the woods.

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