Alan Hill. – Unsuitable Blog and HappenStance News

Hot topic: Age and Aging

As a writing topic, age is in. Age has always been in.

Sarah Catherine’s ‘a classical blog’ quotes Sappho on the topic. And Mimnermus. And Alcman. And Anacreon. The Chinese ancients had it nailed too – all over the place.

Last night I was reading the 2015 Emma Press’s Anthology of Age, edited and illustrated by two relatively young (age is a matter of perpective) people. It’s a lovely set of poems about age and aging – and many of them are heartening.

Meanwhile, the Saltire Society brought out Second Wind last year, a pamphlet by older poets Diana Hendry, Vicki Feaver and Douglas Dunn tackling the aging process with the energy of youth.

And the Scottish Poetry Library, in conjunction with Polygon, is planning an anthology of ‘Scottish poems for growing older’, due later this year.

Even I myself am currently working on a new publication from Alan Hill, a sequence of short poems titled Gerontion. (You may be able to guess its central concern.)

We human beings brood about age a lot. It seems to trouble other animals less, but then other animals don’t look in mirrors.

On her later birthdays (88, 89, 90 and finally 91), I used to ask my mother how she felt about having achieved that particular age.

‘What age?’ she would say.

‘Well, 90 is pretty old, isn’t it? How does it feel to be so old?’

She would shake her head. ‘I feel just the same as I always have,’ she would always say, never one for a fuss. But latterly she looked in the mirror less – much less – which is perhaps why her cardigans were frequently done up wrong, or the patch of melted chocolate on her blouse failed to bother her.

Mum was ill with Alzheimer’s Disease, which confers both bother and blessing, and it was the reason why we were jointly compiling her memoirs. She felt extremely well most of the time. On one of the birthdays, I told her how old she was and she was astonished. ‘Am I really so old?’ she said.

‘You certainly are,’ said I.

‘Well, how old are you?’ she asked me.

‘How old do you think I am?’

‘About 25?’

I laughed, of course. ‘Mum, I am 60.’

She looked at me properly then, and with horror. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘That’s AWFUL! It was like being in a science fiction film, where the main characters are suddenly spirited into a future fifty years ahead, chatting happily, until catch a glimpse of themselves in a mirror, and a horrible reality dawns.

But my mother soon forgot this and went back to being her young self with me cast as a somewhat younger friend. In fact, I thought she was feeling younger and younger in the later years. Quite often she was a child whose parents were just about to arrive.

I think most of us continue to feel much the same inside, throughout our adult years, until some aspect of physical decay strikes us. So poems about age and aging are really about some form of loss, loss being (to my mind) the central and abiding theme of poetry.

Young poets are supposed to write about love. Unsurprisingly, we fall in love with youth which (apart from Jane Eyre) is associated with health and beauty. We do not fall in love with age (the stereotype stoops from street crossing signs).

But even love poetry is really about loss.

DUST

As in you can’t see it for. As in hit the, bite the, cut the, kiss the, gather the. As in when the dust settles. As in not see somebody for. As in dust yourself down and.

Plot and Counterplot is in a box in the boiler room beside the front door. Alan Hill’s No Biography is partly behind the sofa and more of it beside the french windows in the lounge. Also behind the sofa are the new PoemCards, racked in sets, the leaflets ready for No Biography and the two Po-Lites and Plot and Cop.

Behind the stairs are more pamphlets. In plastic boxes with the lids firmly on.

Because of the dust. The dust is created by Sandy Kelly. Sandy Kelly is refitting the bathroom upstairs.

There is nothing grand about this house. It’s ex-Council or GDC, can’t remember which. It’s pleasant inside, a bit eighties. Every single bit of it needs redecorating. The conservatory (but at least it has one) leaks in four places. Bits of fitted wainscot fall off every now and again all over the place. Scraps of wall-paper are peeling. It is a national spider protection zone.

But it is about to have a nice upstairs bathroom, and Sandy Kelly is the man. He has been working on the job now for three weeks. The shower is done. The wall tiles are done (but the grouting’s not finished). The floor tiles are not in place yet. Nor is the toilet, the washhand basin, the cupboards that go around them. And my mother is coming to stay on Friday for the launch of Plot and Cop in the Scottish Poetry Library.

I’ve been hoovering and dusting every couple of days (not like me) because of the layer of fine dust that has been settling over everything. It floats down the stairs and then permeates everything. Upstairs, the other pamphlets are in the spare room with the door firmly shut. So are all the bits and pieces that were in the bathroom before, or at the bottom of the stairs gathering dust. How mum will get to the bed in there remains to be seen.

It’s only dust. People’s houses disintegrate in earthquakes. In Scotland, one of the safest countries in the world, so far as natural disasters go, there’s really nothing to complain about.

We are but dust and to dust we shall return. Just not quite yet, I hope.

Gill Andrews and the Forty Thieves

I didn’t think it was funny until after she’d gone away. But then I realised that I’d handed her forty thieves in a box. I should have put them in a big jar, like Ali Baba. I have a jar. . . .

The thieves were for the London launch of The Thief, which is at seven pm on Monday 25th October in the second floor suite of the Old Crown in new Oxford Street. The Old Crown doesn’t have a sign outside showing its name, but it is the pub on the corner of New Oxford Street and Museum Street, about halfway between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn tubes. If you think you can go along (please do), email me on nell@happenstancepress.com and I’ll let her know. That’s if I manage to get this blog post to appear. . .

I didn’t think it was funny until after she’d gone away. But then I realised I’d handed her forty thieves in a box. I should have put them in a big jar, like Ali Baba. I have a jar. . . .

The thieves were for the London launch of The Thief, which is at seven pm on Monday 25th October in the second floor suite of the Old Crown in new Oxford Street. The Old Crown doesn’t have a sign outside showing its name, but it is the pub on the corner of New Oxford Street and Museum Street, about halfway between Tottenham Court Road and Holborn tubes. If you think you can go along (please do), email me on nell@happenstancepress.com and I’ll let her know. That’s if I manage to get this blog post to appear. . .

But now I am sounding silly, and there is a reason for this. I’m typing on the new machine, the little bijou Inspiron which allows me to use Windows 7 and do things that I don’t seem to be able quite to do from my Mac.

New machines are always lovely in one way and HORRIBLE in another. They do things you aren’t expecting. They do things too fast. Their mice aren’t the same as the mice you’re used to — in this case it’s a touchpad which seems to move things before I know I’ve touched it properly.

To such an extent that I just finished this entry and then lost it when I somehow got to the previous webpage by accident. Oh hell. I had just successfully uploaded a picture of berries in the garden (to prove it really is autumn now) and was about to save everything with a sense of triumph, when I lost everything with a sense of exasperation.

Then I got to the end, repeated the process, got the nice picture, tried to resize it — and blow me down, did I not somehow close everything? I somehow had logged myself out and was responsible for Windows closing down, then starting up again, installing its updates — all beceause I did something (I know not what) with this ‘floating touchpad’. Floating touchpad, my foot.

I had mentioned, before that, the point HappenStance is more or less up to. Kate Scott, and the three Samplers nearly off to the printers (about to finalise pdfs and send them to authors), the first two publications in the Po-Lite series in draft form and posted them to their authors, Martin Parker and Graham Austin, yesterday. I hope to start type-setting Alan Hill today.

I know some of the reviews have got lost in the Sphinx area. It was to do with the changeover. I’ll put them back as soon as I can, if I can get this new machine to be my friend. I probably can. I’m getting used to the keyboard. Just not to making the window I’m reading in look like the right size and resolution for me.

Okay. Let’s try putting that picture in again now. . . this has only taken an hour and a half so far.

Saint Britta, whose story is lost

Someone in the Post Office (where I was spending a small fortune posting boxes and packets of pamphlets) referred to this lovely ‘Indian Summer’ — that term we use to describe a period of warmth and sunshine, after ‘summer’ is officially over. It’s been gorgeous this week, though in Scotland, this morning, it has given way to thick grey cloud again. Why Indian? I thought I’d look it up.

Immediately I discovered it wasn’t a ‘true’ Indian summer this last week. True Indian summer has to be after the first proper frost, so we’re talking October or November. And anyway, the term ‘Indian’ summer only began to be widely used in the UK, according to Wikipedia, in the twentieth century, when American influence became more potent than European, the ‘Indian’ deriving from Native American references.

Before that, it would have been a St Martin’s Summer, named after the French Saint Martin of Tours, who died on November 8th in 397 AD. Rather a long time ago.

However, Saint Martin’s death became a good story. Corpses of saints were valuable: people made pilgrimages to pray at their gravesides, get healed and even get relics (the original tourist and merchandise industry).

Martin died in Candes-sur-Loire, later named Candes-Saint-Martin in his honour. He had converted the pagans after all and knocked down their temple (they didn’t do diversity in those days). Anyway, according to legend his body was snatched in unchristian manner by the people of Poitou, who popped him in a boat and floated him downriver to Tours, where they buried him (though not according to the website of Candes-Saint-Martin which suggests he is buried there. He was once, it seems, but he was definitely shifted).

Anyway, the ‘St Martin’s Summer’ refers to the way, according to legend, the vegetation on the river bank flowered as the saint’s stolen body floated past. It was November 8th and things definitely shouldn’t have been flowering by then.

Saint Martin himself was actually Hungarian. According to the history of Catholic Saints, he was in the Roman Army, got converted, and once he was demobbed became a Catholic and, in due course, a Saint. It must have suited him because he lived to the age of 81, a ripe old age in those dark days.

He was a popular saint, so an Indian summer in Spain is Veranillo de San Miguel or Veranillo de San Martin, depending on which date it occurs (either September 29 or November 11th). In Galicia and Portugal they celebrate Saint Martin’s day with bonfires, roasted chestnuts and wine.

In Russia, it’s ‘Old Women’s Summer’, in Bulgaria ‘Gypsy Summer’ or even ‘Gypsy Christmas’. In Sweden, it’s Brittsommar, which is linked by the name day for Saints Brigitta and Britta, celebrated by an open-air market on October 7th. Saint Brigitta was a medieval mystic with a complicated story; even her daughter became a saint. But poor Britta — she was a fourth century virgin, martyred with Saint Maura – and her story is lost! Her relics were discovered by Saint Euphronius, Bishop of Tours, (where Saint Martin is buried).

In Germany, Austria and Hungary, it’s ‘Old Ladies Summer’ (Altweibersommer) or ‘Crone’s Summer’. That is (allegedly) because of the white threads of the canopy spiders in autumn, in turn associated with the white haired Norns, the demi-goddesses who live at the base of Yggdrasil and control our destiny.

In Scotland (but not in England, Ireland or Wales), the European Martinmas (November 11th) was one of the quarter days. That is to say the days when servants were hired and rents were due. That meant a holiday, and in religious terms an opportunity for feasting before fasting.

All of which brings me to the sorry conclusion that we have not had a St Martin’s Summer, or an Old Wives Summer, or a Brittsommar. We haven’t even had an Indian Summer. It’s too soon. What we have had is a few lovely days in late summer, early autumn, and we should be jolly grateful and get on with it.

For me, it’s been so beautiful in the garden that I found it hard to work at the desk, but nevertheless that has been necessary. Kate Scott’s pamphlet, Escaping the Cage, is more or less complete though the cover’s not done. Three Samplers, from Isobel Montgomery-Campbell, Patrick Yarker and Tom Vaughan, are in the post in draft to their authors, who will provide a bonny signature for me to scan for the front. Parcels of the Hardy pamphlet have gone scurrying hither and thither. Two new PoemCards are ready, one by Maggie Butt for empty nesters; the other by Bruce James — the comical but melancholy tale of the Woodworm. More will follow.

My next task is to organise a subscriber mailshot, which will have all sorts of interesting things in it. The new website is about to go live; some teething problems yesterday.

And then it’s on to Martin Parker (redoubtable editor of Lighten-Up Online) and Graham Austin (two PoLites), Tim Love (pamphlet) and Alan Hill (tankas). I’m slightly behind schedule, and the accounts are also demanding my attention. A small prayer to Saint Martin about now might be useful, though I think I’ll appeal to Saint Britta, whose story was lost. I can relate to that.

I’ll plan a little chestnut roasting for next month. . . .