OUR PENNILESS WRITE

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Fri, 13 Jul 2012 04:39:20 -0400

“When I found George I was 14 years old”

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:25:03 -0400

“When I found George I was 14 years old”

"When I found George I was 14 years old"

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:15:07 -0400

“When I found George I was 14 years old”

- by Elizabeth Wewiora

When I found George I was 14 years old
When I found George I was 14 years old. He said he was looking for something or someone but he could not remember which. I think he had taken a rather heavy blow to the head during his bumpy flight over from Poland.
When I was 15 years old I lost George. He was playing in the back garden behind the rabbit hut. I hoped that he would come back if I left his favourite song playing from the radio on the Kitchen window. But apparently he didn’t like that song anymore.
I think I first decided that I hated George on my 21st birthday. He never dropped by to send his wishes. What we had together in those previous years was meant to be special but all that was ruined now.
I think I first decided I had fallen in love with George when suddenly he began to flap his wings with a rhythmic beat, suddenly the sky became full of birds, moving in unison to George’s improvised beats. He suddenly turned his head and disappeared, and then came back with a record player that would act as a stand while we went for tea.
I’d forgotten all about that record player until my sister reminded me it was in the loft of my mother’s house. It was an old battered beast of a machine, just like George really! I hope one day he flies back to me.
Do you think a creature that is not a bird but not a human either, can really love a foolish girl as much as she loves him?
George was a funny type of guy really, because he always insisted on turning the light switch on and off three times before he could settle to bed. I found this particularly strange because he was a bird.
When George turned five he decided to flee his homeland to pastures new.
In this foreign land he found love. The love of a good women. I would like to say that this woman was me, but alas I was only a distant memory: a nice and polite girl he met once on an allotment site.
I think George has always been frightened of commitment, that’s why he disappeared from behind the rabbit hutch and flew away, then thought about what he was missing so came back just to check and stay for a while, with those who he loved but was too scared to say. So he said it with a record player that, whenever used, was a reminder of him.
George’s children were the making of him – literally making him up from anything they could find around the house. Patches of fabric, buttons and all kind of bits and bobs. There were two girls and a younger boy in the family of his household. They were a creative family and puppets were their favourite things to make. George often felt like a puppet on a string, passed around from child to child, even the dog sometimes.
George once shared a secret with me; he told me that he NEVER RECYCLED.
George then decided to join AVEN as an honorary member on 28 April 2012. He doesn’t know what it is though. Maybe he could Google it but it’s hard to type with claws. My aunty said she would trim his nails right back if he wanted, so he could manage his day to day tasks a little better. She was a nail beautician by trade, but George did not have much time for nail beauticians and so rejected the offer.
Perhaps if George hadn’t left so early in life, I would have been a more intelligent daughter, but it is hard to say and wrong to judge.
The most important things about George really is that he would like to one day return to his homeland – back to this roots – wherever that is?
Floating between two countries, two cultures, George struggled to set real routes. He always felt this sense of limbo and responded with slight unease towards the question, ‘where do you come from?’ It is a question which many of us can answer with confidence and clarity, but not for all of us, not for me. And a question which continues to challenge us more that others, especially for George, is ‘where do you belong?’
The inbetweeners is a difficult term to be a part of – just ask George.
Today George had what he likes to call a ‘Eureka’ moment – the light bulb of his mind suddenly began to flicker and develop into brightly shining light. George had an idea! He decided to collect a found object and put them in a box – he turned this into treasure in an unmarked spot in the garden before leaving the house for the final time.
She met George in Liverpool. Turns out he is from Liverpool. He’s very nice, a very good person. Once day he asked me for something, I said no.
Today will be the last day we speak of George – the pain of his memories are just too much for me to bear.
When I turned 26 I left George. He is with you now, where he has always belonged.

"Dogs or Kids"

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 07:04:15 -0400

“Dogs or Kids”

- by Richard Taylor
A shark’s body had cracked in two and its white dolphin-like remains were awash the steps in front of where we picnicked that day. The tower that loomed in front of us had no bottom. Instead it dissolved in the surf that licked at lower foundations of iron abdomen.
The unrelenting stone of ages smacked a dull thud upon my crown as I reached the top of the watch tower. The Portuguese had build it strong and unforgiving, so I stepped out on to the ringed plateau with a shade in my eye. Dizziness took me and much of everything else dropped from my arms. Life is not Chess, but this Ruck was unmoved and straight in force. I manoeuvred to the wall to rest each buttock on the side-stone; cold in the shade I came too and saw him before me, his head silhouette blocking the sun. It was then that we turned to look below. Fragmented white and blue foam pulled in and out against the man-made shoreline, like sequins embellished in the heat. Beaches in the distance then stretched as far as the curving land could go and slow heaps of dunes, patched with green grass and glistening movement, touched the horizon.
We reached the shore through a thicket of sharpening knives otherwise known as gorse and rested a while on the rocks at the East end of the beach. A power station dominated the horizon and the heat arising sifted any existing foundations into bleached haze. The gargantuan build floated like a castle in the distance as we gazed at families in the foreground. Kids ran naked too and fro, from sea to sand land and back, pissing in the waves, charging at the sky.
We clambered down to walk a stretch of sand daring the waves with our toes. Soon jellyfish were more exciting and less alive washed up on the shore, drying out in the sun. My legs neck nose and forehead stung and our water supply was running low.
Its as if they had watched too many nature programmes. Their movements were exactly like the Meerkats at Butterfly World in Leeds, and they were just as exposed. But this was East Lothian and we were on the beach. The sun was shooting its rays along the coast and against the wet sand, up in to our eyes upon our foreheads burning pasty calves along the way. We turned our gaze inland away from the water to rest our eyes upon the palette of reeds and green grass amongst sand dunes. It was here the animals began to play.
One man stood all of a sudden atop the highest dune like a king set amongst cloudless skies. He was tanned and, as he started to pull down his lower garments, we could see this was an all over tan. So he was used to being naked. After a while two more men stood in the same way, but on lower dunes, and a hierarchy was played out as more nakedness appeared. Then two more men and two more and soon the dunes were full of buttocks thighs and clean shaven skin. Their obviousness matched their ability to remain as animals in a new kingdom; cruising they were and all we could do was watch as if visitors in a zoo. Thankfully we saw no intercourse, this must have happened as they dropped beneath the grass again and out of sight. And this did happen, they did drop, and all came together under the watchful eye of the top most gay man.

"Modigm submersion and solid-base"

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:48:35 -0400

“Modigm submersion and solid-base”

- by Richard Taylor
Beneath us rose this amphitheatre

enclosed to an aquarium
of under water
salt-water
sound.
We had followed the swarm in to the surf
the boat had got us so far.
Oars, no longer effective, halted in the wind
as our sails flecked into stillness.
Quiet were our surrounds
we toed in to the vastness of this
great blue that happened below.
Gone boat and bye to sky
And we drowned into the deep. It reached us

just as we took our breath for our own. And there we found our feet.

"You May Like What You See"

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 06:37:14 -0400

“You May Like What You See”

- By Richard Taylor
Cows have ultimate efficiency, even though they appear slow and hindered, they seem to be able to piss and eat at the same time. I observed this fact shortly after my train pulled south out of Berwick upon Tweed in to a flooded area, which caused the East coast train line route such problems days previous to this journey. We rolled over a hill and out in to a clearing of sea and wet sand. Workmen were busy fixing more drainage to the hillside, extracting water from underneath the rail tracks reducing subsidence. The train was considerably slower than it normally would be and as the black cows came up towards the tracks to drink from the flooded plain, they then urinated and consumed grass simultaneously.
The carriage I am on is divided by pink hens and stag-like mediums. I sit here with Emotional Joystick playing out in to my ears, my music of choice, loud and fitting to douse out the noise of men on heat and women trying to be just as hot. Pop goes the champaign. Cheers go the rest in reply. Touch my laptop with that fizz and I will banish you from this journey forth-with.
As we approach Newcastle the clouds draw in, and the wind picks up. My mother’s best friend’s sister lives in the city. The other day she had to move out of her home due to its lower floor and basement being flooded. Farmland passes us all by, I seem to be the only one looking out the window. Out numbered my buttocks stay firmly fixed to the seat. It is mine and they will not have it. Small lakes have collected themselves offering more to the otherwise medley green landscape. Vans flags and caravans scatter the shore line and the next song I have to myself, starts and hovers on.
What would you do if, after an apprenticeship with a joinery firm, your teacher laid you off just to hire another intern? Strapped for cash would you accept a pay out from a scheming friend asking you to transit a package of crack from Manchester to Leeds? Would you then store it in your home? I owe something to these Leeds men who spent most of their time brewing vodka with magic mushrooms, eating MDMA like Synthetic Smarties and cooking up horse tranquilliser to snort like wet animals. They would often piss and inhale at the same time but you have to give it to them, they had taste in music. And there was a select few of us who enjoyed it all.
The room we entered just before Christmas was decorated to the teeth and the ceiling appeared at half its capable height. Jade green plied with lager danced on the highest of heels. She touched the plastic shine of Christmas come with her red finger nails, her leopard-print dress filling in the middle of each shake and twirl, her tights well chosen to match the top half with the bottom. Red hair tied back, lips on, she’d beat the whole of this carriage with her style. They would not know what hit them with her Lancashire twang. Gabba played on. We drank more lager. Soon I was matching her movements and together we danced and tore down the room.
The train is moving faster now and thank God we are closer to where these animals might alight the train. Despite the ticket-master’s announcement they will probably fall down the gap in between the door and the platform, much like other hoofed and picketed creatures would trap their lower parts in cattle-grids.
Trees now crowd around fences that mark out field upon field. We still hug the shoreline but the horizon is now mostly farmland, weather measurements, abandoned tractors, shining rivers, rolling viaducts and the odd tip of a white sailing boat dotting in the glistening distance.
We must be gaining on a city now, there are more tracks conjoining and the train is in steady flow, it feels altogether straight and less ragged and raided. New suburban builds pass us by and pylons give way to wind farms catching the rays of the sea breeze. Hillocks of yellow mess decorate one field in between furtive allotments that hide beneath bushes below our trajectory. Radio masts taste the sky as points to recognise farm houses that stand alone. Small corrugated huts house food for cows that are now a shade of light brown. They eat but do not piss.

"Near Omsk 24/04/11"

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:11:00 -0400

“Near Omsk 24/04/11”

- By Euan Ramsay

I am very much enjoying having Bill Bryson as my travelling companion on the train. He talks about people emigrating to Australia from Britain in the 1950s and for most people it meant weeks at sea. It kind of has that feel on the train, that we are no longer in 2011, but some earlier time, when people expected international travel to take a long time and didn’t have the impatience of our privileged position towards travel today. From the window of the train is certainly doesn’t seem that the world is getting smaller, in fact is it so large that I have difficulty comprehending the sheer scale of it.
There seem to be less houses now and just naked silver birch and brown and yellow fields. There doesn’t seem to be as much snow, we are heading South.
The landscape and the people are slowly changing. We crossed a wetland for many hours this morning. The houses, some made of brick look less like garden sheds. Vast concrete silos, industrial buildings don’t look so abandoned any more. I had a nice time brushing my teeth and peeing with the bathroom window wide open, the wind and the world zooming past, and washing the porridge from my cup in the old steel sink. My cup is used for everything! There are less Russians on the train, the Turkish men left in the night at Omsk. The faces of the passengers are changing as we cross the vastness of Russia, leaving Europe behind and entering Asia.
The towns in this area look like someone has abandoned an old Lada in an allotment.
Time for some instant noodles, chicken or beef, I’ll have the beef please!

"Ashes"

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:57:28 -0400

“Ashes”

- By Wendy McCredie

The fragile clumps hang precariously from their perch. A long tail hangs down from them, seemingly holding them all together. Every so often one of the clumps will twitch and they all take a juddering trip a little further down the stalk, but somehow manage to cling on. If you felt so inclined to anthropomorphise them, you might cloak them in red waterproof jackets, like a string of amateur mountaineers, ill prepared for the conditions clinging together to the rope that their guide had bid them hold onto tightly. Echo’s of their unhappy and uncertain, but not yet fearful; cries as they descend unwillingly might hang in the air. But perhaps their cries are too comical for some desolate mountain cliff-face, better perhaps to think of them as first-time abseillers, caught in unexpectedly inclement weather. Better to preserve both your and their hope.
Occasionally one loses its hold and plunges to its dusty death, imploding on impact. The others are still for much longer than normal after each fall, as though they remember that each twitch could send them all to that fate. Below them the ground is smooth and cold - where it isn’t littered with the remains of their compatriots – and patient.
Slowly, slowly, they descend the tail as though the shorter distance to the ground will save them. The lowest of them touches the ground. And implodes as surely as its compatriot that fell from a height.
As though now resigned to their fate the rest give up their fight and fall to the ground, pulling down the cord that had sustained them for so long. The faint red glow of the beacon above them dims to nothing and the dust settles.
The air fills with the lavender scented clouds of their passing and for a long moment: there is calm.

"Final Working Day"

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:48:00 -0400

“Final Working Day”

- By JV

They tell us that
Public Sector Pensions are good
Then why would they
Destroy them if they could?
They tell us that
Private Sector Pensions are bad
Then why don’t they
Make them better and make us glad?
The Working Class deserve
On the final working day
To have a good Pension
After the Final Pay
Enough jobs should be created
There is no underclass
Just not working at the moment
We’re all Working Class
Are we living longer?
Or is that a Forked Tongue Excuse?
Do you know a 90 year old?
How many? Tell the truth
Many of the next generation are obese
I’ve heard it being said
Will they live longer?
A statement I’ve never read
When Pension circumstances change
These new rules are still here to stay
This proves it’s a one way street
As we don’t get back what they took away

"My Room"

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 11:30:00 -0400

“My Room”

- By Michelle McCracken

On one side of the room, the built in wardrobe is approximately one half of the width of the wall. On the opposite wall, the window also owns literally one half. It is not that the wardrobe is particularly large or the window a grand feature bay but that the room has similar dimensions to that of a rabbit hutch. Not literally, but approximately. When the blind is drawn down, I am boxed in and I like it.
The room feels self-contained and suspended like a hot air balloon hovering in the midst of a built-up city. I do not think of its interdependency on the hallway to the right, the kitchen behind my head and the main bedroom with en suite beyond. When the door is shut and the blind drawn, the room and everything in it ceases to exist. No-one thinks about the room. Or thinks about me being in the room. The room is mine and exists only to me. Outside of room and I, we are invisible.
There is a scratch at the door, the room is not suspended anymore. As the cat creeps through the creak in the door, I lift the blind in and let her leap into her spot on the windowsill. The window is a perfect sqaure frame holding one perfect solid square glass panel. It frames the world perfectly like a glass panel in an aquarium, tropical fish swimming in and out a line of vision. The fish exist only in the present. No one can see where they came from or where they go to. This is my aquarium window except the fish are people and they do not swim but walk and cycle and encase themselves in moving vehicles. The scenery is not plankton and plastic castles but other windows and buildings and carparks.
From where I sit the sky fills four fifths of the window. It takes its hue from a paint brush coated in navy and plunged into a clear, still glass of water creating white and light dappling. Soon, fusion will be complete and the night sky will relax into solid blue unmindful of day. A flickering of red and yellow light races through the last of the silver linings. It takes approximately seven seconds for the aeroplane to cross my window screen from stage left to right. I watch in amused bewildermint as I imagine this tin shell with wings exporting and importing hundreds of little people across the Firth of Forth into Edinburgh Airport.
No one knows that I have sat in this box of mine that to you in your areoplane does not exist and that I have saw you fly across my line of vision imposing yourself into my existence and that you will never know me who watched you.

"SETTLED N HAPPY"

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 10:49:00 -0400

“SETTLED N HAPPY”

- By JV

58 Years
In the same Cooncil Hoose?
That’s far too long
It’s time tae get oot
We need that place
You’re tying it up
We Hivnae built ony mare
But we need tae look like we huv
I’ve a lifetime O memories
My husband noo passed away
Living my life to the full
My family sometimes visit and stay
Young folk need oan the ladder
Noo that Naebody can buy
We’re jist no gonny build Cooncil Hooses
Noo hit the street, don’t look back, don’t even try
I’m Homeless
Oh you get a lot of points fur that
I’m 80
Sit doon, take the Wecht Aff Yir back
Disabled?
Go tae the tap O the list
There’s Naebody else near Yi
You’ll get a Hoose, in fact Yir first
Is there Yin empty the Noo?
Ah Ken it’s Kinni Shin
See that Yin Yiv Jist left
Well turn Roon and move back in
Whit Hiv Yi Din Wi Aa Ma furniture?
We’ve turned it Intae matches
Venetian blinds, washing machine?
Oh! Oh! Here she goes, batten Doon the hatches
Sideboard and ornaments
Beds, wardropes, TV
Fitted carpets
Fridge and settee?
Yi’ll Jist Hiv Tae get new Yins
Bit Aa Wiz settled n happy
Ower the years they cost fortunes
Get back, Pey Yir rent An Coont Yersel lucky

New Experimental Writing from Barcelona 10/06/2012

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 13:56:00 -0400

One day, sometime in early Spring, a group of friends in Barcelona decided to start a writing group together. Each week, they decide on a thematic or structural device to help focus their experiments in writing and share their creations together over a beer or two in a sunny spot of the city. They all agree that this experience is helping to expand their writing technique and enjoyment. Here you can read the latest of their work. The experiment here was to write without nouns. A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea.

Each writer took a different approach to the challenge and created their own noun-less literary vision. This got me thinking, do we always have to name in order to identify ? Do our realities, experiences and expressions have to be defined in some way or can the art that we create exist free from these constraints? Can we continue to develop and grow without concrete, named definitions of all that we try to do?

As always, here at Our Penniless Write, we encourage constructive feedback, new ideas, and most importantly,we support the unbound freedom to write.

‘Yayoi Kusama standing in a field (In front of a tree)’
by Senka Islamović

Green earthy grow
Sunbaked below
Under great grey
Straight piercing above
Spreading equally under
Orange circles light up around
Substituting for absent big dry
Hiding behind cold bite
Beginning of living
Force within resides
Often called all mighty
Make grow, make grow
From bellow
Bite what rattles
From tied-round, snaring
Sound sharing, from within
Dance, dance fertilise
See, evolutionise, rise!

‘Untitled’
by John Fortescue

Descending, coming,
Closer closer nearer nearer
listen, listen closely and watch and wait,
Push up close, to better see,
Push and peer through, as close as possible.
Now coming, nearer and nearer still.
Still descending
Now passing, fleetingly, oh so fleetingly!
Fleeting and beautiful
Fleeting and radiant
Fleeting and unaware.
Then past, continuing down,
Unseen and away.

‘Puzzling Greatly, re-imagining Alice’
by Anne McColgan

What is the doing of a papery reading very instrumental,
without colourful 3-D moving realistic or talking together?
Wondering if changing through sleeping.
Let inside to think.
Was inside equal when awakening
Not long ago?
Almost thinking of remembering feeling a little different.
But- if not the same- the next asking,
‘does here exist here?’

- - - - puzzling greatly - - - -

Not possible to explain, afraid because not really here…
If understood?
Not possible to believe, understanding tiny situational
to be found growing.
Never getting any older, but comforting while navigating
Never to be older, but then, always to be learning.
Nice would be nice if sensing aspersing in
Changing functioning.

How pleasanter when not growing
larger and smaller,
And being focussed by
Wild natural breathing.
See miaow without grinning,
but grinning without miaowing!
Curioser and curioser in living!
Oh… wishing converting like seeing,
turning, viewing around darkening.
To know how to end,
Or how to begin.

‘Untitled’
by Patrick Smith

The ‘sustains and wets’
Runs off the ‘shelters and protects’
Down the ‘channels and ejects’
Onto the ‘is cobbled and does stretch’

‘Philosophises and is sheltered’
Philosophises and is sheltered
From the ‘sustains and wets’
That now only wets

This ‘framed exits and enters’
Wasn’t the chosen ‘arrives and wants to’
But ‘Philosophises and is sheltered’
Arrived nonetheless

Not unlike the ‘sustains and wets’
That now only wets
Thought ‘Philosophises and is sheltered’
Who now only philosophises

"The Train - Moscow to Yekaterinburg 23/04/11"

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:17:00 -0500

“The Train - Moscow to Yekaterinburg 23/04/11”

- By Euan Ramsay

Another rush to the train and sweat is pouring down my back as I enter the hot, cramped carriage. Carriage three, they really do make you feel like third class right from the off; before you even get on you have to walk another fifteen carriages down the platform to reach your third class open sleeper.
The train stops and young men stand on the tracks smoking and spitting, their sweaters, jackets and jeans along with their short haircuts make them look Scottish. Babushkas with bags of cherries and people with huge amounts of different cuddly toys tied to them walk up and down the tracks next to the train. They walk around the smoking men, each one of the men seemingly taking in turn to talk on their mobile phone.
The blonde pregnant Russian girl, her husband and mother all changed out of their train clothes (generally for the Russians, tracksuits) into smart attire and left at the last station, a small town near Perm. I got off the train at Perm and almost immediately was seized upon by a tall toothless man who was selling food and drinks to passengers. He wore a dirty black woolly hat and equally dirty black coat, he spoke surprisingly good English, he told me about British history and that Britain is made up of sixty countries and islands. He was particularly interested in the Royal Wedding and had recently read ‘Ivanhoe’ by Walter Scott.
I am reading Bill Bryson’s book ‘Down Under’, it is very entertaining. He is travelling on the Indian Pacific railway in Australia, a railway I have taken myself, which runs straight across Australia from Sydney to Perth. He says:
“There is something wonderfully lulling about being stuck for a long spell on a train. It was like being give a preview of what it will be like to be in your eighties. All those things eighty year-olds appear to enjoy, staring vacantly out of the windows, dozing in a chair, boring the pants off anyone foolish enough to sit beside them – took on a special treasured meaning for me. This was the life!”
For twenty-four hours now the landscape has been unchanging, long spindly twigs of trees, snow in parts and frozen ponds, brown grass, brown earth, a brown land defrosting after a long deep freeze. Regularly obscured by monolithic soviet coal carriages or oil tanker carriages, old wooden shacks, the occasional empty concrete building with no glass in the windows, rusting containers, everything is downtrodden and old.
The middle aged Russian woman who was across from me got off, I helped her with her extraordinary amount of luggage. I tried my feeble Russian with her as she left, she spoke to me in Russian all day yesterday, me just smiling and nodding, even laughing when seemed appropriate, which was not often, she had a very serious way of talking. No sooner is she off than the Turkish men, barefooted, sit with their feet on the seat noisily slurping black tea from small plastic water cups. Putting your feet on train seats is a big faux pas on this train, and I expect the Provonista to scold them.
I pass villages with wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs, most brown and aged, but many colourfully painted in blues, yellow and greens,with painted patterns on the thick window frames, like poorly constructed Alpine lodges. Huge oil painted skies tower over the landscape, the background to an epic painting of a Napoleonic battle on these huge plains.
Still we pass wooden shed like buildings with thick grey smoke coming from their chimneys and cut logs staked up next to them.
I play cards and chat to the Turkish men, there are many more than I thought! I have warmed to their non-Russian ways, only one of them speaks English so everything I say is translated and in turn I am given the translation from any number of commentators. They are travelling to Omsk I think, I showed them a map of the Trans-Siberian route which they took great interest in, but I think some of them thought it was a map of the world so there was much confusion.
The Samovar is a great boon, tea, coffee, noodles, porridge, all of which I am eating from my old chipped enamel camping cup with a steel Chinese spoon I stole from the drawer in The Napoleon Hostel in Moscow. I could just imagine this back home, fifty-four people constantly carrying boiling cups of water thorough a rather wobbly railway carriage, health and safety nightmare!

"‘You’re just not a proper lesbian couple if you don’t have a supper club and your own allotment..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:29:00 -0500

“‘You’re just not a proper lesbian couple if you don’t have a supper club and your own allotment plot’”

- By Elizabeth Wewiora
The final allotment visit of the year took me to Belfast – a very early rise to travel across the water, and a visit that would turn out to be the most rewarding in terms of diverse allotment sites, and indeed allotment folk.
Armed with wellingtons and uncountable layers of clothing, I was met with plot owner G, a lady whose passion for all things cultivation was clear from the outset. I was kindly driven to her own plot first, on a curious triangle plot of land, unknown to many in the city and by far one of the smallest sites I have visited to date. Sandwiched between two railway tracks on a slightly awkward slope, the plots sat, some loudly and some almost invisible, against the surrounding housing estates and local neighbourhood. ‘It isn’t the prettiest of sites’ was the first comment, which Lady G felt the need to point out. In fact it was pretty much an unused piece of land that through local community support, finally seemed to find some purpose. The site had been up and running for some years now but it was still very much a work in progress. With changing allotment officers, and plot owners coming and going, some transforming and some simply ignoring plots, the site still had a long journey to reach ‘allotment perfection’. But then again who wants a perfectly presented site, when there is so much personality and character to be discovered on individual plots and the varying work people are prepared to do on it.
It must be said that Lady G’s plot was an ingenious example of landscape architecture; stylish recycled raised beds, a draining water system to tackle that tricky slope, and a completely systematic approach to planting her various crops.
Keen to show me the larger sites situated in Belfast – I was then taken to two extremely different but intriguing allotments. Firstly, an allotment site which had been created at the back of a national trust site, just on the outskirts of the city. Complete with national trust cottage, a small farm area and mulled wine and baking on the go in the Kitchen, there was a whole host of local families and young couples working together as a community to develop what was a essentially an old cattle field, into a glorious and well organised site. It was here that I met Lady G’s friends, a fellow ‘supper club’ couple. The Supper Club was an idea started by a few local friends in the city, all of which happened to be young lesbian partners and all of which enjoyed hosting ‘come dine with me’ style evening gatherings. The food, of course, came from the cultivated crops on the couples’ sites, and Lady G’s friend giggled to me, ‘that you just aren’t a proper lesbian couple around here unless you have a supper club and your own allotment plot with your partner. It really is quite trendy now’.
On a tight schedule, we had to move on and unfortunately missed out on the mulled wine, but it was worth the journey to the third and most unusually sited allotment I had been to date. It is times likes this that meeting people like Lady G is such a blessing – as I feel my allotment adventure never would have taken me to this site without her. Hidden at the very ends of an old and overwhelmingly large NHS mental health hospital grounds, I arrived at my last allotment adventure of the year. A local volunteer group had been given some unused land within the grounds of a mainly empty hospital site for the purposes of cultivation. What had been created was incredible; a sea of neat and heavily occupied allotment plots, flourishing with crops and flora despite its winter season. Through sheer determination, dedication and teamwork within one full season, this empty area of marshy land had become a fully operational site. Each plot had, as many do, their own accessories or individual trademarks ranging from a small dolls house and amusing DIY scarecrow to impressive manure systems and decorated raised beds and flower pots. I met with two fantastic women, who could not emphasise the sense of wellbeing and community spirit they felt when on site, and it was clear to see why. As a culminating allotment visit, I felt thoroughly satisfied by what I had seen.
It is officially time to get my name on a waiting list…

"Misspent Years"

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:15:55 -0500

“Misspent Years”

- by Max Raskin
To know one’s life
Has been misspent
Before it can begin
To house one’s love
Where sadness lives
And so too, all one’s sins
To think of nought
Is thought misplaced
Spellbound and paralysed
To wish that lust
Unthinkable
Could simply be reprised
To hold your gaze
Once filled my heart
Now derelict and grey
To seek your hand
Through swirling sands
Met only with dismay
To break this curse
Like mirrors, reformed
Placed face up in your hand
To spend my days
In her shadow – alone
A welcome reprimand

Moscow 21/04/11 By Euan Ramsay Six am, dawn breaks in Moscow,...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:31:00 -0500

Moscow 21/04/11

By Euan Ramsay

Six am, dawn breaks in Moscow, the moon still smiles through the rising blue sky and mustard horizon of the coming sun. My first impression of Moscow was not great, it was cold, the wind here cuts like a frozen razor-blade. I had my foolishly big pack and I walked from the other end of the city to get to the hostel and thanks to the Lonely Planet’s inability to accurately plot points on a map, I ended up thinking I was lost and walking all the way round the block the wrong way, not as easy as it sounds when you are carrying over twenty kilogrammes of bags and your hands are like frozen pork chops. It was cold and overcast all day and a disinterest hung over the city. Saint Basil’s and the Kremlin looked unimpressive against the bland grey cloud. In the evening the cloud moved and a golden light came through my hostel window. I put on my coat and walked down to Red Square with a sense of anticipation. I looked up from the big grey cobbles that cover the square and saw Saint Basil’s in all it’s magnificence, the multi-coloured pumpkin domes bulging and glowing in the evening light.

"Whistle blower your table shine is mine"

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:24:51 -0500

“Whistle blower your table shine is mine”

- By Richard Taylor
In my mind’s eye I saw from below the coffee table again, its underside constructed for ultimate-fold and transportability. Atop this table, opposite from where I hid, stood a woman wrapped in a scarf and covered from breast to toe in a black jump suit. She whistled a tune that, by way of my open-plan apartment’s acoustics, rang true through the room. The women held her arms aloft balancing core-weight against one table leg that appeared shorter than the others - she swayed from one foot to the other on the balls of her feet, and the table followed suit in time with her song.
I was sat amongst my objects on the half of the open plan space that housed my studio endeavors - ever since I invited the women in I had begun to construct a hide out for myself amongst paintings: by now she was so coveted by her song her eyes were blind against her senses, and I could move unseen and unheard gradually gaining on her - closer and closer still and then upon her.
I needed the coffee table, I had inspected its underbelly and had planned a painting using its alterior surface as a ground for decided incisions, cuttings, and pastings - I had the oils mixed and ready, emulsified with turpentine and bees wax.
I would only get so close before interrupting her flow. I had to carefully plan my moves, one after the other, to increment this sound and build upon her display. She had to fall in the opposite direction towards the window for the table, pushed by her dexterous mishap, to carefully roll on to my side of the space. One foot wrong on my part and she would fall the wrong way.
I got as far as the staircase in the middle of the room and had to stop. She stared right in to my eyes as her whistle reached a higher tone, as if to pierce through me.

"Four feathers and an open window"

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:19:46 -0500

“Four feathers and an open window”

- By Richard Taylor
Of late I have been collecting the feathers that float through the window at the eastern end of my open plan living space. The feathers seem to be from pigeons that habituate their movements in flight by dipping under the bridge across from my window frame and landing reversely within the suspensions and metal constructions that hold it together. Its as it the pigeons sacrifice one part of their wing span in order to be given permission to ‘land’ or to ‘rest’. I often watch from the interior side of the window as the birds, encased in silhouette against a background of light, grace the last inches of sky and then join the black mass of the bridge and its hinges - then, slowly but surely, a feather falls and gains drifting momentum towards the vacuum that is my open plan flat. The feathers enter and fall lightly to the floor - from there I pick them up and take them to the stair case.   
The stair case, as I am sure you will know by now, makes up the centre and dividing space of my studio-cum-living arrangement. Apart from the occasional obvious spell of a line between where I work and where I sleep, the flat is currently in disarray - and the feathers add nothing to what should be a goal in clarity for me to define what is work and what is not. My old sofa now exists on the studio side as a sculpture, a broken function that folds in orange display with wooden feet jutting out from the top rather than the bottom. The coffee table also now exists on the brink of my studio space, on its side. It just needs one last push over on to its back and it will be ready for painterly affect.
  I have four feathers in my hand and as I approach the stair case I trip over the cable for a light fitting, a four meter line of black wire affixed to the ceiling. The fitting comes loose as a result of my momentum, and the energy from my forward steps transfers like a pendulum making my body top heavy. As I fall head first to the ground my hands involuntarily follow my arms and spread out in a wing-like fashion, the four feathers again reach the air. My nose hits the ground with tremendous force. The feathers float with a slight sweat taken from my hand, which affects their gravitational balance. The interior conditioning of dust momentarily contorts their time in the middle of the room. I turn over on to my back and watch them above - they create a perfect circle in slow motion, a perfect mobile with no attachments and no armatures.
There is a gust of wind and it is as if the vacuum of my interior habitation flicks a switch, the pressure in the room reverses and in one fell swoop the air is sucked out of the window - the feathers follow this gulf stream and rush for the outside. I lose them in one blink on an eye.

"Saint Petersburg 18/04/11"

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:18:00 -0500

“Saint Petersburg 18/04/11”

- By Euan Ramsay
The riverfront of St. Petersburg has a wind straight from a Siberian winter. The wide River Neva flows like a great choppy sea under grand bridges, past the Winter Palace and Russia’s imperial past. My ears burn from the cold. Wandering around, I realise where my awkward sense of familiarity comes from; the city reminds me of Amsterdam. Not necessarily in looks, but in the canals taking wide arcs through the city. I realise this because I am lost, or at least finding it difficult to get my bearings, and I found this in the first city I ever went backpacking to, Amsterdam. St. Petersburg really does have the air of a grand European city, of Paris or Rome; the dirt and the splendour and the ashtrays in cafés.
I make my way to the Zoom Café, finding it after some effort to circumvent the roadworks going on around me. This is roadworks Russian style, digging up the entire street, quite literally. There are no safety barriers and sand covers the narrow space between the buildings and the work site, full of large deep holes and huge concrete pipes. I watch a group of glamorous young ladies teetering across the street as the pointed heels of their high leather boots sink into the sand. The Zoom Café is a very pleasant place in a kind of cellar with vaulted ceilings full of fashionable young students, smoking as they eat.

"Different Wine"

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:49:36 -0500

“Different Wine”

- By Lee Devonish
She had to go outside. Indoors she felt the entire day roll up behind her like a scroll and ahead there lay only more of the same, only in the dark. The hangover was hard earned, the headache well deserved. Punishment was what she needed. Whatever was left of the sunlight was going to hit her, and now. Sitting in an electric blue fold up chair from Tesco (a gift from a friend a few years ago, she never went there herself), she wished she was wearing fewer clothes. Wait - a breeze - now she wasn’t. Then the breeze stopped, so she was once more. No - After a few seconds of vacillation she decided that it would be easier to accept that only the decent parts of her wobbly body would get the full benefit of the sun. It was so low now that soon she’d be looking for a cardi anyway, and since that entailed movement and activity, it simply didn’t bear contemplation.
On the grass (and here one stipulates grass, not lawn, as the description of this scrubby patch as anything such would be immoral) to her right sat a large glass of disgusting white wine. It was made even less appealing by the certain knowledge that she would indeed drink it in its entirety, grimacing at every mouthful if need be in order to assert to herself that whilst she may be imbibing a substandard product (wine product - they actually have that in the States, not over here though, how very vile!), she was at least aware of the fact and could proceed with the warming knowledge of her high level of discernment. This made her feel superior, not withstanding the inferiority of the libation. How many unfortunates would sip unawares! Not she. No such bliss for the informed.
The unromantic reality of the situation could easily be subsumed by the larger concept of “sitting in the garden with a glass of wine”, so weighed in the balance, the fulfillment of an act which largely matches the concept is weightier than the alternative of doing nothing, and merely contemplating the concept. This, she mused, would also account for the tolerance of years of bad sex. But in this she did digress. The garden was a mess. Her mother would hate her. The garden could wait. Her mother would find something else to hate her for.
That she should willfully persist in the act of drinking an unpleasant substance should direct any observer’s attention to the possibility that this woman may simply be indolent, too lazy to take the merest action to rectify her situation. She noted that any observer, however inattentive, would not need much more than a cursory glance at her surroundings to conclude that indolence may well be one of her attributes. “Allow me,” she would say at this point, “to rise to my defense and posit an alternative view; my apparently misguided persistence points to my far more admirable personal traits of humility and empathy. For who am I to insist on anything finer than that which I have; and surely any who find themselves in a position of lack would view with complete disdain a woman who, although not wealthy herself, would discard a perfectly potable beverage on the basis of arguably shallow perceptions of quality. Why, would not a stock maternal figure appear within the majority of minds, urging us to think of the starving Africans who would be glad to have our surplus, and compelling us therefore to knock that alcohol back?”
At this point she became overcome with loathing and a wish to slap herself for using the very real plight of starving refugees to construct some jocular turn of phrase for her own amusement. Thereafter, by a wave of bilious nausea. Having become so disgusted by her own overestimation of her meagre wit, she had no choice but to drink the remainder of the offensive wine as penance. Her guilt grew still more as she was forced to acknowledge that the self-inflicted punishment was no more than the action she would have otherwise taken; her only option to assuage the guilt was to remove any trace of pleasure in the act and attack the basis of her sense of superiority: to make herself thoroughly enjoy that nasty wine.
Having realised that the shadow of the house had encroached as far as her radiantly white right leg, she moved to the one-metre-square patch of sunlight left remaining on the scrub, leaving the now empty glass out of reach. At least it could no longer haunt her with reminders of her own selfish nature (she really was sorry about the Somalian refugees) and the mingled memories of bad sex and bad wine, and most tragically, both at the same time.
She started to wonder if some quantity of a thing, albeit of low quality, could be better than none of that thing at all. Of course, large amounts of that high-quality version of that hypothetical thing do not exist for most of us. It didn’t exist for her at least. Is it due to whether the item is a luxury or a staple? The starving Somalis (sorry) need water, but dirty water can kill just the same as having none can, though in different ways. So was her wine a luxury or a staple, and is bad but regular sex better than none at all? (She made a note to slap herself later.)
Obviously, she wouldn’t die without the wine, although she didn’t particularly want to attempt an experiment. As for the other… well, she suppose she was still alive. But if those were non-essential items - and of this non-essentiality she was still not entirely convinced, but she had committed to hearing her hypothesis out - then surely quality is an arbitrary value assigned in the individual instance.
Therefore there could be no such thing as bad wine, neither bad sex; merely different types or experiences thereof. Consequently, in order to further disprove the inference of laziness to her person, to salvage any claims to piety and prove the gratitude for the circumstances of her life which allowed her to sit haughtily in a free folding chair from Tesco in a half metre square of sunlight within a dismal garden in rural England (instead of trekking across the Kenyan border), she had no choice but to immediately pour herself another glass of disgusting wine. For as disgusting, disappointing or merely different it was, it was almost within reach.