Andalucia Steve

...living the dream

Posts in Category: Poetry

Adios

This is the last of my regular weekly postings

 

It's four in the morning. I've been binge-watching 'Mindhunter' and I just went to the kitchen to check on the sink, which has had problems draining. I boiled another five litres of water and poured it down with a litre of 6% wine vinegar which had been languishing at the back of the cupboard for years but it doesn't seem to make any difference. I'm at that stage in a non-practical man's life where I'm counting the times I buy the namby-pamby drain-cleaner solutions from the supermarket, comparing the cost with biting the bullet and getting Eduardo the plumber in to give a more lasting solution to the blockage. First world problems I know, but if the sink doesn't empty, the dishwasher might overflow and flood the kitchen, and if I can't use the dishwasher then I'll have to wash the plates by hand in the bath, which is a fate too tedious to consider.
 
Anyway that's my morning so far. Today however is a milestone, as it is the last day of my self-enforced blog publishing time-table. A year ago I made the New Year's resolution that I would draw up a weekly publishing schedule for my blog and spew out an original piece of content each Sunday. Much to my surprise, I've managed to stick to it. This is issue 53. I aimed for each post to be about 1000 words which I stuck to more of less, so that is 53,000 words. That's a lot of words, nearly a book in fact!
 
The exercise has taught me a lot. Sticking to a time-table has brought me a loyal if small regular reader-ship of about 60 people who take the trouble to read what I write. Some even comment and get involved with discussions which have at times become a little heated, even though I've mostly steered away from politics and religion. I've only marketed the articles on Facebook and Twitter, a single post for each article on each platform. On both, the topics that have had the most traction are Spain and Brexit, probably a reflection of the folk I interact with most on each of these.
 
I had no idea when I started these regular postings that 2020 would be the year of Covid-19. I had no idea people would be trapped in their homes and that I too would have a vastly different pattern to my daily activities. Looking back on it, the creation of a timetable with deadlines was probably the single best thing I could have done, as it helped me give form to a week where days could otherwise have been indistinguishable from one another, save for the occasional trip to the shops. If you're fortunate to live with other human beings, I can tell you first-hand, that being on your own during the pandemic has been far more trying than in regular times when one can come and go at will. At times it has felt like being in solitary confinement and I for one will be glad to see a return to normality in 2021, even though I'm not personally a very gregarious person. Even now my sleep patterns remain largely divorced from the clock as I'm so used to the feeling that there are no appointments to keep and nobody is going to be knocking on the door. (Hence writing this at four in the morning!)
 
I suppose, on reflection things could have been worse in 2020. Yellowstone could have erupted. No civilisation-killer asteroids crashed into the earth. Aliens haven't invaded and started shooting up the place. Apart from the pandemic and Brexit I think we've got off quite lightly really!
 
For those of you who are disappointed that my regular postings end today, I will continue to post sporadically as the mood takes me, however I plan to take the timetable principle and the allotted time to devote to another potentially more lucrative activity. I have not made a final decision as to what that might be. Someone suggested I should weave the Spain related anecdotes into a book which had not occurred to me. I had in mind a couple of other writing-related ideas, so I want to spend some time teasing these out and look at the best one to pursue.
 
In the mean time, here's a poem wot I wrote. I haven't written a poem since I was at school so don't laugh, but it's just a stream of consciousness thing about the things my nose encounters here on a daily basis, so don't go looking too hard for rhyme!
 
Of sun-born olive-branch bonfires
Of over-revved two-stroke engines
Of early morning bleached pavements
Of just-baked loaves off the bread-man's van
Of coiffured old women pebble-dashed in talc
Of elderly men dripping in Tabac
Of expresso and tostadas 
Of the secret smell of budding ganja
Of churros and chocolate
Of workman's sweat and builder's dust
Of puros scenting up the street
Of frying squid and boiling octopus
Of brandy, ponche and anis
Of sun-scorched earth and tar then rain, reminding us of life again
These are the things I smell in Spain, of life, of love, of being sane.
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, December 27, 2020 5:02:00 AM Categories: Andalusia blogging Christmas Coronavirus Covid-19 dystopia Poetry Spain Spanish Spanish culture
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The Tyger

Things that go bump in the night
The Tyger
I felt eyes burning from behind. I heard a growl so low it could have come from the depths of Hades. It was a big cat.
 
I'm running now. It may have been a tiger, a jaguar, perhaps a leopard but who cares when you're scared. Feline taxonomy becomes secondary to survival. I just knew it moved stealthily and with intelligence. Whichever way I ran it took a shortcut towards me. Hide? Forget it. Had to keep moving.
 
Then I caught a break. I opened the kitchen door and stood to the side. The beast's momentum carried it outside. I slammed the door shut then ran back upstairs to close the windows in my jungle house above. Quickly upwards, lungs bursting. Another floor, another floor to the top. I heard the growl again. The big cat had climbed a nearby tree and was waiting. It came in through the window. At this point I started to throw objects at the snarling animal - fruit, vegetables whatever came to hand. That's when I woke up!
 
One generally awakens quickly from a nightmare, though I noticed as I journeyed into consciousness that I'd made a mental note to source weapons of a more practical nature such as spears or knives, in case I were I to find myself in that position again. Then things became clearer.
 
It was stupid o'clock and under normal circumstances I would have rolled over and gone back to sleep. However my mind was still racing from being chased by the big predator so I knew nodding-off again was not an option. There was only one thing for it.. Twitter!
 
I grabbed my smartphone and lay there in the dark scrolling through the wall of micro-stories. Lots of marketing (note to self, why do I bother following all these sodding online marketers - OK they follow back but they post such crap, much of it automatically scheduled making sure my feed is polluted with pithy motivational messages even in the middle of the night).
 
There were lots of stories about the local UK elections. Basically the Labour party had gained more seats than the Tories, but because the Tories had anticipated a poor result and Labour a big one, the Tory Twitter brigade were claiming it as a huge victory. Another not to self: 'Truth' is the first casualty of a politicians opening their mouths!
 
Then a ballsack-grabbing headline caught my eye. "Knesset gives power to Netanyahu to declare war with single vote backing". That seemed important. It's not just that the power to start a war is sliding from a cabinet towards an individual i.e. the shift from democracy towards totalitarianism. It is that legislation such as this does not pop-out of thin air. Somebody has gone to the trouble of asking for this, of planning it. What is the motive? What is the intention? Worryingly Netanyahu had, a few hours before, given a presentation claiming Iran had lied about it's nuclear program. Are Israel about to declare war on Iran, who they're claiming are a nuclear power in hiding? This sounds bad. 
 
Immediately the first thing to do is to fact-check. The original Tweet was on RT or RTNews as I recall and had a link to the Knesset. To further confirm the story I checked the Knesset website in English and found the relevant press release [https://knesset.gov.il/spokesman/eng/PR_eng.asp?PRID=13851]
 
This had been announced on Monday 1st May and I was only finding out on the following Saturday. That surprised me because I read a lot of news and have feeds and alerts pumping information to me all the time. So I thought I'd do a quick search in case I'd missed this important story. Well there was nothing in the Daily Mail, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The New York Times or the Washington post. Doing a general search of Google news, there were a few local/blog-type Jewish and Arab publications reporting the story but the only internationally known news source carrying it was Al Jazeera. [https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/991365553012002817]
 
I'd be a very rich man if I only had a microBitcoin for how many times I've had it said to me - 'Oh but you don't want to listen to RT or Al Jazeera, they're not credible news sources you know. Not trust-worthy like the BBC for example'. Well as an after-thought I just checked the BBC and there was no mention there either. 
 
One has to ask why this piece of news was not more widely circulated. Do they not want to worry us? Well, the newspapers seem to spend most of their time keeping us in a state of fear. My guess is, there is something planned that they don't want us to know about just yet in case we start to rally against it. I think that Israel will attack Iran and/or Syria soon.
 
Perhaps there is a reason I was dreaming about being stalked by a fearsome big cat. I thought back to William Blake:
 
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
 
The Tyger in this poem is more than a wild animal. The protagonist who sees the Tyger goes on to ask several questions of the beasts appearance in relation to the supreme deity which created it. Blake is challenging us to rise above the meekness of the lamb of God and to realize the suppressed spiritual power in our soul. Blake sent us the Tyger to wake us the fuck up. In my case, he succeeded.
 
[Disclaimer - I jotted this down after the nightmare a year ago and never got around to blogging it before. Since then there thankfully has been no large-scale invasion of Iran/Syria by Israel - yet!]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, January 19, 2020 4:38:00 PM Categories: Dreams Israel Poetry
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