'The Little Girl' - a guest post

Today, a very special guest post for a very special person in my life, Lisa, by her father 'Bulldog'. It needs no further introduction.


The Little Girl . . .
. . . the first years and selected vignettes.

The Little Girl was a surprise. Not unwelcome, mind you. Never a fleeting thought of that.

Not that there wasn’t some concern. Daddy had finished his third year at university, and Mommy was working. With scholarships, Daddy’s summer job, Mommy’s work, and some student loans, they were getting by – but just barely.

The concern ended at the first heartbeat. But . . . PARENTS! How does one become a parent? Where’s the book? Where can one take a course? Is panic appropriate? We’re only kids ourselves.

Mommy and Daddy lived in a second-floor walk-up flat with hand-me-down furniture, no air-conditioning, and a bunch of critters that ran for cover in the kitchen when the lights were switched on.

This would not do. Not for The Little Girl. Daddy and Mommy cornered the landlady. Either evict the critters, or find new tenants. The critters were gone within a week. The Little Girl was not to learn “Bug on ME!” for a while. Then, Daddy made his first-ever credit purchase – a Sears window air conditioner, back when it was still Sears, Roebuck & Co.

The Little Girl made her appearance in mid-summer. Good timing that, because university was not in session and Daddy was able to continue summer work to save up for the fall semester. The Little Girl was born at 7:11 a.m. She was destined either to be very lucky – or to manage a convenience store. Daddy hoped for the former.

Vignette: In those days, fathers were not allowed in the delivery room, so Daddy waited. When the nurse told him it was a little girl, he rushed to the nursery. With his hands and nose pressed against the glass, he saw Her. Daddy cried. Of happiness, of course. First born. A Little Girl. THE Little Girl.

The Little Girl was a happy baby. Tow-headed, giggly, and with a smile that would melt a heart at forty paces. That fall, Daddy switched to mostly night classes so he could be with The Little Girl during the day, and Mommy could bring home something of a paycheck. Balancing the checkbook. Loans. Struggles. More than a few worries. But, with one wrinkly-nosed grin from The Little Girl . . . the worries didn’t matter. And, by the next summer, The Little Girl was zooming around like she owned the place. In fact, she did.

Vignette: Mommy and Daddy took The Little Girl outside and set her in the middle of a blanket. To the little hand touching the grass it was barbed wire, and her world was an eight-foot square. She didn’t seem to mind. Neither did her blue bunny.

The Little Girl didn’t notice, but Mommy had a little surprise planned. In the fall, something called “A Little Brother” showed up. The Little Girl didn’t know what to think of A Little Brother, but within a year, she was The Big Sister, and proud of it. She still is.

Vignette: See Mommy carrying A Little Brother into the house, See Daddy carrying The Little Girl. See Daddy slip and fall in the mud in the front yard. See The Little Girl covered in mud with a puzzled look. See Daddy laugh. See The Little Girl laugh.

Two years later, Daddy graduated. He had a real job. Mommy and Daddy threw all their broken-down furniture over the balcony to be hauled off, packed up a couple of beds, a crib, a TV, The Little Girl and A Little Brother and moved. Omaha . Gateway to the west. Where The Little Girl still lives. With a Little Girl of her own.

Later, Mommy and Daddy moved. The Little Girl was older, and on her own. Then came summer and The Little Girl's birthday. It was a Wednesday. Walking through the garage at work, it was the first time they were separated on her birthday. Daddy cried . . .

Little Girls make you do that, but you wouldn't trade them for the world.

By Bulldog.

Watch out there's a poet about - Guest Post

As if it's not enough that I peddle my doggerel to captive audiences and the unwary shoppers of Milton Keynes I now swoop onto Gemmak's blog and spill it out here too. Thanks to her for giving me the space.

Two poems; slightly bizarre ones I'm afraid but a lot of what I write seemed inappropriate for this blog.

The first is a bit more accessible and resulted from me thinking about the number of words Eskimos/Inuits etc are supposed to have for snow and then I realised we have just as many for the word "time". Interesting how it features so heavily in our lexicography.

The second is far more obscure and was written when I was playing around with the idea of Jack Kerouac's stream of consciousness style and is really about the representation of deities and how every culture I know of has at least one "god". I know they are both not what you would consider 'poems' in the traditional sense as they are written in free or blank verse - I do write "proper poems" too like villanelles and sonnets but hey, something different is fun too.

If you have a passion to read more of my poems (or even hear my voice - eek) then you can click here.

IanB (a.k.a. Alex Sykie, a.k.a. Punctuation on Wordpress).


Time
----------------------
Time kills.
So we kill time.
Time heals.
Does everything heal with time?
Time is made of some sort of plastic
because Dr Who and Einstein can bend time.
Although it’s quite small since it’s
so easy to lose track of time.
Time can be stolen.
We steal time.
We take a minute,
snatch a second.
Time has wings,
time flies.
Time deceives,
time can play tricks.
Time changes everything.
Everything changes with time.
Time passes and,
once it’s gone
it never comes back.
You can’t own time though,
we never “have” time.
Time is addictive nowadays
because we never seem to have
enough time.
Unless you’re in prison;
then you can’t get rid of it,
you have time on your hands,
you’re doing time,
your own time not anyone
else’s, just yours. The judge
gave you time as your master
and now you serve time.
Until it’s finished with you
or, like money, you’ve spent all your time on nothing,
wasted your time and now you’ve had it,
you’ve run out of…time.

Friend
----------------------
This is the spirit of Kerouac. Chelsea Hotel
spirit, English-style.

I mean it though. To you:

I used to call you friend.

I cried and you listened to my sobbing.
I laughed and the laughter bounced back.

And we lied about understanding.
It was the easy thing to do.
It tussled with my rational side.

You were my morning friend. My good-time
friend. My comfort.

I used to call you friend.

Do you remember the songs?

Happy, clappy songs.
It tussled with my rational side.

We were wreathed in sweet-smelling smoke
and chimes. A childhood duty,
kissing feet, wiping cloth, reading
what we couldn't do and never what we could.

Authorised words. Approved and translated.

Then songs about being happy to die because
there would be something there. A song relying
on trust. A tussle with my rational side.

You were never my rock standing in a sand-filled
desert, filled with emptiness. You were never
the hand that guided the art.

White man. White woman. Nails in the wrong places.

Olive in the skin. Oil on the hair. Painted
by the gentiles.

Words that banned things. Stipulations,
prostrations by action and abstention,
by observance in reverence. Until the difference
between the free and those who still listened
grew greater in my mind.

And the difference between the free and me
became so paper-thin you could rub your
fingers through it and they would touch.

Such a fine gap. It tussled with my
rational side.

Move on move on. More wraiths of smoke.
Breath in for peace, hold and release.
Breath in for solace, for solace, for solace.

Mind walks, takes a run up and jumps into the
dream sky of possibilities.

Made our friendship look very different.
Less rules, more creativity. More of
everything: colours, creeds, good and bad.

I used to call you my friend.

Breathed in, moved to the jungle beat.
Made our friendship look very very very different.
Gave you a new face, a new size.

I danced in the warehouse. I danced in the street.
Everybody was there but I was on my own.

Then I hugged the trees. I squeezed their bark
and ran my hands up and down them; my connectors
to the Earth, a divination of you. Stroking them
with my palms and hugging the hard woody trunk like
a lover come back from a long journey and you don't
want to let them go.

Your face looked so very very different and you
lived everywhere and you were truly beautiful.

It tussled with my rational side.

Dreams we have as children - guest post

An alarm goes off; a hand reaches out from under the covers, picks up the phone and fumbles with the buttons. Some days the hand, correctly, selects snooze. Other days, it cancels the alarm. But that’s why there are two alarms. It drops the phone on the pillow, grabs the covers and pulls them up tight. One final, futile attempt to take refuge in a dream world which is departing, rapidly, as the morning sun sneaks in under the curtains.

The cat just watches from his vantage point on the bed. He is also in no hurry to get up. The bed is soft and warm, and he still has a full belly from the night before. Plus, he has seen this happen every morning for the past few years. He is used to it.

The alarm goes off again. The hand fumbles, fails to find the phone which has slipped between the pillow and the covers. The alarm gets louder. Grumbling and mumbling the figure rises from the bed. To those who doubt evolution; this strange, hairy beast, grunting and gesturing like some sort of Neanderthal, manages to leave no doubt that we are in fact related to primates. Some of us more than others, it seems. Covers are thrown open; the cat stands up with a mixture of grace and indignation, pausing to stretch - doubling his size before yawning with his maw wide.

The phone is found. The alarm is shut off. The figure grunts, scratches; leaves the bedroom. It’s a hideous sight to behold. The cat watches. The bed is left a mess.
Over the next minutes, a kettle is boiled; coffee or tea is brewed and drunk. The figure evolves from a naked, hairy beast to an almost civil human being. The cat is fed and sits in front of his plate dragging most of his food onto the floor. Inexplicitly, cat food must taste so much better from the ground.
The figure leaves for the day, the cat relaxes; he has the house to himself.

-x-
Turn back the clock.

There is no alarm. There is barely light creeping in under the curtains. If you listen very, very carefully you might be able to make out the sound of birds chirping to themselves in the trees; a tentative start to the dawn chorus. A light is flicked on, curtains are thrown open. A radio shaped like oversized headphones is turned on and a young boy is bounding around the room full of energy; the sort of energy most adults can only obtain by dangerous amounts of caffeine or the abuse of non-prescription medication. He dreams of being an astronaut, an artist, a rock star, a policeman, a fireman, a cowboy. Each day it’s different. He’ll stand in front of the radio with his red, plastic guitar (the one with the yellow wobble bar) and strum along to the latest single by Pink Floyd, or the Who, or Queen. He’ll get on his little white police motorbike (the plastic one, with the little red walkie-talkie) and re-enact the last episode of C.H.I.P.S. or he’d run around with his imitation colt 45 and pretend to shoot red Indians (who were different to that nice Indian couple that lived next door and came around every so often, sharing their strangely spicy, but really rather nice, food with him and his parents) that everyone knows are the baddies of the wild west. He really wants to go into space and looks forward to the day England buy one of those new space shuttle things.
He thinks girls are yucky and never wants to be married; the ones on his street are forever playing with their dolls and pushchairs. He’d rather race up and down the road on his bike, and really wants to be able to do all those tricks the BMX riders on the telly can; last time he tried though, he ended up in a neighbour’s hedge and almost bent his front wheel.

He likes camping out in the back garden; even if the ants find him and sneak into his cheese salad sandwich. He loves being outside and to the consternation of his parents, likes to tear up and down the garden in the midday sun. “You’ll get all hot doing that!” his mother cries to him, but he doesn’t care; he is having fun.
Every day is an adventure. Every day is filled with imagination and fantasy.

-x-
There is a point, somewhere on the roadmap of life, where childhood whimsy is abandoned as we face up to the harsh realities of life. England will never have a Space Shuttle. C.H.I.P.S. was oddly camp and not at all reflective of the highway patrol, either here or in California, then or now. Girls actually aren’t that bad, well most of the time; and even if he goes on x-factor or any of those “lack of talent” shows, he has to accept the fact that he’ll never be a rock star. Of course, he can accept that, but he likes to forget he accepted it from time to time.

-x-
It has been too long since I wrote, since I blogged. When the offer was made to me by Gemmak to be a guest blogger, I won’t say I jumped at the chance but I found myself rubbing my head and thinking “where am I?” and “how did I get here?” which led, naturally perhaps, into the dreams I had as a child. Inside, although I’ve grown and changed, I’m fundamentally the same person I’ve always been. Yes, the packaging may be a bit dented and tatty in places, but I’ve not really lost any of my awe and wonder of the world. Yes, I have had to grow up and accept the fact that reality, more often than not, sucks. But I feel like I’ve retained some of the naivety and innocence I had as a child. Maybe that’s the sign of a creative mind? (I’m told people like John Lasseter retain a child-like quality, enthusiasm, energy about them; so if that’s true then I’m in good company)
The dreams we had as children, they’re not always feasible or realistic. But they were fun, weren’t they? We should never lose sight of them, and revisit our innocence from time to time. I think it’s what keeps us young.

Thank you,

NON53N53 April 2009

It's my birthday....

.... and for obvious reasons it's going to be a difficult one but it is made considerably better by Daisy the Curly Cat, the best cat in the blogosphere agreeing, very kindly, to write a guest post for me.

Thank you Daisy and thank you to your mommie for taking the time and for making me smile on a day I don't much feel like smiling.

A Shelter Cat’s Story.
Hi everyone! It’s me, Daisy!


I am so excited to get to write a guest post for my friend. My Mommie is a volunteer at a no-kill cats-only rescue shelter, so I wanted to share a story about one special kitty’s journey.

His mother was a feral cat who came to the shelter to be spayed and released, only it turned out that she was pregnant and due to deliver right then. This little kitten and his littermates went straight into foster care until they were big enough to live at the shelter, and he was named “Neptune.”


When Neptune finally went to live at the shelter, they stole some of his blood with a needle. Then they stabbed him with a needle two times. Next, they put some stinky stuff in his neck furs, and his sharp little baby claws got trimmed. And then they made little Neptune eat some yucky-tasting medicine. Our boy was a brave kitten and did not growl or bite even once. When he was big enough, he was also taken to the clinic and given some medicine to make him feel sleepy. When Neptune woke up, he was surprised to find that his “boy-parts” had been taken away! Neptune was a little sad about that, but he got over it by the next day, for the other cats explained that the medicines and tests and such were to make sure he was healthy and stayed that way for a long time.


Finally, Neptune got put into his very own little room with plenty of fresh water, food, toys, a soft bed, and a litter box. He was sick for a little while with ringworm, but they did not kick him out because of that. Eventually, Neptune and his littermates got moved to the adoption area. Little Neptune was very excited that he might get to have a Forever home of his very own.


Pretty soon, all of Neptune’s littermates were adopted. Nobody wanted Neptune. But he was a happy kitten by nature, so he kept busy playing with the other cats and kittens at the shelter. He was sure that someone would see how handsome he was and adopt him any day. People came to visit Neptune, and the other cats. Sometimes, people would look at him and say things like “this one is cute” and “how about him?” but they always picked another cat. He waited and waited, for six long months and did not ever give up hope.

Until one day, a nice lady that volunteered at the shelter put him in a carrier and took him to her home. She explained to him that he would get to live with her family FOREVER! And Neptune got his true name, which was Harley. You see, this is the story of how my brother Harley came to live with me. But Harley’s story is not unique. There are thousands of wonderful cats and kittens just like Neptune waiting for their chance to become someone’s Harley.



You can keep up with Daisy and Harley everyday HERE.

'Heroes'..... A guest post

For reasons that I don't think I need to explain I seem unable to string together more than a few coherent sentences lately and it was thus that late last night I put a shout out on Twitter for anyone who fancied guesting here. 'Alex' (@redalexred), a fellow blogger and twitterer offered to help me out almost immediately. For those of you who don't know Alex, he is a serving RAF officer with more than a few exciting tales to tell on his own blog Balderdash and Piffle, so, I will duly instruct you to take a trip over there sometime and let him take over here for today!

Oh...and if anyone else would like to guest post here just drop me a mail or a comment, subject your choice!

Over to you Alex....

Heroes.

My first hero would have had to have been Trevor Francis. The first million pound footballer (well almost his transfer fee was £999,999 but it’s close enough!). He came from Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest and became my hero when he scored the goal to win the European Cup in 1979. He dived into the box in front of the goal to head in a cross by John Robertson, landing on a concrete “shot put” circle by the goal. I was allowed to stay up late and watch the game (which was very dull) but the goal got me bouncing around the room. MY club had won the European Cup! And the player that did won it…well he became my first real hero. I was 10. But footballers retire. They disappear and new ones replace them…Stuart Pearce, Stan Collymore, but they weren’t the same. They weren’t real heroes to me. Just other players

Since then I have had a couple…in the 1980’s and early 90’s Bruce Springsteen was a bit of a hero to me. He just made this excellent music that spoke to me. Talked to me. Took me out of a crappy, cold council house bedroom in the Uttoxeter and off to a place in the sun with cars, and guitars, and girls, and beer and music, and soft, soft summer rain, with barefoot girls sitting on the hoods of cars. It was like a new world to me. I slowly built up a collection of everything he had put onto vinyl . I made tapes. I would have weekends where I would play his music song by song, album by album, in consecutive order from first to last. I had a wall with posters of him, books on him…looking back, it’s probably a bit obsessive compulsive to be honest. But HEY! I was 14-16. It’s the age to get obsessive.

But for some reason he stopped being my hero. He stopped speaking to me and his music went off in a direction I disliked. All this fake folk stuff, a devotion to Pete Seeger he suddenly found. When everything he had said before was about his devotion to Phil Spektor! It was like he had turned his back on me…and so I turned my back on him…I can’t listen to anything he has produced since The Ghost of Tom Joad. I still listen to the earlier stuff. When he was raw, and, to me, true.

But one day I was idly watching a bit of TV and found a real hero.

I had got into the outdoors and was interesting in watching anything with mountains and hills in, and there was a programme about South Georgia. And the name Ernest Shackleton was mentioned.

Now I’d heard of him, he was some explorer dude. Went to the South Pole? Yeah that was it.

But I watched and heard his story. And was captivated. This man, he failed at getting to the Pole. He’d fallen out with Scott…but he did this amazing thing.

He took a ship to the Antarctic with the aim of walking a team across the whole continent. But the ship he was on had gotten stuck in the ice. The ship was stuck fast and then it was crushed by the ice!

He led his crew through almost 2 years of privations and hardships and discomforts, living on the ice-floes, watching their ship be crushed and sink. Transferring to three life boats, they lived on the ice until the ice broke up enough to sail the boats to the nearby Elephant Island. From here he took 5 others across the South Atlantic sea, in an open boat for over 800miles…aiming for the island of South Georgia. This he did, but managed to land on the wrong side of it, and then be unable to relaunch the boat. So he and 2 others walked across the island. Over mountains 4000foot high. Over glaciers, and through deep deep snow. With just a carpenters adze as an ice ax.

Once over the mountains – something that has only been repeated once by modern mountaineers with modern kit, he organised a rescue party and returned to Elephant Island to rescue his crew. NOT ONE PERSON DIED.

And Shackleton led this party. He was the one who made sure that all his crew made it home from an ordeal that must have been completely unimaginable.

Why did he become a hero? Simply because it takes a real hero to do this stuff. He got the right people, and he organised them, led them, motivated them…inspired them.

And this is what a real hero should do. He (or she!) should inspire us. They should make us want to be something better than we are. Do more than we are doing. Reach further than we are reaching. Yes heroes have their faults – Shackleton was a bit of a ladies man – but that’s what makes them more inspirational to me.

If these real people can have faults like the rest of us, but still do so much – then there is hope for me. Maybe I can be a better person if I do a little bit like they do.

If I push myself diving into the box like Francis did, knowing that I might land badly but still score the goal. If I can take people’s minds away from the boredom and drudgery of life like Springsteen did and open their eyes to a whole new world. If I can motivate people like Shackleton to overcome terrible cold and fear…well I might just be a bit of a better person…if I can use a little bit from each person maybe I’ll grow and change. And maybe that’ll make me be a bit of a hero to the people in my life that I want to be a hero for. My children.

Alex.

Swinging the lantern

Occasionally we read or hear something that pulls us up short and makes us examine our priorities, bringing life, and how horribly fragile it can be, into crystal clear focus!

Why one piece of information or story really 'gets' us as opposed to another I don't know, lets face it, we aren't short of stories of personal tragedy or world crisis, we see death, destruction and disaster in such copious quantities in the media it may even begin to have the opposite effect on us as our minds become desensitised in their effort to cope with such a dismal overload.

So perhaps one item connects in our minds because of simpler things, the way we hear of it, the way it is written or spoken or perhaps because as in the piece of writing I am about to direct you to, because it's written by someone real, someone we know, a normal individual who lives a normal life just like the rest of us but who contrary to most of us has faced situations in the course of that life that the most of us just can't imagine.

Balderdash and piffle, a blog I only recently began reading, carried one such piece of writing yesterday, the post is long but it is one of those you will find yourself glued to. Alex, it's author serves in the RAF and was directly underneath the very first launch of a Patriot missile when it shot down an Iraqi Scud in 1990, during the Gulf war. THIS post is his account of that experience and I promise you, it will make your blood run cold and you will thank your lucky stars, that no matter the politics of a conflict, that whilst the pundits and politicians sit in the comfort of their offices 'considering and criticising', we have service personnel with the fortitude to manage situations most of us wouldn't even care to imagine!