You'll get there in the end

Blue Square. M Charlton

Ten days into November it is getting tougher to write a post a day. So I looked at the web site of the National Blog Posting Month, hoping for inspiration. There are over 500 interest groups, but one in particular caught my eye - Writing Prompts - described as, helpful to bloggers who are struggling for something to say. I was tempted to join.

But I didn't.

And the reason is that although I don't like being stuck, I prefer it to prattling on about 'autumn leaves' or 'five reasons to love Mondays' just because it is the theme of the day. One of the pleasure I get from writing is the way it structures my thoughts, and though it can be a challenge to make this interesting for others, it would not be eased by forcing random subjects on you.

I suppose I could knock up an emergency list of relatively straight forward posts (believe me, the collections series has long way to go yet) but that would feel like cheating. And in any case, I like to use my regular themes as sort of punctuation between more thoughtful items. No, that's not a proper solution.

Nor is asking what you'd like me to write. I've been toying with idea of doing a survey on the best of the bike shed, but not now and in this context. I might get a host of suggestions I'd feel obliged to try - in which case I might as well have joined the 'Writing Prompts' group.

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artists Way, suggests making an artist's date every week. The idea is to take yourself somewhere different and intersting. You should go alone she advises (cheap date) and spend at least an hour taking it all in. You could go to a gallery or a museum, but you might equally chose a railway station, an airport, the sea. Her suggestion is a good one, but not very practical at the moment: I need all my spare time to blog.

Julia is also a big fan of morning pages as a way of writing more freely. I agree that we need to experiment to make progress, and practicing, as I wrote in quality not quantity, can be important too. But I'd argue that practice and experimentation work best when you already have an idea spinning, or a notion at least. And these are largely private activities: writing as a 'stream of conscience' might free some people up, but it is seldom good to share.

Pondering all this reminded me of a painting class I once attended; we were asked to take a walk and draw our response to the landscape. I was struck with the same mental block, the more I looked the less I felt. As we neared the time to return I started scribbling - truly dreadful stuff, embarrassingly so. Why? Because I felt obliged. And yet when the class gathered again my tutor said, 'Has anyone been brave enough to leave a blank page?' I was so annoyed.

My philosophical side tells me I should embrace the whole idea of stuckness. After all, some people spend years meditating to achieve it, or something akin to it anyway. At work we lament the lack of thinking time, then wonder why so much of our 'doing' is ineffective. And many brilliant writers have had long fallow periods - Jean Rhys comes to mind - so I'd be in good company too.

Perhaps the trick is not to be phased by the challenge. When I took on my first mortgage I didn't worry about the years of commitment that would follow. When I cycled the Alps I let my mind wander as a way to dull the effort. They say much the same about running a marathon - take one step at a time...

I suspect that blogging is like that too - let one post lead to another - and you'll get there in the end.

Collections 9 - Raku

Why do I write about my collections? The idea was that they would reveal a little of me, and perhaps in describing them I'd see myself differently too. However, I'm struggling to think what my collection of raku pottery can tells us, though perhaps the unique firing process is a good place to start.

First and foremost, it first requires a quality pot (strong and well structured) which is then biscuit fired (no nonsense there) before being dipped in a glaze (subtlety toned), fired a second time (my reflective side perhaps?) and finally thrust into a bin of sawdust (a controlled risk) which combusts to create the (intricate and beautiful) finished article. So there you have it - all about me again.

I like the mix of structure and chance in raku. I like the limited colours balanced by the endless possibilities of pattern and shape. And I like it that there are hundreds of artisan potters who work in the medium - this means that raku is relatively inexpensive to collect.

For example, the vase in the opening photograph was made by Mick Morgan, a potter from Carmarthen. It cost me £40 fifteen years ago and yet I get pleasure from it every day. I have a number of Mick's pots; they are all simple in their design, and therein lies their quality. They are probably my favourite pieces.

My most expensive ones are the 'flat cows', the signature works of Lawson E Rudge. He is heir to a dynasty of potters. His son Lawson junior is well known for his pigs; his daughter Kesa for dogs; and Dillon for his cats.

All my Rudge pieces arrived at significant moments. I bought the large cow when Jane and I first lived together; she bought me the 'big pig' about a year later! When Mike was born I bought the whippet and when Dylan came along I treated myself to another cow, this one more quirky than the last.

The cows all have numbers on the back, always a combination of the figure 2 and 5. There are various stories about this, but the one I like best is that Lawson bought a set of branding irons and couldn't understand why there was not a number 2 - until someone showed him how to reverse the number 5.

Good ceramics are like that - they can be viewed from all sides; always different, yet always the same. And I'd like to think I'm a little that too.

Not playing dead

On Saturday morning we are driving past a churchyard. Dylan asks, 'Why do they put persons in the ground when they die?'

I tell him that people like to remember their family, and a grave is a special place to do that.

'But they can't see them anymore,' he replies.

I concede as much.

'Or touch them.'

No.

'Well I don't want to be in the ground...'

Dylan ...

'...In a box'.

Look at the lovely tress, I suggest, my voice faltering as I drive a little faster.

**************

In the bottom corner of this blog there is a list with the title of Room 101. It is my light hearted take on the TV show of the same name. I could no doubt add to the list many times over.

But readers of George Orwell's 1984 will know that the original Room 101 was something more sinister: it housed our deepest fears. Do it to Julia, cries Winston Smith when confronted with a cage of rats. His will is broken, his resistance dissolved.

If my list were to follow the book and not the TV programme, it would have one entry: the premature death of my children. I can think of no greater horror, and no circumstance that could redeem it. To say, I would rather die myself, is an inadequate cliche for a visceral fear that is beyond my words.

Returning to Dylan's comments on graveyards, he was soon distracted but my mind couldn't shift the thought. I recalled a series of poems by John Latham that are amongst the most moving verses I have ever read.

I met John on a course in 2007; he is an intelligent and sensitive man, a scientist and a fabulous poet. In 2000 his son, an adult by then, suffered a fatal asthma attack; John found his body the following morning.

In response to his loss John wrote a series of poems, later published in the collection Sailor Boy. He read us one poem that describes his fight to resuscitate his son - it is written as a conversation, and I remember how he raised the lilt of his voice as he spoke on his son's behalf, RelaxDad, Game's lost...

The poem moves between time and memory; I can't imagine how he found the strength to read it aloud.

Not Playing Dead

I'm more easy with your body

than for thirty years.

I'd toss you to the ceiling,

twirl you, pull you down,

you'd pin me, I'd play dead.

Now, it's you who fool with me,

you loll, a floppy doll

as I kneel between your feet

squeeze and thump your chest

beg you to fight with me.

It's too one sided to be true.

But in my head you're saying

Relax Dad, games's lost now,

though keep on if you wish.

As if, from some pale twilight

that thickens as you cool

you sense that I'll be glad

we had this wrestling match,

this closeness in my failure

to make you breath again.

John Latham

Burbage

We are at Burbage Edge first thing on Saturday morning. It is bitterly cold, the palest of blue skies with heavy clouds scurrying over from Edale. A slow trickle of climbers leaves the lay-by, the collars of their jackets pulled high against the wind.

We walk down the track, passing the climbers huddled under Little Wall and Triangle buttress. They are uncoiling ropes and blowing into cupped hands. The path is wet, the puddles mirroring the sky as the sun brightens and the bracken glows in all its chestnut glory.

I feel an acute sense of awareness, as if every step is one I've taken before: the peat as it squelches underfoot; each gritstone sinking into the mire; the trickle of the stream as it runs under the track.

As the track passes below the far end of the cliffs that climbers call Burbage North, I strike up the hillside and call to the others to follow. Dylan is whinging with the cold, but we cajole him on. 'Let me show you something,' I say. 'Something your Dad did long ago'.

We clamber up the boulders, under stunted trees and over grassy ledges to arrive beneath a steep buttress. The rock face is still cold but it is drying in the sun; a fissure in the lower wall oozes a green slime. 'This is Long Tall Sally,' I say, one of my better climbing efforts.

Mike looks at the blank slab and I explain how the route is climbed. It means little to him. In truth, I can't remember much, except a delicate blend of friction and bottle. I try the starting moves and get nowhere. Dylan follows me up the lower ledge and I worry he will fall so I retreat ungracefully but with thanks. By now the cold has crept inside our hats and coats.

We climb to the top of the crag. Jane gets stuck in a shallow gully, so I give her my hand and pull. We ought to go back, she says, if we turn now the wind will be behind us. I want to go on, further into my past, but I know the others don't share the enthusiasm. Dylan gives me a look that says 'carry please', so I distract him, telling him that somewhere near here is lion's cage; if he runs fast he might find it. 'You're tricking me again,' he replies.

As we near the road, there is shallow boulder on the moor to our right. It is about twenty yards off the path. I have an urge to go over and follow a sheep track through tussocks, stumbling as my boots catch the heather . A grouse panics and flaps skyward in flurry of feathers. I hop onto the rock, look across towards the car - and there it is!

'It's the lion's cage,' I call. 'I knew it was here; come and see, come and see.' Jane and the boys make their way to the boulder - still unbelieving - and I run off ahead, eager to get there first.

The 'cage' is a square of iron railings that stands isolated on the moor. It is silhouetted against the now cobalt sky. My heart is pounding as I slow down for the last few steps and let the memories flood back.

Somewhere in my albums I have a photo of me and Ken and Simon, each of us clinging to bars, pretending to be monkeys - it had been cold that day and none of us fancied climbing. I remember how it took an age to set up the shot using a self timer, and the walkers who passed by, staring at us as we hooted and screeched. I am laughing as I arrive at the same place, twenty five years later.

The cage is no longer complete, the rusted gateposts unsteady to the touch, the bars twisted and flaking. But its basic structure is still there. I pick up a run of fallen railings and hitch its end over one of the iron spikes that remain standing, pressing the other deep into the peat - the new fence holds. Dylan runs over, 'Let me inside,' he calls, 'I want to be a lion too.' We play, chasing each other round this strange edifice, jumping between the rails as Mike pretends to be lion tamer.

I have no idea why the 'cage' was put here; it resembles a grave, but surely not. There is a deep hole in its centre - a flagpole or a mast perhaps? It was old and rotten when I first came, now it is barely clinging on. Yet it retains a certain magic, a sense of incongruity in this bleak and beautiful landscape. It is beautiful in its own way too; the rusting iron somehow harmonious with the peat, the bracken and the flapping grouse.

We finish our game and walk back to the car. The others pile inside as I search though the bags to find my camera. I run back over the moor to take some photographs, sinking my foot in a puddle as I crouch down for a better angle. I reel off a dozen shots before turning to the car.

A few yards later I trip over my lace and land face first in the heather. As I tie it again, the brackish water is squeezed from the nylon cord and trickles into the peat.

Driving North

I am typing this post in the car as Jane drives us for a weekend in the Peak District. I'm using a Samsung notebook which cost less than £300 and has more computing capacity than had my company's mainframe of not that long ago. I've checked my emails, replied to some comments on the blog, transferred some cash between bank accounts and replayed the video of Dylan that I edited last week on this same machine: stunning.

I love computers. Without my PC I would not be interested in, or much good at, writing; I would read less, have fewer friends and be required to go Christmas shopping on a weekend. On a more serious level I would have little or no access to news and information other than through the popular media. And as for reference, if I was lucky, I might have a set of dusty encyclopaedias, decades out of date. The chances are you feel the same because you are reading a blog – and we've all come a long way since people thought using the internet to research an essay was somehow cheating.

Fourteen years ago, I was 'volunteered' for a study tour in the US. The brief was to research newspapers on the internet and write a report on its implications for the UK. I went to visit Apple and Microsoft as well a dozen newspapers that were pioneering online news and bulletin boards (does anyone remember those?). At that time, computer ownership in the US was nearing 10% of households, and cutting edge performance meant a dial up modem and a browser called Netscape Navigator.

When I returned from the States I wrote my report. Nobody took much notice, which was probably just as well. Even my better projections have been surpassed many times over. I remember how experts at the time were predicting computer ownership might one day be as high as 30% of households. And mainstays of today's internet were simply not contemplated: my boys barely function without Wikipedia, eBay and Facebook. It says something about the speed of development that as I typed the last sentence my spell checker recognised Wikipedia and eBay but not Facebook (I'm using Word 2007).

'Where will it all end,' is a common refrain of my father in law. I have no idea – my experience in the States taught me not to predict too far ahead - the only certainty it seems is that technology will take us further than we expect and more quickly too. Whatever happens I hope to embrace it – indeed it is one of my ambitions to become a sad old git who is also a whizz on whatever gadgetry we have by then.

That juxtaposition probably sums me up. I've spent all week at my PC but this weekend I want to walk on the moors; I want to go climbing with my son - to let him touch and smell the same Derbyshire gritstone that was such a part of my youth – and I don't want technology to dull the experience. Blogging in this context feels like an intrusion.

Maybe that feeling offers us the best clue as to the true limits of technology. For I suspect it lies more in our values and desires, than in the constraints of processing power or designers' imaginations. Despite my love affair with computers, there are times when I simply want a break.

Jargon buster

In my office we no longer increase our sales, we drive them. And it's been years since we compared anything, preferring instead to benchmark before engaging with customers – usually to discuss our learnings.

Jargon is common in the workplace, and as a writer I am probably over sensitive to it. In truth most managers know it for what it is - when I was a trainer I used to get work groups to play buzzword bingo and it was always taken as good fun.

Yesterday I came across this website which made me smile. On the first page alone I particularly liked Alpha Geek as the new name for head of Information Technology, and adhocracy, for minimally structured business where teams operate as needed. If you work in an office, I defy you not to laugh.

Jargon shouldn't be confused with technical language. We need this to be specific without being verbose. So poets talk of a villanelle and not a verse with a dual rhyming scheme in which the first and third lines of the first stanza are rhyming refrains that alternate.... In kayaking we use terms like Bow Rudder of Cartwheel; music has its equivalent terminology as have thousands of other activities. These are precise and technical words – they might be unrecognisable by outsiders, but they are not jargon.

Neither too is jargon the same as shorthand, or slang. The other day on a bird watching website there was talk of an Unstreaked Acro – after much searching I realised this referred to an un-marked Acrocephalus Warbler, a rare aberration of a species. Similarly the birders in Pembrokeshire talk of Manxies (Manx Shearwaters) and Ring Tails (young Hen Harriers). There phrases are irritating and cliquey at times, but they are not fully fledged (ha ha) jargon.

Jargon is lazy and imprecise. Whilst the speaker may know what they mean, they are assuming everybody else does too - and in making that assumption they usually omit vital information.

Take for example the trend in our office to engage with clients, or even worse, to interface. Of course, I know this means we have had some sort of discussion. But are we at the early stages of negotiations, or are we nearing Heads of Terms? Are the discussions going well, or have they stalled over commercial differences? Simply saying we are engaged gives me none of this important information. It's the same with driving sales. How are we planning to drive them, in what direction and by which route?

Jargon is part of office life, and it doesn't pay to get overly snobby about it. But it's important to be on our guard, especially outside the workplace. For in the hands of politicians, bankers and the like, it is a powerful tool for avoiding commitment. Jargon allows politicians to give the impression of having answered a question, when in reality they've told you very little and made themselves look smart in the process. And believe me, there is a whole army of spin doctors – both corporate and political - who make a living out of scripting this bullshit.

Remember remember

Bedtime - uncompleted. M Charlton circa 1992

Remember remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason,

Should ever be forgot.

I've never been a fan of Guy Fawkes Night. When I was a child it marked the start of winter, the dark nights and the prospect of snow. Living in the North East, snow meant long days locked in the house with little to do, and my mother urging silence in case we woke up Dad. There seemed little to celebrate in that, but there was more to it.

My father was a policeman. To him, fireworks meant 'trouble'. They were something the 'bad lads' played with; they were synonymous with delinquents and hassle - bangers! were the stuff of demons. Short tempered at the best of times, my father would become fractious as the day neared; you could feel the tension building, for all the wrong reasons.

It would have been better if he had simply refused to play along. But perhaps feeling he ought to make an effort he would buy the smallest box of Standard Fireworks and we'd huddle in the garden to watch the 'show', before he went to work. I remember once, he lit them all in tandem - we were back in the house within three minutes!

As a teenager, fireworks ranked alongside cigarettes and cider as something you hid from your parents. For a few years they held a certain rebellious fascination; we'd go down the beach and set off rockets and occasionally try our hand at home made incendiaries. But always a sense of guilt remained; I could never bring myself properly to join in the fun.

Once, travelling on a bus with some friends, they let off a fire-cracker concealed in a cigarette. The bus driver thought it was an arson attack and drove immediately to the police station - where my father was on duty! I walked off the bus with most of the passengers - to be fair, I had taken no part in the prank - but two of my friends were dragged into the station for questioning and a stern caution. For weeks I was convinced my father would find out; I'd been with the 'bad lads', playing with fire.

Playing with fire: that's a phrase which makes me uneasy too. When I was very small - about seven I think - my father beat me and my brother so badly we were kept off school because of our bruises. Our 'crime' was playing with matches. I often wonder about that incident - for it was around that time there was an enormous fire in a department store in Newcastle; my father had been one of the officers in charge, it was huge event and he felt the strain. Soon after he had what I now realise was a mild nervous breakdown. Bonfires always brought back memories.

I still feel uneasy over fireworks. The new super rockets and huge display packs are somehow too grand. I can't help but think of them as a vulgar waste of money in a world where people are starving - I know that's a touch pompous but it is how I feel. And at the other extreme, sparklers never deliver on the promise of their name - smiles fizzle out before the flame dies and I constantly worry the kids will burn their hands. Of the few fireworks I did like as a child, most are now illegal: does anyone remember London Lights (a sort of bright match which burned a fierce red) or Jumping Jacks or Chinese Crackers.

My sense of guilt has some echos in the Powder Plot itself - after all, Mr Fawkes and his associates went to the Tower for their crimes. There is also a certain symmetry in that the perpetrators were Catholics, who stereotypically carry guilt as if it were a matter of faith. It took the Establishment 200 years or so to forgive them their conspiracy - we still won't contemplate a Catholic monarch. So perhaps I am not entirely alone in my unease.

That said, the concept of blowing up parliament and most of the aristocracy has its appeal...