Mediterranean Blue

Surrounded by blue - the view across the Straights to North Africa

Blue.  Everywhere.  We are surrounded by this intense blue.  It's the first thing I notice on opening my eyes in the morning; a blueness that shimmers and tells me what the day is to be like.  At night, it is navy, punctured by the silver sliver of the moon and the pinpricks of a million stars.  On a winter's morning, it is a fresh, clean, sharpness of blue, and in summer it fades behind a white haze as the sun bleaches even the sky with its heat.

That's what living in Gibraltar is like.  I can pour forth voluminous paragraphs about culture and commerce, finance and shipping, borders and nasty neighbours and politics, apes and tourism, but actually, living here, growing up here, being part of here, is about that incessant, vibrant blue that surrounds us, day in, day out.  

The sky and sea are the dominant features of our lives.  We are perched on a jutting, upwards thrusting narrow rock with limited if lush vegetation and only small opportunities for independent survival. But so tenancious are the indigenous people, mixed over generations of trade and interaction with the rest of the world as we are, gripping onto our rock face with the agility of mountain goats, that we have managed to create an economic success of a pretty tricky situation.  

To the South of the Rock

Yet it is the sea and the sky that dominate our lives and our thinking.  The sea fed us, nurtured us, imprisoned us.  To live and to expand beyond the immediate, we had to sail, to use the sea, learn its ways, read its moods and movements so that we could survive its ferocity.  It was the sea that brought us trade and took us to the rest of the world.  It was the sea and how we could overlook the entry to an ocean, the passage in between two continents, that brought us riches.  

Cruise ship in harbour as the evening draws in

It is the sea that still dominates and shapes us however we try to tame its strength, and it lies there, allowing itself to be fished in and sailed upon, for filth to be poured into it and its resources to be threatened, and for its boundaries to be pushed back.  For now.  Standing at the edge of land - artificial land, created by dropping enormous rocks into the sea - I see a beast with emerald eyes lurking in its depths, waiting to reclaim its own.  What goes around comes around, and I hope not in my lifetime.

Moonrise over the Rock

In the meantime, it is the colour.  I am no psychologist, but that vibrant blue that surrounds us at every turn must surely have an effect on people.  Is that why Gibraltar more than bustles and buzzes, whether with the energy of commerce and enterprise during the working week, or with excitement and passion of sport, music, dance and leisure activities of the weekend?  Music festivals, May Day festivals, National Day festivals, International Song Festival, literary festival, arts festivals, drama festivals, all sorts of sporting tournaments - the variety is endless.  When, on the other hand, the sky turns out grey - and when that odd, easterly cloud, el Levante, sits perched on the Rock like an ill-fitting hat and muffler, the grey cloying and so deep it borders on purple - and the sea is like a layer of slate scales, the mood dulls and deadens and people frown and tell each other their very bones ache with the damp.  Gibraltar on a grey day is like looking at a work of art without the light on and blackout curtains blocking the gallery windows.

I have often wondered to how great an extent the landscape can shape the nature of the people that live in it.  Without a doubt, landscape has inspired much writing - consider the many poems inspired by the awesome beauty of the Lake District, for example.  I cannot avoid but being influenced by the openness of the sky and the intensity of the blue that lies at my feet wherever I stand on this Rock.  I think, unscientific though my observations are, that I can sample a little of that theory of landscape here.  Gibraltar is the gateway to Europe and the guardian of the Mediterranean, and its colour is Mediterranean Blue.

In some ways I can't avoid being drawn to that colour, that light, to the open sky and the unending sea.  This is just one of the stories that shows that influence:

                                         Mediterranean Blue

     Blue is the sky on a fine May morning. It is the sea when the west wind blows across the Straits in June and when the sun sinks into its cool comfort after scorching the surrounding flats all day long. Blue is the intensity of a love given freely and cruelly returned. It is the colour of forget-me-nots nestling by a brook in the greenness of springtime Kent.

     Sara’s eyes were the azure that captures sailors like a whirlpool to drown them in their depths. Sara had seen men drown in shades of grey. That was the only colour her eyes could see:  the leaden shadows of the dank Levanter cloud that had settled on the backs of the buildings that creep up the Rock towards the Tower of Homage; the grey of the steel and glass box that was her office, a rambling, undefined space decorated with white paint, dove fabrics and black fittings; the various shades of the suits – fitted, pinstripe, Prince of Wales check, plain, flared, tailored, and all grey. The hands of disappointment that gripped the inside of her stomach and twisted it each time she thought of those forget-me-nots in Kent were today, as always, the colour of thunderclouds.

     “Enjoy your evening out on Saturday?  Where did you go, casino?”  Jennifer’s cheery Monday morning voice was too pink, her hair too blond, her lips startlingly glossy, her blouse a painful white.

      Sara gave her secretary a frost-bitten stare and the curt answers that best suited the dullness of the day.

      “Oh come on, you went out on the pull, you said,” Jennifer was still only twenty, single and fascinated with the older woman’s lack of lovers.

     “I was joking. A woman my age doesn’t need to go out on the pull. We have far more interesting things to do,” Sara admonished. It had been an eventful Saturday and she did not want to share the details of it with the young paper pusher.

     When Jennifer breezed into Sara’s office with her mid-morning black coffee, Sara had relented a little.

     “My friend Laura and I started at the Marina with a quick meal,” she told Jennifer, hoping to placate her curiosity. She gazed out of the window at the damp of the day trickling like a layer of sweat down the tiled facade of the building opposite. She felt unusually claustrophobic today, enclosed, the outdoors offering no respite from the infinite gloom. The heat of the day belied its dullness. At least in England you rarely suffered this wet heat, where you dripped out of your morning shower and could feel the sweat running down your back as you tried to dry yourself off.

     “Oh, it’s nice there. Then what?”

     “Can you get me copies of the Transport International accounts for last month please?  Oh, we wondered into Spain to meet up with Laura’s cousins and had a great evening dancing flamenco at a bar in Estepona. Very tame really, but fun, and good for the figure.”

     “You hardly need to worry about your figure. You always look great.”

     “Exercise, raw fruit and vegetables, my girl. It would do wonders for your skin too,” Sara turned to examine the accounts and ended the conversation. Jennifer had perfect peaches and cream skin, unusually fair for a local girl, but then her father was English. No, he was Welsh, Sara corrected herself, and might have been her lover all those years ago had she not been so besotted with Nigel.

     Nigel, the tall, fair, green-eyed, fresh-faced Englishman that had helped her with her cumbersome cases into the halls of residence at university all those years ago and who had stopped her heart with a flash of an emerald smile. Nigel was a second year student from Tenterden, a volunteer helping the freshers settle in. Sara had told her parents she intended to return as a teacher, but once she had spent two overawed days in Nigel’s easy company she knew she never wanted to return to a small town jutting out into a sapphire sea.

     In Richmond Park, Sara discovered the scent of grass that is trimmed for the last time before winter, the desolate darkness of the leaves on the oaks just before they crisped to brown and fell to the ground, the velvet of the cloaks of moss that lined the banks of the brooks where she sat with Nigel, both art students, both sketching, he engrossed in his work, she engrossed in him. They dated, they courted, Sara frequented the chapel on Sunday mornings while Nigel trained at the local pool. He had wanted to swim for the Olympic team and had only narrowly missed selecion. Then, for the rest of the week, she struggled with the red flames of desire that coursed through her young veins at his touch, and resisted him.

     “Sara, why don’t you come out with us on Friday this time?” Jennifer bubbled at her through her pastel makeup as they finished for the day and emerged to the pea-soup air that swirled in the street. The concrete beneath Sara’s feet was black and sticky. The evening stank of sewers that had festered in the heat and not been flushed through by rain for weeks.

     “Well, I’ve a lot of work on these days, especially with those gaming houses talking to the bank about finances. I’ll probably have to work through the weekend,” she hesitated, needing friends now more than ever,  “but if I manage to take some time off, I’ll call you.”

     Sara thought of friendship and remembered Nigel. Nigel had been jade, the colour of jealousy and perfidy. She had brushed aside visions of him swathed in cloths of cinnamon spice and tangerine, limbs locked with some of the long-limbed blondes at whom he would glance when he thought she was not looking. A lifetime of gazing at nothing but the grey and white of the pillar of limestone on which she lived, an expanse of blue so bright it burnt the eyes and the sable and olive tones of the sierras across the bay had left Sara with a thirst for green, for the colour of spring, of newness and life.

     It was on a cushion of lush grass and a pillow of bluebells in the early weeks of summer that fateful year that she surrendered to her lust. Nigel had kissed her throat, and the wanting had poured from her in a torrent of crimson that overwhelmed them both. He had lain between her legs and whispered words of love to soothe her until she had sobbed with desire. Then they had sat against a tree and rested, and he had told Sara her eyes were the colour of the forget-me-nots that dotted the green lace that bordered the woods.

     Two weeks later he had told her he was engaged to Lucy; leggy, platinum, big-breasted and with skin creamy white like the top layer of milk in a bottle. Sara had plunged into the indigo depths of a despair so great she thought she would never emerge.

     A month after that, she discovered she was pregnant and she went on to fail all her exams. No boyfriend, no place at college and no hope, so Sara did the only thing Nigel suggested she should. He had even hinted he would leave Lucy if she did it. She did not sleep for a week, so that she saw everything under a haze of scarlet as the veins in her eyes swelled.

      She had not expected the abortion to be so quick. A few moments in surgery and the baby was torn away, a bundle of red and blue, the same red-streaked indigo as her crushed soul.

     Sara had returned to Gibraltar in the oppressive heat of a full Levanter in August. She had been ill for months, which had saved her explaining to her parents why she had had to give up her studies. Nigel had stayed with Lucy, Sara had flushed her soul down a hospital sluice, and her world had been shades of grey ever since.  A monotone existence, except for the times she was able to exact revenge, spill out her bitterness on other men.  At those times, for a few desperately short hours, she could see her world in exquisite colours again.  She thirsted more and more for those few hours.

     “Would you like a lift home?” Jennifer offered, “Mario is picking me up today on his way home from work. His brother will be with him. He’s not much younger than you and very tasty. You’ll like him.”

     “Stop trying to pair me up with anyone, I have no time for playing games with men, and thanks, but I think I’ll walk tonight,” Sara smiled at Jennifer, thinking she should be pleased the girl wanted to include her in her life. But, like Sara, Jennifer had an unerring ability to attract men and enjoyed the chase and conquer games they played occasionally at the local bars. Except all Jennifer did was sleep with her conquests. Sara’s game always ended shrouded in the midnight blue of the sea.

     Sara strolled up to Main Street. The crowds of the day were thinning and Sara paused to buy herself a bottle of rum and some cigarettes. She found it hard to face the infinite black of the night without some form of anaesthesia. She considered buying the day’s newspaper, but refrained, too scared at what might have been found by the Rock’s eager reporters, or by the coastguards. Instead she walked on, through Southport Gates, past Jumpers Bastion and onwards, her strides long and easy despite the thin heels. Now and again she looked to her right, to where the sun broke from the clouds and shot sparks of white light at her from the surface of the sea. That great, grey, groaning beast, where she had left her last lover just a few days earlier, surrounded her. It was everywhere she looked. Sara could not avoid that expanse of slate. She hated it, was terrified of it, yet it drew her, and now it held what was left of him in its cold, watery embrace.

     “I’m sorry, Madam, but you cannot walk through any further, we have closed the Rosia Bay area off to all the public,” the sergeant’s voice terrified her to attention.

     “Oh, I’m sorry officer, I was day dreaming. Do I really have to walk all the way back and then round Europa Road?”  Sara struggled to think.

     “I’m afraid so.”

     “Why is the Bay closed?”

     “We think there’s been an accident. We have divers out there.”

     “Oh dear, is anyone hurt?”

     “A body washed up on the shore. The fourth in the last year. Another suicide, it appears.”

     “My goodness. That’s terrible. Well, I’ll go back then.”

     The sergeant nodded his helmeted head in respect, navy against the backdrop of stone.

Sara managed a smile as she retraced her steps. The chicks return to roost, her grandmother tended to say. She shuddered with ice-blue rage. Another one gone and still no-one had found out. She had triumphed, and it was only in those moments of triumph that she could look out of her window at the Mediterranean and admire its unique blue.

     

Working to write

My favourite writing place - home!

I am a writer because I write.  I don't call myself a professional writer, because I don't write for a living.  At least, I do, but within the context of the work that I am expected to do as a property manager - which does have it's occasional and welcome moments of creativity.  I have great admiration for those who have taken a decision to make writing their career, whether as jobbing journalists or copywriters for a publication, freelancers or novelists and so on.  Unhappily I do not have the courage nor the conviction that I can succeed that is necessary to give up the day job and dedicate myself to a career as a writer.  Perhaps that is partly due to self-confidence although a large measure is down to having no option but to earn a reliable living in order to raise the kids.  And there are many writers across the decades who have had to write in their spare time and yet have published successfully.

Work - uninspiring and constrained - or a route to inspiration and success?
Photo "Business Image" courtesy of Pong at www.freedigitalphotos.net

But having to work for a living and try to find time to write creatively is not necessarily a bad thing.  The world of work can bring its own inspiration and its own opportunities.  For some, this means taking advantage of perhaps a marketing campaign to develop advertising copy for their employing organisation - useful experience and a useful skill.  For others, it might be working on an employee handbook or developing instruction manuals for items that they manufacture.  A myriad of possibilities that can be added to the CV and perhaps used to find "writing jobs".

Or perhaps, as in my case, work provides the opportunity to observe people and situations, to use snatches of dialogue to inspire stories, or characteristics to blend together to build characters, or situations which can either inspire whole stories or poems or help unravel and episode in a novel.  It also disciplines me to use the little time I have to knuckle down and be productive.

Work places vary - as do characters and story lines.  Work can provide ideas for stories.
Photo courtesy of "Construction Building with support frame" by Keerati www.freedigitalphotos.net

As a property manager for many years, I have seen things and heard things that  curl the toes, bleach the hair and curdle the milk.  I have encountered odd and unusual people and have become a very firm believer - despite being a reader of fantasy novels - that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.  In fact, it is unlikely some of the situations I have encountered could be replicated in a novel because it would stretch reader believability just a bit too far.  But it is  possible to develop ideas: what if that person were like this?  What if the boiler had burst and flooded the apartment below - again?  What if no-one had answered the door and the police had to force entry and a decomposing body found?  What if that mild-mannered secretary turned out to be a lap dancer at the weekends?  

Workplace inspiration has struck and won me second place in a competition a couple of years ago with the story "Predictable Me", which I've set out below - hope you enjoy.

Perhaps the moral of this piece then, is not to let the frustrations of having to spend day in day out at work instead of creating a literary masterpiece slow you down:  use it to keep the ideas flowing and the literary masterpiece will come.

PREDICTABLE ME

     “You’re going to love not coming to work anymore,” says Emily.  She places my cup of coffee exactly in the centre of my coaster.  The coaster is old now, edges curling, a perfect circle marked in its centre from the countless cups of coffee placed there by a parade of assistants over the years.

     I try not to cringe.  Eight years of Emily’s gunpowder-strong concoction and I have never complained.  And I shan’t today, of all days.

     The telephone’s bleeping jars the peace of the morning and Emily scuttles.  What a ridiculous statement.  Half a century of crusty offices, whinging clients and cringing clerks; of course I’m delighted never to have to come in again.

      I sip at the coffee, shudder and leave the rest.  Emily has her back turned and is taking painstaking notes of her telephone conversation.  Whoever is talking to her must be desperate with frustration.

      I sigh and flick a switch.  Despite the early hour the heat is suffocating. The air-conditioning groans into action and then buzzes like bluebottles around carrion. Within hours the sounds that will come to my ears will be the sizzling of cicadas in the day and the grunt of marauding lions at night.

     “Here early as usual,” says Michael, his round, shining face appearing round the edge of the door.

     “And why wouldn’t I be?” I ask.  Michael is flushed and the pink of his cheeks contrast with the bland grey and magnolia of the office, a colourless place that drains life.  I ease myself into my chair.  My hips ache slightly and remind me that my aging body welcomes retirement.

     “I thought you might take it easy today,” he grins and enters the room, a slim file in his hand.  He’s my boss.  A clever lad really, half my age with appalling taste in ties and generally a bit of a fool. A sickly yellow number hangs from his collar this morning. Perhaps he thinks the girls will like it.

    “I’ll be answering emails and then tidying my things off my desk,” I reassure him.

     “Great, and please take a quick look at this file,” adds Michael, “we’re going to miss you.”

     The hell they are.  By tomorrow lunchtime they will have forgotten I exist.

     “Just leave it with me,” I say.  He breezes off, whistling.  I cannot help but shake my head.  In a place where the boss blows air through pursed lips in tuneless sounds there can be little hope for achieving professional success. 

     “So, have you booked your sessions at the golf course yet?  Wouldn’t want to risk getting bored, would you?” roars Mr Fernandez a little later.  Emily hovers, smoothing down her beige skirt, although it would be better if she made an attempt at smoothing down the beige skin of her face.

     I attempt to smile at Mr Fernandez’ jollity, aware I only manage to lift a corner of my lips, which must give the impression of a snarl to the man who lauds himself for introducing the arbitrary corporate performance reward scheme I hold in complete contempt.  I put down my pen.  I have finished with Michael’s file and have added a note which he will find later: ‘to an idiot from a fool’.  I ignore the gold issue; where I’m going, I won’t be playing.

      The day wears on and as I empty my desk of the insignificant symbols of years at work, I contemplate just how vacuous my professional life has been.  The shareholders grew immensely rich on the back of the drivel I typed and I managed to buy a flat.  Home ownership of a leaky apartment was all the rage for a while.

      At the end of the day there is a little speech and a gift: a pair of silver cuff links.  Also not needed where I’ll be going, but I am too decent, or dull, to say.

     There’s a ripple of half-hearted applause and the pop of a cork from a bottle of supermarket Cava.

     “So, come on, let’s know your plans,” urges Mr Fernandez, with a self-satisfied smile.

     “My plans….,” I pause. I glance out of the window to the street beyond and catch a glimpse of my car.

     “Don’t tell me,” giggled Michael, “you’re going straight on a cruise?  You’ve always been predictable.”

     Perhaps I have: predictable, dependable, reliable Francis.  But it’s not really me.

     “I’m going away, to Africa…” I begin.

     “An African cruise?” says poor Emily.

     Something about her featureless face, the clothes that would have better adorned a woman half her age, the inanity of her comment chaffs at my frustration.

     “Try not to spend your sorry life being ridiculous,” I say.  The sudden silence simmers.  My mouth dries and my throat tightens.  I look at the car again.  Kim, my woman, waits for me there, black skin smooth and oiled and glistening, her breasts pressing against her light dress.

     “I’m going to Africa with my lover.  Marta and I are divorced.  We wanted to keep it quiet,” I press.  Even the motes of dust that have circled the office for the past fifty years pause in their drifting.  “I’m spending a few years in Ghana helping set up small businesses with micro-finance.  Kim is a doctor and setting up a clinic. The idea is to help women take control of their sexual health, avoid AIDS, death in childbirth and so on.  We might even be able to reduce the trade in sex slavery.  Ambitious, maybe….and not very predictable.”

     They stare at me, mouths slightly agape, but they are no longer important.  They probably never were.

      “You see,” I carry on, compelled to explain myself, “no-one is too old to change, no-one can be dependable for ever.  We all need meaning.”

      I step out into a blaze of afternoon sun and breathe as if I had just been born, leaving the stagnation behind the office door.  From the car, Kim smiles and waves.  I hurry onwards.  There is much to do.

Walking to write

Spring morning in Ocean Village, Gibraltar

Easter Sunday and here, in Gibraltar at least, it has been one of those perfect spring days: sunny skies, brilliant blue sea, a warm calm pervading the lushness of the upper rock, the lazy drone of a sleepy bee and the chirruping of young birds in the bushes and trees lining the road.  Not too hot, not at all cold.  Perfect for strapping the lead to the dog, shepherding reluctant teenagers out of the door and walking.  Just walking.  Not walking with a purpose except to fill lungs with reasonably fresh air and get away from electronic games and flickering monitors.  Not even walking for fitness or burning of calories, fat cells, cellulite or improving lung function.  Just plain walking, the kind of walking that lets you take in things you might see day to day, but somehow don't register - there's an old chap hobbles about with his equally ancient dog near where I live, I probably walk past him every morning, but wrapped up in daily worries, I rarely actually see him.  Today was for walking, and seeing, and breathing, and creating.

"Morning Walk" photo by Arvind Balaraman courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

To write is to create. That walking helps the creative process is now well-established and there are many examples of writers who have worked out their plots or found their inspirations from walking: think of Wordsworth walking the Lakes, for example.  Henry Thoreau once said "the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow."  A Stanford University study, reported in 2014, found that there was a link to creative thinking and walking, although not necessarily to focused thinking - you might be able to develop a brainstorm of possible solutions to a problem (such as how to untangle parts of your plotting) but you might not be able to quite work out your son's GCSE practise trigonometry question that's had the both of you puzzling for hours.  

But for writers, walking is perfect.  An hour or so away from the mundane tasks that can so easily distract, the blood flowing, oxygen flooding into the brain to freshen it up and get it working that much better can do wonders to your plotting or character development.  Which means it's best to leave the mobile phone behind. There's also the chance to clear up all that clutter in your mind.  While you're walking, your mind drifts.  You may dwell on some of your domestic or professional problems, but the release of positive hormones that exercise brings means that you return ready to approach the rest of your day in a much more positive mood, and I'm not stepping onto the soap box of health benefits except to cite Hippocrates who put it thus:"walking is man's best medicine." Without a doubt, walking is good for you.

"Sunday Walk" photo by Simon Howden from www.freedigitalphotos.net

Walking also gives you a chance to observe and sharpen those powers of observations that are so essential to a writer.  You can focus on sounds, on smells, on what and on whom you see.  Walking is a time I can work out the next steps in a story.  It is the time of quiet that I can use to plan ahead, to straighten things out in my mind.  Sometimes I am struck by something I see to the extent that the words that spring to mind at the time might turn into the opening lines of a poem.  Other times, I walk like a child, with quiet and inquisitive mind, absorbing what is around me.

"Young Child Walking Alone in Forest" photo by chrisroll courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

There are writers who never go out without a notebook, and I frequently have a notebook and a pen or two on me, but more recently I have just walked and avoided even the physical act of writing.  This is because I have been so busy with work and family that I have not had much time to think, so I think as I walk, and what I want is to see things and have my imagination sparked off, to hear things and let those sounds develop into ideas in my head.  There's a tramp who from time to time spends a night on a bench outside the hospital - he turned into a character in a short story I wrote some weeks ago.  The slurping of the sea against the revetement at Waterport in the dead of night became something black and sinister that slinks out of the ocean to consume every living thing it meets.  The stench of the fumes belched out by the bunkering in the harbour was written into a poem.  Walking imprinted those impressions without having to even think them through.  And it has meant I could allow myself that extra chocolate egg this weekend!

"Easter Eggs in a Basket" photo by Mister GC courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net

Between the land and sea

Winners of the Gibraltar Poetry Competition 2014 with the judge, Mr Durante, and the Minister for Culture, Mr Linares

The Gibraltar Autumn Festival is in full swing and once again the poetry competition took place and attracted over 200 entries.  Among them mine, a poem inspired by the sea, an ever-present feature in my life.  I was delighted when this was chosen as the overall winner, and no less delighted if truth be told, when my son won his age category with a poem called "Over the bridge" which was inspired by the strong emotions provoked by exams -  he has his mock GCSE exams looming this month.

Me, receiving my prize from the Minister and looking embarrassed - I hate photos!

The competition judge, Charlie Durante, spoke in his introduction to the award ceremony about the breadth of themes touched on in this year's entries, including war poems.  I guess this year, marred as it has been by some conflict or other around the globe and the threats that ideological extremism pose to any lasting peace anywhere, joined by the memories of the First World War so strong this the year of this war's centenary, the theme of war cannot be far from our minds.

My boy, David Anderson, surprised and delighted at winning his category.

It is always interesting to browse entries and see what others see around them, what inspires them to make an observation, write it down and record it for posterity. Poetry opens a single window to the poet's thoughts which in a poem are expressed in a deeply personal way, a unique way which cannot be echoed by anyone else.  So in reading some of the winning entries which we are lucky to read in the Gibraltar Chronicle, sponsors of the event, we are able to dip into insights to the world about us.  David kindly allowed me to reproduce his poem below and I was surprised that he (usually to be found nose to screen in the depths of some computer game or other, communicating in binary code or peculiar adolescent grunts and trading in bit coins - whatever these are) demonstrated such a sensitive view of how it feels to sit at a desk in the exam room, waiting to turn that question paper round, knowing your entire future is at stake, and perfectly aware that any conscious knowledge of the subject you might have had escaped your over-worked brain over breakfast that morning.  His poem is about the tension of crossing that chasm of fear and tackling those exams.  Maybe although I never seem to catch him with a book in his hand, the boy is literate after all.

Mother and son, proud moment

My poem was sparked by a photograph my very talented photographer daughter took of her son last year on a beach.  The sense of wonder that a two-year-old displays in his face as he looks around the infinite spaces of sea-shore and horizon beyond borders on the indescribable.  When I look at my grandsons and recall how my own children looked at the world around them with insatiable curiosity, absorbing details, thinking about what they see, working out their world and what might lie beyond the horizon, I see the child-like wonder that adults have usually lost.  That we should also view the world about us with the same sense of non-judgemental curiosity would be a wonderful thing itself.  

And there was a third family entry.  My 12 year old daughter, Carmen added her thoughts to the event and came up with a poem expressing her feelings and fears about the shadow cast by the ebola epidemic, which even in the twenty-first century awakens the horrors of plague and disease experienced for generations.  I am a very proud Mum at the moment, needless to say.

Congratulations to all the winners and runners up - many poems were terrific.  I also congratulate all who entered, because it is not without a little courage that you put your intimate thoughts out for the world to see.


Over the Bridge by David Anderson

It’s a darkness,

A cloud, dense and purple,

That threatens to engulf my world,

To choke me,

To clasp me to its icy chest

Till my ribs snap

And I breathe no more because

It hurts when I breathe,

And I’m standing

In the yellow stains of school-room lights,

Waiting-

Gagging breath clogging my throat-

Just waiting for that one bark;

Start.

And then there’s light,

Blinding bright till my eyes smart,

Shining from the sheet

That lies on my desk,

Neat and clean and blank,

Like my sorry schoolboy mind.

And there’s a chasm there,

A yawning gap

With red, raw rocks,

Like hunting teeth,

That want to tear at

The thin threads of knowledge

My teachers tried to weave;

Except, there is a calm voice

In the flood of alarm

That leads me to step

Across a swaying rope bridge,

From cliff edge to mountain top,

Across the gorge of ignorance.

And I step, trembling,

Nib of pen shaking,

Fog thinning and clouds lifting,

And I edge,

Word by word,

Over the bridge.

Between land and sea by Jackie Anderson 

Between the land and the sea I stand,

By lace-frilled shore,

On strip of sand,

A beach that to my tiny frame

Stretches like the stretch

Of time that passes slow,

Time that only just has been and

Time that without fail is yet to come.

With fingers still to find their strength,

I trace the shapes of paths

That reach the lapping waters

And seek to reach beyond,

Beyond the edges of the blue,

Beyond the reaches of my childlike mind,

Further than those places where

The crooning, soothing sea touches sky.

I pace the shore,

Toes deep in tiny grains

To anchor me to the earth

And hold me close to all that I hold dear,

To ground me to a haven.

And yet I gaze and seek

To reach beyond the blue,

And take the magic of the sun

In the palm of my hand,

Hold the rainbow in my eyes

And breathe the mysteries that lie

Where sand and sea and child touch sky.

Catch me if you can by Carmen Anderson

I travel

I race

I leap

Through sky and sea and fields.

I’m coming for you,

Closer and closer every day.

But I don’t understand;

You have technology,

You have computers, cameras, phones,

But you can’t stop me,

You can’t kill me,

You can’t cure my work.

I thunder through towns

I rampage through cities.

I terrify.

I destroy.

I devastate.

And you can’t stop me.

You are to busy,

You are too rich to care,

Too complacent in your comfort.

You don’t think that I’m going to catch you.

But I will,

Unless

You stop and think and change your ways,

You dedicate time

To stopping me,

To killing me,

To curing me.

The thing is,

You have to do it

Before it’s too late

You’re smarter than me.

But I’m fast,

Catch me if you can.

Because I will catch you.