BELATED BARKING

One of the consequences of the Bailiwick’s vigorous approach to dealing with the threat of coronavirus was the cancellation of the Guernsey Literary Festival and with it the launch of my wife’s first novel. 

Barking Mad, Confessions of a Dog Sitter by Jane Mosse, is a lighthearted romp through the joys and pitfalls of pet sitting in Britain and Europe and is based very loosely on our own experiences during the last few years.

The Festival organisers managed to reschedule a number of festival events as the island has now remained virus-free for a sustained period. 

One of the first of these was the belated launch of Jane’s book, which took place earlier this week in front of a capacity audience at the Guille-Alles Library.

During a 45 minute interview Jane spoke of her experiences as a pet-sitter, the glamour and occasional grime of some of the properties we’ve stayed in during our adventures, the highs and lows of getting a novel into print and the impact that Covid-19 has had on the house-sitting fraternity in general.

She also read two passages from Barking Mad and received rapturous applause from her listeners.

Here are a couple of photographs taken by Barbara Santi during the event. 

Copies of Barking Mad, Confessions of a Dog Sitter can be obtained by clicking here.

LOSS OF INNOCENCE

I wrote this short poem whilst holidaying in Florence at the start of the year when we spent much of our time visiting palazzi and marvelling at the abundance of great art on display.
Those were the carefree days, pre-Covid, when terms like quarantine, self-isolation and social-distancing where not part of our vocabulary and the very idea of donning masks to shop was unthinkable.
Little did we know how cataclysmic the year 2020 would turn out to be. 

PALAZZO IN FLORENCE

We drift from gallery, slowly,

to gallery, awed by art

from centuries ago,

the images from Scripture, 

so eerily familiar:

Nativity, the Miracles,  

the Crucifixion on the hill,

the empty tomb, the martyred saints, 

the centuries of Christian wars,  

and further back in time, Man’s fall, 

the cursed beginning of it all.

CANDIE CRUSH

Recognition and acclaim come infrequently to those of us who write verse and publication is even more rare, but when they happen, often like the proverbial buses, they arrive in twos and threes.
So it was with a handful of poems I wrote for two separate arts projects, on the subject of Occupation and Liberation and Guernsey's experience of both during World War II.
Two poems found their way into a newly published hardback book, In Loving Memory, while two of the others appeared on posters in St Peter Port's beautiful Candie Gardens.
Candie Gardens serves as home of the island's principal museum and also houses the Arts Commission's Greenhouse Gallery and it was there that the long-awaited launch of In Loving Memory took place.
Here are two of the poems, one on an outdoor poster, the other, rather more artfully mounted, on the wall of the Greenhouse Gallery. 
I'm not sure where the butterfly came from but it seemed happy to stay. 
      

As always, clicking on the coloured text above takes you to a valuable link providing additional information.

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST

Long before the advent of foreign travel, my parents used to set out each August for a fortnight's holiday in Portstewart, a seaside resort on the northern coast of Ireland.
Quite how they managed to pack three boisterous children, a dog, themselves and two week's worth of provisions and toys into an Austin Cambridge, is one of the many unexplained mysteries of childhood.
I've enjoyed countless holidays as an adult, many in amazing places, but those afternoons with the car parked on nearby Portrush Strand, ourselves huddled on a tartan rug behind a windbreak, eating white-bread sandwiches, gritty with sand, and sipping sweet tea out of a battered thermos, remain, to my mind, the template for a perfect holiday. 

PORTRUSH STRAND

They are still there: I see them all.
Mother, father, sister, brother, 
a scruffy dog, a bouncing ball
they wildly pitch to one another,
a sandcastle with moat and wall.
A tartan rug and deck-chairs hide
behind a wind-break by the car.
As wind whips up a dancing tide,
kids gather small fish in a jar,
displaying them with nervous pride.
Along the Strand, from place to place,
cars park as other families
spill out, spread out, mark out their space
eat sandwiches, drink thermos teas,
play cricket, tennis, race and chase,
but I see only my own kin
clear through the telescope of time:
hot Portrush sun on Belfast skin,
my family, then in their prime,
knee deep in water, splashing in.
Sand dunes rear up like towering waves.
We venture in to hide and seek,
to hunt for trails like redskin braves
or clamber to the highest peak
seeking the Grail that each child craves.
We did not know how happy then,
in those fine hours of that bright day,
we were, or that the lives of men 
are not enriched with constant play
and all existence ends in pain.
A man awaking to cold dawn,
I summon back those days again,
of sun-warm sand to play upon,
school holidays, devoid of rain
when, endlessly, the great sun shone
and feel my heart begin to break,
with anguish, sharper than a knife,
for the long-dead, and for the ache
of living a survivor’s life,
a ship with sorrow in its wake.

HOLD BACK THE NIGHT

Living close to Bordeaux Bay is something I never take for granted.
The bay's character changes hourly with the rise and fall of tides, the arrival and departure of sea-birds and the constant activity of fishing-boats.
At low tide you can walk from one side to the other across an area larger than half a dozen rugby pitches. When the tide is high, with small boats bobbing, children paddling and a few hardy swimmers jumping from the granite sea-wall, it's surely one of the most beautiful places on this lovely island.
On winter nights, however, the bay can be a cold and inhospitable place but even then it possesses an irresistible, harsh beauty. 

NIGHT SEA

Bordeaux sea-wall, high tide lapping,

waves against cold granite slapping.

Black rain splinters fall like arrows

far out where the channel narrows;

cold waves roll in, growing darker,

past each lighted channel marker. 

In the bay, small boats, protected

by their anchor-lines connected

to safe bedrock, one another,

like an unborn to a mother,

rock like cradles balanced there, 
where icy wave meets frozen air.

Moonlight on water, spectral, pale, 
is like a massive vessel’s trail.

Beyond the wall, it leaves its wake. 
Below, dark waters boil and break.

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN

Blue Ormer Publications, the 'go-to' site for books about the Occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II, has recently announced the release of a new volume on the subject. 

Occupied, written by Victoria Robinson, is a beautifully illustrated book which aims to provide an introduction to the subject for primary school children.

Immediately prior to the arrival of German troops in 1940, Guernsey’s children were evacuated to Britain where they remained until the war ended. 

Their experience forms an essential part of present day culture of the island and the subsequent liberation of
Guernsey is still celebrated annually on Liberation Day, 9th May.

It should be remembered, however, that the experience of evacuation was not peculiar to the Channel Islands: city children throughout the UK were also dispatched to rural locations for their safety.

It was of these unhappy youngsters that I wrote in this recently unearthed, long lost poem.

EVACUEES

They departed with labels and tears,

boots-to-grow-into, neat Sunday Best,

like so many letters addressed

to the future. Boys with their peers,

large suitcases, children’s small fears.

Girls departed with ribbons and wraps.

Young strangers to strangers, they went:

train-whistle a poignant lament.

Who could predict years would elapse

before the Nazis would collapse?

At train stations, noisy and damp,

they were gusted like seeds on a breeze,

obedient and eager to please,

to Billet or National Camp:

small child-letters, each with a stamp.

Each stamp bore the face of the King

who beckoned their fathers to war,

though one generation before

had sworn, nevermore. Now they sing 

to try to be brave, that’s the thing.