Busted: A Transport of Delight

Oh, they used to laugh at me
When I refused to ride
On all those double-decker buses
All because there was no driver on the top.
Sung by Joni Mitchell (Twisted)

I HAVE NEVER lived as close to a bus stop as I do at present. The 518 linking Newcastle and Alnwick (pronounced Ann-ick) runs past my front door, as does the 420 that travels back and forth between Ashington and Alnwick. The actual bus stops are a matter of short yards away.

The 518 tends to take the coastal road to the north of Amble, turning inland at Alnmouth (pronounced Alan-muth) Station. You can link with the trains, in theory. I've tried it. It's still a theory. To the south of Amble, the 518 swings slightly inland to Morpeth, and down to Newcastle's Haymarket Station. It's a fairly picturesque ride in summer, especially from the upper deck. Summer, in 2008, was two days in August, so book early as seats are limited. The views are far less picturesque on the other days of the year as the mud has usually risen half-way up the side of all the buses.

Alnwick Station is a miserable spot. It is sheltered only from the worst of the north wind, but open on three sides. There are a very few iron benches guaranteed to wreck your spine. They are constructed to make sleep on them pretty much impossible, which makes me wonder if Alnwick has a homeless problem. There are people wandering abroad? Keep 'em wandering! The station in Newcastle's Haymarket is rather old and charming, and enclosed. No doubt it will be pulled down one day and something hideous and uncomfortable vomited up in its place. If that happens, perhaps Alnwick could purchase Newcastle's bricks and stones and rebuild that station up the country. Visitors to the Alnwick Gardens and Alnwick Castle (Harry Potter's 'Hogwarts' interiors were filmed there) would love a reconstruction. God knows, Americans have bought up old castles and chateaus and (famously) London Bridge to grace the deprived New World.

Bus stops in between the towns range from simple poles with acrylic covered panels showing a timetable attached, to basic steel-and-glass shelters, to brick cubbies. I get on and off at a sort of non-existent stop at Hawkhill Farm somewhere between Alnmouth and Alnwick. One must walk up to the driver in time to ask him to stop "by that gate" if on the bus. If waiting at Hawkhill for the bus, one must step out onto the highway and flap about a bit to draw the driver's attention. And pray you get it in good time!

The 420 buses only come to the coast in Amble, and tend to stop at every odd spot on country lanes. This means that in bad weather they may well be sloshing about on rough roads. Shilbottle can be a bit dodgy. The locals in Shilbottle with a sense of humour take magic marker pens to the Shilbottle signs and cross that first l to make a t. Shitbottle.

The 420 from Amble to Alnwick takes about 35 minutes, the 518 does its route in 30 minutes. Roughly. There might be an injured badger to navigate around on the 420's country lanes, or a language difficulty with boarding Japanese tourists in Alnmouth Village on the 518. Badgers are easier.

One can take one's wheelchair, one's dog, or one's luggage on the buses at no extra charge. The newer buses feature wide double-doors and the ability to lower the floor to the level of the pavement. In theory. A wide aisle and a designated place for one wheelchair are available on these buses.

The 518 and 420 routes feature double-decker buses for the most part, in shades of aqua with advertising on panels, until recently. I have spotted several red London-style buses. All since a rather fun Christmas party, actually. So, I think I've seen red buses recently. Don't take my word for it. There are sometimes single-decker buses on the 420, usually, it seems, when more space is required; and those buses must be a real bother for people with walking difficulties as they are high off the ground, perhaps three steps up.

I carry Cailean on my lap on the bus. He's a small enough pup. He usually puts his nose in any gaps between seats to study the other passengers. With his friendly nature, he's not really a problem. Any fuss is a good one.

The passengers can be of any age, but tend to be OAPs shortly after nine o'clock in the morning when they can ride for free. OAPs are Old Age Pensioners: people over 60 with a bus pass. These OAP passengers have been nicknamed "The Twirlies" because they ask, if it is only just nine in the morning, when flashing their pass to the driver: "Am I twirly?" Schoolchildren have specially designated 423 buses on the 420 route, and ride the regular 518s. One should plan to avoid those buses when the children are travelling. Children rarely give up their seats these days, it seems. They do, at least, tend to sit upstairs. Noisily.

I very much enjoy riding the buses here. I'd like to sit upstairs all the time, but it is awkward, if Cailean is with me, manoeuvring up the twisting steps to the top deck, even if I carry him. It's a shame, as we'd both enjoy the view.

One could populate a novel with characters from the buses, and fill pages and pages of dialogue with overheard conversations. I do make notes at times. Always (I tell you) carry a notepad and pen with you if you write as much as a letter to Nana once a year: buses are a gift horse.

I particularly like the older folks, the seedy ones. The few left who are older than I am. Plastic Macs, the little old ladies bent low with osteoporosis and a week's shopping in string bags, knitted woollen hats over wisps of white hair, thick stockings and sensible shoes. In America these women would be redheads and wouldn't be on the bus, but driving this year's Cadillac. And men, not so bent, just shortened by life's loads (and in Northumbria that could well mean coal), in well-worn overcoats, flat caps, nicotine-stained fingers and bad breath. Stinking of beer and smoke, no matter the hour.

On the very oldest of buses there are seats facing each other at the front. One rather wibbly-wobbly gentleman wearing a tweed jacket with some sort of military pin in the lapel clambered aboard the bus and sat in the seat facing me. I was facing the front of the bus. No, he did not face me when he sat down, but kneeled on his seat, holding onto its back, and off we went, his feet banging my knees. Get the picture? Some people simply must face the direction a train is travelling (and I am one of them) and that obviously extended to buses for this chappie.

An overheard conversation to end this piece. Two old ladies with bits of shopping from the Co-op discussing the son of one of them, a fellow who, apparently, was as daft as a brush.

"Well, Hilda, I opened the door and walked in on him."
"You don't say, Vera?"
"I do. And there he was, stark naked, and in the act."
"Just like that?"
"Yes. Quite a shock, I'll tell you."
"Well, what did you say?"
"I said, 'Horace, get out of here this minute, I have a bus to catch!'"
"And did he, Vera?"
"Oh, yes. Right away."
"What did he think he was doing … doing that?"
"I don't know Hilda. Who takes a bath on a weekday?"

Jan gets Smaller and Smaller ... Then Disappears Completely

If the song's not broke
why bother to fix it?
Don't mix it up
with some
hard-assed jive.
You don't want to mess
(like all the rest)
with a good thing!

It's karaoke
and curry night at the
Wellwood Arms Inn:
singing
hard-assed jive.
The place comes alive.
(Opened at five.)
It's a great thing!

Girls smoking in the
doorway, boys are passing
a joint around,
then some
hard-assed jive
drags them back inside.
(Gone with the tide.)
That's a good thing!

There's a punter drunk
outside my flat tonight.
But it's alright:
just some
hard-assed jive
got the boy that way.
(And he won't stay.)
Though he can sing!

Might just sing along
with that kid for a laugh.
A melody,
but no
hard-assed jive.
Morning's coming fast
(the night has passed).
The lark will sing!

If the song's not broke
You've no need to fix it.
Don't mix it up
with some
hard-assed jive.
You don't want to mess
(but do your best)
with a good thing!
Ross Eldridge (Hard-assed Jive)

"WHY AMBLE BY THE SEA?" people ask me regularly. And the answer is not the flippant "Why not?" even though it might be somewhat correct to respond that way.

When asked what attracted me to this seaside town, I can only truthfully say that I turned up here late one morning to pick up some brochures on local attractions from the Tourism Offices on the Amble Town Square and one thing after another fell into place. By mid-afternoon I had a partially furnished flat, a list of what I might be needing (not much) and a date to move in. I must admit, in my mind that day, I measured the flat for a small dog. Two years on, I got him.

And that came back to me this afternoon as I walked from my home to purchase some goat's milk from the Co-op, which is really a minimart, a corner store, smaller than the 7-Elevens one sees in the United States of America. It is early January on the North Sea coast of England, about 35 miles south of the Scottish Borders. If one swam due west, one would … assuming one did not freeze to death … end up at the entrance to the Baltic Sea. Mind that freighter coming from Russia with coals for Newcastle!

With January comes the frigid weather: And we've had a blast from the Arctic this week. Rivers, lakes and puddles are freezing over, the fountains in Trafalgar Square are frozen (I'd like to see that), snow in places. Very small ponies near me are wearing blankets and I wondered if the horse-blanket folks make them that size only by special request, not routinely. Might these ponies be the descendants of the pit ponies?

This afternoon I was bundled against the cold, six layers above the waist. Protect the chest, the throat: I don't want the bronchitis that seemed as if it would kill me off a year ago (in milder weather). I waddled down my street and joined a half-dozen or so other penguins wandering, bobbing along really, and headed towards the minimart on the pavement on my (north) side of the street. There were no people coming towards me. On the other side of the street was one lady, walking in the same direction that I was, so all I saw were the backs of people.

I recognised the lady on the other side of the street, even from the back, even though she was layered and over-coated, wearing a woollen cap, and her movements mostly masked by the extra clothing. It might have been her carrier bag, but more likely it was the foot of her maxi-skirt showing below her coat. A lovely printed fabric in many colours, tending to the darker shades, the sort of patterns that the hippies were wearing 40 years ago. It was Jan from the Tourist Information Office.

Three years ago my father's youngest brother drove my aunt and me into Amble prior to a jaunt up the coast to do some sight-seeing. We found the Tourist Information Office easily: Amble is such a small place, with only one main street a narrow block in from the water. The building housing Tourist Information looks quite new (half of the building is a public toilet), and is bright and colourful inside: postcards, pamphlets, books, films, souvenirs, and a live television feed to a bird sanctuary on an offshore island. And there was a lady at a desk three years ago.

I always buy postcards, and headed straight for those. Then I got chatting with the lady at the desk as she totted up my cards and other small purchases. My accent gave me away as someone not exactly from around here. I could have passed as a local if I'd spoken with a Scottish burr, or in the Newcastle Geordie dialect, or Pitmatic, but I sound foreign. In any case, the lady had not heard my accent recently (it was out of season, tourist-wise, and her office was rather quiet) and that usually requires an explanation. Yes, I don't really sound American. Could it be Canadian? The lady had relatives in Canada.

I had been wondering about renting a flat somewhere in this part of the world, which I'd fallen in love with. I'd been staying at The Angler's Rest Inn in Sheepwash, Northumberland, I asked the lady at the Tourist Information about the possibilities of finding bed-sit (efficiency) apartments, furnished, in this area. She immediately telephoned the town's real estate agency. Yes. Yes. I will. Yes, Bye now. I could walk two blocks and the real estate folks would be glad to chat with me.

Before I left, I did introduce myself, and the Tourism lady was Jan… with rather modest flower-power 1960s clothes.

At the Agency, they happened to have an available, vacant flat, furnished, just up the street (in Amble, everything is just along the street, it is that small). They could call the owner, and did. Yes. Yes, I will. Ta-ra! To me: Paul will meet you there.

Ten minutes later my landlord was showing me around this flat. My first thought was that it was too big. The kitchen is nearly twenty foot square, which is daunting. However, the rent was right and the location was fine. I shook my new landlord's hand. The deal was done.

It was Jan's back that I saw on the far side of the street yesterday. I pop into the Tourism Office now and then to buy local gifts to send to family and friends, so I see Jan from time to time there. But she also plays the organ at the Roman Catholic chapel next to my flat and I sometimes see her up this way. Of the many Amble friends I have now, she is the first.

Jan was walking away from me faster than I was, for I was daydreaming a little. I thought how short Jan is, though it might have been the many coats she was wearing, making her look nearly as wide as she was tall. As she approached the corner across from the Co-op, she seemed so small that she would not have been able to see over garden walls. Then she turned right at Olive's Tea Room. I reached the junction in a few seconds, but no sign of Jan. Had she become so small that she'd disappeared?



I remembered the lines from Alice in Wonderland:

"The White Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge."

That's the way Amble by the Sea can be. Small ponies and short people, and friends popping up and then seeming to vanish. Yes, I saw Jan again today. If we fall down rabbit-holes, we somehow reappear quite safe and sound, usually smiling, even under cold, grey skies.


I love this part of England's green and pleasant land.

Gods in Ruins

Standing on the bare ground,
my head bathed by the blithe air,
and uplifted into infinite space,
all mean egotism vanishes.
I become a transparent eye-ball;
I am nothing; I see all;
the currents of the Universal Being
circulate through me;
I am part or particle of God.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature)

Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.
Better than a hundred hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.
Gautama Buddha (The Dhammapada)

IT WAS OSCAR WILDE who wrote: In polite society, one does not talk about politics or religion. Of course Oscar made a name for himself doing just that, though he really succeeded by pointing out the petty foibles of mankind and by making light of them. Well, almost. A Woman of No Importance is seriously funny.

I'm no Oscar Wilde, and I should probably thank the gods for that. I wouldn't mind being a manic depressive William Blake or Virginia Woolf.

William Blake wrote about religion, of course, inasmuch as it is generally associated with God. It is probably fairer to say of Blake that he lived, wrote and created his pictures under the close influence of gods and angels and the Ancient of Days. Blake, apparently, felt that these otherworldly creatures were sending him messages that he felt compelled to pass along.

I once read that the farthest that William Blake ever travelled from the home in which he was born on 28 November 1757 (in Golden Square, Soho, London) was 59 miles. And one might argue that one who remained so close to home should refrain from commenting on national issues, much less international issues, even less on issues spanning the Cosmos. In 1757, I'm guessing a journey of 59 miles, if one had a horse-drawn vehicle and didn't meet a highwayman (Dick Turpin was, at least, dead by the time Blake was born), took a few days. One would overnight at some country inn with none of the charm we associate with such places in 2009.

In September 2008, one gentleman, Yves Rossy, from the Continent, crossed the English Channel, with some sort of jet-propelled wing strapped to his back, in a matter of minutes. Not as fast as Hitler's Doodlebugs, but someone will be working on a way to ride a rocket as I sit here typing, one can be assured.

Blake, of course, saw Chariots of Fire. Here's a mathematical problem for anyone interested in such things: If it takes Apollo about twelve hours to cross the sky in his chariot of fire, at the Equator, at mid-summer, what sort of speed are we talking? What horsepower? Even a non-mathematician such as I can appreciate that one must know at what height above the Earth (and must know the Earth is a sphere) the chariot is flying. Religions have depended on such facts and figures. Men have been excommunicated, men have died, good men, for suggesting the inexpedient.

It is remarkable that Popes, after consulting with their gods, have made pronouncements on things they really should not have, given that, quite often, they are proved incorrect within a fairly short time. Ask Nicolaus Copernicus! Copernicus was not the first heliocentric theorist, and his work lead to enlightenment, but he was denounced by the representatives of the One True God as being not only subversive, but immoral, and in opposition to Holy Scripture. Whew!

An issue that bothers some people, perhaps many, in particular in North America, is gay marriage. I should start this paragraph by mentioning that I am a proponent of family life, of a father and mother of different sexes, married wherever they might choose in some sort of legally binding ceremony. If children come along, I believe the best way to raise a child is in a two-parent heterosexual home. I think, I believe at least, that Nature is compelling on this matter. I do not have a stack of books, reports and statistics on biology, but it seems to me that we've evolved (yes, I believe in Evolution!) into what we've called, since 1947, the nuclear family unit. Actually, we may have been nuclear long before we had the bomb.

I do not think there should be a gay marriage option: a pair of husbands, or a pair of wives. I understand, from the very few articles I have come across, that approximately 90% of the population in the civilized world, at least, is pretty much heterosexual (straight), and I like the idea that this clearly natural order is respected. A homosexual world wouldn't last more than the current generation.

If the gay or lesbian couple cries: We only want what the straights have! I have to ask why marriage? If a man is born missing a limb and has a prosthesis attached, it is still artificial, and can be removed at the end of the day.

Pope Benedict XVI, the successor to the popes that parented the Inquisition and burned idolaters and unbelievers at the stake, and successor, I might add, to several popes who have apologised for disbelieving Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Copernicus back in the day, has recently said that homosexuality is a problem that must be dealt with, much like saving the rain forests from destruction. Benedict said that behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations was a destruction of God's work.

The pithy response goes: You don't play the game … Don't make the rules!

The Mormons jumped on the bandwagon - perhaps they provided the bandwagon - regarding Proposition 8 in the recent Californian elections. Together with the Roman Catholic Church, the Mormon leadership advised their membership to vote for Proposition 8, an amendment to the California State Constitution that would outlaw same-sex marriages.

One might recall that the foreigners who settled in America did so to escape unjust kings and religious persecution, even state religions.

Three things:

The Mormons make no secret (for a church full of secrets until recently with the advent of the Internet and whistleblowers) of their belief that the Roman Catholic Church is the Great Whore of Babylon. So it is most odd to find the Mormons and the Catholics in the same bed, even if it is on such a heterosexual matter.

The Mormon Church leaders, from their pulpits (I cannot speak for the Catholics), encouraged their flock to not only vote for Proposition 8, but to contribute financially to making it happen. To help buy the Election? I believe in the separation of politics and religion, except in an essay such as this one I'm writing, as I take a chance in polite society.

The Mormon leaders, from Joseph Smith onwards, have called for Mormon political power outside of the chapel walls. The traditional Christians of the Middle Ages had their Crusades. The Taliban are those seeking religious knowledge, but even they have corrupted this to become those seeking religious and political power. Could the peculiar garments of all be cut from the same cloth?

Nearly $75 million was spent by groups in favour and in opposition to Proposition 8. How many hungry, dehydrated children could be helped with that sort of money?

I believe this whole business should have been resolved as a matter-of-conscience vote. And the result not predicated on how many souls could be bought and sold.

Proposition 8 was passed, just, and it is now against constitutional law in California for same-sex couples to be married in the way heterosexual couples might be. And, when all is said and done, this is the result I believe in, but it should never have been, I believe, a matter for the churches. How many voters for and against actually attend church, actually pay their tithes and offerings?

The pronouncements by the Mormons and the Catholic hierarchy could only serve to divide people. The Pope's suggestion that homosexuality must be tackled, corrected, is very nearly an incitement to violence, isn't it? Pitch a brick at a fag. The Pope, speaking for God, said it was okay! The Mormons used to attach electrodes to the genitals of gay members of their church willing (or unwilling, perhaps fathers and mothers forced it on their sons) to be cured, and then showed them homoerotic pictures. Zap! Has Elder Boyd K. Packer apologised for that yet?

What next?

Gay rights. If homosexual and lesbian couples cannot have a marriage ceremony, with all that that entails, then they should be able to make some sort of very serious and legally binding commitment. A coupling, if you will. Gay rights: Freedom from oppression simple because of a preference they, apparently, are born with. Gay rights: The ability to be so much a part of society that eyebrows (much less swords) are not raised.

And, before I go, a request to some of my gay friends: Rethink these Gay Pride parades. They seem to be awfully vulgar by intent. It cannot do the cause any good. You hardly look like people who could raise a child who - nine times out of ten - has been born to turn out straight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested: A man is a god in ruins. I think we can return to a more divine state if we just think things through before they get out of control, and note that over the centuries so many unalterable pronouncements have had to be retracted.

One word: LOVE

'Nuff said!

Walking On the Edge of Eternity

Tidal Pools, Amble, 1 January 2009

Coquet Island, from Amble, 1 January 2009

Amble Pier, 1 January 2009

Harbour Entrance Light, Amble, 1 January 2009


Amble by the Sea, 1 January 2009





So here hath been dawning
Another blue day;
Think, wilt thou let it
Slip useless away?

Out of Eternity
This new day is born;
Into Eternity,
At night will return.

Behold it aforetime
No eye ever did;
So soon it for ever
From all eyes is hid.

Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881

OUR SCHOOL HAD A SONG AND A PRAYER. The song was in Latin, and something of a rip-off of a common school and university song in Great Britain and on the Continent about the brevity of life, best known by its first line Gaudeamus igitur, meaning Therefore let us rejoice… It's also a drinking song in Europe, especially popular in the pubs in Vatican City where the national language is still Latin. I made that bit up. But it is a drinking song. The European first verse goes:

Gaudeamus igitur
Juvenes dum sumus.

Post jucundam juventutem

Post molestam senectutem

Nos habebit humus.

This translates as:

Let us rejoice therefore
While we are young.

After a pleasant youth

After the troubles of old age

The earth will have us.

Warwick Academy, in Bermuda, poached the first two lines and then inserted two verses about bears (the school crest featured one chained to a stump, the better to be baited), and rising up and flourishing, and Quo Non Ascendam (the school motto: To what heights might I not ascend?). Included from the original full version was Vivat academia, which speaks for itself. Omitted in the Warwick Academy song was Vivat omnes virgines (wisely, it would have been a lost cause). We did not sing Post molestam senectutem because, don't you think, it looks as if it might mean After being molested by old teachers.

And we roared out the School Song on those relatively few occasions on which we had to sing it. I'm guessing if there were 550 pupils at the school in about 1965, perhaps ten knew what the Latin words meant in English. I cannot say I did. I didn't even know what the translation meant when I came across it. But we roared, we let rip.

The only other song we really put our all into was Jerusalem, with lyrics by William Blake. That most English of hymns: Think the WI, think Jam and Jerusalem. And I cannot imagine, in our tremendous effort, our near or actual shouting, we had a clue about what Blake was trying to convey. Blake had gods and angels all around him, much as Yorkshire men have ferrets in their trousers… A way of life.

A shame that Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry has not been made into hymns or school songs as he rests somewhere between the divine and the rodent, don't you think? If Andrew Lloyd Webber is looking for a subject for a new musical, how about Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Solos for seabirds, shanty songs, aria for an albatross. Fire and ice. It could be fabulous.

Back to Warwick Academy (and I hope I never go back, never set foot there again!) I must tell you that I was recently discussing accents with an old friend from schooldays, over the telephone, seven hours across the divide. Perhaps I shouldn't name him, so let's just call him Richard. Now, Richard is an actor and a drama and English teacher, and he speaks well, and not as American as some, I suppose because he spent much of his childhood in Bermuda and he has learned how to project his voice, how to make himself heard. My accent is a mess. I use the English expressions and words, but the squawk that I emit is, at best, some sort of Canadian version. However, I'm fairly good at making myself understood: It is a reasonably clear voice. Hell, I sat in on enough of Richard's 10th Grade drama classes; I should know how to deliver a few lines.

And Richard mentioned the rehearsals we had to go through at Warwick Academy prior to any events featuring the School Song and School Prayer. He, too, recalled the loud, almost joyous, alehouse rock we put into Gaudeamus Igitur, but then said to me: "Remember Miss Devlin and the School Prayer and gra-aw-aw-awnt?" And I did.

Miss Devlin, I believe, was responsible for the music for the School Song and for the Prayer. Reggie Frewin might have fiddled the Latin. Miss Devlin was a peculiar woman, always wore a full length grey fur coat (in Bermuda!) and dark glasses. She spoke with an English drawl; she was very Jam and Jerusalem, even with the Irish moniker. Reggie Frewin was an English fellow, a first cousin of Winston Churchill, all rather proper. But if Miss Devlin could be said to have a broomstick up her jumper, Reggie was often loose as a goose. He was well eccentric.

Miss Patricia Devlin wanted the School Prayer chanted as if by boys at Eton, Harrow or Rugby, and not by the scholarship boys there, god-damn it! If the Prayer had a name, I don't remember it. I think of it as Look with Favour (or Cook with Flavour) - the first three words of the thing. I don't recall much more of it. Let's have a go:

Look with favour
We pray thee, Oh, Lord,
Upon this our school.
(Yadda Yadda Yadda)
And grant…

And one must not sing grant the way Ulysses S Grant probably said his surname. One must not, must never, ever, sing like an American. One must elongate the word grant into at least four syllables: gra-aw-aw-awnt. And so we would overdo Miss Devlin's instructions, chew the scenery, until she'd stop playing the piano, stand up and throw a fit. Her fur coat would have fallen off the piano bench at that moment, if you wondered.

Reggie Frewin died some years ago. So far as I know, Pat Devlin is still around, though she must be awfully ancient by now. I think of her as a menopausal old trout fifty years ago! Seems to me that Miss Devlin was transferred from the music department at Warwick Academy (a school for the better class of white children) to a primary school that was, even after racial segregation ended, pretty much entirely black Bermudian so far as pupils went. How the hell did she adjust? I imagine not a great deal of Latin was sung at that primary school, but the Bermudian accents. Gad!

It's now 2009, and I have to write January, which can be a bugger to spell if I'm drowsy (often!) and I'm wondering if the world can get much messier. Of course it can, but many of us know that it will improve eventually. (William Blake: Without contraries is no progression.) Some people have the means to get through some lean years, and there are tens of millions who will simply starve to death or murder one another. I'm not sure whether the poster child for famine gets time, or has the capacity, to wonder where his next meal is coming from. The wondering is throttled by the pain in his gut.

Yesterday, New Year's Day 2009, I went walking along the coast to the south of Amble by the Sea with young Cailean. I had wakened early and we were en route at sunrise, and I took a few photos of the dawn, the sky over the North Sea. A clear, cold and perfect sort of day.

And, in my head, I sang one of the hymns we sang at Warwick Academy: So Here Hath Been Dawning, which features the words of Thomas Carlyle. This hymn has a lovely melody, and in my head I hear no wrong notes.

Cailean sniffed about, his first New Year's, and I wondered if it is wrong to feel so bloody happy when others are not. Hell, let's sing:

Gaudeamus igitur!

Happy New Year! To a Latin beat!

CAILEAN'S FIRST CHRISTMAS

WE WENT TO BED EARLY last night, and then woke at midnight. A quick walk outside (cold, a bit foggy), then we settled in the front room, the little fibre-optic tree switched on, and the electric fire that looks like burning coals (those were the days!) taking the chill off.

I gave Cailean his very first-ever Christmas present. A fuzzy, green slipper of his very own (hopefully mine will no longer go missing and turn up under the bathroom mat or nudged behind something) which he ran around with, at top speed, for about 15 minutes. I made a mug of Horlicks, for I am old.

Then Cailean napped on the sofa, keeping the slipper close by, and I watched the movie The Narnia Chronicles: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe which is a favourite (remember reading the stories 45 years ago?) and is certainly relevant to the Christmas season.

The people upstairs were awake. They had some rather glorious Christmas carols playing on their stereo, but not too loud for comfort down here.

A couple of hours later, we went back to bed with the soft buzz of Horlicks, slippers and Aslan to send us straight off to sleep.

I'm going out to Christmas dinner with friends just after noon. We will, no doubt, watch HM The Queen's Annual Christmas Message on the telly at three o'clock. We got our first television in about 1959. I'm not sure whether the Queen's Message aired in Bermuda that year, but I've watched it in Bermuda and in England for about 50 years. Before that, we listened on the radio. It's a very nice tradition.

Growing up in Bermuda, Christmas dinner was on Christmas Eve: my grandparents, my Uncle Harry and his family, and our dear friends Margaret & Joe came every year. Turkey, ham and vegetables, roast potatoes, then sherry trifle. I recall the year I moved up from the small table to the main event. After dinner we walked through the citrus orchard to my Uncle Jack's house for eggnog and a slice of cassava pie. My sisters and I opened our gifts on Christmas morning. Always a big tin of Quality Street Chocolates from Mr & Mrs Coddington. The choccie in the purple wrap was, and still is, my favourite. Our spaniel of that year usually had a red or green bow attached to her collar. Not something my little dachshund would tolerate in 2008.

Christmas Day was quiet, leftovers to pick at, books to read, telephone calls and the Queen's Message. Sometimes my father would come by and we'd visit with him for an hour or two ... a drive in his car and we'd find a little cafe open somewhere and have a milkshake (usually too expensive an option, but it was Christmas).

On Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, we'd be ferried somehow to my Uncle Harry's home for the afternoon. More eggnog and cassava pie, and another sit-down meal in the evening.

It's a wonder my sisters and I were not fat children, you might think. However, be assured that this was probably the only time of year when we exceeded our RDAs of anything.

My parents have been dead well over a decade, my grandparents are gone, Harry's and Jack's wives, my Aunt Anne and Aunt Brenda, have passed away, Joe left this life in the 1990s, the Coddingtons as well. Our spaniels were brief candles.

Of course, I returned to the UK, as did my youngest sister and her family. My other sister is anticipating (most keenly) her first grandchild in a few weeks' time, her daughter lives in the south of England and I wonder if my sister and brother-in-law can stand to be 3,000 miles away for long. This baby, a girl according to the ultrasound, would be my parents' first great-grandchild had they lived, and my grandparents' first great-great grandchild.

For Cailean, this is a first Christmas. He's only nine months old. In just a moment, we are going to walk out in the village for an hour. We'll most likely bump into some of his friends, dogs and people, as they get their exercise before lunch.

My flat is next to a little Catholic church with a very long name (let's not leave out a single local saint!) and I can hear singing there, through the fog. Christmas morning mass.

Isn't it remarkable that in this crazy world, the only sounds at this moment are carols in the mist? Christian or not, you'd have to like that.

Merry Christmas, Cailean. Merry Christmas, one and all!

Things That Go Bump in the Night

"Marty, if you see anything suspicious, you know where I am."
"The trouble with this swamp is that everything is suspicious."
Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster

IT WAS AN OFFER I had to take up: My Internet, telephone and television service all through my broadband connection, for a combined price saving me some dosh.

Of course, I agreed and asked "When?" and was told that the new Hub for the broadband would be in the post that day. I could set it up myself and in doing that would activate it. The device for the telly, however, would not be delivered until Monday, 5 January, 2009. Wait! The good news: I'd be first on the delivery list and it would be at my door at seven o'clock in that morning on the 5th. Would I be home? Well, yes. In bed. And I could install that machine on my own as well. I'm not very technical. Oh! It's simple. Easy enough for some bloke called Rui in India to say.

The next morning the broadband Hub turned up. It weighs less than the instruction booklet that came with it, if you don't include all the wires, plugs and adaptors that came in a plastic bag labelled "You may not need these. See the set-up instructions."

I called Sky TV and asked them to collect their satellite dish and equipment when convenient. They'd be right round. Before I had figured out what Hub accessories I did and did not need, there came a knock at the kitchen door. The man from Sky. He had everything removed in under five minutes, and didn't charge me for doing it. And I had only my telly and DVD player, and no connection to the outside world as far as television is concerned. I'm now counting the days until 5 January.

One would miss certain things keenly, and, fortunately, a number of our TV channels feature their programming online a day after the regular broadcast, and available to view online for a week or more. I'm not going to miss Coronation Street much to my relief: Maria has realised that Tony had her husband, Liam, killed for having the affair with Tony's fiancée Carla, and Tony realises he has to despatch Maria as well.

Watching things on my computer monitor, in the kitchen, is not the way I prefer to spend an evening. I use my computer a fair bit at other times during the day, recently on my personal genealogy project (577 names as of yesterday), and for some correspondence, and I consider my desk area an office of sorts. I like to get away from it by teatime. The sofa calls.

We have, in Amble by the Sea, a little DVD rental store. Now and then I do rent a film, but the store tends to stock the goriest horror films involving power tools and Disney cartoons. That's what they can rent and make money at it, I guess.

21st Century Movies is Amble-sized: a walk-in cupboard sort of place. Because there is so little room, the rental copies are sold off a few months after first appearing in the shop. As an extra source of income, the owner brings in rental copies from other dealers, puts them in racks out on the pavement, and sells them. And here one can find a shiny seam among all that dark computer-generated gore. I buy used DVDs for a pound or two each.

I've picked up some classic old movies, better newer films, concert films, documentaries. One never knows what to expect. There are a great many westerns, a genre I'm not terribly fond of, though I've been to Kanab, Utah, a number of times, where many of the great westerns were filmed, and loved the place. I don't care for the face. Sorry, Duke. And there are horror films. The chainsaw features sell immediately, leaving the likes of The Lost Boys, Bride of the Monster, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and real horror like Gallipoli for me to pick through. Curiously, nobody had taken In Bruges and Phonebooth and Alexander, recent offerings. Do we not care for Colin Farrell in Northumbria? In Bruges and Phonebooth have an element of horror, Alexander is just horrible.

Last night, at two o'clock in the morning, I put Bride of the Monster into the DVD player. It was made before I was permitted to go to Saturday matinees, or just never made it to Bermuda's Island Theatre. In fact, those horror and sci-fi films were missing from my childhood, with the exception of serials like Flash Gordon that ran before features that tended to be gladiator flicks. I looked for Ed Wood films after seeing the Johnny Depp comedic bio-pic.

Bride of the Monster is hilarious, camp, and makes one wonder. Was Ed Wood serious, or just having a laugh? The film features a monster which appears to be file footage of an octopus, references to that creature in Loch Ness, super-men, mind transfer, devious hypnotism, a heroine with perky breasts strapped to a gurney, electric shocks, flashing lights, sliding fireplace backs, cabins in the woods, an alligator, bumbling coppers, big cars, thunderstorms, swamps, the famous giant rubber octopus without a motor that Bela Lugosi had to manipulate himself, lights in the sky, and it ends with an atomic blast and cloud and the cop saying: "He tampered in God's domain."

There was so much thunder added to the film's soundtrack that I didn't notice that we had a storm going on outside my flat. To be honest, I expect the storm was affecting the whole of Amble and inland for a few miles. When the film ended, I heard the real storm and a metallic clanging around in the courtyard. Cailean looked out from under his blanket. Fix that, papa.

I went outside, of course, and there were plant pots tipped over, and the lid of the barbecue had taken wing, looking not unlike the saucers in Ed Wood's Plan Nine from Outer Space. The wind was howling; I could hear the sea booming on the beaches.

I secured the barbecue's lid, and looked upstairs at the windows and saw lit, real candles burning, flickering. It was three-thirty in the morning. One doesn't feel too happy knowing someone upstairs in an old building has candles burning while they might be unconscious. That really is scary. There was no sleeping on the cards for me.

Miming on the Karaoke Machine

A black cat crossed my path today
Then another made his way
Uptown
That I couldn't get around

And there were cracks in the pavement
Cracks in the pavement
And I couldn't get up to you
Some downs I can't get through

But there's rain coming
Heavy rain's coming
Going to wash away
My black and blues

Cracks in the pavement
There are cracks in the pavement
What if superstition's true?
Some downs I can't get through

But there's a storm coming
A high wind's coming
Going to blow away
My black and blues

There are secret signs and evil eyes
And devouring wolves as sheep disguised
Truths whispered
Might as well be lies

But there's love coming
And peace is coming
Going to kiss away
My black and blues

I RATHER LIKE that photograph. A friend, who would know, said it looks like Heathcliff walking his ferret.

I suppose that day, abbreviated as it was so far north as we are, was the last chance to go to the beach until next spring. Next spring might be two days in August 2009, this being Northumbria. We took a bus up the coast at mid-morning, had lunch in a pub called The Hope and Anchor, then walked the few yards onto the sands and wandered about for two hours.

A nice sniff-round for Cailean: he likes to get his nose into dead crabs, empty sea-shells, strings of seaweed, and the unnatural rubbish that people drop after their polystyrene-packaged picnics are eaten, after they've smoked their rollies, after their penises deflate. Really lucky dogs find a dead seal or a stinking, bloated sheep on its back.

At the pub, I had haddock, chips and mushy peas, and a pint of lemonade. The barmaid asked if Cailean might like a plate for some of my fish, and I thought he might. However, somewhat to my embarrassment, the little dog refused to eat from the plate, and not even from my hand. There was another very large dog watching him, and some other diners making a clatter with salads, and two frightfully gay men at the bar chattered away loudly about the antique auction on the plasma screen telly attached to the end wall, apparently more interested in presenter Alistair Appleton than the hideous detritus from some old lady's attic. All so very different from my kitchen where Cailean usually sups from his steel bowl. I paid my £10, which seemed a bit steep for what I'd had, especially as my lemonade had never been near a lemon, and we scarpered.

By half-past-two the cool sunshine was quickly vanishing as a storm rolled in. I set up my camera on a bench at the back of the beach and took the one photograph with the sunset, inland, behind me. We walked quickly back to the village as the temperature started to drop, and had to jog to the bus shelter to beat the rain. We shivered there for thirty minutes, and were ready for the warm, even stuffy, bus when it turned up.

However, we'd had a day out, and during the two weeks since then we've had light snow, ice, and a blizzard, word that this is the coldest winter in 33 years, odds 3-1 that we'll have a white Christmas, more ice, and yesterday and today we've had heavy rain. In fact, we've not been more than twenty feet from the kitchen door in two days. Cailean was okay with his first snow, though he refused to pee in it because it was touching his bits (I'm like that too) and we had to step into shelters to do it. But he dislikes this icy rain and running water. Try and keep him out of a hot shower in the flat though!

We have our very small fibre-optic Christmas tree up on a table, and Cailean has totally ignored it. He has dragged his bed up against the radiator in the front room, gathered his soft toys, blanket, spare cushion and three balls around the bed, and spends a good deal of home-time there. He can see the tree with its out-of-sight-light-show (if only I'd had the tree in the 1960s, I'd have found God) and doesn't seem to care. I have to wonder if the slow changes in colour that creep over the tree rather subtly just don't register on the boy's retinas. I'm nearly in a state of Nirvana, and Cailean hides his Snakey-Snake under a blanket and has a kip.

The Christmas cards are going up on string and on the mantelpiece each day, just as my mother's were displayed, and the room looks quite jolly. My Easter cactus is blooming at Christmas for the first time, some sort of religious conversion. As I recently put new covers on the furniture, recovered the pillows and bought some small mats to add colour to the room, which is now golden rather than maroon and white, it is most pleasing to sit and enjoy the warmth when we get home in late afternoon.

I am going to three Christmas dinners. One is in a posh restaurant (I've already ordered fresh raspberries and a sorbet for dessert) with about 20 others, and Cailean will miss that one. Yes, a doggy-bag is planned. I'm also attending an open house the next day, hoping there will be something other than turkey to nibble at. Cailean will be with me, I believe. Father Christmas is to turn up. I'm hoping Cailean will not be frightened. Christmas Day will be spent at the home of some friends in town. I shall be awfully full by Boxing Day.

Cailean is getting his own slipper for Christmas. He's eaten one pair of mine, and has started on their replacement, so I'm hoping the neon-purple-and-green slipper from the pet emporium is more appealing. Please.

Last New Year's Eve, at the stroke of midnight, I was wakened by knocking at the kitchen door. This was before I'd got Cailean; I'd been watching the telly and dozed off. I opened the door to find a Scotsman in a white t-shirt and jeans, in the bitter cold, holding a bottle of whisky. He wanted to know if I'd like to share a wee dram with him. I do not drink, and have never liked the taste of whisky, and who expects strange Scots on their doorsteps? Of course, I now know it was my (then) new neighbour who I'd never seen before, he's a nice bloke, brings Cailean treats, and it's good luck all round for Scots to have a wee dram at midnight at the New Year with someone. I declined a year ago, but hope he'll return as we move into the first minutes of 2009. I won't drink his Scotch, but he may let me sip my Horlicks and not think me totally naff.

I have a few resolutions, I suppose. Stay fit physically, read more, and travel a bit, and try to really make a good job of my now-large genealogy project. I have over 400 names in the family tree now, all direct lines back to about 1800, some back another 100 years. I need to attach references, certificates, photos, and stories if I have them.

My sister's daughter is expecting a daughter of her own in February, and she would be my parents' first great-grandchild if they were living. With another generation, it seemed to me that I might record what I could in case the little one, one day, wonders where she got her love of shoes. We have shoe-makers back in the early 1800s on both sides of the family, in Thirsk, Yorkshire and Lubenham, Leicestershire. My great-niece might like hats, and there were Moon relatives who made bonnets in Canterbury 150 years ago. She might like to grow things, and could blame the several farmers directly back in Colne, Lancashire during Queen Victoria's reign. Yes, I want to spend some of the near future in the past, as it is a pleasant way to spend the present.

Summing up 2008: It has been a terrific year since 28 April when I collected Cailean. I'd had severe bronchitis for a few months before that, and was on the underside of my mood line. I've now walked off 30 lbs, mastered my high blood pressure after 15 years, and started writing again (a dog is a perfect audience or focus for a writer). I'm cooking and baking. I'm rereading books I first tackled 40 years ago with a view to understanding why they appealed so much, how they might have affected me, and I'm pleased, so far, to find that I wasn't spending my time reading rubbish. I may look ten years older than I did in 1967, perhaps more than ten, but I still find some magic, some wonder, in the books it seems we were all reading back then. We were so cool. I think those books served us well. Odd that my Counter Culture of the 1960s was reading the books of the 1920s and 1930s. What do the young people read today? Where do the children play?

Happy Holidays!