A Redwing Winter
by Phil Thornton
They came one morning
A few days after the snow
And perched on next door’s tree
Whose branches hung over the fence
We didn’t recognise them
This alien flock with immigrant songs
As they flew from tree and tree
Yet all pointing in the same direction
As if awaiting a signal of some kind
A kind of thrush perhaps
Yet none we’d ever seen before
Fat as magpies yet splashed
With red and white on the wing
On the head, mottled breast
We got the books out, googled them
No luck but described them to Margaret
Who instantly named this mysterious breed
They stayed for a couple of days
Made their home in our gardens
A stopping point, a staging post
En route to some warmer destination
Blown off course or simply lost?
The snow fell heavily that winter
It took us and the redwings by surprise
How Far To The Horizon
by Ted Kessler.
Ted Kessler is a friend of ours but you wouldn’t call him a friend of the river. He’s a boy of the city. Well dressed, well groomed and well with it. He will never hold a fishing rod (but if he did, you can be assured it would be of the finest tonkin). He’s Nik Cohn, not split cane. But Ted has been with us from the start. Behind the scenes and at the bar, with well timed words of encouragement and always there to help when I’m out of my depth in the writing department.
This isn’t the first time Ted has graced our pages (you can read his previous HERE) but today is special. From today, we get him monthly (JB)
Towards the end of 2009, Jeff Barrett generously asked if I’d write a diary for CBTR in 2010. All right, I said, I’ll write one for you every month. And here we are, right on track, as February is sucked from under us by the swell of March…
OK. Let’s do it. Diary entry number one. Right here, on the internet. Is that a good idea? Or a bad one? And what would you like to know about in detail, dear diary? The awkward divorce? The girlfriend’s struggle to recover from meningitis? My routine at the gym? I think not. Let’s keep those items in-house for now.
But what’s left? What do I actually do that’s worth relating? The question hangs miserably in the air. In 2000, I was sent by my then employers, NME, to interview Paul Weller. Weller provided one quote that afternoon that haunts me with each passing day and that looms especially large whenever I attempt to fill in a blank brief such as this.
I asked Weller what he did with his life outside of his day-job, what was he into? He looked forlornly at his tea. “I’m still only into the same things that I was into when I was 15,” he said, shrugging. “Music. Clothes. Girls. And wanking, though I don’t get enough time for the wanking. Nothing else seems to matter apart from those things.”
And as I write this diary entry and reflect upon what’s interested me these past six or seven weeks, it is with some shame that I echo Weller’s comments. I’m now the same age that Weller was when he made those remarks, and what am I into? I’m into music, I’m into clothes. I have a girlfriend, and an ex-wife, which means I must be “into” girls too. From time to time, I go to the cinema. I invest money supporting a football team, but I’m not entirely sure whether the emotion enveloping me is hate or love. Beyond that, however, the mental landscape is barren apart from the occasional mirage of a book or a television series, perhaps a quarterly vacation, and newsprint. In truth, the subjects that occupy my mind are those that did so with the same demented intensity as when I was 15 years old: Music. Football. Clothes. Girls. (The order rotates depending on the emotional fixtures list). Totally retarded, yes, but I’m comfortable as such. I am what I am, after all, Olive. (more…)
Letter From Arcadia
Ice Station Tigernut
ja
your blue-knuckle crevace de coeur set my dinner cold. jack london turning in his grave. frank barlow on ice at the hippodrome. here we kept the sledges loaded and the braziers lit. the way to the lake still ditched in old grey coats of last year’s decomposing snow. arse pit like a fishmonger’s slab, hailing bream eyes, skirts of frozen wave round tree stumps,
sheets of ice-drift catching on the lines.
fishing with ancestors, you can hear the water creak like a longboat after dark, you walk on pressed air freezing into sheets like snipped up basildon bond in the first wink of moon. an origami of snow in a footprint. a sky with its throat cut.
Falling & Laughing Competition Winners
Thanks to everyone who entered the Falling & Laughing competition. Congratulations go to Louise Brooker and Iain Rowan, you are the winners. Your books will be in the post as soon as Grace and Edwyn have added their signatures.
Music is for the Birds
2 March 2010 // Miscellany // Music
First mentioned on CBTR by Ceri Levy in his Bird Effect Diary of August 2009, the Music & Migration compilation is now a beautiful reality.
David Sheppard tells us all about it;
Perhaps it’s an innate empathy with birdsong, or the fact that autostrada perambulating troubadours enjoy kinship with anything which regularly ‘migrates’ along familiar pathways in order to keep itself alive (while, ahem, mating, with preternatural regularity), but whatever the reason, musicians have long exhibited a very particular affinity with our feathered friends – as The Byrds, Doves, Guillemots, Pigeon Detectives, Eagles, Black Crowes, etc, would surely attest. That was certainly the opinion of Copenhagen’s Martin Holm: experimental musician, incorrigible record collector and indefatigable campaigner for global conservation alliance, BirdLife International. When the latter organisation wanted to increase awareness of the burgeoning threat to the habitats and ‘flyways’ of migratory birds it seemed perfectly logical, to Martin anyway, to ask musicians to be the mediators of the message. (more…)
The Bird Effect Diaries
2 March 2010 // The Bird Effect
The diary of the making of a film. and an on going fascination with birds and their accompanying cast of human characters. By Ceri Levy. Read previous entries, starting here.
Isles Of Scilly – Part 3.
Friday October 9th
Jim and I decide to stay on St Mary’s today and get off to a cracking start and fail to see both a reported Red-Breasted Flycatcher and a Firecrest. As we run around the island in search of birdlife, we do see a wonderful sight as ten Whooper Swans fly overhead and then drop onto Porth Hellick Pool, which is where we are headed. We go into the hide and watch this elegant group swanning around and also see a Green Sandpiper. For me the best moment is when we manage to witness a fleeting, bullet-like aerial performance from a Kingfisher, as it barrels round the eastern side of the reed-strewn pool. A perfect split second of blurred blue and orange, almost like a glimpsing of a ghostly apparition from another dimension, partly within our world and partly without, and just for a moment our worlds connect. It never matters to me how long or how short a time I see a Kingfisher for, as they always impress me and fill me with awe. For such small birds they have such majesty about them. (more…)
Country Bizarre Issue 6
1 March 2010 // Country Bizarre
Thames Clean Up
Thames21 media notice
DATE: Tuesday 2 March. TIME: 0800 – 10:30
Staff volunteers from major supermarket retailers will be joining Thames21’s volunteers to help remove plastic bag litter from the foreshore at the Isle of Dogs, East London, on Tuesday 2 March.
This will mark the start of Thames21’s ‘Deep Clean’ two day event on the lowest daytime tide for five years in London. Hundreds of volunteers are expected to help clean-up four foreshore locations of the River Thames over two days. Large expanses of foreshore will be exposed, revealing some of London’s worse affected locations for litter.
Cameras welcome. Photographers/reporters are advised to wear old clothes as the site can be very muddy. Boots will be provided.
LOCATION: Newcastle Draw Dock, off Saunders Ness Road, Isle of Dogs, E14 3EA.
CONTACT: James Aldous, Marketing Manager, Thames21..James.aldous@thames21.org.uk
Sign up for the Thames 21 news-letter at info@thames21.org.uk
Patti on the Radio
Patti Smith’s memoir of life in New York in the 1960’s and 70’s is book of the week on radio 4 this week;
Episode 1 goes out on Monday, 1st of March, at 9.45am. Further info HERE.
I wrote a few words on the book for the Heavenly blog last week. read it HERE.
Competition.
Grace Maxwell is the partner of songwriter/musician, Edwyn Collins. Together they have a teenage son, William. In February 2005 Edwyn suffered two brain hemorrhages. He then went on to contract the MRSA bug whilst recovering in hospital. He was lucky to survive but everything changed.
This is the story of them rebuilding their lives. It is frank, honest, angry and at times, very, very funny. It was published in hardback last June and is out in paperback (with a brand new cover) next week.
The publisher, Ebury, has given us two copies to put up as competition prizes. To make the prize even better, Edwyn and Grace will sign and dedicate the winners copy. To be in with a chance of winning one this is what you need to do; (more…)
Caught by the River