I’m being pestered by petitions – people with their hearts in the right place, telling me the BBC is under threat.
Of course it is and who cares?
I never thought I would write such an awful thing, but times change.
I’m disgusted by their ageist policies, especially applied to women, pay differentials, especially applied to women, bias to whosoever holds the purse strings, USA obsession, blatant pro-brexit, anti-Corbyn attitude, treatment of Emily Maitless….
Except, I don’t know any of the above is true. I haven’t watched TV news on any channel since June 2016, nor listened to a radio bulletin . I read the NYT, Guardian and Mirror online. It means I can choose what I can stomach. Trump, Johnson, to name two from a long list, will give me ulcers if I don’t protect myself and they are not worth it. Truth is an irrelevancy to them. I would put Gove on the list, but he is intelligent. If only he could convince us of his honesty.
I only listen to non-political Radio 3 and haven’t viewed linear TV in years.
Put in a nutshell – I doubt the BBC is worth saving and I no longer care.
I couldn’t afford a therapist so I started writing about my man hang-ups – by imagining I am woman.
It works.
Put Clive La Pensée – into Amazon. Look for Goddesses for some free pages.
There was a trip I had been promising myself – to the Südgelände. I knew that once the age of steam was done, there were vast areas of redundant railway sidings. Most were built on. Some survive, still.
One such area occurred because of a political spat. The Soviet Russian government wanted to break allied resolve to maintain the status of West Berlin, so they shut the railway line through the GDR, hindering essential supplies to the city. At the end of the line, in West Berlin was 18 hectares of sidings, and no train was allowed to enter – for 40 years.
What would that leave? The answer is to be found in the middle of Berlin, on the so called Südgelände. I cycled along the Sachsen Damm, took the ramp up to the Südbahnhof, but turned southward, away from the railway station. I rode alongside a long thin strip of land covered in railway track and jungle. Once I had found the entrance, I had to abandon bike. There is nowhere to cycle on the Südgelände.
Alongside this strip of land, maybe only 100m wide, the modern high-speed trains thunder through, brakes squealing in order to stop at the adjacent Südbahnhof and a few minutes later at the main station. More sedate is the noise from the other side of the park, of the local trains chuntering at low speed towards the city centre.
Forget them both! You can see neither the silver bullets nor the red suburbans. They are screened by wild bursting greenery. Follow the walkway laid out for visitors. You have no choice – the jungle has won. Without the walkway there is no progress. Observe with delight the turntable, once capable of swinging a locomotive weighing 250 tons through 270o. Now it couldn’t turn 1o for the profusion of elderflowers pouring from all gaps. There are tunnels – not for the trains, but for people to get through the dense growth. And the silver birches – those ubiquitous trees, which are always first to colonise sandy soil. They have unceremoniously shoved the sleepers to one side and now block the path once used by thousands of horse power.
The clever art work comes in two forms. The stuff that artists have been encouraged to scatter round the park, much of which one can climb on, and that which nature has turned into art. The once proud points-controller, now sticks its round bulbous black and white lever in the air, but the points can no longer be set. Bunches of grass have long since jammed the movement of the rails.
An art piece, (looking as though Tate Modern has lost an exhibit) provides a climbing frame for wild plants. Technology eat your heart out. You are no match for nature’s primeval forces. Huge barrels and bizarre shapes lay next to the sheds. Someone once had a design for those steel structures. Now they look daftly at the sky wondering if the world will ever want them and how long before they disappear beneath the green sea. Rust is the colour if you are not a plant!
There are several entrances to the Südgelände. The best to take is the one next to the S-Bahn station Priesterweg. Then you will walk through an underpass, beneath the railway lines and will see the graffiti on the bridge pillars. It is brilliant! I thought, ‘There must be a book to be written that needs that picture on the cover.’ OK – I know. Most writers produce a story and then seek an image for the cover. I saw the image and sat down to write Goddesses. It’s finished and is about a woman who uses the lives of pagan goddesses to release herself from her repressed sexuality.
I saw the Goddess on the pillar, while I was reading 50 Shades. No whips or millionaires with clichéd helicopter pads and a choice of 50 cars, in that graffiti or in my story. Just carnal force and nature taking control, and it is not all green.
I’m a bloke! Why write about female repressed sexuality? Isn’t there enough to be said about my own gender?
Of course there is, but Gods and men think they are in control. If they haven’t a problem, they make themselves some. Gods and blokes have a self-destruct button and hence, never get to the point. That’s why I often write using a woman’s POV!
But to answer the question, I found it easier to project my own hang-ups, this way.
Gods were never repressed – they did the repressing until they made fools of themselves. Lilith is my first Goddess, except she wasn’t a goddess. She was Adam’s first missus, but we don’t talk about her, because she gave Adam some lip, when he insisted on always going on top. She paid Adam back by seducing an angel and was consequently written out of theology. History reduced her to a screech owl (and Frasier’s wife of course). She has hung on in the bible. She is there, in Genesis, but presumably that is an oversight. She is alive and well on the concrete pillar to the entrance to the Südgelände. S-Bahnhof Priesterweg.
A woman wielding a knife! It took years before I looked beyond her eyes, to see the knife.
Once you start making the effort to ‘wake yourself up,’ – that is, be mindful of your daily activities – you appreciate your life more.
Christmas Ales – dark, bitter and strong. They were bottle conditioned and laid down for years until considered ready. I was afraid my Fullers Ale would deteriorate, so drank it when only 2 years old.
The bittering and high hop rates mean they will keep longer. Majority Ales were brewed upon the birth of a male heir, to be drunk at the 21st birthday celebration. Did they last that long? We don’t know. We do know that most was returned to the brewery, after the party, for disposal. We can draw our own conclusions. 21 years is a step too far, but 3 or 4? Risk it! Make it strong enough.
So, if you want a genuine Christmas Ale, brew now for Christmas 2021 or 22. You might be lucky enough to come across a limited edition, such as the Fullers, but don’t bank on it.
Fully revised – the brown beer book for craft brewers.
You will use malt, so dark, that only moderate hopping will be needed to achieve the bitterness. Your OG will be so high, you might need a special hydrometer.
Select a gyle from my book on brewing Stout and Porter and get the kettle on for lockdown relief.
Giving a stunning beer at Christmas is the perfect way to solve a present problem. You can be sure, the recipient hasn’t anything like it in their stocking, nor can they buy it for themselves.
Share a beer with a buddy. Teach him to brew if he’s a friend.
Which is why you should get the no soggy pages, iPad, tablet, iPhone, Android version for Kindle, of The Historical Companion to House-Brewing.
All you need for that special brew – apart from malt, hops, water and yeast.
So brew her some beer, or if you really like her, give her the Historical Companion, too!
It works for gender reverse, it goes without saying.
How to plan a seduction. One can take a leaf from nature’s handbook and let it all hang out.
Picture by Kerstin Winters – Flickr.com
Connie Grimshaw was seduced into a life of sexual liberation by two ill-advised sherries at lunchtime.
I posted the first half of Chapter 1, in which Connie, offered enticements for a contract. Her PA decided she would have to go through with it. We left the story with her preparing for her rendez vous, with Greg, the CEO of a major Baltimore customer.
‘Stop mocking me! It’s not funny. I’m not doing it. That wasn’t a date I agreed to. It was a screw, so if you think he is so great, you take my place.’
That wiped the smirk from Dee’s face, but for just a moment, until she thought of her answer.
‘I can’t. I don’t have the authority to sign the contract, so it’s over to you. And what is wrong with a Lilith moment?’
I knew Dee’s hobby – no. That is too weak. Dee’s passion is myth and symbolism. She’d thrown Lilith into the conversation, well knowing I would be clueless and have to ask.
‘Who’s Lilith? Obviously not Frasier’s wife from the sitcom.’
That turned the tables. I was about to boast with my knowledge of a classic TV series. She ignored my pitch.
‘Lilith, my dear, was the original woman. Most people think that was Eve, made from a bit of Adam’s rib. Chauvinistic claptrap. Before Eve, Adam got bored, so God made him a woman out of clay, just as he had made Adam. She was Lilith, Adam’s first wife. She thought she had the same rights as Adam and wouldn’t do things just because Adam said so. In some versions she complained about Adam always wanting her underneath during sex. She decided to teach Adam a lesson and seduced an archangel. She was the original power Frau.
‘Lilith was ignored by theologians, even though she is in Genesis 1:27. The Christian myth mill turned her into a witch, night demon, shriek owl and so on. She has ended up the incarnation of woman’s lust, causing men to be led astray. That’s what can happen to you if you buck the system.’
‘And you still want me to seduce Greg to get a contract? Lilith would have kicked him downstairs or seduced his priest, out of spite.’
‘Sleeping with Greg to get a contract does not count as bucking the system. That’s being a good girl. Adam would have been fine had he let Lilith have her way. She wasn’t asking for much. She wanted to be top dog once in a while. She went off and screwed another as revenge. If Greg won’t give you what you want, he will miss out on the screw of his life. You have to let him know that. If he is a good boy, he won’t be able to stand up by the time you are finished with him. He won’t have the energy or inclination to defy you ever again.’
I began to protest, but didn’t get far. Dee’s voice became authoritative and left no room for manoeuvre, not even for a boss.
‘Listen carefully, Connie. If we don’t get that contract, the firm goes bust and everyone can look for a job.’ She thumbed over her shoulder at the engineers leaving for the gym. ‘Those guys need the bonus. They have wives, children and mortgages to support. Some of them have not drawn a proper salary for two months. They have been supporting the project, at risk, so to say. But they would pick up new jobs. We, on the other hand, are only as good as our last transaction. We are stuffed without that contract and you know it. What’s the big deal? You must have screwed a bloke in the past to get what you want. Get out there, be a Lilith and show that prick what you are made from. Not clay! Womankind will admire you for it.’
‘I don’t see myself as a “Queen of the Night’’,’ I mumbled and felt a blush rise from below my stiff blouse collar.
‘You volunteered for the post,’ she told me. ‘Queen of the Night, Lilith, call yourself what you will; you are going to get a man to do what he doesn’t want to do, for no other reason than he wants to get in your knickers. Talking of which, I bet you are wearing those awful harvest festivals again.’
‘Harvest festivals?’ I weakly repeated, not getting the joke.
‘All is safely gathered in,’ she explained, but then went into practical mode, and that’s what I pay her for.
‘I’ll book a table for two in the corner and make sure the team go out this evening. We don’t want them cramping your style with lewd comments, but now we need to get you some sexy underwear at the hotel lingerie shop. If you are wearing the same brand as I saw in the swimming pool changing room last week, they are a complete turn-off. Let’s go.’
‘I need a drink,’ I protested.
‘No, you don’t. Not yet at least. Get gently drunk on the wine over dinner. Take it easy, though. One can misjudge things in tricky situations. Lilith was always in charge, never more than when the blokes thought they were calling the shots.’
‘One question. Suppose it’s the other way round?’
‘I don’t get you.’
‘You said, “You are going to get a man to do what he doesn’t want to do, for no other reason than he wants to get in your knickers.”’ But maybe he is hanging me out to dry over the contract, to make me do something I don’t want to do.’
She laughed.
‘You don’t look like a woman with much resistance. I think you are up for this. You haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.’
The full story is available via Amazon, with all the twists, turns, love, mendacity, betrayal and sin and error, every romantic thriller should encompass.
This post is satire and any resemblance to reality is misinterpretation by the reader.
In the corner, behind the entrance portico, in a place of worthy honour, but nevertheless, barely visible, is the statue of our Prime Minister, facing, on the opposite corner, the Queen. At night, when everything is still, when even the clatter of a minimum-wage cleaning bucket has desisted, they whisper across the marble space. This evening, Her Majesty is particularly taciturn, and with good reason. The PM is not noted for his conversational skills as one never knows if he is serious, making things up or just daft. She watched the PM draw breath, and cringed.
‘That school group today Ma’am – barely respectful and their teacher said nothing.’
By Matthew Well Flickr
The Queen was reluctant to comment. She was supposed to enter a debate on the good old days. No! She couldn’t stand it for a fifth night in a row. She’d had seventy years of fun-poking at her institution, and specifically, at her expense, although the future King had mopped up quite a few of the hostile barbs over the last 40 years. But her PM, had endured barely 12 months of being an idiot. Well, that wasn’t quite true. There were the mayor debacles such as the buses and bridge and getting the sack a few times for telling porkies, never mind the pay cut he took to become PM.
The building of a Museum of Unfulfilled Promises, supported by Wetwang Civic Society, was the worst slight her class had been asked to endure, and then be demoted to the basement, along with the cloakrooms and lockers, dripping umbrellas, and school classes eating sandwiches at lunch, was the limit. It was insufferable and coming at the end of her long and bumpy reign, highlighting the idiocies of more governments than she could name, was especially hurtful to a public servant who had given her best.
‘Public Servant’. Now she was doing it.
That gnawed within her breast and caused most pain. Her reign and events surrounding it were housed in a cellar-room called, ‘Public Servants.’ Her status as a servant was proclaimed in letters two-foot-high at the top of the wide stairway down. Was it deliberate? Didn’t they realise how titulated she became when forced to share with the servants? And downstairs!
Of course, the PM – the lecher PM, noticed every time they stiffened. What more had she to endure?
And where in heaven’s name, had Wetwang Civic Society found the money to purchase Frisky Manor, a fine 18th century, 20 bedroom country house that was destined to become a boudoir hotel with golf course? When the Civic Society gazumped Best Western with an eye-watering offer, and proceeded to increase the tourist trade with this damned museum, life became unbearable. What was the matter with golf? Her mother had assured her golf was the best way to divert blokes who couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants and thus allowed a woman to retain some kind of dignity. Then, to cap it all, the PM had discovered that the chair of the civic society ran the village chippy. A gentleman would have kept that to himself.
‘Oh, can there be misery loftier than mine,’ she sighed. She’d learned at school it was a quote from Milton. Another false promise! Bloody Hamm got in on the act when bored by his own immortality. If only they knew how bored she was by hers! She loved to quote Shakespeare. ‘Not to be’, would be the way forward, but for that fool of a son of hers. Now she had to outlive him. And why did nobody remember Milton, but everyone knows Endgame by some unfathomable, minor-league, Irish writer who just happened to get a Nobel prize for scribbling.
She had gleaned from chattering visitors ascending the stairs, that every unfulfilled promise since 1952 was chronicled in the basement rooms. There was even an analysis of Eton Old-Boys who made it to PM during her reign. Anthony Eden – made a fool of himself over Suez. Harold MacMillan, such a safe pair of hands, promoted Profumo, who was Bullingdon and liked affairs with spies and call-girls. Douglas-Home, the chinless wonder who either couldn’t pronounce or couldn’t spell his own name. She had never been able to make up her mind which, he came and went so quickly. Cameron who started the whole Brexit mess because he couldn’t keep his Bullingdon back bench under control and of course, the present fool, the magnitude of whose folly had still to be assessed.
They were all there – in the basement, larger than life, in wax, each dripping with their unfulfilled promises. She was sure the Eton masters must have groaned when their proteges went into politics. They must have known. Teachers are rarely as stupid as their pupils.
She heard the click of the light switches, then darkness, followed by the crash of the front door, buzz of the security set and the hammer of the final staff exit at the rear. That all took a few minutes, but the knowledge of what was to come next made them endless.
The darkness brought out the Unfulfilled promises like hungry cockroaches. Where had they been hiding all day? She couldn’t see, but imagined them crawling from the wainscoting, pelmets, from behind bookcases, from within the books on political memoirs, under seats, behind architraves, through keyholes and skirting boards, the PM’s hair. The list was incomplete, she knew that, but the chattering of thousands of unfulfilled promises was relentless, and the worst was, one knew one was part of their mockery – keywords like queen, royalty etc. betrayed that, but she couldn’t follow the sentence for interruptions from other promises.
Often, she mused, ‘Why Wetwang?’ Then a sign appeared, within her vision. Wetwang, from Viking Vertvanger or field of justice. The ancient chiefs met here to decide and apply the law. A cold shudder shook her wax as she noticed the modern meaning, quoted from the urban dictionary. ‘A wet wang (n) – to give someone a good rogering.’
‘A ghost would be fine, Dee. I could put it down to too much cheese or a raunchy kipper.’
My PA Dee was wide of the mark. I was not about to put her right in the middle of a busy hotel lounge and bar. I caught my reflection in the mirror behind the drinks. I was relieved to see I looked like I’d seen a ghost. The truth would have left my cheeks burning and given the game away. I moved conspiratorially towards her. ‘It’s much worse than a ghost. I’ll tell you later. It’s too public here,’ I whispered in her ear.
Dee could have waved at a waiter. Instead, she took my hand and headed for two vacant stools at the bar. We ignored the calls of friendly derision about girl stuff and doing things in pairs. That was good-humoured banter and came from the engineers, who were celebrating our new contract, were pleasantly drunk and probably admiring our backsides as we walked toward the bar. We hadn’t had time to change and so waddled on high heels, our cheeks trapped in tight business skirts and doubtless fighting for space. That was a lot of oscillating flesh. I hate such sexist teasing, but that didn’t help. The power suit is now part of the female armoury, in the world of sales and deals, and the events of the last half hour had unleashed long-sublimated emotions. The knowledge that six pairs of male eyes were taxing our backsides as we swung across the deep carpet caused a twinge of excitement, with or without my approval.
I’d been drinking, too, and was in a lot of trouble.
‘I’ll get you a drink.’
She nodded toward the other team members, all men, sitting nearby. ‘That lot are going to the gym or pool or whatever, in a minute. Then we can talk in private.’
I hooked myself on to the barstool, which was just too high for comfort, and in a tight skirt it needed me to hike the hem halfway up my thighs in order to take a sitting stance. This so was not me. This whole afternoon was so not me.
The waiter brought a couple of sodas. Dee came straight to the point.
‘Did he sign? Or are you white as a sheet because he has thought of something else with which he can jerk us about?’
‘He was making a fuss, wanted the price lower, which would send us bankrupt in six months, so I told him there was no way. If he can get someone else to do it for less, then so be it. A competitor would have to make a crap job of it in order to come in with a better price. He knows that.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He sat staring at me … like for a long time; much longer than is polite, but with a hint of a smile on his face.’
‘And?’
‘I stared back. I thought, I’ll show you. I can face you out. And after a while, we started, you know … flirting, I suppose you would call it. His smile broke into a grin and he twinkled and so I smiled and twinkled.’
My young, pretty, twenty-something PA had a fit of the giggles. I was furious.
‘What’s so damn funny? It was stupid and unprofessional of me.’
‘Come on, Connie. We have been working together for three years – three years of living in each other’s pockets, sharing hotel rooms sometimes when the budget was tight, and I have never seen you flirt! Let go for once.’
‘Ha!’ I snorted. ‘Well it happened this time! I let go.’
‘Oh dear. What happened next, little Miss Lascivious?’
I hesitated. She recited that line like smutty poetry in a girls’ school playground. Was she taking this seriously? I hedged a little more.
‘This is about to enter a personal sphere, and I don’t talk about personal things to colleagues. You know that.’
‘So why are you telling me?’
‘I shall need your advice – what to do.’
‘Then get on with it!’
She was becoming exasperated. Maybe her curiosity was reaching bursting point and she knew, woman to woman, I was going to tell her, so why was I fooling myself and dithering?
I took a deep breath and tried to hide the butterflies building in my belly. I needed to get control, but how can one have control when the tormentor is Greg, the middle-aged rave, the customer MD, who Dee declared on day one, had ‘it’, and whom I had just propositioned. Those butterflies were only partially nervousness. I knew the major problem was the signals and urges coursing through my body. I’d managed to suppress them for the last ten years, but now the dam had burst. Ten years is more than is healthy and today my excitement was that of a teenager who was going on that first date. Something in me had decided – today was the day to fight back. It was shaking me with that deadly cocktail of nervousness and thrill of the chase. I continued in a low voice.
‘He smiled, I smiled. I had two large sherries after lunch instead of coffee. There wasn’t a clear thought in my head,’ I offered by way of a pathetic excuse. ‘I told him he could buy me dinner and afterwards we could go to my room and the contract would be on the bedside table with a pen, and he could sign it, and if the decision was still too difficult, I would try to think of something to help him make up his mind.’
My voice trailed off to a whisper. Dee’s gasp drowned the last words. Was it horror or delight that her boss could fall so low?
‘It was stupid of me and I don’t know how I could have said it and now I don’t know what to do. Obviously, I can’t go through with it.’
‘You can’t? Why not? I would, in the service of the company! What higher ideal can there be?’ There was more giggling and then she thought of something nice to say. ‘I assume he took up your offer, so that is quite flattering for you, isn’t it?’
There was a pause, so I completed her sentence.
‘Flattering for me at my age, I think you meant.’
‘I would be pleased to be asked for a date by him and I’m fifteen years younger than you.’
‘Stop mocking me! It’s not funny. I’m not doing it. That wasn’t a date I agreed to. It was a screw, so if you think he is so great, you take my place.’
What did Connie do next? I have to stop here due to underage access.
For the end of chapter 1 – ‘The Flirt’, click on Free Preview above!
E-book £1.80, if you can’t wait.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Goddesses, next week.
And if you like thrillers without porn but with romantic sex, try the free pages from:
Medieval glass makers created the spectrum effect.
Rainbows are caused by water droplets altering the speed of colours in white light by different amounts. This separates them and produces a spectrum of supposedly, seven colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
And there is the rub. Most people can’t discern all seven, because blue, indigo and violet are a separation challenge too far for the human eye. Some cynics suggest that indigo or violet were invented by early observers in order to give the number 7, a mystical number and more interesting than 6.
Sunlit sea spray spawns
Mystic fear, but refraction
Is science’s riposte.
Mystical numbers were important in the 13th to 17th centuries, so the idea of an invented colour is not far fetched. And if a monk happened to stand in the right place as the mists off Holy Island (Anglesey) were rising, he had a halo of refracted light around his body, and one understands the attraction of a mystery and how early Christians manipulated their flock.
In my picture, one can imagine a figure standing within the halo, which makes it even spookier!
The sculpture is in the Bose Park in Berlin, so I thought, do your Haiku in German!
Inner me asks, ‘What is the problem?’
Outer me replies, ‘If I make a mistake, it will be out there – for all to see, or read.’
Inner me insists, ‘People make mistakes all the time – live with it!’
OK! My first go at creative writing in a foreign language.
Steel hysteresis,
Projecting from the meadow.
Power of Art, waiting.
Karl Menzel is a famous Berlin Sculptor, specialising in stainless steel. You put it out there, Karl, you lose control over what people make of it.
I am besotted with his work so watch out for more pics and Haikus.
Incidentally, I have discovered one can’t use Stauchung for spring compression, so I have renamed the sculpture in English as ‘Hysteresis’. that is, lagging behind the event – we are waiting for this beauty to react to its compression. We don’t yet know how.
That’s the beauty of art.
And here is another sculpting genius, who puts up little guys made of cork, for us all to enjoy.
The Bose Park can be accessed from the T-Damm. Follow his directions.
Clive La Pensée 