They swayed on the prom like reeds in the wind nipping on stolen brandy She’d booked room no.6 at the Clarendon He felt like a prince.
He said that he saw a fritillary fly “You cock”, she said, “I’m just a cabbage white” When he mumbled he loved her she hissed “That’s not right You dozyha’p’orth of grapes”
“We must love like mayflies now In this bitter spring” Like mayflies?”,he wondered, “If only they could sing”
He said: “I Saw her one time down on Snakey lane in 1953 Out with her man and a girl And the girl looked a little Like me… maybe?”
“For all I that I cared she thought I was dead And I heard that she worked up the airport But they pulled that all down “ She stayed on the ground When B.O.A.C moved to Gatwick
“We must love like mayflies now In this bitter spring”
“Like mayflies?” he said “If only they could sing”
Now she stamps on the tarmac at Riverview Cries for his plane to come down But planes never land here and if they did land they’d flatten this rotting town.
Maybe she noticed a skylark rise Like he saw fritillaries fly Back In room no.6 at The Clarendon One of them lied.
What a dozy ha’p’orth of grapes!
We must love like mayflies now In this bitter spring Like mayflies? If only they would sing
Gravesend once had an airport.It was to be called London East, built on the pre-war and WW2 aerodrome. All that is left of it is a small patch of taxiway near Nell’s Cafe. The Riverview estate swallowed up the rest. This tale starts during the Battle Of Britain and finishes in 2002. If you know how long mayfly imagos live then you’ll understand the premise…the fleeting urgency of love in wartime.
I think I’ll tell you about Sally Evans She was striking out notes that she wrote to herself Tore them to pieces and hid them away In a Bandaid tin on the shelf in the shed
I was sixteen and my hair was curly I had always imagined her words were about me So I pieced them together like cryptical crosswords And found to my shock they were not.
“Graham has dumped me… God I’m so sad” Johnny’s all right for a laugh but he’s a bit of a twat I’m three weeks pregnant I know it’s not long My parents will kill me but in truth I’m more scared of the bomb”
Two cold war kids on a horsehair mattress Listened to Shackletons drone… They were hunting the subs in the North East Atlantic And we were too scared to go home.
But Sally wasn’t up the duff And the Berlin wall tumbled down soon enough. I got birthday cards… but not this year Just an odd little jigsaw in a Bandaid box.
“Alan has left us The kids miss their Dad Kevin’s all right for a laugh though he’s a bit of a twat. My kids six months pregnant… she’s never at home. And I’m nearly fifty years old and you know I’m still scared of the bomb.”
“I think you loved me… well I wanted you Though we never said so… That would have been cruel And what was that plane called we heard every night? The one you said watched over us Sometimes I miss the bomb”
Let’s look at this Forty-two- a- penny shrine, Its overpraised, chaotic lines That start with tea and yellow trucks, And flukes and random bits of luck. Oh and bits of sciencey sounding stuff That do connect but not enough.
It lacks the risky weight of science. Just gags eked out across the stars A paperback for airport bars Vanilla TV scripted just for you Who rhyme with number forty-two
Too slack to even make it forty-six (And give it universal Chromosomal Human meaning)
1980’s babble Fishy Kinder egg bland chocolate Without the present Or the flavour Do yourself a favour Don’t panic
I love Silbury Hill. During the investigations of the 1960’s, when it was probed with massive corkscrews and pipes, to no avail, that strange cone was often featured on childrens’ telly programmes like Blue Peter and Newsround. It’s unlike anything else in Britain, and it’s accessible. You can drive up, find a gap in the fence (there’s always at least one), and clamber up to the top…if it’s dry enough that you won’t slip.
But why was it built? On who’s orders?
We assume that Neolithic people didn’t travel much but of course they did… people always travel…and there’s plenty of evidence for international trade too.
So, one day this hairy travelling bloke… or hairy travelling woman…. arrives at a prehistoric Devizes pub in a Ford Transit, loaded with exotic spices, cuddly toys …and unguents… and gets talking to the local warlord who’s been fretting about his future long barrow burial mound thingy …and how, style-wise, the design is a bit two-thousand-and-late BCE.
The well-travelled hairy nomad scratches a 2-dimensional triangle on a bit of bone and says, “This is how real kings and queens do it out East, and it’ll be a lot better tnan your poxy old barrow. Pay me 5,000 bilberries and I’ll sell you this design…in fact for 10,000 bilberries and a lardy cake you can have the copyright!”
This local warlord is well happy… pays up, gets all the local unemployed lads and lasses to build a big pile of mud and chalk. It’s basically a very large pile of stuff that naturally settles into a cone shape.
No one in the town had ever seen a real modern pyramid, so everyone in Wiltshire felt very smug… as people who live in Wiltshire generally do.
The old warlord died and the tribe realised there was no doorway to shove him in… and no burial chamber either. After a few jugs of mead they stuffed him into the nearest overflowing long barrow and kept shtum. Well style isn’t everything and he’d been a pretty shit warlord.
Wiltshire folk have been a bit smug ever since.
Ok so it’s a pretty dumb theory but as good as some other stuff on the fake archaeology sites.
Next up in Archeological Bollocks…the Bronze age origins of the Cornish pasty or pastilla and its role in facilitating the Phoenician tin trade.
An old, stout, confused woman, with jumbled memories, stands on the waterfront.
She mourns a boy she spent an April night with so long ago. A drunken proposal, after a tea-dance on the pier and illicit nips of brandy. Swaying in the wind on the edge of Bawley Bay like skinny reeds. In that place where General Gordon smiled, Pocahontas cried, and Lady Franklin once waved at two wooden ships that sailed off into the ice.
He’d called her “My pretty flutterby…like a fritillary!”. He was the only one who ever had.
“Oh you daft boy… but I’m no painted lady… more a plain cabbage white”, she’d teased. “Anyway we must love like mayflies now.”
Or something like that. For wishes and covenants were as slippery as fishes back then, and there was no time to waste. He flew off next day and, like so many, he never came back to her.
An old man with a burn-scarred face stands on a small patch of crumbling tarmac… to the south…on the high ground near Riverview. He stamps on those last remains of a once rumbling runway, with jumbled thoughts. All has changed, except that easterly chill. “We take off upwind to fly and we sail off upwind to die” he mused. “It’s always against us.”
He looks down towards the river with rushes of faded memories like hers. One reel is still so clear and sharp. That waitress he danced with in ’42, who took him back to The Royal Clarendon Hotel. You don’t forget your first… her smell… her skin… the hair down there. A prince that night alright.
She’d always assumed he’d died … so many did. He’d actually bailed out blazing over France and spent the rest of the war as a POW. …came back weary and glad at first, then skinny, ugly and bitter.
He spotted her just once… a few years after he returned … from a distance… one spring in the ’50’s, walking with husband and children… on the old Medway canal towpath that came to be called Peanut Road.
He’d turned away unseen. Would she have recognised him? Probably not.
Such things happen in wartime…and in its aftermath.
I keep your letter folded away For a later that never came. In a Jiffy bag Along with an unwritten postcard of Lough Owel And a Young’s beer mat with your number Written with a pen you borrowed from Maria In The Spread Eagle. I kept them for a later Where we would laugh at our luck… Fuck…
…in long dry summers. At the end of a long green lane In the shade of high Elm trees On this horsehair mattress That smells of tobacco
And now it is a later Different to the one we willed And could have owned Where we are grey And Elm trees are long gone away Like Somerstown
I keep your letter In a box by a river In a room with no view In a town where General Gordon smiled And Pocahontas died Where Lady Franklin watched Two optimistic ships Float off into white mist They are good people here You would love them.
