Self portrait as a window pane
And i am hard and smooth like glass - i hope you see right through me -
Don’t see me at all
One side of me in sunshine sleet and howling wind and
One inside with cactus dreams, my mission is
To keep the two apart and keeping draughts
At bay
Not much to say really on a
Good day my life is uneventful and I love
This quiet life of double vision
In a
frame
Anita Greg 29/06/2020
The Cloud over the house
I think this patch of things being the wrong way round started last week
I don’t mind it when this happens and the world goes blurry but it’s not really a thing to talk about in public
Thursday was fine and it wasn’t until Friday that the thing came through the letterbox like she said it would - although it wasn’t exactly a letter. It was a glossy leaflet with a picture of the Queen on a horse on one side - and a load of shite about “A Flag on Every House ” Campaign (Call Wayne on 07554599481 and Our local activists will come around to YOU with ladders ) on the other -
and it sent me into a tailspin - I wouldn’t talk about this sort of reality except that it’s the thing that came through the letterbox that I had already written about - without knowing what the cloud was so it was a bit weird
So after a few hours of stewing - and indignation as for one thing I just happen to know there are two separate people at the end of the street who are working in an autistic residential unit who are not at all British and might well be freaked out so I sent off a hail of letters to local politicians
Starting
“ Dear Public Representatives "
and going on a lot about Our Beloved Queen and how very cross she would be
with a PS
" ps - I expect you have seen the leaflet ... If you haven't then I can drop it into your office ... I will not be calling " Wayne " - and I don't want his " Local Activists " coming round to my house with their ladders ... I am now afraid to answer the door in case it is them. And if I don't let them put a flag on my house ... what happens then ?
As if this year hasn't been difficult enough ! ”
Largely Fiction really- as just personally I have rather liked this year and of course I really don’t give Britishness or any other other Nationality a thought or give a monkeys if I did - but I was playing to my audience ... And I do quite like having the Queen but only because I don’t have any confidence in the UK ever electing someone who wasn’t a lunatic as a President but that is all.
Anyway - it all blew over a bit. I realised that not everyone had got the leaflet which had only gone to houses with flag holders on the outside -... ie / actually not the people I was worried about
I have a flag holder on my house but I can see from the ground that the bolts are solidly rusted in . I already had WD40 and had got an adjustable spanner from Amazon and was thinking about using the loft ladder to try and get the bolts off - but it was raining and I thought it was probably a bit pointless spraying WD40 in the rain - plus would be more attention-getting than I especially wanted to be
And another thing - I looked along the street and noticed for the first time that even the people who would normally have put flags up by this month ... Just hadn’t bothered this year.
And the people I was worried about are not fussed at all - so a storm in a teacup hopefully and I have calmed down and am happy again
I did look up the “ British Freedom Party ” ... In Belfast, this seems to be mainly a person called Jolene Bunting ( and how is THAT for an unimaginatve choice of name - if I was making this up ) who got thrown off Belfast Council and got only 350 total votes standing as an Independant
Also - and even stranger perhaps - or perhaps not - they have a relationship with an organisation called Siol na hEireann ( website “ www.irishpatriots.com ”they interview each other and the same person seems to do both websites ) --- there seems to be an International and mainly anti-Muslim and Neo Nazi network ... Run from ... where from ? Who knows ? Maybe Russia ? I couldn’t even guess. It is a bit sinister
But I don't want to be playing Amateur Detective ... I would rather think about Feathers
And Stars !. This is my first ever website http://www.starmoss.co.uk/
And if it is not self-explanetary ... I would be totally happy to explain to anyone how it works ...but get me on the subject of Constellations - and I would go on forever and you would be so sorry you ever asked
Anita Greg 30/06/2020
Mnemonic for the brightest stars visible in the Northern Hemisphere ... In descending order
Save All Virgins Cried Ricardo !
Promise Beetles A times 3
Altair
Aldebaran
Antares
Speak Polite and Formally
visit Dentist Regularly
Sirius, Arcturus, Vega, Capella, Rigel, Procyon, Betelgeuse, Altair, Aldebaran, Antares, Spica, Pollux, Fomalhaut, Deneb, Regulus
Photographs
The Years of Being Black
When I was - I don’t know how old - very young - I was lent a box brownie camera and it is strange how memory works as I didn’t even know that I knew what it was called - but there it is
Basically it was a black box . It was slightly higher than it was long or wide and covered with a sort of pimply material which I suppose made it easier to hold without dropping it. There were holes in the box - one to look through - one that took the picture and one with numbers that told you how many pictures were left.
We went to Flamingo Park Zoo near Cleethorpes on the Yorkshire coast and I took pictures of the dolphin, the elephant, some penguins and my Grandad and stuck them in an album.
Years later we had moved across the country and I was at Carlisle and County High School for Girls - in the days of the eleven plus, it was the Girls Grammar. I wouldn’t say exactly that I was bullied there or that I was miserable - it was okay I suppose .They made me stand up and speak while they gathered round because I was a stranger and the way I spoke was like the telly. It wasnt cruel - they were only bored and somebody else might have enjoyed being a human television but there we are - we don't get to chose these things and it was hardly Tom Browns Schooldays .... but I felt like a frog in a henhouse shrivelling slowly by the day .
.
We lived eight miles out of Carlisle on the edge of a village. One day I was looking randomly through the photo albums and came to the pictures I had taken at Flamingo Park and saw the pictures of my lovely Grandad. I knew he was from Barbados - just hadn’t realised he was what we would have called “ half-caste ” in those days .. Or just Black as he would be now - or of course just my Grandad, back in Flamingo Park.
Obviously I was Thrilled. - this explained absolutely Everything. Of course I did, actually look totally white ... . but ...
Ali G ( who wasn’t born then ) just wasn’t in it !
Naturally I did not tell anyone that I knew now why I was different - I never began to get my head round the idea of communicating until years later - but inside I did know
It wasn’t until later that I realised that I was not the only adolescent on the planet with a sense of Alenation but one of many - and it was another thirty years of meeting people before I realised that, anyway, most people who have ever lived in Carlisle turn out to have hated every minute of it and would no more think of getting off the bus at Carlisle bus station as it passed through from Stranraer to London than I would
But that was in the future - meanwhile my class was like the Midwich Cuckoos. And they were almost all called Lynne or Linda ... I exaggerate - a bit - but just knowing that I was Secretly black like Aretha helped get me through the days
This lasted - on and off - until we moved down to London and it got scuppered. I was hoping to go to Art College but needed to work for a year before they would let me in. Apart from any other reason, I wanted to find my feet in the City - just a Southern girl who had been living in a gloomy Northern town and with a flimsy idea of myself as sort of now black - sort of now Northern ---- not much else
My first friend at the cafe I worked in was Judith. She was from Leeds and she told me a complicated story about smuggling a goat onto a National Express coach to Leeds - or From Leeds - I can’t remember which way the goat went - but I was wide eyed
And just a tiny bit put out - she was not just totally blacker than me - she was a hundred percent more Northern. and with an actual proper full time Northern accent where mine was fluctuating with a tendency to copy whoever I was talking to - hers was solid Leeds ... But most Devastating of all - listening to her stories made me realise that there were the kind of people in the world that would try and smuggle a goat onto a National Express coach ... And that I wasn’t - and never ever would be - one of those people.
Anyway - that was Bye bye to me Being Black ... But we had more of a laugh in that cafe than I had had in a long time. Honestly - it was just like coming home .
Anita Greg 30/06/2020
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