Sir

Tags

love, poem, teacher

                                        

The first Spanish lesson

of a new term and there you were,

brown hair flopping

over gold-rimmed glasses –

straight out of university.

Each day I searched for you

to catch a glimpse, a smile.

I wrote your name

on my exercise books,

embellished it with hearts

and arrows. When the others

had gone, you taught me about

Lorca’s imagery. I still write

your name on steamy windows

and in dust on shelves.

How it was

How it was

We lived in a cottage,

with flowers, with trees, with birdsong.

From my bedroom window

fields in every direction.

In summer, studded with buttercup gold,

in winter silvered with frost.

Sometimes there was snow,

so deep, so deep.

Like the winter of 63

when we were snowmen,

following deer and fox tracks

for miles and miles.

The gardens burst

with harvests: carrots, beetroot,

cabbages, and in the orchard

cherry, plum and apple trees.

Hedgerows thrummed with bees

and spangled with ladles

of Mum’s blackberry jam.

But one morning machines appeared.

Metal jaws shredded roots:

bluebells, daffodils, the wild orchids.

They devoured a field, trees, our gardens.

Rabbits and foxes took flight.

We had to leave.

Our cottage was pulled down,

stone by stone.

And from a concrete ocean rose blank new homes.

From each home, a family.

They will never know the names of the trees.

They will never know the names of the flowers.

They trample over the nightingale’s song.

They trample over my heart.

Our cottage at Broadfield. Gone now…

Messages Much Missed

Tags

Hardy, love, poem, poetry, texts

 

 

Messages Much Missed

 

After T. Hardy

 

 

Oh, how I miss you, texting me, texting me,

my phone now lies silent and dead.

You were my everything, all to me, all to me,

as from the very first day that we met.

 

I gaze at your photo standing right next to me,

taken in town at our favourite spot,

where you’d always wait for me, wait for me.

How cool you look in blue jeans and white top.

 

I’m reading your messages, over and over

dreaming that you are here by my side.

Perhaps I should delete them, delete them,

but without them how will I survive?

 

So, here I am

barely coping

birds around me singing.

‘Flesh perishes, life goes on,’ someone said.

But not your texting.

 

Copyright Shirley Anne Cook

 

 

 

 

 

Day in London

My birthday yesterday and we went to see the Tutankhamen exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.  I had really been looking forward to seeing this, but I was a bit disappointed, as there were not as many items as I’d hoped.  I think perhaps that as I have seen the Tut displays in Cairo museum several times I may have been expecting too much. But anyway I did enjoy seeing what was there.  The workmanship used to make these objects never ceases to amaze me.

Outside the Saatchi Gallery.

 

 

Some exhibits

 

 

Afterwards we went to Madame Tussauds where I met my hero John Wayne and others!

 

 

 

We will remember them

 

 

 

Cambian caskets

enshroud shell-pocked helmets

legions of blossom

 

Cordoba

Last week we went to Cordoba in Spain.  The Alcazar ( de los Reyes Cristianos)  is one of my favourite places. It has been the residence of Roman governors, Moorish calliphs and Spanish kings – Ferdinand and Isabella lived there for over eight years. It has a castle, beautiful gardens and an old Moorish bathhouse. It was built on the banks of the Guadalquivir river. The beautiful Alcazar gardens were added by Ferdinand and Isabella and given a Moorish design with gurgling fountains and aromatic plants.  We walked in 30c heat last week, the soft murmuring of the waters helped to make us feel cooler.

Goodbye my dear Spanish friend.

I lost my dear friend Carmina on Saturday. She had been fighting melanoma cancer which started on her foot some ten years ago.

Carmina  Broadfield, Crawley, Sussex. C.1969

I first met Carmina on a school exchange. I was learning Spanish, ( O-level), she English.

I remember making the journey to her family villa in Castelldefels near Barcelona.  It was by train, across France, and I had to sleep on the train, sharing the compartment with people I did not know. It was all very strange. I was only 15.

 

Anyway, her family made me very welcome. She had four brothers, all very good looking!

The villa was near the sea and we used to go to the beach a lot. Her dad owned a small boat.

In the evenings we went to discos or the cinema. Once when we went to the cinema we took baguettes filled with Spanish omelette ( tortilla de patatas). I wasn’t keen on the idea of cold omelette sandwiches but they were delicious.

I met a few Spanish boys at the discos and got told off by Carmina’s father for dancing too closely to one. Those were Franco days and you were not allowed to even kiss in the street.

Carmina came to stay in my home next, in Crawley, and I showed her the sights of London and Brighton, which she loved.

I have naturally curly hair and hated it. No hair straighteners back then. Carmina showed me a way to straighten it using what’s called an ‘ensaimada’. An ensaimada was a Spanish type of cake made of twisted pastry.

So, you wet the hair and coil the hair tightly round and round your head and clip it down tightly. I don’t think it did a lot for the hair’s condition, but it worked and I often dried my hair in that way, with a big hair roller on top.

 

 

Carmina and I kept in touch after the school exchange and wrote to each other often. Carmina would send me my favourite turron at Christmas time.

 

I went out to Barcelona a few times over the years to see her and she visited the UK , once with her parents, but not lately, due to her illness.

We had so much fun when together. She was always laughing and full of life, with a twinkle in her eyes.  I will miss her very much.

 

 

Ode to John Wayne on his birthday.

Tags

birthday, john wayne, ode to John Wayne, poem

Ode to John Wayne

 

I’m not interested in Brad Pitt,

Clooney, Depp, Gere or Cruise

for you were a man with true grit.

They couldn’t walk in your shoes!

 

I fell in love with your gait,

it set you apart from the rest,

and the way you sorted the bad guys

with the fastest gun in the west.

 

Your rugged looks never faded,

in the saddle you rode so tall,

with ideals that never jaded,

you were always a box office draw.

 

Your films are still shown on TV,

death can’t take away your fame.

You have your place in history.

John, your star will never wane.

 

 

 

Broadfield House, Crawley, Sussex.

Tags

Broadfield, Broadfield House, Crawley, Haigh

 

 

 

I am writing a history of Broadfield House.  My dad was caretaker and gardener on Broadfield estate and we lived in a cottage not far from the house.  We had the whole estate as our garden, this included the beautiful gardens, lake and woods. Behind our cottage were fields and we could walk miles without seeing a soul. Sadly, all that has now gone, replaced by the houses of Crawley, a new town began in 1947.

The house was built in about 1820 and various families lived there.

In early 1948 my Dad and Mum were actually living at Broadfield House, which had been a country club and hotel. It had just closed, as it was going to be the offices for the new town architects and they were looking after the house until the office workers arrived.

Late one night there was a knock on the door, when my dad opened it there were two men standing there. One was John Haigh and the other man, he later found out, was Haigh’s friend Doctor Henderson. Haigh was taking Henderson to his work shop in old Crawley, on the pretext of showing him one of his latest inventions.

“I’ve booked a table for dinner” Haigh told Dad.

“No, you can’t have done, we are no longer open,” my dad answered.

“Well, then may I use your phone?” Haigh asked.

“Yes, of course,” Dad replied.

My dad heard Haigh book a room at ‘The George Hotel’ in Crawley town centre.

Haigh gave my dad two shillings for the phone call and then he and Henderson went on their way.

My dad told us how he was later interviewed by the police when they were investigating the Haigh murders, as he was the last one to see Henderson alive. Henderson was probably murdered in Haigh’s work shop that very night! Shortly afterwards Haigh also murdered Henderson’s wife. He murdered nine people in all and disposed of their bodies in vats of acid.

That’s just one of the stories in my book, there are plenty more!

 

Our cottage.

Raleigh’s wife – poem

Tags

beheaded, Elizabethan, poem, poet, soldier, Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English writer, poet, soldier, explorer and politician. He was beheaded in 1618. His head was embalmed and his widow Elizabeth carried it around with her in a velvet bag until she died.  This poem is based on this story.

 

 

Raleigh’s wife

 

 

My love, you are with me always.

This leather bag is like a second womb

and bulges with your head.

It weighs the same as our son at birth,

but you are stillborn.

 

There are black-cowled whispers.

‘Widow Raleigh is insane,’ they say.

‘Why not a lock of his hair?’

I am undeterred, your embalmed head

will accompany me everywhere.

 

I like to slip my fingers inside

your crackled cocoon and explore

the geographies of your exquisite face.

My finger tips linger on the curve of rictus lips.

It’s as though your laugh has just left.

 

At night I take you out and bathe

you in sweet-scented herbs,

wreathe you in your finest ruff,

each laced purl pressed to perfection.

Then when it’s time to sleep

your head rests on the pillow next to mine.

 

Your torso may reek of rottenness

but worms will not steal our goodnight kiss.

 

copyright Shirley Anne Cook 2019