cameraman & i & i

me and she be dancin'
under smoochy light,
heart to heart and tum to tum
in shady crazy night.

for posin' more than pullin'
we airborne, in the groove.
me pilotin' me partner.
we cut we coolest moves.

i twirlin' her and curlin' her
we don't know we name
she got bad boy lover?
maybe on the game?

but feet astride the rhythm
we burn love's bitter rind
flying wild latino style
excitement in we mind.

him shaggy and unshaven,
cross bone rings and beardy.
tight cropped head and natty dreads.
a denim leather weirdy.

him badges, dope-leaf decals.
with bone to stretch him ears
so round they’ll take a cucumber
if he make 60 years.

hid behind him armour,
hells angel rider too,
scary'nough, he raggy rough.
tough tongue floating on the booze.

him shoot me me partner
on his vijo phone
him catch we up in camera
check out when he get home.

meanwhile we be dancin'
the music comin' fast
trumpets, congas juicin' up
the bass line thick and hard.

yes sir we can salsa
on tiled and dancin' floor.
him post we on website
we? we coming back for more.

© Patrick Ellis 2006

They just can't get the glass

They don’t make mirrors like they used to. They just can’t get the glass. I remember a mirror once. Was it last year? No, maybe the year before. No, come to think of it, it must have been longer ago than that.

Well, whenever it was, that was a cracking mirror. Oh a joke, cracking mirror geddit? But it was a cracking mirror. Clean and clear, in a plain frame, honestly reflecting the sunlight of an honest era. I don’t mean it dazzled you with the truth. Truth can be quite blinding really, don’t you think? No this mirror was kinder. It just had a strong luminance. As if it were itself a source of light with, you know, an even brightness.

It was probably the way it had been put together. I’m still trying to work out when it was. Perhaps it was five years ago. Maybe even ten? It was when they still understood about crafting. Whoever made it had obviously taken their time to get it just right. No mass production. No spoor of the Asian tiger there. Must have been a product of the late empire that mirror. Wow, was it really as old as that?

What a reflection. You’d almost call it optimistic. And the silvering on the back. Perfect. Not a blemish. That was quality. Such colours it had. The reds in that mirror were red. And the blues, boy were they blue? Not like today’s mirrors where the colours wither and fade as soon as you look at them and whose dodgy reflectors inflict flecks of silver on even the most vibrant crowning glory.

I can remember where it was if I can’t remember when. That’s right. It was at mum & dad’s. In the hall opposite the grandfather clock where that big picture of the sea is now. But so well made. And true if you know what I mean. You could tell from the grandfather clock’s perpendicularly perfect reflection. These days they all seem to wobble outwards at the centre. So shoddy. I don’t understand why people just don’t take them back.

I know what it was. It was trustworthy. A bit like a butler I suppose. You know, the old family retainer. It’d hang there discreetly attentive while you gave yourself the last once over before meeting your public. The preening point to check that the tie-it-yourself bow tie hadn’t ended up looking like an old sock wrapped round your neck or that the jeans emanated just enough poetic distress to interest a young lady, but were not too mangled to alienate her mother. Boys and their jeans. Was it ever thus?

And while we’re on the subject of sartorial elegance, it was to satisfy that plane of glass that Dad would adjust the rose in his button hole. And where I would resist in squirming embarrassment as the same was inflicted on me. Only for the tight bundle of perfumed petals to be consigned to the hedge during an appropriately radical post exit instant.

Not to be bested in the vanity stakes the ladies used it too. Mum and sister’s frequent final image analysis prior to sorties to Marks and Spencer to buy arm loads of blouses and trousers, skirts, shirts and jackets happened here. As did the twirling and turning, the dipping and zipping and diving, the craning of necks and the stretching of legs and the last yearning gaze the following day when the armfuls all went back. With the whole process to be repeated in a fortnight.

It was one of the family. A confidante you could engage in conversation when you came back, resplendent with alcohol from the pub. A reliable old friend who would give you none of the graininess you see nowadays sneakily replacing a face’s soft peach bloom with something closer to the shell of gnarled old walnut.

No, they don’t make them like they used to, mirrors. They can’t get the glass.

© Patrick Ellis 2006

Dear Charles Kennedy

hi charles,

i must admit that the ghoul in me has thoroughly enjoyed your recent mugging. the reality beneath the airbrushed surface of british politics has been wondrous to behold. very hieronymus bosch if i may say so.

you really should have gone earlier you know. had you done so your loyal assassins could have continued their writhing and spitting masked amongst the shadows. and the great british public would not have been able to tell whether they were smiling benignly or baying for your blood. they know now.

but you chose to stay. and put up a fight. which drew the not-so-great and the less-good-than-you-might-expect out into the open. i bet rab c nesbit was proud of you.

and not only rab. perhaps british voters were heartened to see some real blood on the tracks. if you achieved nothing else at least you have exposed your own humanity. flawed like the rest of us maybe, but none the worse for that. a reasuring spectacle amongst the ineffectual suits and conforming automatons that populate the corridors of power.

yes charles you should have gone earlier. by your own admission you do have a problem with the drink. and that is going to take some coming to terms with. you aren't going to be out of that one in a fortnight, mate. so schtum now and head for cover. get some help. and, when you have found a way to manage your condition, re-enter the fray.

as the prodigal returned your political capital could be massive. especially in a country which is waking up to its own ugly dream of excessive boozing. and of course you will not suffer from the blood stained hands with which your erstwhile friends are now tainted. not so much 'ming the merciless' as 'et tu mingus?' treachery, especially in public, has never been an endearing trait. and we all like a fighter.

so head down, get help and then prepare your comeback.

cheers

patrick ellis

Seascape, Oxwich Beach, Gower Peninsula, UK

Seascape looking south from Oxwich Beach, Gower Peninsula

Lowering the Tone

Dear Mr Blair,

I understand that you, like so many of our country men and women, enjoy the odd snifter. Why not after all? It helps one to unwind at the end of the day. And encourages a good night's rest. From time to time I have been known to take a drink myself.

Hopefully unlike yours though, my imbibing has occasionally got out of hand. It got so out of hand at one stage that I experienced a couple of episodes face to face with the purple bunnies. I even found myself on one occasion, counting the antennae on the malevolent insecty things that wriggle out from under the skirting board just as the gin hits the heavy duty 8% electric fizz at 3:55 am. Happily this was some decades ago and I have yet to renew their acquaintance.

More recently, and more positively, in a small way I have helped recovering addicts and alcoholics scrabble out of their own pit of monsters. Ironically this gives me a great buzz. Equally ironically it holds its own hangover potential. I. e. you can feel crap afterwards.

Yes even on the sunny side of Alcohol Street life can be pretty chewy. I recently watched a gifted friend from my adolescence evade the profusely proffered helping hands and lifebelts and drink himself to a very early death. A bundle of laughs for all concerned I can tell you. Not.

So I may claim to have a little knowledge of the stuff. But if I do, have my bibulous adventures earned me any insight? Can I for example explain why Brits drink increasing amounts of increasingly costly liquor like they hope there’ll be no tomorrow? Can I fairy cakes. All I know is that’s what they seem to do.

Once upon a time I had boozing down as a solitary vice. Perhaps that was just my take. For many now it seems that getting slaughtered is, by turns, a liberating experience (i. e. it permits us to do things that we would never have the guts to try sober), a fashion statement, a seriously conspicuous consumption opportunity not to be missed, the new black or scariest of all, the new national sport.

Whatever the goal in this city, the gusto with which young men & women (not to mention the older ones who might have a chance of knowing better) exploit the festive potential for self degradation makes for an impressively depressing spectacle.

The melancholy is undiminished when it takes place in what remains of our inspirational 19th century architecture. Windows through which our forebears dreamed of the stars now stare out in disbelief over their great, great grandsons and daughters puking in the gutter. Until that is, the drinkers really get disinhibited and let it all hang out. How sad, especially over the ‘big weekend’, to see my people brought so low.

So why do they do it? I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the alluring way that alcohol is marketed. Or the glammy image with which boozers are anointed by the press. Ooh we do love a bad girl. Or boy. Don’t we? Just look at the recent case of poor George Best. The latest in an infinite line of sad suffering ‘stars’.

It’s probably nothing to do either with the way parliament trembles at the jobs and investment power wielded by the brewers. Or the punters’ need to be a celeb-for-the-night and sluice away what they see as the comparative mediocrity of their Jo and Jane Soap lives. It’s probably nothing to do either with their personal vulnerabilities or with the need to block out life experiences that are just too tough to handle. Who can say why they are all so desperate to get pissed? Is it just because they can perhaps?

And they sure as hell can. There is no dispute on that point. But what to do about it? I only hope your solution of granting 24/7* access to the hooch succeeds. I am not personally convinced that if you give a bunch of bingers more time to slosh the Day-Glo goo down their raucous necks they will be magically transformed into sophisticated one-glass-of-red-wine-per-day euro-sippers and everything in the clinic garden will be rosy. Not even during the panto sason. In fact it seems to me to be quite a long shot. But it might work. Although may I suggest, probably not after dark in the feral exclusion zones that so many of our urban centres become.

Still not to worry, the increased revenue'll be a sure fire vote winner. Just don’t publish the sum balancing that against the cost to the National Health Service. Or to the local constabulary who will have to keep papering over the cracks.

Surely our police have more important things to do than soaking up drunken violence of an evening? I mean what about the War on Terror? (And while we're about it, what about the War on the Causes of Terror? Thats one that doesn't seem to have found a purchase in you recent rhetoric. But that's a separate rant.) We don’t want any unhinged zealots masterminding the spread of toxic chemicals throughout the land now do we? But hang on a moment. Intoxicated? Toxic? Could there be a link? Mr Blair, you’re not hiding something from us are you?

Apparently you didn’t lose one night's sleep over your decision to let slip the dogs of war in Iraq. I bet unleashing the joy of non stop guzzling on the UK population hasn’t kept you awake either. Such are the qualities of leadership. Sleep sound, Mr Blair. Just like the Iraqi war, I think it very unlikely that the boozing will be happening in your neighbourhood.

Yours sincerely,

Patrick Ellis

PS *I only hope that you think long and hard before you apply a similar rationale to the laws affecting the supply of those other opiates of the masses. God, even religion would be better than that.

© Patrick Ellis 2006

Heres Looking At You Kid

Seascape due west from Llangenedd beach on the western extremity of the Gower Peninsula.

A grim sky makes for a moody image. No two the same.

© Patrick Ellis 2006

Seascape between Rotherslade and Lambswell on the Gower Peninsula UK

Seascape looking south towards the North Devon coast. The image was made between Rotherslade and Lambswell on the Gower Peninsula. This is where I was lucky enough to grow up. If I ever did.

I find seascapes like this one both contemplative and rewarding. The colours and the lines are simple and you might think predictable but the variety is infinite. You never get the same one twice.

© Patrick Ellis 2006

Oystermouth Square Re-visited I

My earliest, and possibly closest, brush with celebrity's sparkling firmament occurred when Snowfy, our family cat, bore a litter in Harry Secombe’s uncle’s airing cupboard. Although I didn’t appreciate the depth of her understanding at the time Doris, the lady of the house, was particularly forgiving. Her husband Cyril didn’t turn a hair.

But then Cyril wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the hair to turn. He did. Turning it though might have been a little on the tricky side. Cyril drew his tonsorial inspiration from an earlier epoch. I imagine, although I don’t know, that he may have seen a few silent movies. May even have been impressed with the romantic success of Rudolph Valentino et al. Consequently Cyril’s conception of an appropriate coiffure involved a pretty hefty application of unguent followed by deft brush work to mould his crowning glory tightly to his scalp.

The result could only be described as dapper. Through my child’s eyes, although I didn’t realise this then, dapper was Cyril’s defining characteristic. He was a pleasant chap. Always ready with a cheerful hello for me. But most of all he was the ‘d’ word.

Dapper didn’t stop at the top. It seemed to run all over the man. Like a generous coating of wax polish. Whatever he did he was dapper. As he briskly stepped out of an evening his tidy belted overcoat and smartly buffed shoes perfectly complemented his trim trilby set at its impossibly rakish angle.

Dapper at play and dapper at work. Cyril was employed in the transport sector. Following a stint on the much missed Mumbles Train he became an inspector, a uniformed position, for the local bus company South Wales Transport.

A man of some resource Cyril resolved the conflict of sartorial identity over anonymity with characteristic panache. In contrast to his evening wear, his dark blue service coat was never seen to be buttoned and belted. It hung casually from his shoulders, more in the way of a cape than a mackintosh. And although never scruffy, the way he wore it spoke far more clearly of dashing romance than it did of a career spent negotiating the idiosyncrasies of 1950s British public transport.

A coat worn in this manner was hardly likely to conceal something as prosaic as a ticket punch. Never. No one would be surprised were Cyril, should the need arise, to unsheathe a rapier and engage in some deft sword play with a brace of razor wielding teddy boys before bounding onto the running board and making good his escape to a fortified eyrie in Thistleboon, Derwen Fawr or even Cwmrhydyceirw.

That coat said plenty. But the triumph of Cyril’s spirit was made most manifest in his bus inspector’s regulation hat. Conforming, horizontal and of an unmitigated blueness this was the ultimate millinery icon of the status quo. Although currently suffering a serious challenge from its transatlantic relative the baseball cap, it remains a provocation to subversives the world over. The badge of petty officialdom and the rule of bye-law it has been, at the least a flat challenge, and at the most a herald of grim destruction, to groups as diverse as illicitly tree-climbing children, canoodling couples, cider pirates in parks and pro democracy activists in Tiananmen Square.

But for all its cultural potency, it was no match for Cyril. He simply tipped it to one side. And that was that. The jaunty angle of his trilby was exaggerated beyond imagining by the harsh planes of this tyrant’s crown. Cyril’s simple affectation completely subverted its power, transforming it into a benign portent of a more liberal future.

Looking back nearly fifty years to Oystermouth Square is a long view. While the rain accentuated the profile of the cobbles under their thin tarmac blanket it seems unlikely that this charming man, busy with his timetable, could foresee the social upheaval that would hit Britain ten or so years later.

But did he? Was Cyril a nascent fashionista? Or a real revolutionary? Difficult question I know. But worth asking nonetheless. Because it might explain why he remained unperturbed while Snowfy temporarily annexed his airing cupboard with her contribution to the future. Perhaps he was considering the rake of his hat in the scheme of things. Or maybe he had far more important issues on his mind.

© Patrick Ellis 2006