Happy Merry Tram 'n' Ferry

'Well, Piglet.'
'Well, Pooh.'
'Merry merry.'
'Happy jolly.'
'Tom and Jerry.'
'Buddy Holly.'
'Jolly happy.'
'Outsize nappy.'
'Roaring fire,'
'Danny Dyer.'
'Happy merry.'
'Tram 'n' ferry.'
'Sleighbells ringing.'
'Bob 'n' Binging.'
'Sprouts 'n' mash.'
'High Street crash.'
'Rudolph's nose.'
'Boots to close.'
'New Year Joy.'
'Myrna Loy.'
'Bette Davis.'
'Dot 'n' Mavis.'
'Here's to you.'
'To you too too.'
'With a hashtag?'
'Plus a gift-bag.'
'All good cheer to every body.'
'Eeeeeet's Kreeeestmas! -'
'Ah - Walsall Noddy.'

Happy Merry Tram 'n' Ferry

'Well, Piglet.'
'Well, Pooh.'
'Merry merry.'
'Happy jolly.'
'Tom and Jerry.'
'Buddy Holly.'
'Jolly happy.'
'Outsize nappy.'
'Roaring fire,'
'Danny Dyer.'
'Happy merry.'
'Tram 'n' ferry.'
'Sleighbells ringing.'
'Bob 'n' Binging.'
'Sprouts 'n' mash.'
'High Street crash.'
'Rudolph's nose.'
'Boots to close.'
'New Year Joy.'
'Myrna Loy.'
'Bette Davis.'
'Dot 'n' Mavis.'
'Here's to you.'
'To you too too.'
'With a hashtag?'
'Plus a gift-bag.'
'All good cheer to every body.'
'Eeeeeet's Kreeeestmas! -'
'Ah - Walsall Noddy.'

I've stood me stand.

'I'm sorry, Piglet, it doesn't make sense--'

'--it does, Pooh, if you'd--'

'--and I simply can't join in with any old nonsense at Kanga's carol-service--'

'--Pooh, it's just a shorter way of saying--'

'Victim of incompetence, that's what that cattle-shed was.'

'Pooh, it means that once upon a time, in Royal David's city--'

'I wonder how it got there? Must have played merry hell with its joists.'

'Pooh, it means that there once stood a lowly cattle-shed in Royal--'

'Oh, yes, stood is right, probably all winded and buckled, having been fed misinformation.'

'Look, there's no suggestion that it was ever anywhere else.'

'Once, Piglet. It says, once in Royal David's city. Which is to say, as soon as it got there.'

'Pooh--'

'Probably been given a right royal soft soap, poor old thing. Oh, yes, come along, annual Cattle-Shed convention, meet all your mates from all over, exhibitions galore, new breakthroughs in shed-stance, sign up for our Lowliness Profiling--'

'If you'd just--'

'Lunch provided.'

'Pooh, it means once upon a--'

'David hisself might drop in.'

'Please, Pooh--'

'So it gets all its laths and rafters over there, you know, looking out for a guide with one of those placards,"Meeting Point, Out-of-Town and Overseas Cattle-Sheds, A Warm, Woody Welcome." Nothing. Hangs about, asks a passing wheelbarrow, sorry, mate, never heard of it--'

'Pooh--'

'Though there's a Gazebo-fest on in the next street, you could tag along with them.'

'If you'll just let me--'

'Here, now we're chatting, my sheddy friend, any WD40 on you?'

'It means that once upon--'

'Oh, right, well, how about a dollop of corn-oil?'

'It was always there, Pooh. It never--'

'So what does the poor hoodwinked shed do? What can it do? Stand for a bit. And just the once. Then, quite rightly, it says to itself, you know, flip this for a game of dry-rot, I've stood me stand, it's a long way home, seen one royal David you've seen them all, I'm off.'

'All right, Pooh. All right. Well, how about "Ding-Dong Merrily On High"?.

'What? A song about a pub brawl at eighty thousand feet?'

'Just a thought.'

 

Of which we know whatnot...

'Pooh, I was wondering -'

'Shhh, Piglet.'

'Sorry?'

'Shhh.'

'Why?  What's happening?'

'Let us betake ourselves unto the zone.'

'What zone? Oh, don't tell me someone's slung up an installation right here in -'

'Silence, Piglet.  Silence. Tigger says it's essential to mediate.  You know, let your mind go plonk.'

'Why should we do that?'

'Words, Piglet.  Tigger says that sometimes they can be swords when they should be fraushoes.'

'It's that honey, isn't it?  Moment I saw "Produce of Colombia" I just knew--'

'That whereof of which we know whatnot, thereof let us know not it.'

'So…if you don't know something you shouldn't talk about it?'

'Yes.'

'When's that stopped Tigger?'

'For it is written, Piglet: let your yea be yea and your shush be shush.'

'Biblical, is that?'

'Oh, Piglet, Piglet.  Jimmy Cliff.  1968. Top tune.'

'I think he might have got it from -'

'He sang about the White Cliffs of Dover, you know.  Just like Miss Lynn.'

'I don't think Mr Cliff had quite the same experience of Dover as -'

'Your mind, Piglet, your mind is like unto the sky.'

'What's this "like unto" business?'

'Your thoughts are like clouds, Piglet, having a proper old scud.  Happy thoughts.  Airy thoughts. Then, all of a sudden, sad thoughts.  Not all that very nice thoughts.'

'No, Pooh, that's minefieldness.'

'Not mediation?'

'You mediate between things.'

'Ah.  Like the devil and the old brown cow?'

'Deep blue sea, Pooh.'

'Oh, code now, is it?  Well, purple sparrow to you.'

'No, it's a saying that -'

'Sorry, Piglet, I'm in the zone.  Ow…ow…'

'Oum, Pooh.'

'Ow…cow….'

Not Maudlin

'Piglet?'

'Yes, Pooh.'

'Is it Kavenarr or Kavenaww?'

'I rather think it's Shrowsbury.'

'Ah.  So not Sconn.'

'Oh no.  Though possibly Soulihull.'

'Or Lemster?'

'On high days and holidays, I should think.'

'But not Maudlin.'

'As in College? Oh, no.'

'I've always wondered what Maudlin College is.'

'A slightly more stoical Heartbreak Hotel, Owl says.'

'Oh, I see.  Piglet?'

'Pooh?'

'How exactly do you pronounce Cholmodeleybelvoirfeatherstonhaugh?'

'Char.'

'Gosh.  Needs an extra-long cheque book, though.'

'Oh, they never carry anything like money, Pooh.'

'Well…extra case for the syllables.'

'Or luggage.'

'So how do they manage?'

'Owl says they just call out,  "You there, zero-hours giggy chappie, haul these, will you?"'

'Gosh.  It's a wonderful world, Piglet.'

'Red roses too.'

Creative Writing at Leicester

Many thanks to Jonathan Taylor for taking a selection of my work for the Creative Writing at Leicester site.  Please follow link.

http://creativewritingatleicester.blogspot.com/2018/09/two-poems-by-michael-w-thomas.html

The Portswick Imp: Collected Stories, 2001-2016.

My collection of short stories is now out.  I hope that you will investigate, enjoy and spread the word about it.  Many thanks, I appreciate it, Michael

 

Michael W. Thomas

The Portswick Imp: Collected Stories, 2001-2016

ISBN 978-1-910322-57-4.

£7.00

Black Pear Press, www.blackpear.net

Available from Black Pear, Waterstones and similar outlets.

‘Past, present and future meet throughout Thomas’s stories, and the meetings are not without consequence.  But there is humour, too, and the chance for the reader to alight in different places at different times.  Sunny San Gimignano.  The Black Country at the lowest season of the year.  An Irish farm circa Sputnik and The Twist.  An England undone by humanity; another England undone by the inexplicable.  A Midlands town seen through Grenadian eyes.  A Welsh landscape in which man becomes shadow, shadow becomes nothing at all.  With a quality that has ensured the publication of Thomas’ writing in titles as diverse as The Antioch Review, Muscadine Lines, Under The Radar, The London Magazine and the TLS,  the stories in The Portswick Imp open up lives in all their ordinary improbability.  Here, so often, is a desperation that refuses to be quiet but also an acceptance – laughing or simply wide-eyed – of a world where, in the words of one character, what is to come can feel like "the first yard of a desert" or, in the words of another, "the proper start."’  Black Pear

 

Early and Late: new publication.

If you would like a copy, please contact me here or on michaelw.thomas@btinternet.com

Many thanks. 

Early and Late. 
Poems by Michael W. Thomas.  Artwork by Ted Eames.
ISBN: 978-0-9929510-3-0
52 pp. Gloss-and-paperboard covers. £5.00
Publication date: May, 2018.

Over four sequences, Early and Late moves through the stages of life as the writer views them: from portraits of peers in primary school (inevitably faded by time) through the bronco-ride of adulthood to the condition of those who face endings of different kinds. (This last isn't necessarily mournful: endings can be a matter of renewed hope.)  The collection contains illustrations by artist and writer Ted Eames which, in different ways, talk with the poems and reveal further slants on their meanings.

Fyoooo-elll...

'Are you absolutely sure, Piglet?'

'That's what Tigger said.'

'Ah…so you're not sure.'

'Eminently plausible, Tigger says.'

'But what on earth is the point?'

'Partly diplomatic and, well, partly lurve.'

'Good grief…how?'

'Well, he's marrying the first one for, you know, the lurve thing…'

'Thang, surely.'

'Sorry pardon.  And he's marrying the other one so that his country won't lose all its teeth if it has to opt for a Hard Biskit.'

'And Tigger didn't mishear the names?'

'No, Pooh.  He assured me that his auditory ambience was geared to the appropriate valences at this point in the stretched envelope.'

'Well, bless my soul.'

'I'm fresh out of robes and water, Pooh.'

'All right, well, leave my soul to its own devices, then.  I just can't believe - '

'You'll just have to, Pooh.  Harry Wails is wedding Meg and Merkel.'

'And when's it happening?'

'Very soon.  The Feast of Wembley.'

'Oh, gosh, I know that one.  Will that Good King Windlassless be there?'

'I think they just thaw him out for a few days in the dark season so he can look out of a window and then pop out for, you know, a bit of trodding with a sheaf of pages blowing after him.'

'I see.'

'Unless his people talk to Tigger's people.  If they do, it'll fuel speculation.'

'Fyoooo-elll, surely.'

'Sorry pardon.'

Battle of the Bayou

'But why, Piglet?'

'Tigger says that it's the patriotic mood of the hour…'

'Ah…'

'So we must participate.'

'I see.  So…a film about what was happening in The Hundred-Acre Wood during their Second World War.'

'Yes.'

'What was happening?'

'Tigger says it's not about what was happening.  It's about what can be made to happen now that they can say was happening then.'
'So what will be happening now that was or wasn't happening then…then?'

'Ah, well, Tigger's going to use the bridge over the stream for the famous meeting.'

'Famous meeting?'

'When General de Gaulle presented Winston with a Parisian tabby to say, you know, ta for letting the Free French stay.'
'Ah.…I see.  Hence the phrase "Chat to Churchill".'

'Précisément.'

'Sorry?'

'Thing is, Pooh, Tigger has you and me in mind to be part of de Gaulle's entourage, so I'm learning the lingo and I'd advise you to get weaving too.'

'Weavers, were they?'

'Busy bees, Pooh.  Working on back-channel diplomacy.'

'I get a touch of that if the honey's off.  So we'd be in the entourage?'

'Yes.'

'Or as they would say…'
'Er...entourage.'

'Bit of a cheek, pinching our word.'
'Ah, well, Tigger says that it all dates from 1812 when the English took the Bayou Tapestry over to Normanton.'
'Yorkshire?'

'France.  They pinched that as well.  And the Bayou Tapestry will be central to Tigger's film.'

'What is it?'

'History in the eye, Tigger says.'
'In the eye?'

'Bit of an opthalmic issue at one point, apparently.'

'What about all the other points?'

'Oh, now, Pooh, they're what you'd expect in the Bayou Tapestry.'

'Expect?'

'Oh, you know…bluesmen with dobros drawn, disputes about 'Midnight Special' starting in G or C sharp.  All that.'

'Ah.  So…an unrestful time in the Wood for the next while...'
'Gary Oldman's playing a tussock.'

'Last word in versatility, him.'

        

Early and Late: Poems and Images, Michael W. Thomas and Ted Eames.

Early and Late.  Poems by Michael W. Thomas, Artwork by Ted Eames.  Forthcoming from Cairn Time Press, 2018.  (Promotional video)