Happymerrytram'n'ferry

'Well, Piglet.'
'Well, Pooh.'
'So here we go.'
'So da capo.'
'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.'
'Clark's 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.'

Sunday night, BBC Wan.

'Well Eeyore says it's a must for Sunday night viewing.'

'Is that right, Pooh?'

'Shows the themes of evil, conflict and pocket-friendly confectionery in a whole new light.'

'What's it about again?'

'Ah, well, you see, there's this girl called Lara who has to put up with hour-long balalaika themes being composed for her by this chap called Doctor Chicago, who's actually Omar Sans Serif in disguise.  He keeps her hostage in…oh, you know, one of those Russian country houses…I honestly can't remember--'

'Dachshund.'

'That's it, Piglet, exactly.  He keeps her trapped in his dachshund and subjects her to his balalaika--'

'--Pooh, you might just want to rephrase--'

'--when he's not on the phone to John Lenin, who fronts a top-of-their-game skiffle-and-grunge quartet, trying to fix a comeback gig with him on Chicago's Southside…or Natwestside, where the meanest low-to-medium-flexisave-account-advisors hang out.'

'So what does Lara do when he's phoning--?'

'Well, she only goes and betakes herself--'

'Get away!'

'To her room, Piglet, there to develop a recipe for handi-pak sweets in honour of her grandfather, who was an Original Werther but a touch cheerier than Goethe's was.'

'I see…no I don't.'

'The main thing you need to know is that, if she can somehow get the recipe out of the dachshund, someone will rescue her and she can take her rightful place alongside the great confectioners.'

'Like whoever came up with Fry's Turkey Defrost.'

'Precisely.  She's got a dedication ceremony for her grandad planned and everything.'

'I might just try it, Pooh.'

'Sunday, 8pm, BBC Wan.'

'One?'

'Always Wan.  "His Mint Imperials."  Convulsive viewing, says Eeyore.'

You Hum It, I'll Drown It. (A drummer breaks silence)

You Hum It, I’ll Drown It. (A drummer breaks silence)

First published in the Open University Music Society Journal, Autumn 2019.   

The drollery…you get used to it.  What do you call someone who hangs round with musicians?  A drummer.  How can you tell if a drummer’s at your front door?  The knocking speeds up.  What’s the definition of perfect pitch?  Throwing a drum-kit into a skip without touching the sides.  Ancient lore, too, gets in on the act: ‘If thine enemy do wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum.’  Like drum solos on rock double-albums from the Seventies, the gags roll on.

Drummers are not alone, of course, in being the target of status-banter in the music world. Viola-players know the feeling.  Despite the excellence of the likes of Slim Harpo and Larry Adler, the harmonica remains for many a last-minute buy as a child’s Christmas present (inviting wounded looks from the parents: see ancient lore, above).  The ‘perfect pitch’ quip is also applied to the banjo, an instrument that suffers further from P.G. Wodehouse’s pronouncement that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play it but refrains from so doing.  But drummers…ah, they’re beyond the pale.  Preferably far beyond, otherwise they’ll misread it as pail and want to clatter it.

I’m a drummer.  I also play guitar and ukulele (skip-alert) and I belong to a singing group. As old-time comics were wont to say, however, it’s the way you tell ‘em.  If I tack ‘drummer’ to the end of the list, some people take me for a relatively serious musician.  If I lead with ‘drummer’, I’m branded.  ‘Ahh, Ringo,’ they might say, as if  mis-remembering the Bisto ad. Sometimes it’s ‘What do your family think?’, as if I’ve just confessed a yearning to reinvent myself as Vlad the Impaler.  A similar question, ‘What do the neighbours think?’, implies my profound misanthropy.

Actually, the neighbours are unaware: for home practice I have an electric kit with headphones, which keeps the sound intimate and allows me to experiment with different settings, ranging from Country Rock through Reggae to Timpani. So all that the transient fauna in our cellar ever hear is a tapping-fest, as of someone in Starbuck’s who ordered a coffee half-an-hour ago.

What does a drummer ask a band leader?  “Do you want me to play too fast or too slow?”  Ah, these we have loved.  This is an important point, though, and not just for drummers.  Wooziness of tempo is bad news, especially if poor acoustics are on hand to aggravate it. But drummers are expected to be guardians of the pace—not least (and quite rightly) by bass players, with whom they form the engine room of a band.  Once I played with a blues band whose leader, the bass guitarist, was fastidious about tempo.  One of the band’s highlights was the Muddy Waters song ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ (a sentiment which wouldn’t benefit from being urged to the sound of drums), popularised in the early Sixties by Them, Van Morrison’s group.  Famously, that version ends with a dead-stop.  Woe betide any guitarist who, copying it, allows a note or chord to ring on.  And woe betide any drummer who sees the last bar as a perfect opportunity to demonstrate that, look, they’ve got the drum-line to Bolero down pat.  The leader and I were rehearsing once and he became so worried that I wouldn’t stop dead that he inadvertently did just that about three bars from the end, leaving me to disarrange the air on my own.  I say ‘inadvertently’: perhaps it was an electrified version of a knight-errant’s test.  At any rate, from his perspective I was just blithely clattering on and might not be trusted to put a sock in it with the others.  I exited the band shortly after.  

Nowadays I play the djembe, a large West African hand-drum, with a group connected to the Elgar School of Music in Worcester.  For some time the leader has been seeking a snappier title than Elgar School Folk Ensemble.  My suggestion, Eddie and the Nimrods, has yet to find favour.  We play a variety of pieces from all over the world and gig in various places: local festivals, fetes and most recently in a bandstand in the middle of a lake.  Our melody instrumentalists know what they’re doing; I strive to sound as though hanging around with them has paid off.  As you would expect with folk tunes, most of the pieces are 3 / 4 or 4 / 4 and some require less interference from me than others.  Technically, late medieval tunes such as ‘Greensleeves’ and ‘Pastime with Good Company’ require just one emphatic beat at the start of every bar (or, for 3 / 4 time, every second bar, otherwise I start sounding like an insistent bailiff).  For a while, with such tunes, I pondered nipping out for a quick drink, having rigged up a dummy’s hand to be worked by remote pedal.  Then I realised I could smuggle in some Latin American beats, provided that the fills weren’t intrusive.  I’ve yet to be caught out.  If and when I am, I plan to state as historical fact that both Elizabeth I and her dad used to hold Samba Dance-Offs at Hampton Court. 

But you can’t rely on the safe haven of crotchet values.  The Greek pieces we play are invigorating, colourful—and 7 / 8.  In one, ‘Kalamatianόs’, there’s a rest-bar between parts A and B—or almost.  The leader fills it with a vamp on his mandocello (cue Frankie Howerd raised eyebrow), nearly everyone else comes in on the sole quaver at the end and I have to join them at the start of the next bar.  It’s like ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ in reverse but usually I’m present and even correct.  A more recent piece, however, ‘Zwiefacher Die Alte Kath’, flits capriciously between 3 / 4,  2 / 4 and 5 / 4.  Should my path ever cross Kath’s, be she never so alt, there’ll be a free and frank Gesprӓch.

Throughout this article I’ve sensed the drummer jokes hovering in the ether, so I feel duty-bound to sign off with another: my favourite, really, since for good or ill it says something about this drummer’s character.  A boy was at a jazz workshop and became enthralled by the drumming.  At the end of the day, the organisers asked him how he’d enjoyed it: ‘Great,’ he said. ‘When I grow up, I want to be a drummer.’ ‘Son,’ came the reply, ‘you can do one or the other.  You can’t do both.’

Michael Thomas is a tutor on A815, Part 1 of the Open University MA in English.  He tends to keep his hands clasped tightly together in lectures.  www.michaelwthomas.co.uk

 

Sift It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Salted...

'I see…I think.'

'Heavens, Pooh, it's quite straightforward. Top security for our Wood in just five words, Tigger says.'

'Just go through it again, Piglet.'

'Anything you see that looks amiss, you just say the magic…oh, you know, like when you repeat a spell over and over.'

'Decanter.'

'Decanter, exactly.'

'See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Bravo, Pooh. You've hit the Nile at the flood.'

'Suppose you weren't ready.'

'Weren't ready?'

'I mean, there you are, having a leisurely cup of tea, you look out the window, you sense that something's wrong--'

'Oh, well, then it would have to be Sip It, Sense It, See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Or if it was a really leisurely cuppa, I suppose it would have to be Sip It, Swish it, Sense It, See It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Pooh, you really don't have to overthink--'

'And if the urgency of the situation overwhelmed you all at once, it would have to be Sip It, Swish It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Sorted.'

'Actually, I think we can just stick with Tigger's five words, Pooh--'

'Or you might be in the middle of preparing a cake when you spot whatever's up--'

'Pooh--'

'I mean, still with your trusty cuppa--'

'All Tigger said--'

'Sift It, Sip It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Say It, Sorted.'

'I wish I'd never--'

'Not to mention Christmas variations.'

'So don't, Pooh--'

'Old Santa Claus, he's a busy man, you know, shooting hither and yon up there in the filament, some of the presents are bound to fall to earth while he's urging on Plaster and Blister and Dimsum and all. So if one falls at your feet, what can you do but drag out the old toboggan and help him?'

'Tell you what, Pooh, leave it to the rest of us to--'

'See It, Sleigh It, Sorted. Nice ring, that.'

'Pooh, let's be silent, eh? Let's practise minefieldness.'

'So there you are, leisurely cuppa, cake on the go, present falls past your window, out with the toboggan, present delivered, back home, whimsical afterthought of adding some savoury to the mix--'

'I wonder if the Foreign Legion is still recruiting--'

'Sip it, Sift It, Swish It, Sense It, See It, Swig It, Sleigh It, Salted, Sorted.'

'Pooh, for the love of--'

'And as for old George squaring up to the Dragon, with tea to drink and a cake to bake and a toboggan to fettle and a pressie to reroute and a bit of savouriness to chuck in--'

'Mum! Mum!'

'Port Winston Mulberry'

This is the title poem from my 2009 collection (England: Littlejohn and Bray).
 I post it here in commemoration and heartfelt thanks. If it weren't for that astonishing push, we wouldn't be as we are, here and now.

'Port Winston Mulberry'
(Considered by Evan Statler, sometime private, Canadian Armed Forces)

('Mulberry’ was the name given to artificially constructed harbours towed over to the Normandy coast to facilitate the D-Day landings, 6th June, 1944. Two were constructed. Remnants of one, nicknamed ‘Port Winston’, are still visible at Arromanches, itself codenamed ‘Gold Beach’, where British forces came ashore. Further east, around Courseulles, was ‘Juno Beach’, on which the Canadians landed at 7.55 am, in the last phase of the offensive.)

Look at Winston. Exploded sausages
floating in soup. That’s what Lauren’s youngest said,
and he should know--at ten,
commander of all knowledge
in this torn and herded world.
Then he took off, to where his mom
was seeing to a double-scoop pistachio,
leaving me on this beach,
postnuclear with its teethed ledges, sucking holes.
Back then it was just a moonscape,
but those were smaller times.

I should be at Courseulles,
where the guys hit the ground.
But this is as far east as I can push;
so I stand and let the breeze
haul me back the voices:
Cal D’Entremont setting up a jive
just before the tailgate flew,
screaming ‘Saskatoooooon’
and haring down ahead of me.
Hours on he was half-off a stretch of sack,
jolting through an archway:
a fazed lemur losing it on a branch,
no tail left to ring salvation in iron.

Rod McKercher stared at the sands in disgust,
thinking of another ring,
his Prince Edward Island beaches:
“Call that surf?”--and he was gone,
walking a straight line through the business,
strafing just so many gnats
crowding his rifle butt.
Top of the beach, I fouled a line,
thought I’d be shaking hands with The Man
in a foot of scummy hereafter;
McKercher dragged me up like I was
a pretty marker on the tenth green:
“You West Coast guys,” he cried
and motioned me to swing into his shadow,
to enter the books and the footage
in water-clawing step.
He dropped. I was blasting alone
till I wrenched my left foot
and had nothing but a hobble
and a dead man to scare Adolf
back down the road to Caen.

Lauren’s youngest appears
with a chocmint, single scoop,
which he aims at my mouth.
The gang want to turn inland;
the tapestry at Bayeux sounds cool.
I toss the keys to whoever can catch them,
request they report back at six:
“That’s 1800,” I tell the blond fire
on the youngest’s head, and rake it.

I’ve seen all the tapestries foolery can weave.
I’ve seen them pinned down on the linen,
two dimensions the only available space
for death: D’Entremont derelict on a stretcher,
McKercher jitterbugging into dust,
soaking on the sand that curled his lip.

The Espace disappears--and here’s a guy peddling flowers,
wheedling about my sweetheart in African French.
Why not? As he steps away, I pull the wrapping flat,
flower by flower, and pitch them at the Mulberry.

And they land and float
and rock and go under,
all the sweethearts who got serious
and drove an endless howl
through yawning June,
with its petals and its moons.

(Infantrymen going ashore from the H.M.C.S. Prince Henry. June 6th, 1944. Image: PO Dennis Sullivan / Canadian Department of National Defense / Library and Archives Canada / PA-132790.\r\n. There were more than 18,700 Canadian casualties and over 5,000 Canadian soldiers died.)

'Clear the Lorry!'

'Well, Piglet…'

'Well, Pooh…'

'Looks like proper chaos in their country.'

'I'd say so, Pooh.  Tigger reckons they're now in unchartered accountants.'

'Heavens! What does that mean?'

'They'll just have to get themselves chartered.'

'Ah, career change.  Well, they were obviously rubbish at being MPs.'

'And Old Bill was defeated three times.'

'Back to traffic duties for him, then.  So what will happen next week?'

'Well, Laura Carlsberg--'

'--Probably the blondest political editor in the world--'

'--says they'll be opting like it's gone out of business.'

'Just ahead of their country, then.  So how does that work?'

'Ah, now, the biggest Bercow--'

'The what?'

'His real name's John Speaker but he's the biggest Bercow in the House.'

'Stiff competition for that.'

'Oh, he just blinds them with precedent and neckwear.  Anyway, Ms Carlsberg says that he'll

arrange for a pantechnicon to be reversed up to My Lady's Lower Chamber.'

'I don't think I wish to--'

'I don't wish to tell you. '

'And then?'

'Ah, then, the biggest Bercow gets the list of the different optics ready and yells "Clear the Lorry!" and the doors open and they all scurry out.'

'Who do?'

'The indicative voles.  And then he yells out an optic and they all run and hide.  Then someone finds where the largest number are hiding.  Then they all come out again and he yells the next optic and they run and hide again.'

'Till the optics are empty.'

'Completely.  And whatever the largest number of hiders…or hideaways…I don't know the right--'

'Heidelbergs?''

'That's it…whatever the largest number of heidelbergs is at the end, that's the optic they choose.'

'What a lot of optics.'

'A vital part of Westminster life, Ms Carlsberg says.'

'No wonder they don't get anything done.'

'And apart from all that, someone might move a motion at any minute.'

'On live television?  Disgraceful.'