It's only Werdz (Contains swearing!)

   

I have a fetish for the steel of words.

People state: “Yer don’t ‘alf kno’

a lot of werdz mate!”

I suppose I do but;

What - a - fucking, Waste!

·          

When some baulk at alternate words

Or pull a forced grimace,

That says “Ooer! ‘ark at you

Wiv’ yer big long werdz.

Flash git ain’t-cha mate!

·          

I recently used (without thinking)

The phrase, ‘a visceral feeling’,

They said “ Yoo wot! You fuckin' nob!

‘ave a drink, un' get down off the ceiling!

·          

So I thought, I know what I shall do

I’ll use this thrall in words,

And try to write some poetry.

‘Fill copious page in fulsome prose’

Use all those words that just mean ‘nose’

And show the world that words;

Are luminescent spears,

That pierce the bugger’s atmospheres.

·          

I found a spot where I was able to

Present my poems incognito

I chose an obscure 'nom de plume'

Shared my first in dread.

·          

The first response from someone said.-

“You have a vast vocabulary friend,

its clear, but here’s 'the rub.'

 

you’re rather

out of step

old son,

That wordy stuff,

been overdone.

Poesies knave's

Simplicity and

Brevity is King!”

Oh! Fuck it then!

The King is dead long live the fucking King!

George's War

Princess Josephine (image courtesy wikipedia)

He woke late. Emily; pregnant with their fifth child, lay heavily in a warm wet glow from a fitful sleep. He'd lain awake wondering if this would be their second boy. They had chatted before sleeping of the void left by the passing of their first son aged only eight months. Emily had the three girls to help but George coveted a son to share his gardens and joys.

“Stay there Emm. I’ll get the girls to keep an eye on things”.

Kathleen was thirteen and managed well. The younger two between them doing all those little things that mum struggled with now her sight was lost. George kissed Emily’s pink glowing belly. ‘See you soon little man’ he said picking his cream leather helmet from a hook on the bedroom door before turning; 'love you Em'.

He weaved the black chromed motorcycle along baked autumn lanes, a Blackfin tuna in a rippling sea. She was glossy, glimmer bright, fishtail exhausts polished to a gleam brighter than a smile in a child’s eye. She wore a jet black sidecar, languishing like a platinum draped Josephine Baker. She was his joy his release his obsession his mistress.

It was late morning, an Indian summer day October 1938. Chamberlain had returned a few days earlier with his fluttering paper promise. His Princess always out on Sundays releasing her from her wooden temple taking her to visit his parents. It was about twenty five miles along the counties byways and he knew the route like he knew the growing phases of his prize rhododendrons.

The sun baked a shimmer into the road, making it uncomfortably warm. Sweating heavily in jacket and pale gauntlets his helmet squeaked with perspiration; pushing the peak back every few miles was useless, He pulled over. George took a coarse grey knitted blanket from the sidecar, brought to wrap plants from his father’s estate. Removing helmet and jacket the blanket was used to dry his nape and forehead before replacing and adding his jacket. He pushed the helmet down firmly onto his crown thumping it down with the side of a clenched hand to get a good tight purchase. The rough wiry blanket combined with sweat and rubbing of chin straps had left his jowl sore so he’d left them unfastened. He was fewer than five miles from his parent’s cottage.

Cooler now cruising winding roads, thinning woodland flowing past. Torrents of rose and sage leaves rose as he reached them lowered as he passed in a wave of branches. Ahead the road bore sharp right it was simple to cut the angle by skirting the inside kerb drifting back across he had done it a hundred or more times. This time an enormous moss green liveried bull in the shape of an army Scammell took the same bend from the opposite direction. George snatched at the brake.

But for his sidecar he may well have avoided impact. It had slapped the bulbous wheel arch of the beast and flicked the bike into the air. The bike remains of the side-car and George had their momentum violently stopped by a stolid statuesque gilt leafed Elm tree. Wrapped around its trunk tighter than puttee’s, soldiers leaped from the lorry racing to the confusion; dangling like a pink grub eaten fruit from the blackened branches. His right leg severely lacerated by torn metal he was trapped, the bike above him. His helmet had burst from his head clattered against the hanging branches bouncing into the road.  A junior crewman mistook it for his head and fainted. Hot fuel and oil leaking from the tanks dripped, blistering flesh from his cheek and neck. A gunner grabbed a piece of blanket cloth wrapped into the branches pushing it over his face to stop the burning. The cloth soaked up dripping fuel. Crew and passers-by helped yank the bike out of the trees. In that moment the heat from the engine ignited the cloth  instantly melting it into George’s face and neck. Jackets were ripped from backs and three men beat at the flames and body aware that the whole might explode at any moment. They managed to peel George from the crumpled metal throwing him across the road away from the danger. He passed out from the excrutiating pain.

Emily was told of the accident in the late afternoon. A baby boy was born later that day, five days early. It would be several weeks before Dad met son. He was a beautiful baby.Everyone said how much he looked like his mum

©Agides

Terry-Thomas: Unmistakable

Unmistakably  Terry-Thomas

Hard Cheese!

I loved Terry-Thomas as a child. I got to know him from television, hisfilms shown  in the late 60’s and early 70’s. “Monte Carlo or Bust,” “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines”, it seemed a film featured Terry-Thomas  almost weekly in those days, but my first recognition of him as a unique voice was at the age of 12 taking my younger brother to the cinema in the Market Square to see the Disney film; Robin Hood. Terry-Thomas’s unmistakable voice, sizzled and curled in the character of Sir Hiss (King John’s sly councillor companion). I giggled every time he spoke just because I knew the voice so well, never mind the jokes and those hypnotic eyes. The animators even gave the snake Thomas's gap toothed grin, “One more hiss out of you Hiss. And you are walking to Nottingham.” Hiss: (to himself)"Snakes don't walk, they slither. Hmph. So, there.” at the age of 12 that was so funny, and I remember my tummy hurting from the hand trapped giggles.

I seek him out on television to this day. Many of my mental floss films feature him, those gentle charming films that make you warm inside and make your belly smile.

'I'm Alright Jack', 'Blue Murder at St Trinian's', 'Lucky Jim', The Green Man, those wonderful Boulting brothers films with Ian Carmichael playing  a man named Windrush and where Thomas’s stiff upper lipped type, acted as the perfect foil for the lugubrious and louche man (and sometime woman) mountain that was the inimitable Alistair Sim.

'Charles' How to Murder Your Wife 

As a sixteen year old, I had escaped my family home and found myself living in North London, alone above a shop on the High St in East Finchley. After working in the frozen food store under my flat for a few months, I settled in one evening to find a favourite Terry Thomas film on telly, it was 'How to Murder Your Wife' with Jack Lemmon, portraying a cartoonist and confirmed bachelor, hugely successful and happily unmarried enjoying the comforts of a well-to-do existence which included the services of a loyal and attentive valet, Charles (Terry-Thomas) and, featuring the visually arresting Italian actress Virna Lisi whom Lemmon's character mistakenly marries after getting drunk at a party.The next day I was talking to a colleague about how funny the film was and how big a fan of Terry-Thomas’s I was, when she said, “Oh yeah he’s really well known around here, he used to live in Lichfield Grove and went to school  wiv’ me friends granddad”, I was blown away by this news; I knew someone, who knew someone,who knew someone, who knew Terry-Thomas!

A few days later, on my next day off, I set out on  pilgrimage to Lichfield Grove which was all of 20 minutes’ away from my flat. I found it relatively easily, not sure what I expected to see but it was a nice street full of attractive semi’s and terraces with small front gardens, gable’s and bay windows . To my dismay there was no sign of the great man nor any indication of which house was his. I can't recall whether blue plaques were a thing at that time but if they were none of the houses had one or any other sign that said a legend had lived there. When recalling this, as I was writing I thought I’d look it up again and sadly still no blue plaque on what I now understand was number 52*, a criminal oversight and dreadful shame in my view.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ a rollercoaster of a comedy chase film to find a buried treasure with a dozen American stars, to this day can make me laugh out loud and Terry-Thomas  more than holds his own in a cast that includes Hollywood luminaries, Spencer Tracy, Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar, Peter Falk and Ethel Merman. The film that gave him the catch phrase “You’re an absolute shower!”was Privates Progress” another Boulting brothers films with Ian Carmichael as Windrush (again!)and William Hartnell (the future first Dr Who no less!) as the soon to retire Sergeant battling to win a bet that he can win the platoon prize, finally, is often shown on telly and I will never miss it if I find it in the listings.

My absolute favourite is the deliciously 'twee'd' comic masterpiece, “School for Scoundrels” an absolute 'tour de force' for all  concerned, a glowing gem, not only a wondrous vehicle for the man who says ‘You're an absolute shower!’ through a gap toothed grin wide enough to park a “Swiftmobile” but: bringing it back to 'showers'; The prize for our our protagonists was called April (get it? I know, I know, pretty poor) – April Smith, played by he gorgeous Janette Scott.

“Oh, I say, Aren't you going to introduce me?”

For me, Terry-Thomas is one of our most underappreciated stars, and the story of his final years is dreadfully sad, wasting away to that cruelest of illnesses, Parkinson’s disease, of which so much less was known in the 80’s. He consequently fell into terrible depressions, attributed by him, to the helplessness he felt fighting his illness. He and his wife descended into near poverty eventually living in a three-room, unfurnished charity flat, with financial assistance from the Actors' Benevolent Fund.

In 1989 some of his old friends learned of his situation and a huge benefit concert was organised to raise money to help, it came just nine months before he passed away in January 1990 so his last few days were spent in a nursing home near Godalming in Surrey.

Terry-Thomas makes me and I know many others smile when thinking about his films. There is a blue plaque at Terry-Thomas's one time home in Queens Gate Mews, Kensington, but he was a North London boy born and schooled so the fact that there is no blue plaque at Lichfield Grove, Finchley, is a sad oversight for a man that entertained us so much and for so long.

Finchley Council if you don't sort this out all I can say is – “You're an absolute shower!”

*I learned the house number from Graham McCann's brilliant book - Bounder! The Biography of Terry-Thomas(ISBN 978-1-84513-441-9) Graham McCann is also the writer of , in my view, the best Marilyn Monroe biography ever written, called simply Marilyn Monroe (ISBN: 978-0745603797). I unhesitatingly recommend both.