From the last ditch

They say he’s ill, Kim Jong-il,

Does he need a pill, ill Kim Jong-il?

No he’s had his fill, Kim Jong-il.

He’s ruling still, ill Kim Jong-il,

He has an iron will, Kim Jong-il,

Even when he’s ill, Kim Jong-il.

Mahatma Gandhi

Was rather bandy,

He owed his condition

To malnutrition.

"A winning hand"

Cried Tallyrand.

"Only a fluke"

Said the Iron Duke.

The bad weather rolled in from the sea, summer was at end. One sat on the cold wet rocks and sang thus:

“Grim Gothic Winter strides apace,

Cutting down sweet summer’s Grace.

Scythes with ice-bound Blade away,

The Blooms that sprang so fair in May.

Cold northern Blasts our Voices still,

Echoing from the summer Hill.

Frozen Fingers touch me now,

And chill my hot and fevered Brow.

Hard hearted Season end your reign,

Ceding me my Realm again.

Calling back the Time that’s gone,

The Time when she and I were One.”

We have had considerable difficulty with the above ever since it was found inscribed on the fly leaf of Adamson’s Guide to Artificial Insemination. When solicited recently for an opinion, one of the Spice Girls volunteered,

“Welwe, somebody just made it up then. Din they?”

“In all probability you are right my fairest”, the interviewer neglected to say, hitting back with, “Ah but who? That’s what the viewers would like to know.”

“Welwe, I dunno, do I?”

This effectively closed the conversation, leaving the matter where it rests today.

Not that it could be said to be resting. Academic eyries are being shaken and literary eagles risk falling out. After a dormant decade, a Finsbury Park Imam has splashed into print denouncing the use of sex in medicine as a vehicle for poetic expression. His Hampstead colleagues were at a loss to know where he was coming from until the Danish Cartoonist revealed, in the columns of the Sun newspaper, that he had forwarded a copy of the text in question with notes on its provenance to the Imam as a peace offering. It seems to have been a singularly ineffective gesture.

Unwilling to be outdone, occidental scholarship in the shape of Jacko Smyrnovich in the American Journal of Insemination, offered this, the first critical textual appraisal:

“It goes without saying that the first two lines are not poetry (which is more than can be said for the rest). Adhering to my grandmother’s advice not to jump into bed without first looking what’s under the bedclothes, it behoves us to examine content before tackling the knotty subject of form. Fortunately the content is not extensive, in other words there’s not a lot of it. The whole work can be paraphrased thus:

Flowers being cut

Chill out!

Where’s my girl?

From this we can be confident that this is not a narrative poem, this story line is going nowhere. Tentatively, and subject to further analysis, I would put it into the category of Reflections, of the sort usually seen in a schooner of Bud, States-side that is.

Form gives us more to chew on, posing the existential question, “Are we being taken for a ride?” The capitalization could lead us in that direction. Ostensibly, this is an 18th century composition, probably by a Limey because most American poets were colonials until late in the century and there are no particularly colonial traits on show. We are in all probability in the hands of an impostor. Choosing Adamson’s work as the vehicle for transmission is a dead giveaway seeing that it was first published in London in 1922. Anyone wishing to write something inspiring on the fly of this otherwise deadly work had, post 1922, the whole gamut of world poetry (Longfellow, Whittier, Nash, Dickinson etc. to mention but a few,) to choose from.

In summary, we are dealing with a scribbler, who chose this unorthodox method of bringing his work to public notice to avoid publication costs and peer review.”

Despite this there are still those, academic and lay, who see or would wish to see in this more than meets the eye. Doubtless in the coming years, decades, nay, even centuries the question of the “AI text” will be raised. We may expect all barricades to be both manned and stormed.

Open up Missus, it’s six and they’re dying for drink. Cabby’s parked his Ford Prefect round the back and Frank Smith is coming up from the field. Knocker is puffing up the drive and Major won’t be far behind.

Mrs Turner’s here with her jug, always first. “A pint of Mild in there please, and I’ll have a Crown Ale while I’m waiting.” Surprise, surprise, she always does. Mrs Turner has a brewing tub in her back kitchen. All the old terrace houses on Bunyan Road have one. Home brew was common when they were built.

Major’s settled in at the bottom of the stairs, his ‘baccy pouch on the shelf and the Gold Block burning well. “A good pint of Bitter as always please, keeps a man alive, I say.”

Knocker’s laying out his coppers on the table, two shillings; there’ll be change from two pints of Mild and Bitter tonight.

Here’s the first tray full, Cabby’s Oatmeal Stout, he looks like he needs it, Frank’s Bitter in a straight glass and Knocker’s Mild and Bitter in a handle.

Frank sprawls on a bent wood chair on the right near the fire. Knocker and Cabby slip into their favourite corners on the bench behind the scrubbed deal table on the left.

Mrs Turner won’t go in the Tap Room so she hovers by the kitchen door chatting to my Mother, in the cellar drawing pints. A kilderkin of Mild and one of Bitter are up and drawing, two more are waiting, on the still, untapped and covered with damp cloths to keep them quiet.

Major appears at the cellar steps, proffers his straight for a refill. “Two’s the limit, it used to be three, or more, in India but the weather was warmer and we needed it.” Come Christmas and he’ll have a gin and tonic to celebrate.

Come Christmas and perhaps Dr Vaughan will walk over the road for quick one. He won’t drink in the village for fear of meeting nobody but his patients and spending the evening in informal consultancy. “No such thing." he always insists. The Slater's Arms is his favourite, where he is practically incognito

Come Christmas, but it's not yet the summer, when we'll get young people sitting outside at the table near the back door. They'll be served from the cellar hatch. The Boot's licensed premises stretch to the back garden and the big back yard. It's because of the Statty on the back field.

Thurston's will squeeze their trucks, trailers and caravans up the drive and across the yard into the field. Setting up the Dogems, the shies, the flying chairs and the rifle range takes all day. We've been saving old bottles for the shooting all year. They've plugged in to us for the fairy lights but they'll need to run their diesels for the rides. It's noisy, the music blasts through the night air, there's a smell of toffee apples and diesel fumes, it's the Statty. Kempstonians stream up the drive. Some stop for drink on the way up or the way back, the cellar hatch is crowded. I came holding my mother's hand while father was away at the war.

Some lash out on bags of crisps. They’re in the side cupboard in their tin box. Smiths of course, with the salt in a blue paper twist. It’s always at the bottom and there’s a knack in shaking the bag to bring it to the top. We're running out of glasses, let's get collecting and washing up. Tap another barrel, Thurston's men will empty it before the draymen come on Tuesday.

They don't bring their dray with horses anymore. Now it's a big wheezing beer lorry that rocks and jingles empty bottles on soft springs. The slide is down, "Four today?" "Must be a party going on." They help my father man-handle them onto the still. A pint each, on the house of course, it helps them to see the marks on the brass ullage dipstick. No time for more. The horses used to get their feed bags so the draymen could drink while they were munching. Now the lorry sits there ticking and cracking as it cools off, but ready to go.

We're last today, so it's back to Biggleswade for them. With the horse dray they used a Bedford depot, but that's long closed. "I know it's progress, “Mother would say, “but the horses were much better. That lorry's not good for the beer. It arrives too lively from shaking and we need a week on the still to settle it. The old chaps won't touch it if it's not drawing clear."

She didn't want anyone with an upset stomach from drinking at The Boot.

But then Wells and Winches sold out to Greene King. The bitter beer, which was filled into the legendary sherry barrels, disappeared. New bottled varieties appeared that nobody had heard of, let alone tasted. Only the Crown Ale survived.

The Statty permit was revoked and the village’s old Statute Fair was no more. Our old men drifted away, “This beer’s so bad it makes you want to give up drinking.” Greene King sold the land and building to developers.

The hedgerows around the old field and the Saxon burial ground were rooted up. Daisy’s stable was knocked down. The two old cottages on the field way were demolished. The neighbour's houses were bulldozed into piles of rubble. Our walnut tree and our apple trees were felled and finally the old Boot Inn, stately lady, last of her kind in the County, was pulled down. On the last day a fire was made to burn the taproom furniture, the deal tables and the benches, even the piano. The old beams were thrown on, including the one where the old carpenters had written 1699 in nails over the door.

Nothing remained, even the glasses were smashed. I have two pint pots from George the fifth’s time in my cupboard and the ullage dipstick on the wall. I would have liked to have kept the builder’s plate saying “I.B. 1699” that was embedded in the wall just outside my room, but somebody smashed it with a sledge.

Mother stood crying. "They shouldn't have done that. That was a crime." But "they" were not there.

William Walker and Ethel, last license holders at The Boot Inn, walked away with nowhere to go.

Although the ubiquitous traveller Carstairs, created by J B Morton, travells no more there are some additional notes on Carstairs' more recent exploits.

La Rochelle April 2008

1. N'Joola

Whenever accused of procrastinating in Africa, Carstairs was wont to remark, "N'Joola was not built in a day!"

Editor's note

In fact it has been established by an expedition financed by the National Geographic magazine that N'Joola, which consists of seven mud huts and a corrugated-iron out-door lavatory, was built in six and a half hours. Was this essential information withheld from Carstairs?

2. In Filthistan

The landscape of Filthistan, consisting as it does of arid desert intermixed with almost arid desert, is still criss-crossed by primeval paths sometimes frequented by equally primeval tribesmen. Carstairs, within spitting distance of the capital Stin-key, encountered his old tennis partner Ibn-Ben Smythe (Josh to his friends) possibly the last of the primeval tribesmen to be educated at Eton and Cambridge. A happy hour was spent in the shade of the Pi-pi tree recalling those days in far-off N'Joola and the girls at Ginginiluvu.

3. In the Outback

Carstairs crossed the Great Australian Outback many years ago with his faithful companion Gibbereegee an authentic representative of the exploited native Australians, known to his intimates as “My mate the Abo”. Incidentally acquiring a taste for Swan’s, and having led a hectic life as the Bandmaster to Ayers Rock, Gibbereegee was content to settle for carrying the six packs in his tucker bag. Disdaining to use a compass, the pair invariably arrived late calling for ice to the accompaniment of derisive cheers.

4. The Great South Sea

Disembarking at Rongorongo for lunch Carstairs was met on the beach by Tutiti in her grass ethnic skirt. Struck by the overwhelming romance of it all he decided to beach his pirogue for ever, hoist the flag, and live on her sweet potatoes. Many were the nights when Carstairs and Tutiti would watch a moon rising or setting chatting quietly about where to build the pier if the need arose. Manoman, Tutiti’s ancient father, would sometimes join them, blowing mournful notes on his conch. Wontiti, Tutiti’s stepmother, usually didn’t.

5. The Land of the Rising Sun

Sensing a need to impress the sons of Nippon with British Hardihood, Carstairs ascended a highish building in Haigotcha and announced to the assembled crowd “To Fujiyama in a pyjama” waiving the striped article for all to see. Donning the chosen apparel he then proceeded, accompanied only by Almond Blossom his gymnastic Geisha, to assault the placid peak. Recalling, when halfway up, that they had left without lunch, the gallant pair descended and consumed a bowl of soup with a chrysanthemum in it. Onlookers were astounded when Carstairs ate his soup with his personal chop sticks. (The left one having been pierced from end to end allowed him to use it discretely as a straw). This was, of course, before the days of television. Almond Blossom is reported to have remained inscrutable throughout the proceedings.

6. Dhown the Nile

Carstairs much preferred to sail dhown the Nile in his dhow to keep the sun out of his eyes.

7. Back to base

Carstairs occasionally felt the need to swing by London “For a change of lion cloth and a jig with the ladies” as he put it. Arriving at Southampton he invariably disembarked into the arms of Lady Fey of Fotherbottom who never failed to twitter “Oh Carsty, you do smell of elephant, how lovely. Let's go somewhere quiet where I can brush the dust of Empire off you” Formalities thus dispensed with, the couple were wont to retire to the Sea View Hotel near Fotherbottom for the customary cocktails and high jinks. The whereabouts of Lord Fotherbottom, although a mystery, seemed to interest no one.

8. The field of flowers

Carstairs’ frequent trips to Xochimilco have recently become the subject of much speculation in the gutter press. The apparent lack of love interest has fuelled speculation that the renowned traveller was about to cross “zum anderen Ufer” as Goethe would have put it. Fortunately, several otherwise demure descendants of the Aztecs have come forward to give the lie to such scurrilities. Modestina from Oaxaca, a particularly robust representative of the ancient race with chins like a step pyramid, confessed on television to lying panting on the patio after a rendezvous with our subject of interest while he drifted away in pursuit of a pink gin.