Tuesday 10 January 2023

Schrodinger's Train: Potsdam, Dresden

 Schrodinger's Train Paperback

Ebook now available, but not currently showing*.


To accompany the paperback version of Schrodinger's Train, my first writing work since March 2017, I would like to share some photographs from the journey. 

I've selected items I have mentioned in the book and some extras. I have some brilliant videos too, but it is years since I have been here, and on You Tube, so please forgive me for being a bit rusty.

By the time I reach The Netherlands, I reckon I shall be up to speed on the Tech :-D 

As I have already written 64k words, I'll keep the literary side of this exercise to an absolute minimum, though there are outtakes which didn't make it to the book I will include, like the one below.

For those of you who would enjoy a Free PDF of Schrodinger's Train, drop me a line. I will have free copies of the paperback too towards the beginning of February.

Section 3: Potsdam, Dresden




1: Altes Rathaus (Town Hall) in Potsdam - look at 
the sky. Unbelievable.


2: St Nicholas Church, Potsdam


3: Dresden Cathedral



4: Schofplatz - close up of one of
the biggest squares in Dresden.




5: The first building you see when you alight the
train at Dresden Station at the entrance to the modern retail sector. The Old Town
is about a mile walk from here and is in complete contrast. 





6: There is modernist art all over Dresden, and a great love
of the horse (in common with the rest of Germany). Beautiful creatures...
obviously not me!


7: This piece is called either Quo Vadis or Walking Trabant. I don't
think its unique to Dresden and can be found elsewhere, including Prague. Terrific.


8: Dresden's neumarket.


9: Dresden's theatreplatz, with the castle at the centre.


10: Dresden Opera House: Sempeoper


11: Dresden Academy of Fine Arts


12: The spire of Kreuzkirche, Dresden




13: Dresden Castle (south view)




14: Sophiekirche - a beautiful building


15: The Crown Gate at the Zwinger Palace. A single photograph doesn't do this area of Dresden justice, justice, so I videoed it and will publish soon. Possibly the single most aesthetic and inspiring place I have ever visited - or seen, to be honest.


Dresden 
(Sunday 26th June, 2022)

 The whole rebuilt, regenerated and revitalised city is full of symbols of pacifism, reconciliation, and harmony between people. Seen up close, it’s both inspiring and uplifting, but also dreadfully sad. For a Briton, Dresden represents a complex set of contradictions.

The Old Town was rebuilt by the Soviets after the war and you can see all the great medieval sites rebuilt stone by stone. It is awesome, in the true sense of the word. The Zwinger Crown Gate, the amazing Palace, the Museums and their edifices.  An afternoon there wasn't anywhere near long enough.

In the end, simply: I have never seen anything as exquisite in my life as the Old Town of Dresden. 

NB: Potsdam is nice too - well worth a visit











Monday 9 January 2023

Schrodinger's Train: Berlin

 Schrodinger's Train Paperback

Ebook now available, but not currently showing*.


To accompany the paperback version of Schrodinger's Train, my first writing work since March 2017, I would like to share some photographs from the journey. 

I've selected items I have mentioned in the book and some extras. I have some brilliant videos too, but it is years since I have been here, and on You Tube, so please forgive me for being a bit rusty.

By the time I reach The Netherlands, I reckon I shall be up to speed on the Tech :-D 

As I have already written 64k words, I'll keep the literary side of this exercise to an absolute minimum, though there are outtakes which didn't make it to the book I will include, like the one below.

For those of you who would enjoy a Free PDF of Schrodinger's Train, drop me a line. I will have free copies of the paperback too towards the beginning of February.

Section 2: Berlin, Hoppegarten


0: Originally, I chose Hoppegarten
so I could go to the Office Racenight there on the last Friday
I planned to be in Berlin.
Sadly, the internet
fixture list which showed the racenight
was wrong (which happened a lot), so I never did get to go to
Hoppegarten races, but I did get to see the
racecourse itself and to walk along the 5f straight.
Lovely!


8: In Hoppegarten, a racecourse town
twenty miles outside Berlin, I stayed in a tent behind
a chateau and in front of a series of abandoned barns and
farmhouses which were rumoured to be haunted. One night,
the heavens opened (in the middle of a heatwave) and all my
possessions were saturated, either through rain or damp.
Camping is definitely for the purist! This entire accommodation, beautiful as it is, is freely
available on Airbnb throughout the summer and it is cheap and friendly.









2, 3, 4: Berlin is full of museums on
the river (described in the book).
They are absolutely beautiful
to look at and, for twenty euro, you can
visit them all. It's a great walk too and it can take
all day to see everything.






6. The Reichstag Facade and...




7: Reichstag Dome. Massive queues prevented a
personal visit but I am told it is fantastic inside.







8. The inspiring New Jewish synagogue, a symbol of hope and 
a fantastic minaret. This photo is the property of
Jewish News

NB My photo of the Brandenburg Gate was so bad, I deleted it. Suffice to say, it is a
wonderful place, a gate you can stare it for hours.



Berlin (from June 23rd 2022)

Berlin isn’t perfect, granted - Belfast is smaller, sharper and has much better beer - but it is new, brand spanking new. Immaculately clean and fresh. After the chaos of Gardner Street around Dublin station, and knowing London well (for example, the area around St Pancras and Kings Cross), Berliners have it lucky by comparison. They have it cleaner for one thing. It feels like a new city and that is, perhaps, because it is. Yet, it's simultaneously old too:You only have to stand there quietly, next to the Reichstag Dome, amidst the hustle and the bustle of the young eurobackpackers walking past, the school tours, and the smartly dressed business people off to the conference and you get that impression

















Sunday 8 January 2023

Schrodinger's Train: Northern Ireland

Schrodingers Train Paperback Version available here.



To accompany the paperback version of Schrodinger's Train, my first writing work since March 2017, I would like to share some photographs from the journey. 

I've selected items I have mentioned in the book and some extras. I have some brilliant videos too, but it is years since I have been here, and on You Tube, so please forgive me for being a bit rusty.

By the time I reach The Netherlands, I reckon I shall be up to speed on the Tech :-D 

As I have already written 64k words, I'll keep the literary side of this exercise to an absolute minimum, though there are outtakes which didn't make it to the book I will include, like the one below.

For those of you who would enjoy a Free PDF of Schrodinger's Train, drop me a line. I will have free copies of the paperback too towards the beginning of February.

Section 1: Larne; Belfast; Northern Ireland


1: Larne. Northern Ireland is full of graffiti, some 
good, some grotesque, but this was the best
piece I saw, in the centre of Larne Town. Beautiful, isn't it.

c

2: Writer's Square in Belfast. Both halves of
Ireland have a superb literary culture and
in Belfast, there is a square dedicated
to the Writer's Art. A must visit, opposite the
majestic St Ann's Cathedral



'3. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't
get the scale of Belfast City Hall Right at the centre of Belfast, it's a
majestic building that dominates the entire city. Check it out online; it's worth
the effort.

All city navigation refers to this and it makes wandering around simple.
Belfast incidentally, has one of the best ergonomic signage systems
I encountered. It's impossible to get lost in the City.



4. I have a brilliant video of Larne, which I shall post later, but generally, the weather in Larne
was foul, so my shots of the town weren't great. This one is a beautiful shot of the Irish sea taken from the Antrim Coast Road on the first afternoon I was there. I walked six miles and it is one of the
most memorable walks imaginable.



5. One of my favourite chapters in the book focuses on my
visit to Down Royal races. The day itself was, er, interesting, to say the
least. Set in Lisburn, amongst acres of prime Irish countryside, this racecourse might be 
worth a visit in winter, but certainly not in June for the Ulster Derby. Mayhem!



6. My beloved Notts County are extensively mentioned throughout
the book and I took any connected photographs I could for no other reason than selfish amusement!
Belfast, like most British cities, is a city of contrasts, with opulence adjacent to poverty. This shop is just out of the prosperous, thriving centre.



6a: Belfast's Famous Crown Pub is well worth a visit. In fact, I think
that Belfast towers over Dublin for pubs, clubs and general nightvibe, but that
might be an age thing. The interior of the Crown is something from another time. This was the 
only pub in the centre I found real ale - Timmy Taylors, Landlord - incidentally. 


(This photograph
is downloaded from the site 10 Pubs: The Traditional Irish Pub Crawl in Belfast | Ireland Before You Die)


 


The Sea Seen From The Antrim Coast Road

Subject to the rays of this burning sun, blue is an inadequate description for the sea to my right which stretches to the north west of the British mainland. The range of colours is startling. They say that Eskimos have fifty seven words for snow, how many words are there for blue in English? I didn’t know. There probably aren't enough.

 




7. Fans of 'Titanic' will know that the considered-indestructible
liner was built in Belfast at the Harland and Wolff shipyards. These are the famous
yellow cranes. There is a visitors centre and it is extremely popular. 







Wednesday 22 December 2021

A Christmas Cavity

 In 2015, as part of a celebration event, I edited and published an anthology of short stories called Access All Areas, which I think is still available somewhere on the interweb. I think there's a blog post on here, actually. Have a look on the right!! 

I wrote a Christmas tale for inclusion, which proved popular, so as I am currently writing something new for 2022, and it's Christmas right about now, I thought I'd share it one more time.

Merry Christmas, everyone and have a wonderful New Year

Mark xx




    A Christmas Cavity

*

Dense flakes of snow descended from grey skies on to the car park. A white Christmas, the first for years. Janet’s car (an Audi, second-hand, a proper workhorse), was covered in a screed of uncontaminated white flakes. The walls surrounding the tarmac floor of the car park had become, in the blink of an eye, the innerscape of an ice-cube.

She wondered how she was going to get home.

And not for the first time she wondered why she had opened her dental practice on Christmas Day.

*

She turned from the window to her patient. Dennis. Old Dennis.

Open wide, she commanded. He obeyed and Janet began to probe the rancid circumference of one of his seven remaining teeth. His breath, imbued as it was with vodka and McDonalds, made her thankful for compulsory masks.

It wasn’t always the case. She’d spent twenty-six years of her life exploring the nuclear wasteland of mouths like that of Dennis, who lived in hostels and on benches and sometimes, she knew, in the car park behind her practice. She had never got used to it, the fire and the death inside mouths like his.

You would think after nearly a quarter of a century she would have done.

There was nothing for it. The tooth had to go.

*

I’m sorry to tell you this, Dennis, but you’re only going to have six teeth left after today. This one’s pretty poorly, she said. His eyes said it all (rheumatic, milky, the nicotine from his endless rollup invading the iris, painting it tobacco tan, like the dead molar about to be separated from is putrefacting, crimson gums), and he had no need to acknowledge her beyond that.

After (the tooth came out with a satisfying pfft, almost below the level of perception – a sound of relieved separation only a dentist would hear), Dennis signed his initials on an NHS form and went out to sit in the waiting room. He was the last patient of Christmas Day. Three pm. After some form filling and post-dental comedown, Janet said goodbye to young Nigel, her nurse of nine months, with an envelope containing ten purple twenty-pound notes and a card (a photomontage of Finland), from a luxury multipack she picked up at Debenhams last New Year.

Together, the two of them had prescribed three bottles of high strength Ibuprofen for infected gums, six bottles of antibiotics, propped up five teeth (employing the subtle dentistry skills she trained for) and removed eight others (using the brute force the modern realpolitick of British dentistry forced upon her by virtue of the credit crunch). 

He pecked her on the cheek before pulling up the hood of his parka and shut the door behind him, leaving her alone next to Big Jim, her faithful, fully equipped, eight-grand dentist’s chair. Nigel ushered a reluctant Dennis out into the cold and locked the door from the outside, a robust clicking sound that simultaneously filled her with relief and with a creeping dread.

She was alone. Again. On Christmas Day.

The fourth year in a row. Ever since Brian left, four days after her thirty seventh birthday.


Janet’s practice, Greensleeves, was the newest dental practice in the area – a vast, sprawling council estate, one of the biggest in Europe and her’s was the only practice in the City that opened on Christmas Day.

She opened every day, did Janet, for at least eight hours, and on Tuesday and Thursday, in the evenings too. For the last four years. She had a business partner, but he was happily married and he had gone back to Krakow for Christmas with his wife and two kids to see family. She gave her his blessing. Said she didn’t mind taking up the slack. At one point in the week before Christmas, she nearly asked him if she could tag along, but she left the unprofessional (and completely silly) impulse pass.

She supposed she was still stunned: Brian was the love of her life and she couldn’t imagine being apart when she was with him, and she still could not imagine life with anyone else. No-one would ever come close. Not that there had been many options since and not that her ex felt the same way. Brian met a receptionist at the practice in which he worked. Twenty-two. Now, he treated the molars of the middle class in Harrogate while the girl who took Janet’s place by his side raised his child.

*

Janet had never grieved. When he told her that he was leaving, Janet simply affirmed what she had heard, repeated it back, dug her fingernails into her palms and said okay.

Then she erected a logistical schedule that had lasted four long years, an unbreakable routine, an ironclad dam structure which she supposed was a defence against utter despair, a breakdown from which she would never recover.

Her parents had died and there were no children. Scottish, her few friends were all back home (and, of course, all married with kids, which meant visiting at Christmas was awkward and embarrassing for her, the maiden aunt in the party hat at the end of the table, no one beside her to tug on the Christmas cracker).

She was a stranger in a strange land here and not for the first time, as the silence embraced her in the now immaculate, antiseptic environment of her suite, she wondered why she was here. What it all meant, in the wider scheme of things.


As she did so, she heard footsteps outside in the waiting room.

Padding, as if someone was shaking snow off boots onto the welcome mat.

Who’s there, she shouted, startled, getting up from atop Big Jim. There was no reply. Then she heard the crackle of a zip-fastener – someone was taking off a coat! She reached for a pot of dental tools and picked up a scalpel. Held it. Janet wouldn’t go down without a fight, that was for sure.  

(Once, back in Aberdeen, someone had tried to mug her in the street after a night with the girls in the town, an alcoholic ex-oil worker down on his luck. She’d punched him so hard in the face, his nose cracked. When the coppers finally caught up with him, he asked for a solicitor - not to defend himself, but to sue…).

Stealthily, she crept up to the door. Opened it.

*

A man sat in the waiting room reading a magazine, with one leg across the other. A big fellow, with a red shirt and a proper pot belly hanging over his belt; a healthy, protuberant beard, almost white, like candy floss; thick, old-school jeans and boots.  She put him at sixty, but it was hard to tell ages nowadays (the older she became), and as she stared at him, incredulously, her scalpel in hand. Her fear abating, she realised that he had that ageless look about him, as if he’d been there forever and would always be there, like someone’s grandparent.

No – he looked like her own granddad. As she remembered him. Before he died thirty years ago.

The practice is closed, she told him, carefully and slowly.

Is it? He replied, putting down his magazine. And I’ve got such terrible toothache.

You don’t look like someone with toothache, she said, lowering her scalpel.

He gave her that all-encompassing smile again. I assure you I have, he said. I’ve got such an important day today too. Lots of work to do and I have people expecting me, but I am afraid that this bloody toothache is getting in the way. I was in the area and my tooth has been giving me tremendous gyp, and then I spotted a very nice chap coming out of the pub at the bottom of the hill…

The Lamp? She interrupted. He had a slight accent (French? German?) and his measured delivery – perfectly enunciated – was delivered with depth and a certain huskiness.

Yes, that’s it! A fine pub! The Lamp. Nearly stopped off for a Ploughman’s lunch and a pint of ale myself! Anyway, I inquired after a dentist - lovely chap, slightly the worse for wear! - and he told me that you may be open and I thought I’d pop by on the off chance. It really would be frightfully good if you could have a look. I’ll be happy to pay.

How did you get in? She asked, ignoring him. The door was locked.

Was it? He said, scratching his beard. He looked bemused, as if someone had just told him that the sky was habitually yellow. I could have sworn it was open when I arrived.

Janet walked over to the door. It was unlocked. Bloody Nigel! Yet she swore that she had heard her assistant lock the door. In fact, she was certain of it.

And now she had a decision to make.




There was something about him. Something familiar and reassuring. Something comforting. She didn’t feel threatened, nor up against a wall. The way he smiled was like a big welcome home from someone you loved and trusted. That smile was the equivalent of a generous and expansive hug.

And his voice.

She walked back into the waiting room. In the end, she had nothing else to do on Christmas Day.

Let’s have a look, she said. Take a seat in there.

Oh, thank you, thank you, he said, he said, hurrying past her. He was a big man and his belly wobbled under his shirt, and when he sat down on Big Jim, he only just managed to fit. Like an excited child, he looked around him at every possible novelty – her equipment, her pot of sterile tools, the illuminating spotlights above, the mouthwashes, the scales, the pile of blue forms the practice distributed to low-income folk (eighty percent of her punters. No. Ninety percent).

She scrubbed up, donned her mask and a fresh pair of gloves. Switched on the spots and took her seat next to the giant chair.

What’s your name? She asked.

Nicholas, he replied.

Surname?

Smith, he said. Nicholas Smith. He winked at her and she repeated the name back to him, feeling about seven again, sitting on her grandad’s knee. Janet hardly ever smiled nowadays. She wasn’t miserable, or taciturn or offputting – she had simply forgotten how, she supposed, but just being next to Nicholas Smith made her feel like chortling. But she remained professional. Wrote down his name on the form. Address? She asked.

I live abroad. I have my European health pass somewhere in my jeans, he said, starting to get up with an effort but she put up her palm.

Don’t worry about it. Let’s have a look at that tooth, shall we.

He opened his mouth and she leant over, altered the angles and spotlights, investigated the man’s cavernous maw.  Prodded, queried, fingered, delved, pointed (inside and out), inquired, and did all the stuff she was trained to do and while she did so, Nicholas ummed and aared and nodded and winced (at appropriate points) and gestured in the air with his corpulent, meaty fingers. She eventually spotted the problem (the beginnings of a nasty abscess) and after she had done so (feeling proud of herself, as she always did), Janet Brown did what she had to do.

Unfortunately, she said, there’s not a lot I can do, Nicholas.

Oh no, he replied, looking genuinely shocked.

You have an abscess. I cannot do anything while it is in this inflamed condition. I’m going to have to prescribe painkillers and anti-biotics. The latter will take a week to work, but the painkillers will take the edge off. I have some here, actually. They are very good.

That’s something I suppose, Nicholas said. I don’t really want to lose a tooth.

Actually, you have very good teeth, Janet commented, pouring a glass of water and removing two Ibuprofen (augmented, prescription stuff) from a translucent brown bottle. These will help the pain. What is it you do?

Oh, deliveries, he said, gulping the water and taking the tablets. Hospitals and care homes and residential places and such. I’m a delivery driver.

What do you deliver? Janet asked.

With a herculean effort, Nicholas got up from the chair and stretched. He boomed with laughter. His eyes sparkled and his cheeks flushed with life. She noticed for the first time that he had a remarkably red nose.

Oh, all manner of wonderful things, he said. But this year, books. Particularly books for the children. Yes, all manner of wonderful books. Do you like books, Janet? Are you a lady that enjoys a good read?

I do, yes. Books are brilliant.

He boomed with laughter once more. Yes, they are indeed. They are truly brilliant and thanks to you, Janet, your tender touch and your magic potion, I am able to carry on my deliveries. How can I thank you?

Nicholas reached into his jeans pocket, but Janet lifted her palm once more. That won’t be necessary. Merry Christmas, she said, grinning like a Cheshire cat on laughing gas for the first time in four years.

It’s inclement outside, Janet, so I’d best get wrapped up snug and toasty. Can’t catch a cold, now can I? Nicholas zipped up his giant red parka, still chortling. Then, he reached into one of his pockets, which seemed impossibly deep to her. Time stopped still as he searched inside, muttering to himself, querying (oh where is it? That’’s it…got it…oooh, not…ah! There it is), as he did so. He pulled out a box, no bigger than a matchbox, wrapped in Tyrian purple tissue paper. He handed it to her.

I would like you to have this, Janet, as a token of my appreciation. You have brought me pleasure today – my toothache is leaving already – and this little token will bring you great joy too.

I can’t accept...Janet, ever professional, tried to say, but she never finished. A wave of calm and peace washed over her and she held out her hand. Nicholas passed over the box. Thank you, she said simply, accepting the gift.

Now, I really must be going, he said, pulling up his hood. Lots and lots of people to see today. Thank you, Janet. I bid you adieu and goodbye.

Goodbye, Nicholas, she said, trying to remember whether she had introduced herself earlier, as he shut the door behind him, flakes of crystal snow landing on the doormat.



She looked at her gift box. Though small, it was deceptively heavy, with a proper heft, significant mass, like a cube of lead. She wondered what was inside. Then, as she did so, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a large hold-all on a waiting room chair in the corner. A black leather holdall with two big leather straps and gold press-stud pockets.

Nicholas must have left it behind, she thought. It may be important! She ran over, picked up the bag, raced for the door, hoping she might catch him, but outside, there was nothing.

No sign. The roads were empty and it was getting dark. She felt like calling his name into the wind and the driving snow as the light faded, but something stopped her – a sense of futility, perhaps - or even the strange sense of contentment she now felt.

Safe, out of the snow, a tremble and a shiver underneath her whites, Janet opened the hold-all on the table in her suite. She pulled back the zip and the bag opened neatly.

*

Inside, treasure. Paperback books. Hardback books. Anthologies. Novels. Histories. Magazines. Graphic novels. Comics, piles of comics. Children’s activity books. All new. All pristine. Photo-covers, painted covers. All manners of colour, all the colours of the rainbow. It was a treasure trove of books and for the size of the holdall, there seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of them. Big books. Small books. Tall books. Short books. Thin books. Thick books. Blue books. Red books. Hundreds and hundreds of books. How did they all fit inside? she wondered. It was surely impossible!

She began to remove the books and as she did so, trapped beneath a Roald Dahl and a Phillip Pullman, Janet discovered a blank envelope, sealed.

Clearly a Christmas Card. 

On impulse, and not knowing what else to do, she carefully opened it, taking it apart at the top using her scalpel as a letter opener. The paper sliced easily and swiftly.

She removed the card and stared at it.

Stared at it some more.

 

On that Christmas card was a photograph of Greensleeves, her dental practice. 

With a Happy Christmas inlaid in gold underneath. 

And it was snowing.

It hadn’t snowed on Christmas Day in years.

*

After doing what she had to do with the books, and then in her suite, Janet turned off the light. Picked up her coat and put it on, along with boots and scarf. It was cold out there, but inside, she was warm.

She hadn’t felt as warm as this in years.

Just before she left for home, she took the purple package from her pocket and assessed it once more. She would open that at home, by the fire, with a glass of malt whisky and a mince pie.

And she knew that her life, stalled as it was, hollow and dead, would begin again.

Her Christmas present safely in her pocket, Janet locked the door to her practice and made her way through the winter’s day to her snow-covered car.

xx

____________________________________________________________________

All images are free copyright.

Originally published in:  


Access All Areas


Thursday 6 August 2020

Poetry At School: A Personal View

So. 

The grey men in grey suits want to remove poetry from the national curriculum do they? Typical. 

Why? A society without poetry is a cold society, blank and functional, going nowhere. A metropolis of empty souls. 

A society fit only for old men in grey suits.



I don't want to live in a society without poetry. Do you?


How beautiful is that? Pablo Neruda. 


Poetry has been a massive part of my life. And that started at school. 

I did not like school at all, especially the practical and vocational aspects the Government are now keen to promote. 

Without poetry, I wonder, what would I have done? To this day, I am utterly dimwitted when it comes to tools and mathematics and science and no amount of support and training or government policy can change that. 

When I was a kid, I once constructed a go-kart in our garage – a go kart with no axles so it simply wouldn’t roll. I was so proud of that go-kart, but everyone on the road laughed at me.

In woodwork at school, I tried to make a shark out of wood and it ended up looking like a pencil with no lead. In metalwork, I tried to make a ruler and it ended up more like a parallelogrammatic credit card. Everyone laughed at that too. 

In Chemistry, my only formal contact with a Bunsen burner and its fiendish beakers was when our teacher lashed me in the face with the bendy tube for some now long-forgotten crime. Everyone in the class laughed as I fell off the chair and cracked my head on the formica tiles.


In PE (football, or hockey), I can only remember Mr H, a Yorkshireman every bit as violent and narcissistic as the teacher out of Kes who thought he was Bobby Charlton. 

Once, during football, I accidently fouled a lad called Kevin. We started with the handbags, as you do. The teacher trotted over nonchalantly and smashed our foreheads together leaving us writhing on the ground with concussion while he trotted off again, whistling. 

Everyone on the muddy, slanted pitch laughed and laughed and laughed.

I hated school, particularly the vocational and non-academic stuff like the above. 

The stuff they are trying to promote now. 

I have no fond memories of school after eleven at all. I couldn’t wait for it to end, to be honest. 

Yet, I loved English and to this day, I love poetry. 

Without English and Poetry, I would have been so deep in life's shit I don’t think I would have ever come out.


And it worked for me. Poetry. No-one laughed at me in an English class because I was quite talented with a pen. 

Still can’t do a thing with a screwdriver or a battery drill (still can’t change a plug and have spent the last two days trying to change the inner tube in my rear tyre if anyone can help), but I can write a coherent paragraph and I know the difference between a quatrain and a stanza.

I learnt that at school in the poetry segments of the English curriculum. 

I learned about Byron and Shelley and the epistolary love between Barratt and Browning. I read the good bits of Beowulf and the naughty bits in Chaucer and the beautiful bits of Shakespeare. I was introduced to the Beat poets by Mr Fothergill, who taught History but was a brilliant writer and a published poet. I enjoyed performing. I played John Proctor in The Crucible (and through it learned how patriarchal societies exploit and suppress women, which I wasn’t learning anywhere else in eighties Britain). 


I was happy to read out my poems in class in a way I didn’t want to read out prose. Reading prose in public seems wrong, but oh so right with poetry.

Poetry is a visual, spoken form. The two are completely different disciplines and I learned that at school too. 

The men in grey suits have seemingly forgotten this.

Reading poetry was like acting, or singing, or entertaining rather than writing or reading. It was as distinct a discipline as physics is to history.


I only wished there was more poetry and less functional algebra, which I have never, ever subsequently used to any practical purpose.

I wish I could tell you that I was a brilliant performer, but I was not and am not – however, I was given the opportunity to try on the curriculum and no-one laughed when I did and I learned to present information in front of a class, which came in seriously useful in the future. 

Had I been a pupil in 2021, I would have been in big trouble.

You know what happens when something becomes voluntary in a school: It gets lost in the hinterland of the Extra Curriculum.

If you are a young man, in the murky, grudging extrazone, if you secretly want to learn something arty, you are usually up against football practice with your mates, or the character-building boxing training, or something practical and vocational you can use on an apprenticeship.

If you are a young man, you already can’t be bothered to read because you have Doom:Eternal Boss Level 2 to conquer and now you won’t have to bother with poetry at all because you’re playing the school up the road in the semi-finals next week and you need to sharpen up the left peg 


Putting poetry in the Extra Curriculum twilight zone is counter productive. 

Poetry pays for itself. Poetry may enrich society, granted, but it allows massive practical skills too, useful for all young people, especially in a service, customer-focused, communication-based economy. 

It allows you to write, to talk, to present, to listen, to use language in ways your competitors aren't. It allows you to innovate and to imagine ways to innovate. It inspires and it kickstarts creativity.


I use the poetry skills I learned at school on the curriculum not only for writing, which I use every day, but for presentations which have helped make the companies I work for about £20 million over the years and helped thousands of people into work. 

I have spoken on the radio and I have written books, several of which owe more to poetry than they do to prose because, in the end, poetry is about language and how it is used and I have always - thanks to my English teachers - been more interested in form than content. 

The most beautiful paragraph for me is more beautiful than the most beautiful story. 

I learned that in Poetry too.

I sold thousands of copies of a book called Ultra Violence, partly based on my experiences at school. In the first chapter, a true story, the narrator describes a scene where he is seriously assaulted and nearly murdered by his classmates for some imagined slight. 

http://greenwizardpublishing.blogspot.com/2012/10/bullying-sequence-from-ultra-violence.html

It has been described by a few people as one of the best chapters ever written in a football novel. It also uses poetry as a metier. It’s written with an eye on rhythm and pentameter, things I learned at school. I attach a link here, so if you do read it, don’t expect vocational functionalist prose like, say, that of Dan Brown who wouldn’t know rhythm in prose if it bit him on his overfilled wallet. 

I sold 1500 copies of a book called “Carla” which has been


widely praised and whose last two chapters are fundamentally poetry in prose form. I learned that at school too.

I’m not here to sell these books (those days are over), but the news that the Tories are planning to remove poetry from the national curriculum has inspired me to think about what that actually means.

 If I hadn’t have had strong English teachers (Miss Wyatt, Mrs Ellis, Mr Turney to name but three), with a passion for poetry beyond education, then I would have been a complete failure in life.


I don't have literary parents. Nor am I middle class. I didn’t have an idyllic Blue Remembered Hills background. My school was resolutely comprehensive. My dad was a hundred hour week working electrician and my mum was disabled. Money was tight and your life choices in the town I was born in were fourfold in 1980: 

Pit, army, sixth form or catering college.

Without the opportunity to learn poetry and English in general (and to a lesser extent, History), I wouldn’t have bothered at school at all. 

I had absolutely no idea I liked poetry until I tried it at school. Until those teachers showed it to me. Until I was exposed to it.

Removing poetry from the national curriculum is astonishingly brutal and silly and stupid. It’s also counter-productive. What would I have done back then? 

You can stick me in front of a lathe to make a dowelling rod or something and Shakespeare’s hundred monkeys on the next lathe along would do a better job than I would. 


I am positive, I am convinced, I am adamant that there are thousands of talented young people who would make terrible lathe operators but brilliant poets(and sales reps, and marketing experts, and graphic designers and, er, politicians) if the opportunity to learn poetry is there, and most kids aren’t going to know that in the Extra Curriculum. 

With poetry, you have to be shown.

It's a hidden, veiled exquisition that needs to be introduced.

You have to have the opportunity to be exposed to the poets and the rewards are boundless.

The national curriculum is ideal for this.

Poetry is one of those things that continues to give time and time and again, and it keeps on giving, but someone needs to introduce you to its beauty first.

It needs to stay on the curriculum for pupils like me who needed it.

Mark

Soon, I'll tell you just how culturally diverse poetry is and how this decision is quite astonishing in 2020, especially after the events of this summer.