Happy New Year X
New Year Half the world is hurting, turning its face to shadow. Moldering moments, kindle to flame, are undefined images, lost to a cold, northwesterly wind, licking at the edges where the numbness fades. Firs stand conspicuous among their naked cousins, all tendenous needles and cadaverous cones. The sky is leaden. The streets are all unchartered lanes. An unknown bird calls out this new day; this new year. Everything is redeemable. ©AndrewJamesMurray
Cold is the night in the Great Moor, the rain pours down, no trifle; a roar in which the clean wind rejoices howls over the sheltering wood.
– Irish; author unknown; eighth-ninth century
– My wife, about five minutes ago.
beneath the blustering larches we make them visible on crowded carriages the fingers that brushed briefly in causal static take off your shoes this is sacred ground this is the place where we first met ©AndrewJamesMurray
It was just a typically random conversation, walking into Manchester from where we’d parked the car.
“So, after the Dutch student leaves we’ve then got a Korean one?” asked my wife.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t their leader a bit of a bugger?”
“That’s North Korea. This girl is from South Korea.”
She thought on it a little. “Do you know any Korean words?”
“Nope.”
“How about Japanese?”
I’m not sure how she thought that would be of help, but answered “I know they greet each other with ‘Konnichiwa’.”
She looked at me in amazement. “How can you possibly know that?!”
I like her to think that I’m multi-lingual, so instead of explaining that I used to watch Shogun back in 1980, I tried to give an enigmatic shrug: “I pick things up.”
After traipsing around the shops for an hour or so we called into Chiquito for something to eat. We’d timed it right-early enough to avoid it being packed out, but not too late to miss a convivial, Christmas buzz about the place.
As she tucked into her enchiladas, Jen asked me “What about Mexican? Know anything in Mexican?”
I nodded sagely. “Arriba arriba, andale andale.”
She dropped her fork. “And what does that mean?!”
“See how quick I am, watch me go!”
(I’ve just discovered it actually means something like ‘get up get up, let’s go let’s go’. Close enough.)
I didn’t mention Speedy Gonzales, just a casual “I just picked it up.”
After basking in her admiration for a while, I nipped to the toilet to secretly Google translate something romantic, a painting on the stairs caught my eye.
This could be the Tardis, the nerd in me thought. Maybe a little battered from the explosive power of Capaldi’s (soon to be) witnessed regeneration.
Then, next to it: This could be the Tardis, given some TLC from the (soon to be) new Who incumbent Jodie Whittaker. Is that sexist of me? Thinking that the first female Doctor in the show’s history might start off with a bit of a spring clean?
I’ve tried not to go on too much about the impending Christmas special, knowing how trying I can be on my wife’s saintly patience, although with just four days left my excitement was building. I’d been trying my best not to ruin her Christmas though.
Remembering the mission that had brought me to this stairwell, I did a sneaky Google translate and returned to the table. I took Jen’s hands in mine, gazed into her eyes and whispered softly:
“El nuevo Doctor, ella viene!”
“I know,” she smiled, lovingly. “You picked it up.”
Juggling a few lines before bed.
Smoked and stoked before midday the rain runs down the inside of the day foolin' us into goin' out for shelter run through the jungle; cut through the jungle make a path right back home for all our hollerin' and kickin' and screamin' won't quieten them all down none ©AndrewJamesMurray
I’ve just been watching a magpie hiding a biscuit beneath a leaf. I’ve got kids like that.
Watched the first ever tasting of beef grown in a laboratory. Carefully cultivated from cells and grown, a culmination of years of work, a small portion of this lab grown beef was cooked and tasted. The verdict?: “It tastes like fried chicken.” Now, I am no scientist……
In the morning half-light of the school run, gulls glimpsed on ice with my kids’ school in the background.
Tonight and tomorrow has been predicted to be as low as -12, which is pretty unheard of for Manchester. Bring on the school run tomorrow then. Long Johns Sally weather.
From my poetry blog. Soon be Christmas.
At This Time A virginal shroud settles upon our abodes. Fairy lights flicker in the long night. Inside, all manner of songs and odes are offered to acclaim our rite. Those of us not overtly religious indulge themselves out of tradition. Those of us not openly pious offer tacit prayers without petition. But all desire to feel the joy that shines forth from every child's eyes. An augury, in innocence's employ, that lifts the soul amongst the winter skies. Though we partake in the gathered feast, and survive the night imbibing wine, we recognise, when all has ceased, that part of man inherently divine. ©Andrew James Murray
The 8th of December is a date that links together my two favourite musical artists, two artists that I have been listening to for what seems most of my life.
On the 8th of December, 1943, James Douglas Morrison, son of a Navy Officer, was born. He would go on to become the focal point and frontman of The Doors, known by self-given and tongue in cheek epithets such as the Lizard King, Shaman, and Erotic Politician.
He is one of the few rock or pop stars whose poetry is read seriously, as poetry. As a poet he tends to polarise opinion, but I like his writing, and his song lyrics helped to set the group apart from the usual music crowd. In the days when The Mama’s And The Papa’s were dreaming of California and over the pond The Beatles were telling the world that all you need is love, Morrison was channeling Oedipus, saying he wanted to kill his father and fuck his mother. They were a darker group, harder to pigeonhole, with elements of rock, jazz, blues, and yes, poetry.
Morrison’s was an intellect and creativity that was drowned in excess, a pursuit of a muse that would not be tempered or compromised. The recording life of The Doors, when Morrison was with them, lasted for just four, short, years. But what an outpouring it was.
Also on the 8th of December, in 1980, John Lennon was shot dead in New York. I was a Lennon fan before I even knew who Lennon was. As a kid, almost all of my favourite Beatles songs were his. On his true collaborations with McCartney, for example We Can Work It Out, I always preferred the parts that he sang, the parts that he wrote, without at the time being able to discern who did what.
My favourite Christmas song, right from my childhood, and still, is Happy Xmas (War Is Over), but it was a few years before I discovered that the song was by Lennon. I was a fan of the music before I knew whose music it was.
Today Lennon is regarded almost as a saint, but the truth seems to be that he could be a real shit to the people who were closest to him. He would sing about peace and love yet at times be unable to demonstrate such sentiments. The figure of Lennon is a conundrum. He appeared to be a man of contradictions, which I think has its roots in his troubled childhood. His anger drove him and so made him a Beatle. Always transparent, the lyrics
I heard something ’bout my Ma and my Pa /They didn’t want me so they made me a star
stand out.
Tomorrow, the 9th of December, is my birthday. I can remember opening my birthday presents on my ninth birthday, back in 1980, and the news was all over the television and the newspapers. All that I was aware of at the time, in my young ignorance, was that some guy who was in a group called The Beatles had died.
Little would I know that, for years, for decades later, I would always be struck by a terrible sense of waste when reflecting on his untimely, senseless death.
Fans are selfish. We barely see beyond our own wants and fixations.
There is a woman who lost a husband, and two boys who lost a father, yet all I think of is the music that we could have had, the wit that the world has lost, and the extra pages that could have been in the biography.
And that’s got to be wrong. 
Two men, linked by one date, whose words and music provided a soundtrack to my life. R.I.P Mr Mojo Risin’ and Dr Winston O’ Boogie. Thanks for the inspiration.
City Jackdaw 