The unbearable lightness of rubbing ma two brain cells tergether: Part Two

The Deep and meaningful part tha may explain summit...or not!

Deep in thought or needing the nettie? Complicated like

Like aah said, there's nowt that annoys Belgo Geordie more than folk telling oos aah think too mooch. Aah tend ter scoff an' say yer can yer niver think enough! Thinking is yer freedom to explore your own mind. Test theories, ideas and even facts against what you read, hear and see. Boot! aah give yer - me thinking takes a bit of cranium induced joining oop.

Aah blame them nuns that ran the orphanage of St Vincents, in West Denton, Newcastle Upon Tyne, where aah were dumped in me formative years - four ter six. Dumped by me da, aah got off ter a bad start in the thinking malarky. It were not an environment conducive her thinking. Yon nuns liked nowt better than ter rattle yer brain pan with the back of their hand, a strap, a piece of rope, coat hanger or cane. Yer tried everything ter stop from being brained by the mafia in black. Hiding didn't wurk, they had noses like a bloodhound fer terrorised bairn. Fer sum of 'em beating bairns were a contact sport. So soometimes it paid ter keep yer gob shut and pretend ter pray "Our fader who is an arse in heaven an' made these sadistic bitches dress in black an wear funny hats, forgive them - for aah won't."

Aye aah survived with lumps an' a callus on the back of me nut an' me lugs stretched a bit longer than they should be ter show me journey through that life. Sumhow aah worked out, inside me brain was me own world like. There were a bit of pleasure, or escape in having  a good think about stoof. Random, unrelated stoof, boot mine and mine alone. Escapism? Aye, a lot of times aah wished aah were elsewhere or someone else. Aah learned ter switch off, tune in and drop oot' - aah think it were Tim Leary who catch phrased that. Day-dreaming the nuns called it, before giving oos another battering. They thought aah were not the full quid - threepence short of a penny! Funny in the head. Boot when it come ter being subjected ter public shaming, aah could disappear inter meself. Me heed were a rabbit warren of escape tunnels from where the religious and other threats could not find oos.  Inside me own nut aah could drift like a jellyfish on a vast empty ocean of thought. Boot as a bairn aah had no compass for thinking, no map book,  there were not mooch difference between me waking and sleeping brain. So most thought patterns or drifts were make believe or nightmare. Yer canna blame a sprat for wishing a better life than the shite life he were in. Boot aimless driftin of wanting ter be rescued did not help me to better ooderstand journey aah was on. Abuse does that. Aah still have gaps from that time as ter what went on day ter day.

The intellectual, me poor sister and the artful dodger

Before going ter orphanage aah liked ter read  comics then books. And being yoongest in family of four - a lot yoonger, aah was gullible like. Owt my brothers said was purely belter. Howay man, poot me mit inta wasps nest ter hear them buzz! Nae problem! Hospital! Stoong oop and down me arm inta ma face. Aah learned wasps sting, and sting and keep stinging. Who would have known? Aah roared like any betrayed three year old boot did aah learn? Niver! Poot me finga inta socket while yer turn switch on ter see if there were sparks! Sure did. Sure was. Hospital. Burnt fingers and bruises from being thrown across the room. Brilliant! The physics of electrical charges and conductors. Weel! Me da giving me brother (the one aah'd replaced as youngest in family) another battering while laughing fit ter burst. Like a lamb with the brain of a dumb boot enthusiastic puppy aah followed me bruthers around. Not a good survival skill, boot aah saw me jars of tadpoles fly an me red balloon disappear in front of me eyes through the magical powers of a tack!

A bairn sent away

When they had enough of oos, they gave me things ter read ter distract me and ter leave them alone. Owt with pictures and words, then  aah were your captive bairn. Stopping me prattle like a creek drying top, aah would sink quietly inta a good read. Unkindly, one of me bruthers said it included jam jar labels and the perforations on a bog roll (a new invention then - saved tearing strips of the Mirror in nettie). Aah suspect it were me quiet ma, who had raised her own brothers and sisters, who taught me to read in-between me bruthers trying ter kill me. It weren't school, as living in country aah had not been near a place of learning. Boot aah could read books with big letters and comics with speech balloons. Then when aah were barely four, Ma died and we were sent away. Dumped and left ter get on with the strange wurld of the religious, the vicious and rationed, rare kindness.

St Vincents

For three years in 'care' at St Vincents aah only read when at school, a walk away from the orphanage, and away from nuns and bigger lads. And aah can't remember owt aah read aged from ages 4-7. School favoured picture books, Ladybird series and wooden building blocks ter help yer do sums. The one book aah took with me ter orphanage, a boys annual, were taken off oos by nuns the minute the door closed on me da. Aah don't remember there being books in St Vincent's, joost raggedy bits of comic pages, newspaper pages, doorty pictures, swopped from hand ter hand and none that came my way. Aah didn't have friends and barely saw me bruthers. One of me bruther's reckons there were a book case in orphanage, boot nowt worth a read. Annuals might come out of cupboards for rare visitors days (when local catholics visited to feel pity fer the orphans and be squeezed by the religious fer more money). Of course there were bibles and prayer books which aah moost ha read. Sum had pictures. Saints. The small book of smarmy catechism yer had ter learn by rote while yon priest or lay brother fiddled with yer ter help yer concentrate. The bible were a book of stories as cruel as the place in which aah lived. There were not mooch joy in them pages and the thinking quickly soured on the contradictions, the hypocrisy in the 'holy' wurds that the nuns dismissed as summat too fine for the likes of a stupid snot like me ter oonderstand.

Thinking aboot anything other than where aah was at least engaged the stoof on the inside of me haid. Boot as aah said it were meagre fare then! Aah try and remember what in that threadbare sheet of existence, (the nuns had a word for it - purgatory) gave me thinking pleasure? No friends. No family. Being bullied, beaten, ostracised, malnourished, neglected and abused. Aah knew misery and dirt and snot dripping, legs chaffing with cold. Aah stank of piss and was allus hungry. Me clothes were thin, overwashed, damp smelling hand me downs long past their use by date.  Boot there is one golden memory at least where aah were fully captured by the world outside of that hell-hole. It is a big field, long with grass. Summer and the light of evening still a long way from night dark. The air is thick and warm, alive with insects. The sky is a glow of russet, the colour of baked brick. Across the field, swifts dart and I am entranced by their constant weaving and what I remember of the high pitched sound they made as they pass over and around me and they soar upwards in black thin cartwheels of flight. So many of them, they surround me. And it seems eternal, one summer's evening somewhere in the west of Newcastle. And me, a useless piece of child, at that time, in that place - am not me boot boords soaring free.

St Joes

In 1964, I were sent south, released back inter an almost ordinary world - another orphanage -roon by kinder nuns. It were a big place in Mill Hill. Then I went ter live in Belgium before returning ter foster care. Aah discovered TinTin an pooblic libraries. Places filled ter rafters with books - all kinds of books, except DH Lawrence's 'Hennies in Love.' In fact rumour had it there were brown paper bag books aplenty in municipal libraries boot in the way of getting to them were the curse of the librarian, who could spot a smut stalker through rows of shelving stuffed with books. and an inbuilt radar to know when smallish children were oop ter no good. Nae problem, aah managed to read the steamy sex scene in Peyton Place - not that halters and things made sense then, what the feck were panties? Yer mean caks! Knickers! Then say so! Aah read all of Enid Blyton - Noddy ter infamous five before realising it were utter shite and then moved onto Charles Dickens and Jules Verne via Joost William. Boot I kept my hand in with comics. An, aah were not discerning, if it had a cover and pages in-between it were read. A book took yer oot of herself and let yer live in a different place for a time. That suited me grand!

Council hoose. Aah thought it were grand!

I discovered bad literature does your heed in! There is only so many pot boilers yer can read before yer overdose on threadbare plots and stories of empire building, chaps at war and white, bowlegged, six gun shooting cowboys, taming the West and pesky Injuns. Crap is thin gruel ter an imagination starving fer wurds. Dickens kept me afloat - aye aah were somewhere between Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, or so aah thought until me oldest brother told oos we were not descended from posh folk like. Me other brother were the Artful Dodger, if it were not nailed down he would pinch it, flog it or hide it. Boot then, aah were awfully light fingered meself. Me brothers had long left 'home' and were rare boot influential visitors on me developing brain. By this stage I were back living with me da in council places.

It's where school stepped in ter save the day. They too had halfway decent libraries boot nae brown paper bag books. English teachers would say aah had to mooch imagination. Aah could write oop a good idea boot not follow through. Three stages of an essay? Pah! Getting homework in on time? Double pah!! However, the sixties English school curriculum included rough, gruff 'kitchen sink novels' being set for oos her read. Novels written by working class writers. 'Kes', the 'Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner', 'Saturday Night - Sunday Morning', 'Poor Cow' and 'Up the Junction'. Some of yon writers even came from oop north (past Watford - ok Doncaster then) as did old fogey Lawrence (of DH an doorty books fame). We even read oot plays and poems in class. That sonorous Wilfred Owen gabbin on about doomed youth, as we (sixties yooth)  were being battered by well aimed chalk dusters (hard bits of wood with a bit of felt glued on them - the weapon of choice ter teachers who were no longer able ter wield the cane). Books, wurds, made me start ter think. 'Kes' made oos think aboot owning a bird and aboot then aah found a big black crow. Sick, it died overnight before aah could train it ter kill rabbits or fetch carrion. Mr Owen taught oos war were no good, and nowt like what was oop on big screen. If nuns hadn't pushed me inta communism, reading did. Laurie Lee gave oos a thirst for adventure an whatever lay over the hill, and walking.
Yup, freed from orphanages and foster care, sent back ter live with me da, aah were free ter roam and found 'nature'. First London parks, rubbish dumps and then with a bike, the soft, cultivated southern English countryside. Aah would look fer pockets of places where there were no people. Abandoned factories along Grand Union Canal were good. There was nowt better than finding a big tree by tow path, lying beneath it and listening ter wind and breeze ruffle leaves above. And if a fox hoved inta view, even better! Big skies. Aye, aah fell in love with what aah could see of nature and that it were summit more special to oos than the world of folk. Boot ter say aah were damaged and me thinking munted were an understatement. Aah were wiring me brain by joost emptying stoof inta it. Could aah talk ter me da? Nae, he was one long, chain smoking silence of resentment and sudden extreme violence. He considered me a fool that was an insult ter his sperm.  He was as smart as a badger, but didn't like oos. Aah were too stupid ter be of his flesh and blood. Aah had it easy compared ter his life. And he was overfond of giving oos a battering. The verbal was often worse than the physical, boot the physical drew blood. The verbal? Fer years, aah thought aah were thick an shite at thinking.

Did aah have mates aah could have a good crack with? No. aah was too complex fer them. I fibbed, wanting fantasy ten take over me every day life. It took awhile before aah could turn thoughts inta words, all too often saying the wrong thing. The first thing that came inter me mind were often summat daft. Big-headed because it had not been constructed. Improvised free flowing, know it all thoughts were not the fashion in the South of England in the sixties. A gob, the size of the Tyne tunnel did not help build bridges. See what I mean? Then me da did something unexpected, aged 44 he died. Aah were orphaned, placed under guardianship, went wild, got into trouble an' were packed off ter colonies. Aotearoa ter be precise.

15 when aah arrived in New Zealand at first ter live with me older brother, the intellectual. Aah lasted six weeks under his roof. Aah were a young strange, skinny, fooked oop stranger in a strange land. Turned 16, lonely and missing what had been my first real friends 12000 miles away in England. Progressive music and good crack. Wurking in post office, sorting mail - thirty dollars a week if aah worked shifts, otherwise twenty. Yer could not buy mooch on twenty dollars a week. Living on me own in bedsits, lodgings and small flats, books became my hideaway. Bobby Seale had come with us from England in a paperback ter Auckland rather than Oakland. Aah had stolen sum of me intellectual brother's books, classics, including Homer. After a year at post office aah dropped oot. See aah wanted her be a poet, free of paid work. Dreams eh!

Mr Camus, allus sumun looking over yer shoulder like

Aah had moved inta a student flat, six ter ten of oos and took on casual labouring and dish-washing jobs, spending me paltry wages (17 year olds were paid half of an adult wage and cash in hand were coins rather than notes) on second hand books from the University Bookshop. Aah started reading the Russians - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Sholokhov (did he write the Don books or were the manuscripts stolen from some other poor booger? - aah loved the cossack yarns then in political reading aah learned aboot how they were used as thugs ter crush the revolution). Satre, Camus, Kazantzakis, Zola and Voltaire followed. Aah tried ter read Joyce's Ulysses and got as far as a page 125 and gave oop*. Boot gave a wide birth to owt English and awld. Elliot, Bronte, Austen, Chaucer - which were the required university reading fer me housemates hurt me head joost looking at covers. Aye, it were the start of me pontification on the meaning of life as regurgitated through a narra band of literature. Ok, Kerouac and Mr Burroughs snuck in and laughing Lenny. (Cohen and Bruce) And in comics the inspiring Dan O'Neil with the Odd Bodkins. Too much of it made sense and had me gasping at straws - aah were definitely a paler version of bird.

And Kazantzakis's Fratricides? Better than Zorba the Greek. It were the story between me an me older brother. Hate at five yards. I were the communist, he were a libertarian. He were joost like our da, cruel an vindictive, allus right! Boot better even than da at getting inside yer head and twisting the knife. He thought aah were weak as piss an toyed with oos like I was nowt boot shite beneath his shoe. And like our da, he liked nowt better than ter tell oos, aah were nowt! Aah had ter push him oot of me life ter stand a chance ter stand on me own. It took me years ter stand oop ter him and stare him doon. Life is strange, by then aah loved him boot wanted nowt ter do with him. He could have been anything he wanted boot grew bitter, isolated and hanged hiself aged 64. A waste of a life in my view.

Then there was this stoof called poetry. Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, (deeper than a Siberian winter - it told us some folk were formidable in standing strong no matter how cruel life can be). Cesare Pavese, the blood tango and flashing silver knives and kisses of Garcia Lorca and the First World War poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti. Ginsberg's Howl and Amerika. Auden's slow march past Elliot and eecummings. Both I grew oot of but Auden remains a favourite read. The gentle art of Hone Tuwhare introduced me ter Maori thinking - different again. Aah had ter challenge and mangle the stereotypes about Polynesians and see this country aah was a visitor in through different eyes. Aye, summat were taking shape beneath the bones of me chest that were suspiciously similar ter a growing man. Aah wrote poetry, boot badly. Read poetry live - badly. But were a poet still.Its not aboot fame, publication. It is aboot a calling and muse. Writing stopped me topping meself. It has been there all through me life. Thinking and writing. Reading were the river down which I travelled.

Well aye, aah thought aah were dead clever reading joined oop writing boot did aah oonderstand what it were I were taking in? Yes and no. Aah am more literal than not. Aah cannae deconstruct ter save meself. Tolstoy and Turgenev was easy. Grand ideas and ripping yarns. Dostoevsky though kept me awake at night. Aah did not like his tortured characters and convoluted moral twists but were besotted with his writing. Ironic, as aah had a lot in common with a soul tortured and were hell bent on self destruction and with the moral compass of a gnat flying backwards int'a shite storm. Yes, aah knew difference between right and wrong boot nowt of the subtleties in-between. Books helped explain that. Novels like Joyce Carey's 'Mister Johnson' and mooch better 'The Horse's Mouth', with its description of the artist as an arse. DH Lawrence, Graham Greene. Kazantzakis autobiography.
Poets like James Baxter 'Hemi' another artist as an arse and a jesus suffering complex boot a word-smith. In New Zealand there were the incomparable Janet Frame. 'State of Siege' laying bare the intricacies of a mind unravelling. One chance meeting with Frank Sargeson when briefly aah lived on same road, he were a nice old man, aah did not know he were a writer and master of the short story. Aye, in me reading an through writing aah were trying ter make sense of St Vincents, me da, me brothers, exiled to a country where life seemed ten shut down at 5pm on a Friday. The mystery of making friends, what were friendship? And chasing the elusive 'girlfriend'.What were girls all about? It were sex that were the mystery there and mine were broken. If aah talked aboot me past- not that long ago, ter folk in New Zealand they thought it were made oop. In truth aah were deeply ashamed of who aah were. Aah liked ter think aah were strong. In the dark hours though, aah knew aah were nowt boot a coward. Aye, me da and me older brother were right. There were nowt mooch in me ter show fer eighteen years. Nee chance aah would suddenly emerge as a writer. I could not even spell let alone read out loud the poetry I wrote.

A bit of Janet like?

As a teenager though aah would rather read and think and scribble than go ter wurk. Factories and labouring jobs. If aah needed ter finish a read, aah did and were, a few times, sacked because of it. Reading till 2 or 3 in the morning. Aah paid for work life with reading boot nae regrets! It shocked me there were plenty of folk who never read a book, did not have a book in their hoose and yawned in me face when aah said aah did, many. Every move accompanied by ever increasing boxes of books too good ter let go.

Werner Droescher made me read this

Reading and thinking helped me ter experience other lives while reflecting or hiding from me own. Aah were looking for signposts to make sense of where I had come from in the hope it joost might inspire me to know where aah were going and how ter get there. It never did. I did not have the critical focus ter see the structures underpinning writing, they were joost streams of wurds that carried me along and soomtimes in torrents that left me gasping fer more. If aah had a conversation aboot what aah thought with yon university students, aah knew aah were not one of them. Then aah learned aah could argue. Not debate mind. More like a tank driving inter a wall. In conversation aah could paint with wurds and tell stories. Many true, boot some not - all entertaining. Fiction, faction and in there a damaged core not sleeping boot reading, feeding on the pain of others ter still me own ache of loneliness. Making friends with a German anarchist who had been in the Spanish civil war brought history alive and "Homage to Catalonia" started a deeper love affair with the venerable George for language that fed the soul with brevity, clarity and much ter mull over. See thinking again!

There's allus a bit of Auden ter fill in time

Aye, so aah were not wasting me time when books set off a train of thinking, an a thirst ter want ter know more aboot stoof thas driven me life.   By 21, aah had plans ter be a great poet and recognised novelist. Small problem. Could aah write? Could aah heck! Me writing made sense ter me, boot not ter many others. And as aah wrote earlier me grasp of structure and form were poor. There were too many chunks lifted outa brain of other writing folk. Cliches. Poor sentence structure. Long sentences, absent grammar and mislaid punctuation. Aah didn't know about my dyslexia then. As then, aah could nae even write an essay, let alone a whole blurry book. Me hopes of fame faded as aah moved inter late adulthood, cemented by the bad reviews of what aah wrote, or worse - silence. Kendrick Smithyman - a considerable new Zealand poet wrote: "Not much sign of talent there - is he writing for himself?" Fooked if aah knew Mr Smithyman. Boot me love of ideas, writing, reading and talking aboot them never did disappear. Allus at the odd moment, oot would come me pencil stub and words would spill onto page. There are some grand bits and pieces that are from the core of me.  A few folk have liked them over the years. Boot would aah publish? Not in the way aah first dreamed of the way ter fame. Eeeh the venerable Belgo Geordie, poet scholar and champion farter. Nae, it were more as a way ter show a life lived, pain, warts and joy. So moving on forty plus years. From the life out of the dark and inta the light. Wurds, beautiful big ideas. Life has been grand and never have aah regretted thinking too mooch. In fact, yer cannae think enough. In fact, summits come pop! Aah'm of ter outside nettie for another slab of thought...

Never forget where yer came from

* It took two goes ter complete yon Ulysses by Mister Joyce! It were a few years back when aah decided it were me or him! When I finished all 1200 plus pages I were a wreck of a reader. Like climbing Everest in a go-cart. Never has so many pots of tea been drunk and nettie visits taken ter relief the pressure of sooch a read. Aah'm aah better for it? Nae, boot it is what it is. A colossus. To misquote Edmund Hillary "At least, at last, I knocked the wee booger off..."