John's Quavering Pencil

Hello!

It has been a while. Anyway, this is to let you know that I have at last put a version of my song ‘Breathe softly’ up on my Fyrmusica Bandcamp site:
Breathe softly

I am rather pleased with my artwork. I hope you like it, too. The version of the song was recorded in studio back in 1983 and was originally on my vinyl LP ‘Just for the record’. I recently managed to digitise it. The sound engineer placed a mic very close to the guitar. While I think that was, on balance, a good thing to do it does mean occasionally you get the sound of my fingers running up and down the strings! Oh, and I overdubbed some additional guitar work – you don’t get that in my streamed live performances, obviously. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

I have recently joined a closed group on Facebook relating to the boarding school to which I was sent in the early 1950s. The issue came up about punishment. I, probably about 10 years old, was given six of the best with a sawn-off cricket bat by my housemaster, for throwing sausages at the music master in the school dining hall. Of course, I was not the only person with a tale to tell and some people in the group went into their own sorrow at the things that had happened to them. One or two replied with the astringent “Get over it!”. I have to say that that is rather like saying to someone who is really (and possibly clinically) depressed “Snap out of it.”

Actually, it was not the beatings [sawn-off hockey sticks, rulers, plimsoles, canes – applied to sundry parts of the body such as heads, hands (palms up; knuckles up), backs of calves, bums, backs of thighs (often carressed before the blow)…] that hurt me most. Rather it was the periods of days, and sometimes weeks, of imposed SILENCE where nobody could speak without raising a hand for permission with good excuse to do so that got to me. (24/7).

I don’t think that anybody who experienced that sort of regime could possibly be told to ‘Get over it’ or ‘Snap out of it’. Some will have done, some won’t. At the time, the stories of what UK forces personnel had endured in Nazi and Japonese prison (and concentration) camps during WW2 was starting to become common knowledge in England, possibly because some of the incarcerated prisoners had come back home and had been encouraged to write books as cathartic therapy. Nobody was going to get upset about a few boarding school boys with red bottoms!

I will attempt to maintain, here, an even-handed memory of my time at that school. There were great moments, in adversity. There were great and binding friendships within the awfulness. My experience growing up at boarding school, from 8 to 18 taught me that I could endure the most difficult times, in my later life. Thus I survived my divorce. I survived moving alone to several strange cities. So, a fucked-up upbringing gives you survival skills. That, I accept.

As for the teaching, it was extremely patchy. There were a few brilliant teachers who faught to shine through the regime. There were hosts of mediocre and appalling teachers, too. The way I have always thought about that, is that the best of the potential male teachers must have died in WW2, as I am sure they did. Some of their survivors were really good, I do not deny. But that doesn’t mean that the school as a whole should be regarded as an especially privileged domain as regards teaching, and certainly not while I was there.

So, I do not want to ‘get over it’ or ‘snap out of it’. However, I do want to recognise what I was given. I was given a certain poise in life, and an ability to face up to hard times. This is no more than a trained soldier might have been given. The school I went to was what it was: a minor public school in the early 1950s. No better, no worse. But, as an adult, I vowed I would never send a child of mine to a boarding school, nor would I ever physically chastise him (or her). And to that oath, I have stayed true. This, I owe to those horrible years that I spent away from home.

I stayed up late, wrapped up, and went out into the garden at 02h20. I took a chair into the middle of the lawn and sat looking up at the moon. The sky was clear and I could see a sprinkling of stars. It was very quiet, although I could hear the hum of traffic from the main road, some distance away. The eclipse began to be noticeable at around 02h25 from my vantage point in the north east of England. I had to look south to observe it. By 02h35 about half of the moon was covered but I could detect no redness. By 02h45 only a third of the moon was showing. Eventually, there was a total eclipse of the moon at around 03h15 and by that time it was definitely glowing red. I was starting to get cold out there, so I packed up and came indoors to upload my photos and write this piece. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Lunar eclipse 28 September 2015

Hello!
I’m sorry that I have not been posting here, lately. Perhaps I should tell you about what I have been up to in the Department of Creative Works!

As you may know, my e-book The Hexington Hex has been up on Amazon for quite some time. This is also available in a print version (they print a copy on demand, if you order one). You can get to it from my Home Page or the following link should work, too.

Apart from The Hexington Hex, I have now finished the manuscript for my next novel Passionate Abrasions, and that is currently being copy-edited. I hope to publish this book on Amazon, sometime in July 2015. Meanwhile, I am awaiting the muse to strike, and am gearing myself up to start on my third novel (I do not yet know what that will be about).

The music chugs on. I have now played 1346 one hour shows on the Internet since January, 2008. Currently, I am playing three shows per week (usually on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 8 pm GMT, which translates to midday in Second Life time). I have plans to do more with my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) but first I shall have to upgrade a couple of bits and pieces, equipment-wise, before I can get going on that.

Turning now to the drawing and sketching, I regret to say that things have not gone according to plan in this domain. I had hoped to do about 30 sketches to illustrate the lyrics of my original songs and to then put together a coffee table book. I got about half-way though this programme but then things dried up. My paint brushes and drawing pens have lain idle for some time and so I have decided to shelve this project. It is possible that I may resuscitate it at some point in the future. Who knows?

So, my dear blogophiles, this ends the brief update of my various creative activities. Bye for now.

Well, it has not been a good week for me. I had to cancel a show because of First Life stuff.

In First Life, my central heating boiler went down. I had four different gas fitters out to my house over 5 days. No hot water, no central heating. Of course one tends to feel sorry for one’s self, until one remembers that one is not in a war zone or any other hell-hole, in the human universe.

I wore layers upon layers of clothes (woollen beanie hats and so forth) but in the end I got so cold I felt ill. After five days of this, I was lucky enough to be able to afford to go to a very inexpensive hotel for a night, in my city, where we got showers and actually felt warm in bed. I hate to think of how people survive who just have to endure cold perpetually. Well, at my age, I think the solution would be to just pass on to the world called nothingness. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.