Heysham, Lemn Sissay & The Manchester Blog Awards (again)

I've cheated in my task of viewing the everyday for revelations of truth and beauty. That I'm a cheat is the first disclosure.

On a Sunday in September I travelled with my youngest child to register at university. After the queuing and form filling we drove to Heysham, an old village on the bottom corner of Morecambe Bay. The area is dominated by two advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactors; structures so implausibly big that they are almost certainly visible from everywhere on the planet.


We parked and walked for (about) half an hour and came to the ruins St Patrick’s where we photographed this group of rock-cut graves. The chapel was in use 1200 years ago; it seems very close to the water now but I suspect erosion has brought the sea a lot nearer.

St Patrick's Chapel

The two of us scrambled down to the beach and chanced on a man and a boy dabbling in a rock pool with a net. We chatted for a while. My youngest child has helped at an environmental centre and knows a bit about nature and stuff, and I like facts to be straight. The father was telling us the (incorrect) names for some of the tiny swimming things with great assurance but we didn’t contradict him. We tacitly agreed that it’s fine for that little boy to believe his super-dad is omniscient – at least for a little while longer.

I photographed this coastal rock formation because I believe it shows an unconformity; probably at least two unconformities. An unconformity is a buried erosion surface dividing two periods of deposition which may have been separated by millions and most probably billions of years. The underlying sedimentary rocks in the photograph are thinly-bedded siltstones, sandstones and mudstones which have been folded over by heat and tectonic activity deep underground. Over time those rocks have been exposed at the earth’s surface by a process of attrition. I think the top layer of sediments under the turf will have been deposited in relatively recent times, at the end of the last ice age, as little as 12000 years ago; virtually within living memory.

We had a go at skimming stones but the pebbles are mostly hearty chunks of Millstone Grit and not very bouncy. But then, I would say that.

'They're the wrong sort of stones...'








'Yes Mum, that'll be what the problem is...'





On the way back to the car we visited the most peculiar shop. The lady sews dog coats and peg bags on a machine, on the counter. There are the oddest assortment of things for sale; used buttons, medals and improbable jewellery and CDs that come free with the Mail on Sunday. I was tempted to ask for a packet of pea-flavoured crisps, just on the off-chance. I’m only sorry I didn’t think to photograph her emporium.

A perfect day; my youngest child going to learn more stuff, a deity dad, 1200 year old rock-cut graves, 12000 year old glacial deposits, sediments so old and folded it hurts my eyes to think about them – and a curious shop.

This piece of writing first appeared at The Culture Cheese and Pineapple an arts discussion blog I've recently joined . The remit was to leave the house, walk for about an hour in an unfamiliar direction, take pictures and notice things. Apparently, it is based on the idea of le quotidien; that the everyday can reveal truth and beauty.

As observed, what it initially revealed is my tendency to bilk. But I was pleased with the result. I'm always trying to be as candid as I can but somehow this writing seems more gentle and honest than my usual stuff, Maybe it's because I'm not striving so hard to try to be funny or clever. I'm more calm.

A friend sent me this link to Global Poetry System an idea that began with Lemn Sissay. Poetry isn't quite my thing. I've only really written one poem; and that was an accident, but I love the idea of poetry revealed in the everyday - along with truth and beauty.

As I've repeated to death, I'm on the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards shortlist. My youngest child will attend The Event with me; even though I've warned her I'm likely to collapse in grief, beating my fists on the carpet and wailing,
'It's not fair! You've let talented people in!' when I don't win.
I'm not sure she believes me...

Manchester Blog Awards shortlist

For anyone who was visiting Mars yesterday: I'm on the 2009 Manchester Blog Awards shortlist
This has made me very, very happy.

I'm glad that some of the blogs I read regularly are also shorlisted:
Cynical Ben
Forgetting the Time
My Shitty Twenties (twice!)
Dave Hartley’s Weblog
I thought I told you to wait in the car
Big city, little girl

Congratulations everyone!

Thank you to my other reader for nominating me. Thank you to the shortlisters.

This is a photograph of me not being able to skim stones because they are the wrong sort of rock (Millstone Grit). But fate will have to work harder than that to get me down today; I'm on a shortlist and when I've stopped messing I'm going to get ready to travel to Oxford to attend a Continuing Education weekend course called Neaderthals in the 21st Century. It's my birthday and Christmas presents until forever - and that's fine.

The YMCA Test for Bridesmaids' Gowns and being a Creep

There are going to be some pretty damn special weddings in the near future. My youngest child has been asked to be a bridesmaid, which is grand, and frocks are under discussion. One suggested dress is an asymmetrical style. It has rose petals or foliage all around the top and clambering over a single strap.

My youngest child is hesitant about this style.
‘What’s going to be under those petals climbing over the shoulder?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Will it be a shoe-string strap?'

'It could be.'

'You know what'll happen if it is don't you?'

'Will it dig in?'

'No.'

‘Will it be annoying because it’s not equal and balanced?'
'Not that.'
'Will the other shoulder feel left out?’

'No, not left out.'

'What then?'

'The second I start doing the YMCA it’ll snap. There'll be petals flying everywhere.’

I’m not sure how to put it to her that this celebration might not be a YMCA kind of a do. It might not even be a

(brace yourself) Oops Upside Your Head kind of a wedding-do either.

I'm not going to let on just yet. It's going to be much more fun shopping for bridesmaids’ outfits if we're assuming we have to submit each gown to the YMCA test.

I discovered yesterday that the Author who is Writing about Neanderthals (my favourite hominin) will supervise my MA project. This is a very good thing but I’m also a little bit sad that it isn’t going to be the Writer with the Writerly Name.

At least I can now write sycophantic comments on the Writer with the Writerly Name's blog posts without appearing to be a creep. But then, what is the point of writing creepy comments, if it’s not going to get me better marks? Only kidding. Oh man, I think I’m only kidding, I hope I'm only kidding.

Had two mentions and very fine link-ups in the last week.
Valerie O'Roirdan at not exactly true is about to start an MA in creative writing at the University of Manchester (she's keen to hear from others doing the same or similar). There are links to some of Valerie's smashing stories from her blog.

Kate Feld at Manchizzle is hard at work adding blogs nominated for the Manchester Blog Awards to her blogroll.

And on the topic of the Manchester Blog Awards Dave Hartley has written a story a week for the last twelve months (just two to go). If you haven't read his tales yet you're set for a lovely treat.

Thank you, James Fraser, for my YMCA bridesmaid.

It’s body snatching and it’s not nice but it’s not robbing… and the Top Secret Bunker

I was finding all about grave-robbing baddies on my recent trip to Crail.

Crail is a tiny seaside town in Fife in Scotland. As I’ve mentioned before; it probably isn’t there when you’re not looking.

Grave-robbers securing specimens for anatomists were considered a bit of a nuisance in Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. The real life characters, Burke and Hare, have been described as grave-robbers but they were in fact slayers and snatchers not robbers. They murdered outliers of society and sold their bodies to anatomists and they claimed the cadavers of people who weren’t really their relatives, so they could do the same. But they didn’t go to the trouble of digging up fresh bodies, not towards the end of their careers anyway.

However, real Resurrectionists, as they were nicknamed, did rob people out of graves. Scots parishioners devised a series of increasingly cunning devices to foil the nefarious grave-robbing baddies. They used metal hoops that secured a body into the coffin; ton-weight temporary mortstones to position across the grave; mortsafes and morthouses where the body would be tenable prior to burial and watch houses where a sentinel would guard newly occupied plots.

The nice man at the Crail bed and breakfast told me told me these things whilst I was eating my tea. And he added,

‘There’s a morthouse at the parish church, just along the road.’

I am incandescent with excitement. After tea I start to get ready to go out. Ian eyes me warily.
‘What are you doing?’
I am pulling on my tartan holiday socks.
'Just popping out for a little walk.’
‘It’s going dark.’
I am hoping towards the door, tying my shoelace as I go; did you ever see Wilson, Keppel and Betty performing the Sand Dance? It is very like that.
‘I won’t be long.’
‘You’re going to the graveyard, aren’t you?’
As my reader knows, I do have form where graveyards are concerned.
‘Only to see if the masons here ever use Shap Granite...’
You may also remember that Shap Granite is my current favourite rock.
‘You’re going to look for the morthouse, aren’t you?’
‘...and to look for the morthouse, I was going to say that.’
‘You know you’re a little bit Not Right in the Head, don’t you?’

He is probably correct, but I don’t care. I’m afraid of living people not dead people; I’m afraid of living people and loud bangs; loud bangs terrify me, every time.

It was twilight when I arrived at the gated church. Huge crows hunkered blackly on the church roof and supplied mournful and atmospheric cawing.

The churchyard at Crail is an enchanted necropolis. Built into a tall shadowy wall to the west of the church are a series of mural monuments. These architectural structures date back to the 17th century and are gratifyingly decorated with emblems of mutability and decay, the hourglass, skulls, crossbones, grave digging tools.
The carvings range in quality, from a detailed deaths head like the one above from James Lumsden’s tomb to almost childishly incised representations of skulls and femurs.
Death’s heads have crossed bones behind them whereas the skull and crossbones have the bones underneath. I’m calling the one above a death’s head because I suspect that those gaps where the face joins the cornice once held stone-bones; I have no other evidence for my theory. But I do like it.

A number of of the skulls resemble turnip heads, which, in the twilight, was somehow even more chilling than the more meticulous work.

The mason’s inscriptions are as forthright as their symbolism, although I concede that forthright symbolism is a contradiction.
‘Here lyes interred before this tomb

The corpse of Bailie Thomas Young’

No nancying around with euphemism; ‘there’s a rotting dead person under here’.

A particularly rewarding mural monument to the south of the church appears at first sight to be to the memory of a Dr Who character. The headless suit of armour is an effigy of William Bruce of Symbister.
The Christian convention is for dead people to be buried with their head in the west and their feet in the east; on judgement day the deceased wants to be able to sit up and face the rising sun. As a consequence, the posh people of Crail are interred along the, literally, monumental west wall.

Although Bruce of Symbister’s tomb looks archaic I wondered if it postdated the time when the west wall became full of memorials. Apparently this isn’t the case, he was buried in 1630. I’d be interested to learn why he was placed in the (lower status) south; maybe he just liked sunshine.

So, Bruce of Symbister was clearly posh but when the trumpet sounds his headless armour is going to have to sit up rustily and turn to the right as he does so to get the benefit of the sunrise. He was 80 when he died and has been dead almost four hundred years. Well, I do Pilates. I’m still alive and I’m only fiftyodd and I can assure you he’s going to find that exercise veeery tricky. Trust me. I would like to be here on the day of judgement to see his resurrection though.

As the stygian dusk deepened, the distant clock in Crail Marketgate sounded, the desolate cries of the corvids intensified (thanks, Sound Effect Guys) and I came across the neo-gothic morthouse with its inscription:

ERECTED for securing the DEAD:
AD 1826.

So this is where bodies were locked-up until they were too decomposed to be of value to the anatomist or medical student.

There are morthouses all over Fife but it seems the parishioners’ response to the threat of grave-robbing baddies was hugely disproportionate to the scale of the problem. It’s a long haul for a grave-robber to cart a corpse from Crail to St Andrews or Edinburgh and graves were not routinely robbed in the area. In any case by 1832, in response to the Burke and Hare murders, an Anatomy Act was passed, which secured a legal supply of unclaimed bodies from hospitals, poorhouses and workhouses.

Morthouses were an inexplicable fashion, a bit like animal print leggings.

I take my last photograph in the gloom, nod to the Sound Effect Guys and return to Ian, delighted with my first mural monument and my first morthouse. I start to explain to him about watch houses.
‘Relatives, or more likely, lackeys, had to stay in a little house in the graveyard, watching.’ There’s a pause.

‘A proper house?’

‘A little house, with a window and a fire.’

‘Nice.’

He’s listening to the radio, it sounds like athletics. I try to hook him with mans’ stuff.

‘Some watch houses have gun embrasures and the watchers were armed so they could fire at the grave-robbing baddies.’

‘hmmmm?’

He lifts the radio up to his ear.

‘Or they set up tripwire gun-traps.’

There’s a pause whilst something crucial happens in a race or whatever, then he speaks.

‘You wouldn’t have lasted long then.’

He’s right; I am always lurking around in graveyards looking shifty. Maybe I was a Resurrectionist in a previous incarnation and I got shot. That would explain a great deal.

In my last post I wrote about Padre George Smith being buried in Preston Cemetery. It says on the Rorke’s Drift website that his headstone is light red marble. Well I’ve found it and his headstone is Shap Granite; I knew it would be; Fools.
See, the thing is, marble is metamorphosed limestone and granite is… oh, never mind.

On a lighter note, there’s also a labyrinthine Top Secret Bunker by Crail; it’s where central government and military commanders would retreat in the event of a nuclear attack. Obviously, the parishioners of Fife don’t want the trouble of a lot of Johnny Foreigner types hanging around the golf course in spy wear asking directions in broken English (and not understanding the reply because it’s in Scottish English) so the helpful authorities have supplied a sign.

I was allowed to go to Crail as a prize for handing in my MA assignments nicely. I’ve also had my first rejection; I wasn’t selected for the Flax creative non-fiction anthology; I wasn’t surprised but I was sad. I understand it’ll get easier.

ps nominations are now open for the the Manchester Blog Awards. You can nominate yourself and you only have to be nominated once to enter (my friend's done me). Good Luck. (No. Really!)