Weep for the World

We need a 'Weep for the World Day' and because we are such a gender specific society we could have a 'Women's Weep for the World Day' and a 'Men's Weep for the World Day'. I think however that if men started weeping, then we would never stop because it has been made quite clear that the woes of the world and the responsibility for them lies firmly at our feet. Then we should weep for that fact. Perhaps I should weep for Wales seeing as its a 'parochial' blog this one, but I feel like weeping for the World. 

We start crying as children and then at the drop of a hat, as if to command, but then we are encouraged to stop 'Paid a crio fy ngwas i' 'Don't cry little man'. Therefore at a certain age we start bottling things up, we learn to put up a front. We cry behind closed doors. We cry for many different reasons. We cry for shame, we weep for a lost love or loved one, We sob when Wales lose at Rugby: well some of us do! The first public exhibition of crying I witnessed was on Cardiff Central Train Station. A man on another platform wearing green wellies was crying, loudly and openly. He was quite dignified about it, straight backed, holding himself in as much as he could but it was a sobbing from the bowels of his diaphragm. The platforms were packed but instead of somebody going over, putting an arm over his shoulder and giving him a hug, it was like a parting of the Red Sea on Platform 2. British Rail might as well have trained a Spotlight on to him. It was British Rail in those days because I am old enough to remember nationalised railways. Maybe he was crying because he knew that the network was about to be privatised. Anyway, an adult crying like that to a young un was quite a profound experience. I think I was quite jealous. I am convinced that people need to weep and wail more. We blame Queen Victoria for many things, we blame Margaret Thatcher for many others. Two women, but women who were not typical of their gender. These women and their influence have been far reaching. We prefer our men to drive trains and behave like slabs of meat and we prefer our women, feminine! So we all know where we are, like. 

So much has happened in this century that we have not collectively wailed and wept for. 9/11, 7/7, the murder of two policewomen in Manchester, the killing of Lee Rigby and now the stabbing of Teacher Anne Maguire.(And these from a Western Perspective only) All these events were very public! So what happens we internalise our grief and then go on Facebook and Twitter and blame the Government and Royal Family. I know, I do it myself. We have to have somebody to blame. We blame ourselves individually. We carry around with us an awful lot of shame on a daily basis but we never blame the collective, the group consciousness. Anyway I think we need a segregated 'Weep for the World Day' unless of course you would feel happy crying in front of the complementary gender. I shall leave you now with Anthony Hopkins who is weeping for Wales and for the World.        

Conspiracy of Silence

I don't cry often because I am a MAN but I wept today when I heard about the death of Teacher Anne Maguire. My life as a Secondary school teacher has been briefly alluded to before in this blog

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-malory-years.html

 

I was physically attacked at the above school and if my assailant had had a knife then I too would be dead, and I wouldn't be writing this Blog Post. I saw two full hearses today. After the first one went passed I started singing 'Another one bites the dust' but I sobered up when I saw the next one. I think only teachers and former teachers can fully understand the importance and far reaching consequences of this fatal stabbing. In 2001/2 our Headmistress at the above school brought in photocopied pictures of knives that they had confiscated from pupils and showed them to us at our staff morning meeting. Security at the above school was non existent and one day I was covering for a Deputy Head Teacher who was absent on a course or applying for another job if I remember rightly. Half way through the lesson a person entered the classroom, not in uniform, and proceeded to the back of the class to pursue a conversation with a pupil. "Don't mind me" I quipped. "I'm just the Teacher". He kissed his teeth as he walked out. I walked behind him and at the door I shouted 'Make sure that you are in uniform, next time'. Perhaps it was the word, uniform that upset him. He didn't want to be uniform. 'Don't want no uniformity man'. He placed his hoody over his head and returned, pushing the door open. He placed his leg behind mine and pulled me over. He was tall and thin. I got up. He did it again. The pupils in fairness went quiet. I got up again. He grabbed me in a headlock and walked me towards the door with the intention of obviously trying to bang some sense into me. I pulled out of the headlock and pushed him through the door. He walked chillingly out of the doors and slowly towards the exit. The pupils shouted "Why didn't you hit him Sir?" I said " Because if I had, you would have been the first to report me". I thought that he was a pupil. He was a former pupil apparently who had been excluded from the school in Year 8. He was a Foster Child apparently. This information came out afterwards when the police attended the school but I became the bad guy because I had reported it to the police. If there had been adequate security at the school gates he would not have been able to get in. I had no support whatsoever. I was covering for a member of school management and the incident was treated as more of a hindrance. The police called to the school once again.  On another occasion I witnessed a break in during school hours to a room above the classrooms, reported it, and no action taken. I was convinced then as I am convinced now that there is a conspiracy of silence in many schools in the UK. Bullying is rife and their Anti-Bullying policies are not worth the paper that they are printed on. Be they Faith schools, Welsh Medium Schools, Inner City Sink Schools and Government Academies. These Institutions are more concerned with their reputations and their Ofsted Reports and their place in the school league tables than they are with the welfare of their pupils and especially their teachers. Teachers are Expendable! Supply Teaching Agencies make fat profits out of the failure of the British Education System. I am whistleblowing now because Dafydd Cameron and his Big Society need to take a 'Ghost Busting' attitude to this cancer and go into schools and start talking with pupils and teachers, not with Head Teachers and Heads of Department. They are the ones who are bullying. They are the ones who are kicking over the sand, the evidence. Leave that Pin Cushion Michael Gove at home. This cancer needs strong political action, needs legislation. My incident is now history, the school is no more. It is now a Government Academy with a fancy name. I'm still alive. I can write about it.

 

 

R.I.P Anne Maguire

 



Tin Can Alley

Empty Carling Black Label Cans on the Manchester Ship Canal

Pigeons pecking last night's sick

beside the Manchester Ship Canal,

next to the Glee Club,

but I ain't laughing.

Two Canada Geese doing an Angels One 5

No Surrender

As babies float by oblivious to the human flotsam.

Why is it always

Carling Black Label Cans

that are implicated in Tin Can Alley?

It's only 4%

You're not going to get pissed on that.

But listen here

you dirty rotten litter louts,

what's the game,

throwing your empty alcohol containers behind a wall

so nobody can see it?

You might end up killing baby geese.

Front page of the Manchester Evening News

'Baby Geese check into Priory with alcohol addiction' 

"Angels One Five" refers to RAF radio procedure words, from the Second World War, indicating the altitude of a radar contact is 15,000 feet.

LOUIS JORDAN - AIN'T NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS- 1956

Where do I go from here?

A Great Film which I've only seen once but I remember the ending as I remember the ending to Midnight Cowboy and to Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. Endings are vitally important but it appears that in recent years in TV and Film, endings have been getting successively poorer. I am to experience my own ending soon and one which I will be quite sad about, the ending of my M.A in Playwriting at the University of Salford. Despite my moans and groans about Blackboards and a few technical issues, it has, all in all been superb, not only, in that it has bought me more time away from the world of work, but that it has expanded my horizons away from the South Wales coalfield.. Soon, very soon it will be over and I will have to decide "Where do I go from here?". My gut and my intuition tell me not to go back to Wales. That chapter is over. I have not fully immersed myself in the course because I have made excuses and returned to Wales whenever the teaching element has finished rather than staying 'Up North' and seeing what develops. Me & Wales need to have a divorce! I will be issuing papers soon. I need to have better endings I know that. I think that it is fear of commitment that forces my hand. Fear to commit to any place or person without an escape clause. I should really follow the Greek Maxim and burn my bridges. Make a complete break so that there is no going back. By leaving Wales it will mean that the title of this Blog might have to be tweaked and twerked a bit. Looking back over the plays that I have written, what many if not all of them have in common is that they have poor, weak endings. Perhaps the best ending of all is death. The most definitive ending. There is definitely no coming back from that!  If we know that death is a definitive ending then why can't we appreciate that life is finite. That it is a constant stream of endings. We live as if it will last for ever. We waste so much time. I use the royal 'we' because I know that you do also. It appears to be an inherent part of the human condition. I suppose that if we didn't waste time then we would burn out. Time Management is so important in other areas of our life so why don't we Time Manage life itself. I definitely think I'm going to have to do that after this course because otherwise I will start drifting again and another decade goes by and then its the state pension and then it's the wooden box and as the Undertaker closes the lid, he slaps you one more time, just to see if there's any sign of life and shouts "Feeling Lucky Punk?"

Pure Carrot

I don't smoke ganja

I don't smoke weed

I even turn me nose up

at a little bit of speed! 

Carrots are the answer

Carrots are the cure

Grown in manure
ensures that it's pure.

Diced, Sliced
mashed
or in a cake
You can't beat Carrot!

The Hedgehog of Hendy

 

 

He was crossing the road

at midnight

in Hendy.

I hadn't seen one for ages.

I thought it was a rat at first,

but in the lamp light, he was going too slow. 

I heard the roar

of car

and he froze.

A cat was looking on

but thought better of messing with

the prickly fella.

He wasn't the only one.

My clutch had gone

on Junction 48

and I became as one

with the

nightlife

of

Hendy.

It was a very comforting sight.

nature, showing off in all its abundant glory

but had this nocturnal scuttler thrown me a dummy pass?

Was he in fact the immortal 'Draenog of Dafen',

the only Welsh Speaking Hedgehog alive today.

How did I know that he was a he?

He was going so slow, I presumed he must have been male.

I loved the feeling of being feral once again.

I felt like abandoning the car

and heading off into the hills

with the

Hedgehog

of

Hendy.

 

 

Caerdiff

Soft Lad

SW3

Genius Loci

Today 12th April 2014 the Shark Fisherman of Wales reveals his true identity. Like Banksy he has gone to desperate lengths to hide from the General Public but today with the worldwide launch of his book of poetry 'Genius Loci' the world will get to see the handsome devil in all his glory. There is a picture of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Artistic Director of http://www.redbuttontheatre.co.uk  on the back cover. David admits that he has only ventured into the world of poetry to make money. Money from the sale of this book to libraries across the land will go towards Red Button Theatre so finally  'the vision' can be realised and Theatre can be made.

Don't buy the book, it's not worth the cover price but ask for your local library to order it. My big ambition is to see a copy on the shelves of Canton Library where this Blog began in 2012

http://sharkfishinginwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/toxic-kairdiff.html

So if you are in the Canton area, anywhere along the ley line, please pop in with the ISBN number, print off or copy and hand over to happy librarian. In fact, wouldn't be great to see a copy in every library in Cardiff!!?

Support your local megalomaniac, money making poet today. Thank You/Diolch.

Erik Erikson's Stages of Development

Well, I thought that I had failed all the stages thus far but it appears that I've only failed two and a third hangs in the balance. I am now in the Generativity vs Stagnation stage and considering that I have just published two books and started on an MA I would say that I am generating rather than stagnating at this present moment but because the Shark Fisherman of Wales failed the previous two stages rather spectacularly then things could all go tits up any moment. I always feel that I am close to falling into the abyss and this is perhaps because of my isolation and role confusion in the previous two stages. I know that I am not alone. We never discuss our human predicament, especially men, because we are too busy competing with each other. I actually remember having an idyllic life up to 13 years of age so 4 stages must have been passed through successfully which gives me reasons to be optimistic. If you are not familiar with Erik Erikson's stages of Development then I would thoroughly recommend further reading.  

Aqua Nova (April Fool?)

On Page 13 (unlucky for some) of the #Western Fail today is this:



  World's First Pub under the Sea for drinkers

 

Welsh Brewer Brains is planning to build the UK's first underwater pub in Cardiff Bay. Drinkers will be able to sip a pint of the brewer's finest ales while admiring the aquatic life in the Bay through the windows of the Aqua Nova bar. The pub is a UK first and will be five metres below the surface of Cardiff Bay, close to it's sister pub, the Terra Nova.

Brains is appealing for volunteers to wear a specially adapted suit and be taken underwater by experts in aquatic pub design. The suit will allow the wearer to drink a beer underwater, testing for any changes in taste, consistency and texture.

Brains expect Aqua Nova to be open by the summer of 2015. The pub will serve a seafood menu, including Cardiff Bay, fish of the day.

Bruce Newman, head of marketing at Brains, said "Customers are always looking for something new and different and Aqua Nova won't disappoint.." 

 

Now this has got to be an April Fool's Joke....right?

If not, then it is manna from heaven for the Shark Fisherman of Wales.

 

 

 

There now follows a short sketch featuring two Brain's Drinkers at the Newly Opened Aqua Nova in Cardiff Bay! 

 

 

 

Arky and Terry are standing at the Bar of the new Aqua Nova in Cardiff Bay

 

 

Arky: Here Terry, this is the life innit?

 

Terry: Beats the Grange any night of the week, mind you, the damp they've got in there.....  

 

Arky: I'm not very comfortable in this suit they've given us...

 

Terry: Don't you dare take it off, it's pressure adjusted and all sorts, it'll affect the taste of the beer.

 

 

Arky disrobes and stands in the middle of the floor of the Aqua Nova in his Cardiff City Blue attire

 

 

Terry: You're asking for trouble, Vincent Tan will be banging on the glass in a minute!

 

Arky: Hey we might pick up a couple of Mermaids in here.....Mermaid Quay and all that!

 

Terry: Yeah... I wonder what they drink?

 

Arky: I don't like the colour of your Beer.....It's Blue.

 

Terry: Blue for Cardiff Mate!

 

Arky: That's sea-water Terry....

 

Terry: Here.... there's a crack in that glass, where that shark's trying to get in.....

 

Arky: Here..... where's the BarSquid gone?

 

Terry: I wonder if you can fart in these drinking suits?

 

Arky: Is this a 'Pub too far'? I have to ask myself.

 

Terry: They'll be bringing in pound a pint pubs next Arky....!

 

Arky: Don't be dull.....you might as well be drinking sea water then..

 

Terry: Talking of which...where are the toilets in here?

 

Arky makes a broad sweep with his arm

 

Arky: Out there Terry....out there! Because we don't swim in Cardiff Bay...we just go through the motions....Boom Boom.  

 

Fini.