New blog

MCing Tom Mconville at the Black Swan, York tonight.

See you there.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Are you a potatoe with sticky out lumpy bits or a forked carrot? Then the EU beaurocrats will no longer have you exterminated but will segregate you instead. There is hope. Watch the breaking news. Once you are allowed to survive and be seen people will get to love you, even prefer you to those of your siblings whom the beaurocrats decree are perfectly formed.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

Busy and not busy. I rushed back from York this morning as I was expecting a special courier delivery of some brown CD Mailers for my new Album. The company indicate a 24 hour free delivery service. Well, given that they were ordered at the weekend I expected them today, Tuesday and stayed in, and out of the office, so I could hear and get the door before the delivery person got away.

Well, the delivery never happened, not even a card through the door to say they’d tried.

So, another waiting day tomorrow.

Fortunately my collaborator on another project did turn up and we are getting on with the music and meditation project which will eventually lead to free download meditation aids.
 
The evening was spent at the FILO Folk Night which I ran in the abscence of Stuart Tonnar and the late arrival of Chris Coulter. A very different night as the preponderance of musicians and particpants went for ’60s and Country material or there own songs and poetry. John Hepworth from Buxupstairs at Leeds graced us with his witty songs and poems and Andy from Scotland supplied the Scottish touch in the abscence of Stuart. Jim MacLaughlin, of Musicport, appeared for the last time for a few weeks as he is off to Australia in his search for World Musicians. Brian from Bishop Auckland joined us again and even John Corby sang a full compliment of songs accompanying himself on guitar. That’s the thing with folk clubs and the FILO in particular, you can never predict the music.

I was just thinking about moving house in the old days before cars were common, how the ordinary working family would flit from, say, Grosmont, when the breadwinner lost his job in the ironstone mine and decided to try his hand at coal mining, as happened to my great grandfather, and went to Trimdon.

Well stuff could have gone by horse and cart but most likely, if they had anything to shift, it would go by rail, in the freight vans that were attached to every train. In 1880 it would have been delivered to the door of the new home by horse transport but in the next century it would have been a mechanical horse, a three wheeled tractor unit and a flatbed rolley.

If one could get the railways to collect large items and deliver door to door this could, potentially, get a lot of freight off the roads. Even moving house, everything could go in a container and be loaded on a lorry, off-loaded on to a train and then on to another lorry at the other end to deliver to the door, keeping pantechnicons off the motorways.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

I don’t often write romantic modern songs, though I have written one or two in the last year, songs really outside the ‘Folk’ idiom but still unaccompanied. One of these I wrote about a year ago and it was the start of this development.

‘Days of Dark Mornings’ was inspired by noting couples returning to the car park by the Marina in Whitby after the clocks had gone back. It starts with the lines:

“On the water,late sun,as our day out is done,
Last chance of a kiss before we drift home.”  

It tells the tale of a couple who come to Whitby for a day out at the weekend before going there separate ways looking forward to coming back the following weekend.

I’ve taken to singing it again recently and think it will probably go into my general repetoire, even though it has a seasonal reference, as it is a bit different from my usual songs, not least because it is in waltz time and I quite like it so may be able to remember it. I find songs I write which I do not really like are the ones that are difficult to learn and anyway learning them is a bit of a waste as I am not likely to sing them often, if at all.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

‘Young William’s Tale’ is based on a story concerning William Scoresby, the Younger in 1800 when he was only 10 years of age.

William, Senior was Captain of a the whaler Dundee which was sailing out of the Port of London. On the way to the Artic Whaling grounds he anchored in Whitby roads so that his family, which lived in Whitby, could come aboard for a visit. When the time came to put the family ashore Young William could not be found so the boat was sent ashore without him. He then appeared, allegedly having been looking for his lost cap. He persuade his Father to keep him on board and to take him whaling.

At Lerwick, Scoresby Senior had second thoughts and left William, aged 10, in the care of the local schoolmaster. However, just as the Dundee was about to sail Young William persuaded a local boatmen to row him out to the Dundee and so he went whaling for the first time.

Now, at this time Britain was at war with France and the French were attacking British merchant ships including the whaling fleet. Scoresby, Senior had taken precautions. He had armed the ship with 12 cannon, 6 on each broadside which he had hidden behind disguised gunports. He had also aqcuired someone who could sound the bosun’s call (a small pipe used on Royal Navy ships to communicate orders) and a drummer who could ‘beat to quarters’. All this would give the impression to an observer attacking the Dundee that it was a Royal Navy vessel in disguise, a decoy and frighten off the attacker. That was the ploy.

One day out of Lerwick, in the Orkneys, a French Ship did indeed threaten the Dundee. Captain William Scoresby, Senior appearted to be alone on the bridge of the ship as the French ship bore down on the Dundee, the French Captain hailing the Dundee to heave to. The Dundee’s crew were hidden to leeward and below the gunners were preparing the cannon. At the very last minute Scoresby gave the signal and the call was sounded and to ‘to quarter’s’ beaten and the gunports opened. The French thought they had bitten off more than they could chew and put about and disappeared over the horizon. The Dundee sailed on to get on with whaling. All this was witnessed by the 10 year old William Scoresby so the song is called ‘Young William’sTale’.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

On my journey to and from York today in foggy conditons and on roads that were greasy and muddy there were two incidents that are worth mentioning, not because they are extraordinary but because they are commonplace.

The first was a as I was driving out of Pickering approaching the 30 mph derestriction sign, a large silver car pulled close behind me and then sharply to the offside to overtake at speed. It was quickly followed by another silver car. A few hundred yards further on, by which time the traffic was travelling between fifty and sixty miles an hour, I saw those cars execute the same manoeuvre to overtake another car where they would not be able to see approaching trafffic clearly.

Of course, further on, they were part of a queue behind a lorry, so the risky driving had not got them much further.

On my return journey I was driving up the hill toward the Hole of Horcum and was aware, through the mist, of two small blue lights flashing ahead on the east bound side of the road. I eased off and indicated to a car following mine that I would be overtaking. I could then see that there had been some sort of traffic incident but that it was safe ahead to proceed slowly past. On checking to my right, in spite of my having been indicating for some time that I was likely to pull out, a car overtook the car behind me and my car at speed, breaking, obviously surprised by what I could see ahead, and then continuing on.

The incident which the Police were sorting out appeared to have been caused by an overtaking vehicle having to pull back in sharply at the brow of the hill and striking a cart in front with some force. Both vehicles were off the road.

How much time do drivers think they save on a fifty mile journey by risky ovetaking. Have they ever calculated the difference in time over fifty miles of averaging 60mph or 50mph or 40mph. If they did they would realise that they were saving at the most a minute or two but more likely only seconds. Seconds or part seconds matter if you are Lewis Hamilton in a grand prix but not on a journey from Whitby to York or York to Whitby?

And they don’t matter at all if you or someone you have ‘cut up’ is dead.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com

So, we woke up this morning with a new opportunity. If the massive wave of democratic involvement with the political process in America is the consequence of what happened on 9/11 then Al Quaeda has been successful BUT any further act of terrorism would drive back the potential for peace in the Middle East and the World, would reverse the processes for change that have begun. Give Peace a chance.
 
Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com  

On the way home last night I came across a young female horizontal on the pavement outside a local drinking hole surrounded by concerned doorstaff and placed in ‘the recovery position’ by a female friend. Two police cars and an ambulance then attended. The incident put me in mind of a poem by Ogden Nash, I think, and the need for updating the poem as it is very sexist in that it assumes that ‘boozers’ are male. In the updated version the passer by remarks:

“You can tell the woman who boozes
By the company she chooses.”

And the Sow got up
And slowly walked away.

The problem here was an horizontal one but I understand that some Police Forces have concerns about ‘vertical drinking’ which, a friend once told me, is forbidden in some parts of Canada. I will deal with this topic on a future occasion.

Tony Morris
www.tonymorrispoet.com