Photo by Phyllis

In an era and culture of fake news, I have some reservations about the veracity of the following, but it’s been reported [*] that an hitherto unseen poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been discovered in his birthplace of Ottery St Mary – the actual location so far undisclosed – and it is said to be a sonnet in which Coleridge celebrates the town’s traditional Tar Barrel event.

The history of this event is considered to date back to the time of the gunpowder plot of 1605 and thus the alleged Coleridge sonnet is plausibly based on one or more personally observed November 5^th Tar Barrel events held in his hometown, Samuel living there from the date of his birth in 1772 to 1781.

The stylistic tone and Romantic reverie of the event’s impact on the writer reflects a mature appreciation and will have been written some time after Samuel left Ottery at eight years old – if indeed it is his work. You be the judge:

A thick orange flame flares from the barrel rim
And quivers hot, fluttering in the night,
This roaring unquiet thing on the backs
Of men in motion, a rush of nature
That gives me bright sympathies where I live.
O! this life in Ottery and afar
Which is all motion and becomes its soul,
All fire and sound, sound-bright powered light,
Rhythm in running and fun everywhere –
Methinks, it should be quite impossible
Not to love the Rollers in Ottery,
Where the bonfire rages and smoked air
Is Music merged with a barrel’s scorched tar,
As wild and various as random stars.

[*] Ersatz News International

This is the ending from Ray Bradbury’s story The Leave-Taking, posted here in loving memory of Shané, who sadly passed 29th October, 2017. It was a personal favourite of hers and one she used in her teaching:

Important thing is not the me that’s lying here, but the me that’s sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that’s downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I’m not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I’ll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade. That’s my answer to anyone asks big questions! Quick now, send in the rest!”

At last the entire family stood, like people seeing someone off at the rail station, waiting in the room. “Well,” said Great-grandma, “there I am. I’m not humble, so it’s nice seeing you standing around my bed. Now next week there’s late gardening and closet-cleaning and clothes-buying for the children to do. And since that part of me which is called, for convenience, Great-grandma, won’t be here to step it along, those other parts of me called Uncle Bert and Leo and Tom and Douglas, and all the other names, will have to take over, each to his own.”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“I don’t want any Halloween parties here tomorrow. Don’t want anyone saying anything sweet about me; I said it all in my time and my pride. I’ve tasted every victual and danced every dance; now there’s one last tart I haven’t bit on, one tune I haven’t whistled. But I’m not afraid. I’m truly curious. Death won’t get a crumb by my mouth I won’t keep and savor. So don’t you worry over me. Now, all of you go, and let me find my sleep…”

Somewhere a door closed quietly.

“That’s better.” Alone, she snuggled luxuriously down through the warm snowbank of linen and wool, sheet and cover, and the colors of the patchwork quilt were bright as the circus banners of old time. Lying there, she felt as small and secret as on those mornings eighty-some-odd years ago when, wakening, she comforted her tender bones in bed.

A long time back, she thought, I dreamed a dream, and was enjoying it so much when someone wakened me, and that was the day when I was born. And now? Now, let me see…. She cast her mind back. Where was I? she thought. Ninety years…how to take up the thread and the pattern of that lost dream again? She put out a small hand. There… Yes, that was it. She smiled. Deeper in the warm snow hill she turned her head upon her pillow. That was better. Now, yes, now she saw it shaping in her mind quietly, and with a serenity like a sea moving along an endless and self-refreshing shore. Now she let the old dream touch and lift her from the snow and drift her above the scarce-remembered bed.

Downstairs, she thought, they are polishing the silver, and rummaging the cellar, and dusting in the halls. She could hear them living all through the house.

“It’s all right,” whispered Great-grandma, as the dream floated her. “Like everything else in this life, it’s fitting.”

And the sea moved her back down the shore.

© Ray Bradbury

Just announced, the next Star Trek movie will feature a return of The Borg in a blockbuster titled Random Chance, its premise constructed around a Federation/Borg conflict about intergalactic language change over time, this itself based on a genuine terrestrial debate regarding the development of the English language as exemplified in the following observation by Joshua Plotkin, from the University of Pennsylvania, co-author of research titled Detecting evolutionary forces in language change,

‘Specifically, “woke” is increasingly preferred over “waked” and “lit” more popular than “lighted”, while “weaved” and “snuck” are on track to eventually overtake “wove” and “sneaked”, respectively.

The study also revealed that a flower today is more likely to be “smelled” rather than “smelt” and that the neighbour’s cat probably “dove” behind the sofa – although, as Plotkin notes, British felines remain more likely to have dived.’

The film’s tag-line has been confirmed as Resistance to changes in grammar is futile, but early reports that there will be a return of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard and a controversial new but emblematic Captain’s command So make it has so far been denied.

Further details can be found here.

As it’s the first of November I am presenting my poem Ottery Tar Barrel Rollers, with an illustration by Chris Wakefield, to celebrate the annual Tar Barrel event in Ottery St Mary. This year’s ‘rolling’ will take place on the 4th November.

For further details about the history of this occasion, here is a good place to visit, and do check out the numerous photos online – though you need to see it in person to believe the genuinely spectacular!

Out of interest, a first draft of the image which conveyed much of the inherent menace in the tar-lined, flaming barrels, but it made the rollers themselves seem intimidating  – which is a part of the exciting spectacle, but it is not their manner, so to speak, so we changed!