Monday was the travel day. My partner and I had breakfast and then we set about packing the car for our trip to Devon. To Totliegh and a thatched manor house that was to be our home till Saturday morning. It’s a writing course we are doing, my choice of a way to spend a week together differently. The journey is unremarkable except that there are no hold ups, accidents or blockages to delay us. We have one stop to refresh ourselves and then push on. I have bought a phone mount for the car so that we can use the ”three word” app to navigate by as we have been told that the post code on a sat nav does not get you there. It turns out to be in valuable, especially as my partner spots an important direction on the instructions that have been sent to us.

We arrive save and on time, a little after 3:30pm. We pull into a parking space and are immediately greeted by one of the staff and shown to our room. It is a small room with a double bed and because this is a writing course and “aloneness” is a resumed requirement for writing we have been allocated the room next door as an additional writing space. We share a bath room with a couple of guys in the same annexe. We unpack and go to the dining room in the main house for a cream tea and to meet the other guests.

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I dread this and promise myself to try and learn the names knowing it will probably be the usual dyslexic cluster fuck it always is. There is a hubbub of people doing the greeting rituals and being interested whilst trying to contain whatever anxieties the might have.

There is a lull and I write a brief poem to myself about some of the names with bits of information attached in the hope that some of them will stick. We freshen up and eat at 7 o’clock, a meal prepared by the centre staff. Then it’s off to the barn.

An admin person tells us what we need to know, the usual stuff and then our tutors introduce themselves. The male tutor conducts a session and prods us with some questions. There is homework, reading of poems and chapters of our choosing. Then the woman tutor springs a hand out on us and wants us to consider it for tomorrows morning session. We are given some pointers to consider and then left to our own devices. I write a short poem about the opening babble and its first day at school feel. Then it’s off to bed and the social juggling of the shared bath room. This for ordinary people is tricky at the best of times but with my prostate cancer this is trickier as my frequency is higher and I risk pissing everyone else off with my visits during the night. I endeavour to become the phantom pisser. It is a difficult night, new bed, smaller bed, the hooting of owls, the bark of foxes and the need for another piss, at least three during the night. I do no t sleep well but wake to Sarte at 8 o’clock.

Tuesday and we get up for breakfast, the usual cereals and then the communal dining. The table is huge and constructed out of two substantial planks big enough to sit the 12 course attendees and at least two staff around it. We sit on benches. This is where the first session of the day occurs, our tutor sets us a task almost immediately, a poem in a few minutes. She shows us a pair of pliers and says write about these. Yep really a pair of pliers. I wrote this:

Pliers and a Man

I am steel

Forged in fire

Hammered hard

And tempered

Plunged in water

Hissing steamy anger

At the loss of flame.

There on the anvil

I was malleable,

Fashionable,

At the mercy

Of the Blacksmiths art.

These are things

my Grandfather forged.

Iron worker,

Builder of cars

Till war took him

To fight in other lands,

Returning to a “a land for heroes”,

With no work,

And so he gardened

Grew things at Kew

Until they fitted an

Iron leg.

Forged in fire

Hammered hard

And tempered.

I thought that was quite good for a first stab. Later my poetry would be called “Boney”. Do not worry I am not about to inflict all my jottings on you, this was to give you the flavour of what we were up to. There followed the dissection and discussion around a short story. We were given way to look at things and to think about structure. At the end of the session we are given an assignment. We had to write a piece that ended with the sentence “In the morning the men began to plough the field.” We had until Thursday to write it. Lunch was serve to us by the centre staff and then the time was our own to write, read and complete our assignments. Some people had their sessions with the tutors other walked a bit, including me and my partner, who later went of to do her cooking stint. It was a dispersal. We walked, wrote and wended or way to dinner at seven o’clock. The meal had been cooked by three of the course attendees and included my partner. It was chilli and very welcome followed by Eton mess.

Once again we found our way to the barn, this time to be read to by the tutors from their books. There after a Q&A followed. I am reticent in these as I feel that everyone has read all the latest books and are up with the latest authors and who had won what prizes. I feel an alien. Clearly these people have had an education unlike mine and this is the result. I remain quite and listen. I’m nt sure how I feel about this stuff but I know from reading the “course books” that this stuff does not speak to me or hold me. In fact it is the type pf English literature that has always turned me off and drove me to the continent looking for what did chime with me. The session ends and I think there was more homework reading to do. A coffee and then bed. The coffee was a mistake, I lay awake listening to owls trying to make sense of my day and periodically going for a surreptitious piss, feeling myself get more and more fatigued as the night went on and with every trip to the toilet.

Wednesday, up and breakfast, cereals of course, and a bit of time running off the stuff I had written ready for my tutor session later in the day. The morning was the male tutor doing poetry. He set an exercise to write about the passing of someone, insensitive bastard. Of course, someone got upset and did not return to the session. My partner also left and joined the other. I hung in their but was concerned about my partner although I had a good idea what had got to her. The session was packed with content and everyone worked hard but for me their was a sense of absence, I’m not sure I like this guy but I think there is a cultural difference and I was reminded of a Nigerian friend with the same sort of approach. I’m left not sure where I stand on this, either way someone got hurt or distressed.

The session ends and there is lunch, a hearty soup and meat. There is time to run of some more poems and bits of work before I get to see the tutor for my session. I follow my partner into the pod. The tutor is very good, sensitive and encouraging. She calls my poetry “boney”, I like that that. We agree that its time I handed my poetry to some one else to look at an to pare it down into a manageable collection. To have someone curate it even. This is a good plan and it is time for me to let go of it before I get to the point where I cannot. I laze after the session and fill in time by reading and writing before dinner at 7 o’clock again. This time its harissa salmon and cous cous with chickpeas followed by fruit and more Eton Mess.

In the barn we are introduced to our guest speaker for the evening, a thirty year old poet who has had his first collection published. He is thoughtful, open and interesting. He reads to us and then there is an extensive Q&A session. There is some chat after wards before we head for bed and I get to play my now familiar bladder roulette. Its not a good night and I wake up early.

Thursday. Up early and a shower, a more complicated bathroom juggle but by breakfast I am clean and my partner has plaited my hair for the first time since we were pre children in sunny Spain. Breakfast and then the morning session where we had to read an extract or all of our home work assignment ending with the men ploughing the fields. It was an interesting experience. For better or for worse here is mine.

“It’s a real fucker finding a body, especially when its hanging in your hen house. For a start how did a six- foot bloke contrive to get the belt round his neck and secure it to the inside of the coup. The strangling yourself bit is easy you just let your body weight do the work and before you know it your asleep then dead. Its something you can do off the end of your bed. Always empirically testable if your over inquisitive or just plain stupid. You could of course be unbelievable depressed or indeed even bored and not give a toss whether it works or not, you’re just up for the lark. Any way assuming you have not trotted off to off yourself you might be wondering what comes next, for the Finder of course. The six-foot bloke, clearly older as he is measured in imperial, has a different non future in front of him that will include a forensic photoshoot, a ride in a plastic bag and then finally some of medicines finest will dissect and analyse every organ and tissue to ascertain what the cause of death was. For these people nothing is obvious, only the fact the person is dead. As it turns out they come up with the same answer, death by self-strangulation.

For Finder it’s a different story. It’s a cocktail of suspicion, inquisition and intrusion. In some senses the police are no different to the press. The press has advertising to sell, the police have careers to pursue. This may sound disingenuous as I am sure many a serious journalist will argue that the press has a crucial public function to perform while the police will claim the same in the interest of responsibility to the public. So, what follows is a saga of questions, enquiries and theories, mostly more like fantasy than actual testable theories. So many people need to satisfy themselves that six-foot bloke was not murdered and that Finder has got a cast iron alibi. “I just found him” begins to sound like “I’m running a ruse to cover up my guilt.” It’s exhausting but if your innocent, or guilty and good at it, then they all go away, it becomes yesterday’s news and life returns to normal, or does it?  There might be a bit of counselling for Finder but in general existence goes on.

Did anyone ask about the hens or anything else come to that? No of course they didn’t yet there they were, invaded and their haven used to facilitate an untimely death. Their world probably shook, or at least leaned a bit when the event happened and they witnessed and experienced the death of another creature. Who considered them, no one; except the Finder. Finder noticed. Finder noticed an absence of eggs. The usual tricks of “eggery” were applied. Favourite foods, extra grit, different grain even bloody Mozart, but nothing worked. These chickens were as dead as the Norwegian Blue in commercial terms. Hundreds of them in the coup had become an industrial disaster. There was nothing for it but to reconfigure for the health of the business. There needed to be a fresh investment. In the morning the men began ploughing the field.”

We all read and then moved onto beginnings and commented on some that had been given to us to consider. There were a couple of small exercises to do and soon the session came to an end. I really enjoyed hearing all the stories and the comments. Then there was lunch again. Again, someone asked me what I did, I avoided, so far no one knows what I am or what I do and I do not want to tell them. I certainly do not want to tell them about my cancer. I really just want to be here to write and learn without any of the baggage that being what I am and having what I have getting in the way. So after lunch my partner and I walk for a while and then I retreat to the barn to type and to catch up with the blog. Its my turn to cook to day so at this point I will leave the blog and prepare for my shift at 4:30pm, although I find it difficult to think that sausage and mash with onion gravy can be too difficult to do, I am sure the three of us will manage it. My plan is to have a dash of red wine in the onion gravy.

I was right the meal turned out easy to do and at 7o’clock I and my two course mates dished out a good sausage and mash with cabbage, followed by apple crumble and custard. The three of us played host and when the time came cleared away and washed up. There was no evening event in the barn so my partner and I read each other’s work to date and commented on what we ought to read Then it was off to bed to try and sleep, window open to the sound of the hooting owls.

Friday came along and I faced the crisis of there being no muesli available. I made do with toast and coffee and wander to the barn to think and then wandered up the path a bit till my phone pinged with a signal. At ten o’clock we started the last formal session of the course. The poet gave us things to do and generally tried to press us to be more revealing and to give of ourselves, however after some had experienced distress as a result of the pressing previously there was a reluctancy by some to do so, including me, but then I am just stroppy about being told what to do anyway. The session closed with some admin bits and the tutors telling us we were lovely and how the evening reading would go. Lunch was simple baked potatoes and filling followed by a wait to go into my tutor session. I got in with the tutor and read him a couple of things and we discussed them. My “Bony” poems apparently requires “flesh” and I am more of a “philosopher than I am a poet. So it was an interesting half hour. I retired to the barn and once again my partner and I discussed what we would read at the end of course evening presentation. We ate the vegetable curry, but I could not face the rice pudding dessert and resorted to a couple of emergency KitKats washed down with coffee. The course assembled in the barn and the tutors produced a running order. I was number 9 and my partner number 8. People read their contributions to good applause from us all. One account of a dying mother had some of the group in tears. I read four of my Boney poems, one of which I stood up and did actions for. Here they are:

1.

Tish the Indian

Mimi the Hawaiian

Riptide rainbow Jenny

Pavilion John

These are just

Some of the ways

A dyslexic copes

To hold your names,

To avoid offence.

Those long silences

Are times of process

As the inner Pixies

Rummage through

The filing system

Trying to keep up

The illusion of

Social skills.

2. Pliers and a Man

I am steel

Forged in fire

Hammered hard

And tempered

Plunged in water

Hissing steamy anger

At the loss of flame.

There on the anvil

I was malleable,

Fashionable,

At the mercy

Of the Blacksmiths art.

These are things

my Grandfather forged.

Iron worker,

Builder of cars

Till war took him

To fight in other lands,

Returning to a “a land for heroes”,

With no work,

And so he gardened

Grew things at Kew

Until they fitted an

Iron leg.

Forged in fire

Hammered hard

And tempered.

3.

Capiche?

Like Anders I laugh

Apeing the Cat A

Walk, bow legged

Arms akimbo

Like  carpet

Deliverer having

Lost his rolls.

A tattooed strut

That says;

“Does it look like

I’ve got Victim

On my forehead?”

Hours in the gym

Putting on the armour

To ward of anyone,

To be safe.

This is the image.

Poke your finger

Through it and feel

The empty space.

The person so lost

That they became the image.

This is what you see

This is what you get

Capiche?

4.

I’m not going there

You can shove death

Up your arse

And I will eat

Binky for dinner.

I’m missing my exercise,

My body aches

For the tyranny of

The beat driven gym.

I want my ears filled

With Rammstein;

“Stick my bratforst in your sauerkraut

What’s the problem

Lets do it quick.

I can’t get laid in Germany”

Obliteration of the world

Around me to free

My body to run rampant.

It is this effort,

This discipline of body

That keeps me calm

To be able to sit by life

And drink the waters.

It is the generative power

Of everyday life

That I need to be ready for.

Receptive to the ordinary

Because that is where

The Treatise on a Golden Lion

Lives incarnate in all things.

I know where I am,

I know what’s coming,

So here and now

Is where I love

Where I try to be kind.

It is this now in all

Its splendid everydayness

That sustains me.

(OPTIONAL)

The last four minutes

Who holds the clock?

Not on my life

Not on my here and now

My heartbeat guides me

And my Pixies stick

A V sign up

And get on with running

My brain.

So they were my Boney contribution, I took my applause and reciprocated to others work. Some of the pieces by the group were very moving and some very witty. Some were velvety smooth and demonstrated a real feel for language and form. One piece was particularly well observed and witty and will turn out to be something special I think if the woman follows it through. At the end the tutors praised us and we relaxed down into conversation. The evening wore on until people drifted off to bed. I retired with my partner, again hoping for better sleep and less hooting and peeing.

Saturday, last day and up at 7 o’clock to get a shower and the packing done. I took my partner a coffee as usual and took a brief walk up the path to clear my head. I was relieved to find the muesli had been replenished. Breakfast found the whole course sitting together around the huge dining table and preparing to leave each other. One person drove away, the tutors left and then the taxi arrived to take most people to Exeter station. There were hugs and fond farewells and promises to keep in touch as we had all exchanged an email list. The taxi left and I and my partner drove off to the land of “signal” and traffic. I had completed the week without people on the course knowing the work I did and now do, neither did anyone get to know about my cancer. I managed a week as “ordinary bloke”. I liked that.

We stopped to fill the tank and then again for me to empty mine on the drive to my youngest daughter and fiancés new house in the Forrest of Dean. We did the tour, drank coffee and ate a sandwich. I look at the pile of tools and materials that have been left in the garage, discovering a nativity set whilst doing so. We left them about 4 o’clock to go the pub where we were staying for the night. A cosy room up some stairs that I managed to fall down as we went to collect our bags. We settled in and waited till the appointed time when my daughter picked us up to go for a meal.

We were duly picked up and went to eat a meal together in a local comfortable pub. It was a good time spent indulging in good food and talking about the new house, Christmas and plans for the future. We took our time and relaxed until it was time to be dropped off back at the pub we were staying in. We intended to go straight to bed but we found the pub empty apart from the barman/owner we decided to have a coke and in doing so we started to chat to the guy behind the bar. It turned out that he has held the lease for ten years but it ends in January and he is going to move. I asked if the art work was done by a local artist as it was very good, some like Jack Ventriano and a classic painter I did not recognise. It turned out the guy we were talking to was the artist, self- taught over many years. The classic picture was in fact a copy of a Caravaggio his favourite artist. We talked for ages about this art and how lockdown had proved the spur for him to decide to try to make it as an artist. He has shown someone his work who has offered him a room at an exhibition venue to display his work next year. It was such a lovely surprise to meet him and to find some one so engrossed in his art. We eventually said good night and went to bed in a much different mood than we would have done.

Sunday, we woke in our pub bedroom, made coffee and chatted before going down stairs to breakfast. We sat amidst all the pictures painted by the pub leaser as he served us breakfast. We cleared our room, paid the very reasonable bill and drove to my daughters for coffee. Our morning was spent happily chatting with her and her fiancé and talking about what decorating they were going to do and what work they were having done to get the place straight. During this chat we played with the gas fire they had yet to try. It fired up first time and quick warmed the room up. At lunch time we left and drove home to make bacon sandwiches, watch rugby, catch up with Strictly and of course to unpack the car. By the end of the afternoon we were tired and so we ordered Indian take away and let ourselves to be lazy. I watch the Strictly results show and then catch up with the blog. I’ve a busy week in front of me and tomorrow I get back to doing the work and preparing the training to do later. In the back of my mind there is Christmas but I now have a new project. I’m going to perform the stuff I wrote at the workshop and put it on my YouTube channel for the rest of the course to see. I might put the link into the blog for anyone who might be interested.