Saturday 26 March 2011

March for the Alternative!

I'm not there (too slow to book, or too cowardly), but there's the big event in London today.
This is a protest against the massive cuts to public services, while businesses have allegedly huge tax dues unpaid or 'dodged' and bankers still award themselves massive bonuses.
See the TUC webpage  and write to your MP if you're concerned about cuts (I think we all should be).
#26march on twitter.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Never go back

Is it waiting
Somewhere
Is it?
Somewhere
A feeling
The echo at first
In the bricks of a building
That stayed since I lived here -
Or rather
The street name
In faded gilt letters
Victorian splendour -
But the buses are new
And the arts centre café's a must-have-been-refurb'd
And the films at the cinema
The same ones aren't on again (no, there's no retro this month)...
So the echos are quiet and the feelings are too far to feel -
Only names:
Oxford Road
Whitworth street
Manchester Piccadilly ...
There's no need, no time, to go back to where I worked
Where I slept
Where I drank
Where I spent eighteen months -
Or to the band in the Free Trade Hall
Bhundu boys
Fresh from Zimbabwe
The gig-goers dancing -
Since then half the band's died of AIDS I heard -
And the Hall's now the smart hotel where I just stayed.

The feelings from back then can stay in the past,
Bricked in
Or hollowed for better developments:
They can sleep.
I'd rather be now,
Even if streets both the old and the new build are part of me.
Let the past be,
And
The rest grow for all of us
Peopled by those who remember the names

And by those barely born when the memories were made.

--------/////-----------

Reprise.

The echo a street in the semi-dark
Fading
And somewhere a feeling
From then -
But it's not for today.

Only names, and the names
Are beyond days:
Today, they are only themselves.

[Copyright Jon Andrews 2011)

Room at the top (almost)

From a high-rise bar in central Manchester -



Monday 14 March 2011

Stairway to heaven?

Canalside Brum as it's built

Down by the Liffey




Daytime

And a view from the hotel

Pub Scenes Dubh Linn

John F Kennedy and others
Pub Character :-)



Mulligan's

View from the street

Friday 11 March 2011

Testing

Trying out a new device...
World cat to find library books near you.