Cover caption

Scary wood eating grub. photo Roger Morton

Poetry

The Whistler

Until he was shot through the face

by a bullet in the 1st World War

my grandfather’s whistling could be heard

all around the district.

Everybody would stop and listen as the pure clean sound

flew over the ploughed ground

and into the homes of the  neighbouring farms

the notes were carried

on the wings of the wind and the breeze

and the wives and the women around

said his tunes were as crystal clear and innocent

as songs from heaven

from the gods themselves.

His whistling was as enchanting

as anything you would hear on the wireless

or that any orchestra could concoct.

No bird could touch him.

The melody lilted and took your breath away

while his plough tilted and pushed the earth

in straight lines behind his sturdy great horses

as they did his bidding.

The bullet took of the tip of his tongue

and though his face healed well

not a trace of a whistle was left.

The moustache he grew covered any

peripheral damage and the dents in his cheeks

(where the bullet entered and left)

looked like naughty defiant dimples.

The neighbours were bereft because

they never again heard that

pure clear whistle, brightening their day

bringing a smile to their lips

instead,  just the silence of the ploughed fields

their own thoughts to keep them company as the  

their clocks ticked on and the days felt long.

John recuperated in a hospital in London.

He said London was a terrible place

and “who wid want to live there?”

but he never elaborated.

He said the nurses were nice though.

Joselyn Duffy Morton ©

Stephen O'R's fascination with funerals

Part Two

photo: Roger Morton

Last year I went to the funeral of a film editor I had known for a long time. At the crematorium and party we listened to many heartfelt speeches including one where a close friend told us that she had had a dream in which she was driving near the cliff when the dead woman appeared and hailed a lift. She said she was very happy. She had been walking along a path at the top of a not-so-high cliff when she slipped and fell to her death on the rocks below - or so we thought. A few days after her funeral a group of her friends went to the Police to check the exact spot where she had been found so that they could visit it. The Police told them she had jumped off the cliff at the Gap a favorite spot for suicides. She was so badly disfigured that her parents could not recognise her.

Even the family's catholic priest had been kept in the dark along with all of us. We had cried with the family and watched as they received condolences whilst all the while hiding that their daughter’s death was a suicide.

I got the call, as we all have done, or will do, and a caught a plane to New Zealand. Five minutes after I walked into the hospice room I watched as my father turned to me and mouthed something I never heard, before turning away to die at the end of a long breath out. I was not close to my father having never had a meaningful conversation with him. I no longer hated him and just went to be with my family. A poor man, not religious who had no material success, had, in his death a full house in a larger than usual church. I wrote a prayer for my mother’s ear and delivered it in a fine declamatory style with an actor’s voice that impressed the priest. I videoed my father’s burial, in one hand a rope and in the other a camera. My siblings were grieving - there I was catching them on tape.

A twenty year old girl, Libby (Liberty), whom I had known since she was three, slipped in a puddle, broke her neck before falling two hundred metres into a Peruvian ravine 270k from La Paz. The coroner’s report said she was dead before she hit the water. I was stunned by the news and spent a long time on my balcony looking out across the Pacific in the direction of Peru. The inward waves became waves of agonising emotion. I pulled some tarot styled cards and watched for days as they told of my young friend as she staggered in shock from the river that separated the two worlds. She rested, then rose and confidently walked off. A few years later her mother, an ex (but loved girlfriend) of mine, turned her car in front of a speeding motorcyclist. He died instantly as did her remaining child who was one of a party in a motorboat at 2am when it ran headlong into a fishing boat.

Me ex’s sister had stopped in the street to tell me this and got upset when I expressed my dismay. The sister seemed to want me to acknowledge her grief but I could not bring myself to be considerate.

Another friend lost the fight against cancer. She was popular, the church was packed with mourners, as was the party where fellow comedians spoke well of her. Her husband later told me the death had been horrible, the body fought against its fate and his dying wife whom he had nursed for months had abused him in her last moments.

I began to see that my relationship with death and funerals wanders through the lives of others.

One night I saw an actor I knew, come tripping down the stairs at the theatre. He sported long hair, a beard and a Haj cap. I cried out "Mohammad!" For 38 years I had been bumping into him, sharing a joke in case we might be forced to say something meaningful.  Just two weeks later there I was, dressed in my best black costume armed with a NZ poem to recite in order to show that I knew where he was coming from.

The speakers now stood at the exact spot I had last seen Frank. I felt their speeches were not respectful as if an actor did not deserve respect. The ‘family’ had rejected my offer of the poem. It became about me again.

Later I began to forgive them and then myself as I realised that I just liked bumping into Frank over the years. I saw that I was actually feeling loss and grief for that occasional relationship, that it was it real to me and I did not need to turn it into an epiphany or a performance. I will miss all those people I bump into or hail as we pass.

I discovered the latest death when I was searching for a program on a radio station website. The notice was only hour old. When I last saw my friend Tony we joked about age and illnesses. “The Doctor said I could go at any time” he smiled, trumping my incurable but not life threatening condition.  And he did.

I visited his wife and daughter to see if there was anything they needed help with. There were lists on the table. Jane said the dying had been awful. They were confused but on adrenaline and in control. I realised that I might miss bumping into him but they would grieve. And so it goes.

Tony’s memorial in the Balmain town hall – religion meant no funeral - was packed. It seemed like the whole of Radio national, my station of choice, was there. His co-workers and friends spoke so eloquently that I became depressed that I was not someone who would have eloquent speakers at my funeral. Again it had become about me. I began to think this mob of professional speakers who applauded each others’ speeches were doing a performance for one of their own in the only way possible for professional speakers – drawing a picture of their friend that was to the point, articulate but at the same evoking applause rather than emotion.

With no religion to fill the gap they created a ceremony about their court jester. Tony, a bright funny scholarship boy from a family of agricultural labourers, from Suffolk, England, that could trace its history back to Shakespeare’s time, had a handsome old Etonian, who had been persuaded to like Aussie rules footy and captain Beefheart as his main friend and speaker. The old Etonian had been with Tony in a Church in Rwanda that was filled with dead bodies of the recently slaughtered. That priest’s treachery would put you off religion I suppose

I skipped the party, not wanting to be a bumbler in the company of wordsmiths (me again). I will visit Jane my friend in a few days and take her a curry. I dread the coming decades of deaths, funerals and other catastrophes and wonder maybe that my relating to each of these occasions is just my way of grieving at the loss of yet another piece of the fabric or mantel that is my life. Maybe when that mantel has been totally removed – exposing me – it will be my turn. Stephen O’Rourke

BBC, Radio 4 Extra

Hello again
This week I have news about a writer whose name is surely familiar to all radio drama fans, and whose work has been regularly broadcast on Radio 7 from day one of our launch in 2002, and now continues on Radio 4Extra.
He is Neville Teller, long time radio dramatist and abridger - truly one of the best in the business - whose vast range of works you may have enjoyed include adaptations of The Saint novels, starring Paul Rhys, Maugham's Eye View , starring Dirk Bogarde, Robert Goddard's Into the Blue , and many of the PD James thrillers featuring Adam Dalgleish and Cordelia Oliver.
Neville tells me that he and his wife, now that they've reached a certain age, have decided to pack up and seek the sun, though I must say they've chosen a hot spot in more than one sense! This summer they'll be moving to the Middle East and will become ex-pats. Neville says,  that he has no intention of ceasing to write for radio.
"These days, computers and electronic wizardry mean that you can be in constant touch with people no matter where in the world you happen to be."
Over the years, Neville has amassed a very large collection of audiocassettes and CDs containing not only his work for radio, but also many of the hundreds of audiobooks he abridged for UK publishers.
Knowing he was moving abroad, Neville offered the entire collection to the National Sound Archive of the British Library and they are delighted with his donation.
So all Neville's audio dramatisations, abridgements and adaptations are now in the public domain and permanently available.
When he knew that I wanted to tell you about his move, Neville asked whether he could address a few words to the readers of this newsletter. He writes:
" Radio entered my bloodstream like a sort of virus when I was very little, and there it has flourished ever since. I do hope that the pleasure I have gained from dramatising and adapting works of literature for radio has also brought pleasure to listeners. I don't intend to stop writing for radio, provided my work is still wanted, but I do want to take the opportunity to thank you for the many messages I have received over the years, of praise and of blame when deserved, both directly and more recently through the BBC's on-line message-boards. They have genuinely been much appreciated.
Au revoir - certainly not good-bye."
Neville has been a welcome visitor to our office over the years, always stopping to chat to the team, and sends many a cheery e-mail. I know he will stay in touch, and that his work will always be there for you to look forward to on Radio 4Extra.
Neville Teller treats coming up include The Great Gatsby , A Piece of Justice and The House of Special Purpose.

Mary Kalemkerian, Head of Programmes, BBC Radio 4 Extra

Cover caption

Good use of space? Drink and drive safely?
Photo Roger Morton

From Richard French's ipad

Cafe lunch would be marvellous cos I have an early morning thing and then have to go back after lunch ... so I set the alarm for  7.00, added the snooze button, and set it again for 7.30 and of course awoke at 4.00, 4.30 and then from deep deep slumber and grumpy at 7.00, slothed about, great gefuffle about what to wear to pedal a bicycle while wired up AND spend day in Perigueux, avoided breakfast as instructed, got all my shit together ... instructions, Mutual, Carte Vitale, fully charged Kindle. shades, reading glasses, wallet, watch et al, started the car, reread the instructions to see if I had missed anything and discovered it was for TOMORROW.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

R

the next day was amazing ... like being in a submarine ... two huge long sessions with bicycle in the middle ... they said its all good. Worth getting the day wrong then. Hey ho.

Sincere

Sincere my dear,

she’s not sincere

plastic, phoney, flake-arse

manipulative and frankly

a bit of a liar.

Joselyn Duffy Morton©

Livin’

When someone dies

you’d think you’d want to die too

you’d think it’d be a given

But no, I want to start livin’.

Joselyn Duffy Morton ©

Lizards

Our house wall is alive

with the eyes

of lizards

I waste so much time

watching them

I forget to weed

the garden.

Joselyn Duffy Morton©