{"id":107,"date":"2012-03-20T10:12:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T10:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=107"},"modified":"2012-03-26T16:09:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T16:09:28","slug":"robert-harding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/robert-harding\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Harding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Idyll<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went to escape the urban solitude,
\nTo escape the perpetual flaneurship,
\nthe dogged ‘outsider’ mantle I was made from.
\nI should\u2019ve said grow up you child, you\u2019re a writer
\nWhat did you expect?<\/p>\n

And the people there, in the countryside were like,
\n‘oh yes, no lamplight here mate. Black as the ace of spades, ay, ay?\u2019
\nAnd they smiled a crooked smile. And there was talk of a bypass going somewhere
\nto somewhere,
\n\u2018but where and on whose land?\u2019 they said.<\/p>\n

idyll.
\nhere and there a stately home\u2014poor relations of the Khan’s pleasuredome, boxy stacks of bricks that still decree,
\n\u2018keep off the grass’ and ‘between 2 and 4 for tea’.
\nBy the way folks this is a \u2018no-cold calling zone.\u2019 We\u2019re all for the market out here but not around here geddit?<\/p>\n

Squads of ducks patrolled the dainty lake, the Serpentine, but alas no serpent, nor monkey or macaw. Or the thrilling cries they made, proclaiming the joys of nature. The pheasant did that I suppose, with his strangled squawk. Or was he pointing out another high-pressure pipeline owned by foreign equity?<\/p>\n

Then the silence is cracked open by the radio inside the squad car parked near the village green. The village cop is in his Escort radioing in the ‘suspicious Hyundai’ parked near the Earl’s land. Registration; foxtrot (oh really where?), Golf (to be expected), Hotel (beats my B and B) November (perpetually), Papa (died and left me) nineteen ninety-five model.<\/p>\n

idyll.
\nIn the afternoon Farmer Giles was suffering his piles,
\nfor he dug up a tuffet because Little Miss Muffet,
\nwho was atop it was a
\nspoilt \u2018it\u2019 kid from the city, matter of fact the west of it,
\nand besides moles around here could shut the ***k up cos they had no
\nownership rights either. There were only \u2018pests\u2019 disrupting the economics of farming and moi land!
\n\u2018I\u2019ve worked all me life.\u2019 Said Giles. Moles should earn a living.<\/p>\n

idyll.
\nWherever you looked there were only the serried ranks of the dumb, the
\nbovine, foxes mugging homesteaders of their chickens, creeping gangster owls soundless in the velvetine darkness.
\nCome out from under your stones and see the same thing done but in the city where grown-ups live. Crowds of mustard flowers waved all different ways, blowing with the wind \u2014frivolous shoppers in Oxford Street.<\/p>\n

The animals crowded the pastures; Friesians blackened the meadows, Gothic starlings fringed the boughs, hustling the best spot.<\/p>\n

And all dun-coloured, in the metaphysics of things at least and, worse still, none could talk.<\/p>\n

Nor were there pussycats here, no proper country forest, no labial lawns, or chestnut thatch much less the downy patch, of the
\npenumbra between the feathery wood and the thigh of the meadow.<\/p>\n

And subtract from this, dun-coloured sparrows\u2019 chirruping gossip at lights out.<\/p>\n

No, all quiet here\u2014only the pout of a dace, the moue of a rudd.<\/p>\n

They sit in the dark of a bend in the river where mournful trees overhang;
\nNowhere a plan, for them to jump out into the net I don\u2019t have. Only the dark of the bend.
\nNothing on offer.<\/p>\n

Save some lads who have come from the city. On a trip with ten cold beers each, all warming, turning to soup.
\nThey look at the pastures seen and say, \u2018no birds here bruv\u2019. Only the stench of the next door farm, barbed wire, another warning sign; private property, no trespassing, slow down. Twinned with Cologne. Well if you lose the war.<\/p>\n

City talk cuts no ice here. The farmer\u2019s boy casually blasts the crests of men pheasants with shot, stoves the skulls of rabbits into the landscape,
\npoke down the heads of little black kittens into the bucket. Surplus they bob down beneath the surface and up for the last time.
\nOne cat can off the rats.
\nDrowning cute kitties here isn\u2019t a crime.<\/p>\n

Country people, village people anyway, are as mean and quick-sighted as birds, orderly as clerks, great tuggers of lace, sentinels of the\u00a0status quo.<\/p>\n

And so when on my couch and a pleasant host of geese I see, vree-vree,
\nI think take me back to the town,
\nAnd set me free.
\nIdyll.<\/p>\n

Hell. I feel so very tired.<\/p>\n

*Robert Harding<\/strong> says: I am an ex-teacher, lecturer and research fellow. I taught literature and writing at School, college and University and was a social researcher for The Labour Party, the think tank Demos and the University of Reading. I am now, for better or worse and in one way or another, writing full time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Idyll I went to escape the urban solitude, To escape the perpetual flaneurship, the dogged ‘outsider’ mantle I was made from. I should\u2019ve said grow up you child, you\u2019re a writer What did you expect? And the people there, in the countryside were like, ‘oh yes, no lamplight here mate. Black as the ace of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}