16 Year Old Pauline Blackburn Is Queuing For Tickets To See The Beatles At The Majestic Ballroom In Birkenhead,

Towers on the cusp of something

From the Irish Times, May 2008:

//PLANNERS IN Dublin City Council have rejected a proposal to preserve the Pigeon House chimneys at Poolbeg by adding them to the Record of Protected Structures (RPS), on the basis that they are not of sufficient architectural, social or historical value.

The 207m (680ft) candy-striped twin chimney stacks at the ESB’s Poolbeg generating station have been one of the city’s most recognisable landmarks for more than 30 years, but have never had protection from demolition.

The situation has a greater than usual urgency due to the fact that the Poolbeg power station is to close in 2010. It seems likely that the site they are located on will undergo a change of function.

The ESB said no decision had been made on the future of the stacks and it was unlikely that any decision would be taken until the plant closed.

The company has also yet to decide whether it will sell the 90-acre site on which the stacks stand. The site is likely to become prime development land in the coming years with plans to move much of Dublin port’s activities outside the city and proposals to turn the Poolbeg area into a high-density urban quarter.//

The change in the economic landscape since 2008, along with scandals relating to inflated property values in the Docklands, means that the value of the ‘prime development land’ around Poolbeg may not rise any time soon. At the present time (August 2010) the generating station appears to be still operating and the alternators and drums are still standing, along with the towers. The station compound is run-down and looks semi-derelict, but is still protected by CCTV. The Shellybanks strand in front of the station is still far quieter than its neighbour Sandymount, the quiet broken only occasionally by hikers and wanderers. A foul smell in the area, possibly emanating from the gas used to power to combined cycle generators, puts off the dog-walkers and joggers of Sandymount. I haven’t been able to find any information as to whether the station will be closing in 2010, as announced by the ESB in 2007. The next change to happen in the area, in place of property development, will be the new incinerator which was under construction on a site just to the west of the generating station until 22 July, when work was stopped after the Department of the Environment failed to approve a licence for an outflow pipe.

The stop-and-start nature of industrial and commercial development in Ireland is frustrating from an economic point of view, but the upside it results in strange, intriguing half-derelict landscapes like that at Poolbeg and Pigeon House Road. This is a time for collecting images of industry winding down and the sense of poetry they evoke

White Feathers

My Amazon review for White Feathers, a super new WWI-set novel dealing with (among other things) the practice of shaming non-combatant men into joining up by encouraging the women in their lives to present them with a white feather, symbolising their supposed cowardice. I really enjoyed this novel - as I say in the review, it's that rare beast, a 'literary page-turner'.

It can be hard for historical novels to strike the balance between inhabiting the period in which they're written and fully engaging a broad range of modern readers. White Feathers pulls this off with a vibrancy and a lightness of touch that are all the more striking when you realise that this is a debut novel.

Half Agony, Half Hope

A canon-divergent AU, inspired by Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

In the summer of 1959, Paul’s life is perfect. He has his music, his new band, and his first true love; his song-writing partner, his best friend. John. But then autumn comes, and Paul’s dad convinces him that his dreams are nothing but a foolish fantasy, and that he needs to grow up, get a real job, a real life. Five years later, John is an international music sensation, his band taking the world by storm. And Paul? Paul is exactly where John left him, working a dead-end job, no family, no prospects, no life. And then one day, John comes back to town…

The playlist (further suggestions welcome)…

And the theme song for chapter 1...

Reload! Blogging again....

It actually happened.

On Instagram

 Peñíscola, Spain.

On Instagram

the issue with 2:15 is thats already 4 pm

paul's most relatable characteristic (to me) is being a complete weirdo and obsessively secretive about it

an important part of any feud is ruining your enemy’s whimsical schemes

“MCGOUGH: There are poets who believe that when a poem arrives you write it down, catch the moment, as it were, and then that is it. Whereas other poets revise and rework until something shines through. What is your method? PAUL: For me, how art works is I get a mood, a desire to do the thing, usually writing songs, but sometimes this passion to paint. The feeling has to be there. I do it for pleasure. I’m not a great one for, as Linda used to put it, “Beating myself with a wet noodle.” So with a poem, a line comes to me and I sort of doodle with it in my head. I can’t stop it. I realised the other day that the great thing about being a composer is that you are doing nothing. What a doss! I was recently on holiday in India, having a fabulous time doing nothing, and I wrote three songs that I’ve just recorded. It’s a lovely thing to be able to say in my profession, “I have to be doing nothing.” MCGOUGH: Do you use a computer? PAUL: Pencil and paper. I’m not a typist. Funnily enough, John became a red-hot typist towards the end of his life. He had always had this “Arts Correspondent in Kowloon” kind of dream. But for me it’s pencil and paper by the bed… those moments between falling asleep and just before waking are good. I’ve got this little book that Stelly [his daughter, Stella] gave me and it’s full of scribbles and drawings. MCGOUGH: Are you interested in poetic forms? Have you tried your hand at writing a villanelle or a sonnet? PAUL: I really haven’t got into structure yet, but I can see how it can be effective from reading other poets. Like a mantra. Allen [Ginsberg] always used to say, “First thought, best thought.” And I’d think, “Oh, brilliant.” But the joke is, of course, that Allen was always revising. I think he was the first person I showed my poetry to. He came over to the house in Sussex to ask me if I knew anybody who would accompany him on guitar at a gig he was doing at the Albert Hall. So I suggested Dave Gilmour and Dave Stewart and a few others. Then when he’d gone it dawned on me that he wanted me to do it, so I rang him and said OK. So we met up and I stuck a little Bo Diddley jinkity-jink behind his Ballad of the Skeletons, a really cool poem, and he introduced me to the audience as his accompanist. He loved to be the Don, did Allen, the controller, and I loved to give him that. Anyway we sat down with my poems and he knocked out all the “thes”, and any word ending in “-ing”. And I said, “Allen, you’re going to make me into a New York Beat poet, and it’s just not me.” In the end I thanked him for going over them, and it was good to have an annotated version in my drawer, The Ginsberg Variations, as I called them, but I wouldn’t be using them. It was a lovely process, though, and I should be so lucky.”

— Paul McCartney, interview w/ Roger McGough for the Telegraph. (March 10th, 2001)

Blue on Blue