Tag Archives

The Guardian

POETRY

BEING EEYORE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

“It’s not much of a tail but I’m sort of attached to it.”

WINNIE THE POOH, A. A. Milne

Travelling home in the gloaming from the film

‘Christopher Robin’ – where an Englishman

re-discovers his inner lost boy,

an observation that is not unkind –

she says, leaning forward confidingly,

as we cautiously join the motorway,

‘Grandma! I think Grandpa is a bit like

Eeyore’ – as one might say ‘like Charlie Chaplin

or Einstein’. I ponder, as I tut tut

at overtaking speedsters, and wonder

if there are Guardians still at the Co-op,

what it is, at eight, she sees: a mostly

avuncular, slightly lugubrious

bearded johnny with specs and a high forehead,

or an elderly child stuffed with arcana,

given to irony? Whatever it is

if there were blessings I would feel blessed


Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

LAMENT FOR THE FOURTH ESTATE

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2.1K views

Once Parliament was in recess – both Houses

of Hypocrisy on their long summer hols –

in the basement of an office block near

King’s Cross (where you catch the Hogwarts Express)

one Saturday morning in July,

three journalists, watched by two technicians

from GCHQ, spent three hours to save

the Government’s face, and The Guardian’s,

by destroying hard drives with drills and grinders,

circuit boards whose data – from the exiled

whistleblower Edward Snowden – was

replicated throughout the Americas.

Ah, far, far  better farce than inaction,

and capitulation than loss of

influence! How the Red Tops rejoiced!

 

Only the Manchester Guardian – founded

after Peterloo, and to promote

repeal of the so-called Corn Laws – condemned

the Suez Canal fiasco, that last

hurrah of gunboat diplomacy.

That editor would have hidden the hard drives

somewhere in the British Library’s stacks,

just round the corner on the Euston Road,

and sent the hapless lads from Cheltenham

to Platform  9¾.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
5 Comments
POETRY

A LETTER TO ARTHUR RANSOME

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read2.1K views

‘The island had come to seem one of those places seen from the train that belong to a life in which we shall never take part.’

Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome

 

Encouraged and supported by my doughty,

doting mother and her two sisters – all

elementary school girls – at nine I passed

the entrance exam for a local, day

boys’ preparatory school. We called the teachers

‘Sir’, irrespective of gender, and ‘Ma’

behind their backs if they were female.

 

Mine was Ma Riddell and the first task she set

that September was to write a letter

to Arthur Ransome, telling him how much

we had enjoyed ‘Swallows and Amazons’,

which the class had read the previous year.

The Head Master would choose which letter to send.

 

I was too conscious of my new school cap

and blazer, of being by chance somewhere

I should want to be, ashamed of where I lived

and being found out, to say I had not

read the book, knew nothing about the author.

 

Of course, my letter was chosen, much

to Ma Riddell’s chagrin – not a word

but an expression, facial and tonal,

I knew. “Time you did joined-up writing, Selzer!”

Ah, pedagogy as command rather than

tuition! I said nothing, of course – nor

at home. I assumed the three sisters knew

what they were saving up and paying for.

 

I read all of the novels. An only,

fatherless child, I longed for the idea

of siblings, did not snigger at Titty’s name,

fell in love with the stern kindness of Susan.

I cannot remember what I wrote or whether

he replied. Much later I learned he was

supposedly an MI5 agent,

was definitely married to Trotsky’s

secretary. They lived in Westmoreland,

childless, above the lakes he fictionalised.

He was a Guardian writer, left wing

and affable – a father figure.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments