River

From the rock, a miracle.
Water, the colour of sky,
cold as the caverns
it came from, glittering
into the morning world
and down the hill.

Wily as a cat, it twists
and splits round shingle banks.
Shape-shifter scooping deep
still pools for trout to laze in.

Gathers to itself the becks and burns,
the brooks, the runnels and the rivulets,
puts on muscle, hurls its berserker howl
against the valley walls then
cleaves a crack, one man might leap,
and bludgeons a way through.

A sheet of sliding amber takes
the evening light, transforming it
to gold, imparts a fine polish
to wet stones and fronds of weed.

Who would have thought it ?

I had resigned myself to seeing Ed Miliband and Alec Salmond walking, Alec twisting Ed’s arm up to his shoulder blades, into 10 Downing Street. And I was spared that awful prospect. The Great British Public, in an amazing exhibition of bloody mindedness, changed their minds, not at the last minute, but the very last second, and decided that the Tory party was the lesser of the two weevils.

Not only that,the GBP decided to sack Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage. Miliband had to go.He looked like a man who knows every trick of politics, but can’t have a conversation about the weather.
His minders gave him awful, pseudo- cool lines – ” I am primed for power !” he announced the other night.
And ” Hell yeh !” is a phrase which will live in infamy.

But it wasn’t just Miiband.It was all the other dead beats from the Gordon Brown era who weighed him down- Ed Balls, Miliband’s partner in crime in the good old days, bit the dust as well, as did Wee Douglas Alexander, who masterminded the whole sad campaign. They all got it monumentally wrong.

I’m sad about Nick Clegg. He has that earnest, eager to please look which makes you feel sorry for him.I know, he was damned to the lowest fires of hell for reneging on his promise over tuition fees. He was wrong,but I believe he’s a decent man.

I took most delight in the defeat of Nigel Farage. He is the very embodiment of Toad of Toad Hall – the loud clothes, the bouncy, out of control enthusiasm. Don’t let his loutish charm seduce you. His audience is the old, the embittered, the saloon bar philosophers who look back to a time when England Ruled the Waves. Thank goodness he’s resigned….except he’s left a window open so he can unresign if he wants to…that, and the fact that UKIP polled 5 million votes makes me frightened.

I am not a passionate Conservative, but I voted for our local Tory because….because you have to vote…it’s your duty and your obligation, and you should be grateful that you’ve got a say, however tiny, in what happens in our country. And the Tories ? Maybe they’re the least worst choice. That’s why I voted for them.

Why we should feel sorry for politicians

Democracy is a creaky old machine, but it’s the best worst choice.Don’t bother to vote- and you let the loonies in.I’ve just done my bit . A cross against the name of a decent man who cares about his constituents and who, for the next five years, will enjoy modest affluence and total anonymity.

We demand the impossible from our rulers. We want a Rolls-Royce health system, but we don’t want to the extra taxes it requires. We want a financial safety net for all those in poverty, but jib at the thought of means testing. Scotland appears to want independence and a hefty financial leg-up as well. We want the lolly, the cake- and we want to keep our sixpence too. We want our politicians to be as saintly as St Francis and as cunning as Machiavelli.

I’m sure most of them come into the trade with the highest intentions,but in the end, do they stand come up against the old conundrum – do the ends justify the means ? Do they stand up for what they believe in?Or do they bow their heads and become lobby fodder ? The campaign certainties of Red and Blue fade into a world of grey.

We need politicians who are prepared to compromise.I want politicians who will horse-trade, who will engage with the other parties.I want hard headed men and women who can balance their party loyalties with the needs of the whole country. I don’t want charisma – simple competence will do me fine.

And will I get it ? Look at the party leaders, all of them…..it makes you weep.

The canvas and the camera

I was in London for a couple of days last week, and I managed to achieve a lifelong ambition. I went to the National Portrait Gallery. It’s a wonderful place, packed with paintings of the great and good. It’s fascinating ferret out the secret meanings and assumptions that lie beneath them. There’s a portrait of Sir Francis Drake which is grossly out of proportion – he’s 95% body and 5% head. In fact the painter wanted to show off the silk and lace clothes that he was wearing, and didn’t worry too much about his facial features. It’s quite possible that Sir Francis had a body double for the frills and furbelows and only came to sit for the headshot.

But there was one painting which really stood out from the rest. It was the portrait of Charles 11 at the top of this post.I know it reaches new depths of lo-finess – but I wanted you to have some idea of what he looks like.

The painting is about power, and the meaning is conveyed in two ways. First of all there’s the clothing- rich silks and brocades gleaming and glittering. I wonder if he could have walked around with all that stuff draped over his shoulder.

And then there’s the physical posture and the face. King Charles looks like a man of power. He’s sprawled in the throne of England, legs akimbo. He really owns the space. But it’s his face ( and that’s where the poor reproduction makes things tricky)- it’s his face which gives it all away.I’ve never seen such a powerful portrait of anger. His brows are drawn together, there’s a sneer reaching down to the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t want to be there at all- he wants to be founding the Royal Society or having it away with one of his mistresses. There is a terrific immediacy in this painting, a capturing of one moment in time.

Except it didn’t happen this way. The creation of the picture must have taken weeks. Day after day Charles made himself the puppet of the painter, putting his limbs into the right position.This portrait, like all portraits, is a fake. It has the pretence of immediacy, but it also has a depth that could only be captured over a period of time. The finished painting is an account of the relationship between Charles and his portraitist at the time it was created.

What about photographs, then ? Photographs have immediacy, right enough. They can capture a scene which existed for 1000th of a second. But they say little about the subject and everything about the photographer. Photographs capture a moment of light on skin, nothing less, and maybe nothing more.

I’m not saying that portraiture is in any way better than photography. I would claim that it has more depth. A painted portrait is an account of a relationship; a photograph captures a moment in time, where the subject is often caught unawares. Painters paint..yes.. and what do photographers do ? They shoot.