Daily Drawing: My father’s Polaroid camera….used to take pictures of building jobs he was proud of.
Category: Memory
Daily Drawing: My father’s level
Daily Drawing: My father’s Butlin’s Badge Pwllheli 1956.
A trip with the lads a year before marrying my mother.
Daily Drawing: My Father’s Watch
Actual watch
I keep hearing Grant McLennan.
‘His father’s watch he left it in the shower’ from Cattle and Cane
I recall a schoolboy coming home
through fields of cane
to a house of tin and timber
and in the sky
a rain of falling cinders
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
I recall a boy in bigger pants
like everyone
just waiting for a chance
his father’s watch
he left it in the shower
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
I recall a bigger brighter world
a world of books
and silent times in thought
and then the railroad
the railroad takes him home
through fields of cattle
through fields of cane
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
the waste memory-wastes
further, longer, higher, older
Daily Drawing: Chalk Skull
Day of the Dead? No a fairground chalk skull I won on the 29th September 1971 at Wallingford Fair with my Dad. I know because I etched it on the bottom….today’s Daily Drawing and I already written a poem about it I will find it out and post here..
CHALK SKULLS
Three rings round a shiny target and it’s yours
amidst the clatter and pop of fairground stalls
burning like a new constellation fallen to earth
I clutched the small plaster skull in my fist.
A booth trinket. A choice between that
and a fading, chipped plaster angel fish.
We moved on. My father and I.
Past a mud splattered generator pumping
grey clouds across the dark wet grass.
First thing I’d ever won. 12 years old.
I found it last winter. Turned it up in an old box.
Then noticed the carved inscription on it.
I’d made all those years before.
Shaun Belcher. 11th September 1971.
Wallingford Fair. I held it as my father, now in his seventies,
bent to the garden, his back to me
cuts away at the heavy clay soil.
The flint, chalk and clay, turning over again
as my own thoughts spiralled back over years
to the dusty stubble fields of late summer.
My step granddad and his collie
arcing in loops across the Oxfordshire fields
tracking imaginary pheasants and hares.
The dog that ground to a panting halt
saliva dripping under the kitchen table.
So we too shall come to our end.
All our skulls, man and beast
flaking and turning to powder in the black soil
like this skull, a plaster moon, thrown at the stars.
amidst the clatter and pop of fairground stalls
burning like a new constellation fallen to earth
I clutched the small plaster skull in my fist.
A booth trinket. A choice between that
and a fading, chipped plaster angel fish.
We moved on. My father and I.
Past a mud splattered generator pumping
grey clouds across the dark wet grass.
First thing I’d ever won. 12 years old.
I found it last winter. Turned it up in an old box.
Then noticed the carved inscription on it.
I’d made all those years before.
Shaun Belcher. 11th September 1971.
Wallingford Fair. I held it as my father, now in his seventies,
bent to the garden, his back to me
cuts away at the heavy clay soil.
The flint, chalk and clay, turning over again
as my own thoughts spiralled back over years
to the dusty stubble fields of late summer.
My step granddad and his collie
arcing in loops across the Oxfordshire fields
tracking imaginary pheasants and hares.
The dog that ground to a panting halt
saliva dripping under the kitchen table.
So we too shall come to our end.
All our skulls, man and beast
flaking and turning to powder in the black soil
like this skull, a plaster moon, thrown at the stars.
Available online in The Drifting Village
Daily Drawing: Eternity Ring
Daily Drawing: Eternity ring
Given to me by my mother when my father died I have to check story but I think the added bands inside ring were to stop falling off hand when working or later when ill with cancer as fingers lost weight…my sister Janice Newton will know…small object but found by chance in a writing box leather pouch tonight…small ring that has a big story behind it..
Daily Drawing: Charlie George
My teenage hero….that goal below..and of course this a bubblegum card which only men of a certain age will remember.
Daily Drawing: Lone Star Beer
Despite appearances been empty since 2005 I reckon…was xmas gift soon drank but as never been to Texas kept as a memento. My americana dream is to one day drink one in the lone star state.
Daily Drawing: My father’s theodolite
Emotional one this I kept it when we cleared our parent’s house as I used to help him in surveying. He was a builder and during drawing realised that paint worn off top in two places where he would hold the theodolite..
Daily Drawing: The stable block Long Wittenham
Today’s drawing is all about memory and ‘re-modelling’ the past:-)
The stable block Long Wittenham 1977 from a ceramic model.
Here ceramic model and original 1977 model drawings.
Renovation 1990
