When the pen takes control.

This is the tale of hissing Sid

to sit in the sun he slowly slid

as sibilance was his middle name

smoothly slithering and sliding was his game

Like the big bodied bumblebee

I often get the urge to go

and drift along quite aimlessly

where water and air so slowly flow

but although I only seek delight

she has a purpose to her flight

for during every waking hour

she seeks to drink from each bright flower

the only way blooms can spread their genes

and maintain such idyllic scenes.

Turn the egg timer

the sand gains life as it falls

abruptly ending

Fifty years ago

I can say that I was there,

with a great crowd

at the Bath music fair,

watching all the top

rock bands of the day,

playing their music

on a rudimentary stage.

A local farmer at the show

liked it so much,

being well known for his

entrepreneurial touch,

realised this could be

an exciting way,

to keep the young happy

and also make it pay,

decided to hold on his farm

an annual jamboree

which is now the festival ,

known as Glastonbury

I looked at the clock to check the time

to my surprise it was twenty to nine

when I should have been there at quarter past eight

obviously I was just a little bit late

but I don’t think thirty minutes is too bad

considering the awful journey I’d had

I couldn’t get a cab when I got off the train

and had to walk in the pouring rain

so I decided to ring them up and say

I’d meet them in the pub just across the way

Photo credit Sarah Whiley

Condemned to dance in wild

abandon she stands atop

her man made rock

and in false glee she

calls her sister zephyrs

from across the darkening sea

The kite waits on high

but must land to claim the prize

nothing is wasted

Ten thousand years ago it seems

that the ice-cap melted, making seas

rise up so that what once were mudflats

were changed into great fields of grass

people had to settle wherever they could

by farming land that was once great woods

occasionally fighting off the raids

of strangers trying to invade but found

by breeding together caused variation

that resulted in the forging of our nation

My friend and I went walking by the old mill leat

but the sound of rushing water made her want to pee

we looked all around and the coast seemed to be clear

so she said to me that’s fine I’ll just squat down here

but without warning she let out an almighty shriek

and hobbled over to me, with her panties round her knees

she knelt down before me and I thought oh my luck is in

but all I saw before me was a big, bright, red bee sting

she said please rub some water on the sorest looking part

she certainly knows the way to capture a man’s heart

Regular readers of my brand of verse have probably realised my predilection for tales of nature and the country, probably stemming from a childhood spent on the moorland vastness of Exmoor acting as a human sponge for the sights and tales of a remote area little known by the majority.

Again I can relate a little piece of alternative history… a seldom related story of one of the most elegant yet enigmatic great houses to be found on the wilds of Exmoor.

Glenthorne is an elegant Georgian mansion set high on a cliff top on the North Devon coast, formerly almost inaccessible unless by cart, on foot or by boat, overlooking a secluded beach and the expanse of the Bristol Channel between Lynmouth and Porlock bay.

The original Glenthorne estate was created by the Rev Walter Stevenson Halliday, son of a Scottish naval surgeon and banker, who made a fortune during the Napoleonic Wars and died in 1829. Having resigned from the Church on inheriting his father’s fortune, Halliday chose to invest in a country estate and eventually settled near Countisbury, where he gradually bought the entire parish – some 7,000 acres in all – and became the local squire.

Less well known is a possible reason for the spot that he chose to build his home, the seat of the estate on the Devon/Somerset border. A magnificent mansion standing totally isolated on the cliffs looking out over the Bristol Channel to the far coast of Wales, twenty miles distant. It is well known that William Blake’s dramatic poem ‘Jerusalem‘, familiar nowadays as an oft-sung hymn, was based on the myth that Christ himself may have visited Glastonbury with Joseph of Arimathea and ‘walked on England’s mountains green‘.

The myth on which the Reverend Halliday may have been relying on was as follows. Nowadays it is seldom repeated but it was well known on 19th century Exmoor.

Joseph of Arimathea did indeed visit Glastonbury with the boy Jesus. As their boat sailed up the channel to their Somerset destination the crew complained that they were running low on water and becoming parched. They put in to the shore on a shingle beach at the base of a high cliff. The same landing spot as would be suitable and utilised for the delivery of the building materials later used to build the mansion.

Not finding any form of stream from which to replenish their water barrels, either Joseph or Jesus himself drove their staff into the ground and a stream started to flow. The staff itself proceeded to flower and does so every year around Christmas time, still believed to be growing, unlike the rather better-known Glastonbury equivalent. Hence the name, “Glenthorne,” and the choice of site for the building. despite the difficulty of supplying the men and materials for such an undertaking at that time.