The Printer's Apprentice

Why did Mr Longman leave Sussex to live in Dorset?

The temptation is to invent some wild tale of gambling debts, fast women and slow guns...

after all, this was 1905.


All we really know is that the train changed everything. 


A hundred and twenty miles goes by

in a blink of a steam driven eye…


Whatever the reason, the journey was a success. He found a place to start a new business: a printing works in Dorchester. He printed postcards, stationery - even books for old Mr Hardy.

One of Mr Longman’s Post Cards

Part of a private postcard collection © Copyright Mr. M Russell OPC for Dorchester

Business goes from strength to strength.

Mr Longman gets married.

Mr Longman requires an apprentice.

The boy on the ladder, looking at the camera, making eye contact with you from eighty years ago, my Grandfather back in 1933...

He was 15 years old. Too young to know, as we all are, what the next few years would have in store. 

War ended everything. My Grandfather changed direction, when it ended, and followed a career in psychiatric nursing. But he always had a soft spot for Mr Longman and his days in the printing works. 

Of course, Thomas Hardy had died five years before my Grandfather had started work at Longman’s. But the idea that they had narrowly missed each other, for me at least, is an appealing one.

Rumours

In a northern town, famous for witches and whale-backed hills, there were,

at the time of this story, fourteen pubs in the main street. At least two of them

were haunted. The Dog Inn, at the top of town, had a grey lady.

She sometimes showed up in the bar and scared guests who’d hired a room for the night.

The Bull Inn had a severed hand that crawled across the bar after closing time. 

People in the town spread this rumour so often that the truth of the matter

became absorbed into the town’s psyche.

I loved the place.

I never saw any ghosts but I did see a giant with a rucksack on his back.

It was dusk and hazy and my friend saw him too.

I haven’t been back in over a quarter of a century. But this evening,

as she draws the curtain on a new moon the notion of truth, substance

in a rumour sinks in, takes hold of the mind like a glass of good ale.

Navigational Skills Required Elsewhere

Well we’re always prepared to try out new things aren’t we? This morning, in the cool of a white room that was little more than a cupboard, I ran my finger through France.

What was that place called? There was white sand and these electric globes that reminded me of home.

Low slung buildings, little more than concrete cells. There was this one evening when I drank from a bottle and the person in front stepped back, head connecting with glass to connect with my teeth. A permanent reminder. This little piece missing as is many another.

From where I’m standing England doesn’t look much smaller than France.

My son comes into the kitchen with his friend who’s stayed the night and all further meditations on geography end in an instant. Navigational skills required elsewhere. Closer to hand where perception plays tricks of an equal distortion.

My Life As A Detective

The sharpest sound. Taut strings.

White sand, blue beach.

The man’s hair, sun bleached.

This scene marked the end, although

I didn’t – how could I? – know it.

There was a window and an effigy

on the sill – Mother Mary. More

or less, this was the first thing I saw

after driving with the windows

rolled down, the fields filled

with a curious blue haze.

Detective – I could have been a detective –

work led me to this place, this village,

this farm. A phone number written in

blue letters on white paper that I kept,

consulted like a map, carried as a talisman.

Enough. Except to say, the taut sound,

sharp strings, played in the blue as

I tried to sleep.

The white paper, blue letters.

Lost long ago but still there for 

the deciphering.

One Afternoon

Each window is what you make of it.

This one, for instance, wears gelatinous blobs

glued to the glass – the horripilation of transparent thousands.

Wind whips along the skin of the building

a shimmer of sound, pockets of explosions

the fire-escape coils in black z’s…

In the street, a man in khaki

has a hard time of it trying

to light his cigarette,

the ghost-wail of a siren getting

ever closer.

Actually, We Haven’t Argued In A Long Time But If We Did It Would Go Something Like This

A war of words like sherbet

poured in every shoe she wears.

One word hurts like a whole fleet of words.

Galleon words filling the mouth and sparking

with black lightning. 

Cold Irons Bound