Faslane and Festivals

A friend of mine has just returned from two months at the Faslane Peace Camp, outside the Naval Base where the Trident missiles are stored. The camp has been going for 30 years or more now and she feels a new approach is needed to raising awareness. The probability is they've been there so long everyone is used to them so they are seen as a harmless fact of life by the authorities and mostly ignored. If Alex Salmond has his way the warheads will be moved from Scottish waters in time (at eye-watering expense) but that will only makes them ‘Someone Else’s Problem’ (see ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’) and isn’t going to help the British Isles much if the wretched things blow up.

 It’s a laudable way to have spent the summer. Not one I would ever choose - far too basic and uncomfortable.  Most off-putting of all to me, a squeamish person, is the way they subsist by dumpster-diving. It could, she admits, be a smelly experience, but they often ate very well. Tesco in this area fence everything round and don’t let it happen; fortunately not all supermarkets are so uncharitable. Stall-holders at the local weekly market in the town near the camp give them boxes of unsold fruit and veg so cherries, grapes and good fresh green stuff were frequently on the menu. A fishmonger gave them crabs. She claims to have an iron stomach and came to no harm; went to sleep nightly dreaming of the possibility of avocados. 

She didn’t write any poetry but lots of diary entries so we may suppose she will have something to contribute to the writer’s group soon. There was a party on Friday to celebrate one of our members whose submission to the BBC Proms Poetry Competition was accepted as a runner-up. We hoped to hear it read but they boringly talked too long with the winner. Still, we celebrated with brandy cocktails and blinis which Mine Host had concocted to  set us a puzzle. Each tiny blini was topped with delicacies that had the initials of a famous poet, e.g: Rabbie Burns = radish with beetroot relish. W.H.Auden = watercress, hummus, avocado. Walter Scott = watercress and shrimp. Samphire figured somewhere, perhaps Stephen Spender - I got a bit addled after a while, what with all the brandy.   

For the first time ever I read a poem at a poetry reading event in the neighbouring town that’s been having a Book Festival. I braced myself, read it, sat down shaking at my own temerity, wishing I hadn’t been so bold. Someone looked me out after to say she had really enjoyed it so that made it all worth while.  I’ve had a poem accepted for the Essex Literary Anthology which will be launched on 5th October at the end of their Literary Festival, and had I been going down south as planned I could have been there. Never mind. I’m chuffed.