***
Kim
Russell
Much of my early life was spent with my
maternal grandparents, who did everything they could to help my parents and
give me and my younger sister a memorable childhood. We had sparklers and
Catherine wheels on Bonfire Night and pillowcases for Christmas presents. Nan
would take us to watch the crowning of the May Queen and maypole dancing, and
every summer she would organise one or two day trips on a coach to the south
coast: places like Bognor Regis, Littlehampton and Margate. My nan loved beauty
pageants and, if there was one on the television, we’d watch it and vote for
our favourites. If there was one at the seaside resort we were visiting, she’d
drag us along. I used to dream of being a glamorous girl with bouffant hair in
a swimsuit and stilettos, but inside I knew that it wasn’t for me and grew up
to be an ardent teenage feminist.
Louise
Walker
The summer holiday at the seaside must be one
of the most enduring rituals in British culture and one I have loved since
childhood. Nowadays, going to the sea is crucial to my writing ritual and the
journey is the process which detaches me from the workaday world. I can’t think
of much to beat waking up on the sleeper train from London Paddington and
pushing up the blind to see Truro Cathedral while I eat my bacon roll. Or
arriving on a tiny plane on St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly in evening sunshine and
going at once to have fish and chips at Porthcressa, where my poem ‘An Ordinary
Miracle’ is set. To an extraterrestrial visitor, those gathered around the small
van parked facing the beach might look strangely solemn, while those inside
move gracefully through their allotted roles. Apparently, as in so many
rituals, there is a hierarchy: the young ones start by heating up squeaky
polystyrene pots filled with vivid mushy peas, graduate to wrapping up the warm
parcels, and then to the vital job of taking the orders to pass on to the chef,
the high priest. From early morning joggers in Bournemouth to dog walkers on
February evenings in Ramsgate, we are all compelled to turn our heads and
contemplate the sea as we follow our cherished rituals.
Ian
Dudley
On Boxing Day, the Headington Quarry Morris
men perform the mummers' play St, George and the Turkish Knight. This is to
commemorate the meeting on Boxing Day 1899 between William Kimber of the Quarry
and Cecil Sharp the musicologist. Their encounter is credited with
kick-starting the revival of Morris dancing in England.
The play is a farrago assembled from centuries-old source material, and tells
the story of the patron saint of England (born in Lydda, Syria Palaestina or
Cappadocia, but certainly not England) doing battle with a Turkish Knight. In
the usual version of the play, St George fights and slays the Turkish Knight,
and brings him back to life with the help of The Doctor. In the Quarry, the
Turkish Knight kills St George and brings him back to life. Other characters
with walk on parts include Father Christmas, Beelzebub, and Jack Finney.
On Boxing Day, the Morris men tour the play round the pubs in the Quarry. The
side's final performance takes place outside their home pub, The Masons Arms,
in Quarry Hollow. The hollow is a frost pocket, and the audience is shivering
but enthusiastic. The performance, after the cast have spent the morning
drinking, is not quickly forgotten.
Jo
Brandon
My poem First-Footing
is about a New Year's Eve tradition that my family used to celebrate. The poem
itself became an exploration of luck and superstition and has a more cynical
viewpoint than is true of me autobiographically. (I have quite a superstitious
streak and knock on wood to keep all things well, so this ritual always
appealed.)
Mum told us this ritual was a way to bring good luck for the following year, I
don't know where she learnt it from – I should ask but some things blur nicely
into family mythology. I do know that it's a ritual practised more in Scotland
and Northern England. Different places attribute luck to different physical
characteristics, a dark-haired man, for example, is generally thought to be
lucky. So, on New Year's Eve just before Midnight we would gather in the
kitchen and mum would have got a slice of white bread out of the bag and a
piece of coal from the scuttle while my dad got his shoes on. I would hop from
foot to foot in excitement, hoping that Dad made it out before the clock struck
Midnight (it doesn't work otherwise). Dad would ceremoniously go out the back
door and would bring the New Year in with him through the front, we'd close the
doors quickly to stop all the heat getting out. It always made me feel like
we'd swept out the past year and started afresh. Much more affirmative than the
lists of resolutions I wrote and never kept.
Beth
Thompson
Walking along Liverpool's waterfront and
pausing to look out over the River Mersey. It's a ritual all Liverpudlians
entertain and a special one to me. I have an early memory of cartwheeling ahead
of my mum and grandma, who had laid out a picnic on the grass and were watching
the ferry draw circles back to the terminal.
The waterfront is at once a sublime and meditative space, where the city looks
out at the world and the world looks in on the city. In between is a sort of
playground for expression and contemplation. At any moment, you'll find similar
scenes: couples hand-in-hand, teenagers skating, somebody alone and lost in
thought.
I like to sit with a coffee and watch these stories play out, each immersed in
the same ritual – drawn to the river's edge. I visit regularly and I'm sure I
will do so throughout my life, each time with different thoughts for the river.
I love the contrast between the opulence of the Three Graces, their lofty
stare, and the harshness of the steel-grey river. It's as if the city's spirit,
its blend of grit and glamour, is best conveyed here.
I think us Scousers are irrevocably connected to our city's landscape, an idea
expressed in my poem, Liver Bird.
Rob
Walton
For the first eighteen years of my life, I
lived in Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire.
For many of those years, in early January, I would read articles in the
Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph about something known as the Haxey Hood. There would be photographs of men in strange
costumes. Sometimes there would also be
a news item on Yorkshire TV’s Calendar
or the BBC’s Look North.
When I moved away and returned in the
holidays, I would read about it all over again.
It intrigued me, but I always found it quite baffling. I was a gormless townie and the Hood was a
village thing beyond my ken.
My parents by then had moved to a small town,
Crowle, which was only about nine miles away from the Hood, and I often thought
of going, but the timing was never quite right.
Last year, at the age of 53, I finally got
round to it. I went with my younger daughter to see it for ourselves. We weren’t disappointed. The atmosphere was great, people were friendly
and there was something deliciously weird about it.
Parts were gloriously British, parts were
wonderfully unsettling and parts were too strange for Royston Vasey.
Next year it’s on Saturday 5th
January (it’s usually on 6th January, but it’s never held on a
Sunday). The Boggins, the Lord, the
Fool, the Hood and the sway will all be there for your delectation and delight.
I’m going again, and I’ll probably write
another poem about it.
Carolyn
O’Connell
The poem I submitted for the anthology is On July 28th and recounts the annual
ritual of my sister's birthday party when we were children. We were brought up
in London but every year returned to the country where my parents were
born. It was always in the summer
holidays and at the time of haymaking. Despite being 10 or 12 we joined in this
ritual as other children had done for centuries before us. We would turn the
hay with pitchforks that were often almost as long as ourselves with long
spikes or gather handfuls of flower strewn dried grass: brown, sweet smelling
and filled with dried flowers. The dried
hay was gathered from the fields on horse drawn carts and built into stacks in
open barns.We loved the freedom this job gave us. Being in the open field on
sunlit days, the smells of horses, grass, wildflowers and hedgerows are deep
set memories together with the freedom and total change that children don't
have today for its a forgotten way of harvesting.
***
Second Place Rosette: Poems about Britain is published on 8th November and is available to buy now now.
