I handed this beauty in to MMU for assessment this week. On Tuesday, first thing, I submitted a digital version of the thesis and signed the RDDEC form to say it was all my own work etc. Then I went into Manchester and took the long walk to the bookbinders on Higher Cambridge Street. It was hot and I was tired. I called into MMU on my way back to hand it over. I had an attack of the usual angst I feel when I’ve had to fill in an official form: for some reason official forms always make me feel like a liar. RDDEC had several tick boxes, including that no part of the thesis had previously been published; or if it had, that the published part should be included in a pocket in the thesis. I took this to mean publication in academic journals, so I ticked ‘no’. But as I was travelling into Manchester on the tram I realised that several of the poems had been published, and an article had appeared in The North that was inspired by the thesis, although was not directly part of it. So the old proforma angst pecked my head again: had I lied on the form? Should I dob myself in? I couldn’t edit the form now I’d signed it off. So I spoke to the wonderful Deborah, who deals with all the queries about Post Graduate Research degrees. I’d included all my publication history in an acknowledgements page; would my reply on the form be an issue? She assured me it would be fine and not to worry. Not to worry? I always worry about official forms. I suffer from proformaphobia. After our phone conversation, I met her in the foyer of the Righton Building and handed over two copies of the thesis. It was lovely to meet her in the real world, we’ve met in the virtual world of email so many times over the last four years. She promised to look after my baby and make sure it gets to the official rendezvous with assessors. I’ll hear from my DoS about a date for the viva in about eight to ten weeks.

 I left the MMU campus and walked into Manchester. I needed to go to the Pen Shop for cartridges for my fountain pen. When I got there, the shop was closed with notices in the window about letting queries. I am bereft! This was one of my favourite shops, a real old-style store with the most beautiful pens available. I treated myself to a Mont Blanc fountain pen when I was awarded a distinction in my Creative Writing MA: a treat to myself. I know, most people would have treated themselves to a holiday, or a day in a health spa, or a bottle of champagne. I just love stationery. My son had given me a Mont Blanc ball point for Christmas some years ago, and I promised myself when I started the MA that if I managed a distinction, I would buy myself the fountain pen to go with it. I did, and I did. My partner bought me the mechanical pencil to match, and a leather pouch to put them all in for my birthday, which was about the same time. So I used to love to go into the Pen Shop to buy my cartridges and drool over all the beautiful, and reassuringly expensive, pens they had for sale. And now it’s gone. There’s still one in the Trafford Centre as far as I know, but the one in town is closed. It’s a sad day for pen lovers. The next day I ordered eight packs of cartridges from www.penshop.co.uk  and they arrived the next day. Delivery was free. How’s that for brilliant service? Anyway, I walked from the Pen Shop to Exchange Square where I had lunch al fresco at Wahaca. I sat in the warm sunshine with a glass of wine and a quesadilla, celebrating the official hand-over of my work for assessment.

Me, reading at the Square Chapel, Halifax on Monday this week.
(photo courtesy of Hilary Robinson)

Poetry has been big in my life this week. On Monday evening Hilary and I went to Halifax to read at Square Chapel poets, hosted by the irrepressible Keith Hutson. Strange discovery: people in Halifax don’t eat on a Monday. Or at least that’s how it seemed: every restaurant we passed was closed on Mondays; until we found a lovely little Italian restaurant, Julio’s, down a side road. We had a lovely meal and a glass of Pinot Grigio before our reading. Ian Walker, another MMU creative writing MA graduate, was also reading. It was a lovely evening. I treated the audience to some of my ‘alternative mothers’. Of course, Hilary and I both read from Tonia Bevin’s poems in Some Mothers Do…as well as reading some of our own. It was a small audience, but an appreciative one. We sold a copy of our book.

‘Life’ has been large this week, with the thesis gone. On Wednesday we went to Stamford, Lincolnshire to visit my sister. Stamford is the town they often film period dramas in for the television. It is a Georgian-style stone-built town, you’ve probably seen it in televisual adaptations of Jane Austen novels. Anyway, it was Jane’s birthday last week, so we met for lunch to wish her a belated happy birthday. I was tied up with prepping the thesis for submission around her actual birthday. We had a lovely day and a lovely lunch. On the way home I picked up a nail in my rear driver’s side tyre. I didn’t realise until I wanted to go out the next day and the tyre was pancake flat. I drove it carefully to the nearest garage and had it replaced. The mechanic, Danny, said he could have repaired it, but because I’d been driving on it flat, I had damaged the wall of the tyre and weakened it. That must have been when I was driving home from Stamford because the garage was only a couple of miles from home, and I don’t think driving that short distance would have done the damage. I hadn’t felt the flat tyre in my driving at all. Apparently that’s the way with modern tyres. I remember the first time I drove on a flat tyre, when I was a newly qualified driver a lifetime ago. The steering felt heavy, difficult to control. But it was snowing at the time and I’d blamed the snow. My husband wasn’t pleased when he knew I’d driven home on a flat. But on Wednesday I didn’t feel a thing. So, on Thursday I needed a replacement tyre. I also asked Danny to replace the front tyre that had an advisory notice at MOT, so I had to fork out for two new tyres. Not too bad, actually; less than I’d feared.

On Saturday I collected Hilary at lunchtime and we drove to Coniston for our annual Line Break writing week. We started out six years ago with four poet friends going away together. Then there were five of us. Over the years a couple of friends have moved on. Last year there were three of us. This year Polly couldn’t make it, so it’s just Hilary and me. We feel like a story line in an Agatha Christie: ‘and then there were two’. So I’m writing this from my bed in a cottage in Coniston. It’s a nice cottage, quiet location almost next door to the pub, an Indian restaurant across the road. What’s not to like? Later today we’ll be writing and planning the various writing workshops and readings we have coming up in June. We’ve brought lots of old notebooks to go through looking for poetic gems that have fallen by the wayside. A poet’s life, eh! It’s all go.

So, a poem. This is a poem I wrote in one of Carola Luther’s workshops in St. Ives in April. We were asked to think of a significant event from our lives and write about it, incorporating a repeating image. I took the image of the python to describe the road and the hedgerows snaking away, and Ann Cowling’s long legs. It is also the image of the pain of a fractured skull, a python crushing my head. This actually happened when I was nine years old. My head hit the road, I was knocked unconscious and I spent five days in hospital. What we didn’t know at the time was that it also knocked the three little bones of the inner ear out of sync, so that the hearing was impaired in my right ear. That wasn’t discovered until I was sixteen. No treatment, no use of hearing aids. Only delicate surgery would repair the damage, and as long as I can cope with sharp hearing in the left ear, it’s best left alone. Mostly it’s fine. Sometimes I mishear things, which can be amusing; like the time a friend told me about her ‘everlasting’ bra. That seemed like a good buy, so I asked her where she got it. ‘Ethel Austin,’ she said. ‘I just told you!’

Anyway, here it is, ‘Python’:

 Python

The road snakes away, a python
slithering from the village to Brownlow’s corner.
Red, or rust really, its skin
leaks molten tar on hot days.

The hedgerows are wild, untamed—
also python, their skins shedding regularly
from brown through green, white with May,
the red spots of autumn’s bounty.

Fact: Ann Cowling can run. Her legs
are python too, long and strong.
On that day I was tuned out from sound
she pushed me on the scooter until
her feet ran away with her,
her hands let go the handlebars.

I know the feeling of a scooter’s wobble,
the panic just before the fall. I know
the weird sense of being at my own front door
unsure how I got there. I know the pain of a skull
being crushed by a giant constricting snake.

Rachel Davies
April 2019