The things I miss about England blog

I just wanted to thank everyone who has dropped by on this blog during the course of the year. I will (by the time this goes out) have posted 129 times during the course of the year - the most by some way. I have found it an incredibly useful way to share my fears, loves, dreams, strange drinking habits and obsessions with by and large an anonymous but seemingly intrigued audience.

I started this blog when I moved to the other side of the world, with the aim of highlighting & sharing vague memories of England/UK/life for gentle amusement. I had no vision of what the future would bring, just a dim grasp of the past. 

My life has changed more in the last 10 years than in the previous 30+ by some way:

I left a buoyant England (still in Europe) under a Labour government and virus free, married, with two parents, employed, unpublished, without a record out, pet free and 20kg overweight. Suffice to say all that has changed some for good (eg: 20kg lighter!), some much less so (take your pick).

Anyway, thank you once again for popping here and by way of a thank you, why not listen to the 

Things I miss about England playlist

Wishing you all a safe and happy 2021! 

Andy

Andrew Franks (Poet)

Soul Bay Press (Publisher)

Andy Franks (Soundcloud)

Andy Franks (Mixcloud)

The Butterfly House (Website)

The Butterfly House (Bandcamp)

Lockdown - Day #1

And so the lockdown has arrived... finally.

The reason for saying finally is not specifically a criticism of the current half-arsed communication strategy of a leaderless government. Their venal nature can and will be unpicked over the next few weeks. No, the reason for saying finally is that I felt this coming.

I've long had an intuitive streak and about 18-30 months ago I felt that the normal vision of the future was narrowing. I couldn't see beyond my birthday in December 2019. In part this can be put down to the story I was told by my maternal grandmother: All members of my paternal family died from heart-attacks around the age of 56. Now despite the evidence of my own father lasting to the age of 77, it was something that hovered around in my hyperactive subconscious. Anyway, the final day came and went but the feeling of a horror persisted.

The bushfires that had pretty much suffocated Sydney, finally died down but there was still an aspect of suspended belief that permeated conversations. Something else was on the way.

I wrote a poem in 2017, that was published in December 2018 (Soul Bay Press)....

The Quickening
As the sun gets brighter (still)
the dogs will start leaving home
cats will just disappear
melting back into the forests
the sky will be black & white with magpies
wild Dazzle ships in flight...
all trying to avoid the final closing down sale
the ultimate fight, the ultimate showdown,
the greatest, the biggest, the boldest
the play-off winners mega grand-final, year-end of, best ever everything must go
limbs raising to the skies
everyone must go
this week,
next week,
the week after
still feeling weak after
The ultimate The final The last
Accelerate BABY! Grow
build more, faster, higher quicker stronger big sale, BIGGER,
the quickening is coming
even the ghosts are leaving town...
all the little Samsung babies wrapped tight in their digital homes looking backward sideways upwards in praise of their head dip phones brimming with red-eyed withdrawal

the desolate stares of Microsoft clones mumbling everywhere everyday
constantly burning beyond the bounds of light empty energy of dead candle flicker
there are no more shared midnights the quickening is coming
there are to be no more goodnights
even the ghosts are leaving town...

From 'Sunflower eclipse over Troia Nova' by Andrew Franks

Brexit

Cºuntrycide

31st January 2020 - 11:00pm (GMT)

Albert, Albert Camus, everyone knows his name

Sitting on the windowsill with a copy of L'Etranger in my hand, half in, half out of my Susans Road flat watching the local boys returning from their football match...

Life as Sussexistentialist was wonderful. They were sweet, confusing but heady days.. The soundtrack was the MJQ and the guidebook was written by the former goalkeeper and Gitanes smoking French author Albert Camus. His novel L'Etranger (or The Outsider as it was roughly translated) re-calibrated the way I looked at the world. The simple act of lighting a cigarette, talking to a beautiful girl, making a meal for one and staring out at the traffic was now beyond the mundane. These were the actions of a man on the edge of society...

From the very beginning when Mersault (the hero of the novel) learns of his mothers death, through to the very end on the eve of is own death. He glides and skims through life, death, sex, drunkeness, arrest and being condemned to state execution, the sheer weight of the sun bleaching out the more mundane emotions and reactions of 'normal' people. 

All of which made life on the South Coast somehow far more bearable, knowing that others had felt the same way before.