A Diorama of Daisies at the Door

Robin Ince's Normally Weird Tour Diary - Entry #2

Erica and Alan attend the Plumley gig and so give me a lift back to West Kirby again and another late night of Malbec only disturbed by my 1:30am realisation that I have not written my column for next week’s Big Issue.

In the morning, we visit the Oxfam shop where a gentle man serves behind the counter and offers everyone a compliment.

He likes my beard.

He likes her hat.

We like him.

We pop into West Kirby Books to see if they would like to do an event, there is a little suspicion, but I think we will do something around the Who at Hoylake Doctor Who convention in the Autumn. My signature in the book will be for free, but if you fancy adding Frazer Hines’s to the front page you probably can for a few quid more.

Erica and Alan are off to be entertained by Nigel Havers, so while they prepare their silks and their tweeds, Alan’s dad kindly gives me a lift to Great Budworth. Great Budworth is a village that could easily be a movie set for Miss Marple or a martian invasion. It turns out the martians landed a few years back when the BBC adapted The War of the Worlds again.

I walk by the bowling green and find my clerihew for the evening.

On the Great Budworth Bowling Green

Field Mice are very rarely seen

Due to the forbidding scowl

Of a ceramic long-eared owl

The churchyard is a wonder, this was the place of burial for many villages.

Many gravestones are laid flat as a path around the church, walking on the dead is inescapable. The cherry blossoms are raining now and I look at a stone that has transformed into pink. Dennis Potter’s “blossomest blossom” is inescapable with such a panorama. The root of the tree has resurfaced a metre or so from the trunk and clawed over another tomb. It reminds me of the story that led to my poem that concludes

“Confused Confusing Absurd

But flashes of inspiration

And out of my ashes

May grow apples

Emergent complexity briefly defeats the void”

I read a book of philosophy, I think by Nicholas Fearn, which began with the story of man who died disdained by the local people and so was buried beyond hallowed ground. An apple tree grew above his grave. Many years later, when viewing the parish records, a local historian realised he had been unjustly demeaned and so dug him up to move him closer to the church.

What they found was a body transformed into a man-shaped tree root. All those who had been eating apples had been consuming a little of recycled pariah.

At the base of one of the church doors is a diorama of daisies and that provides the haiku (give or take a syllable)

Dusk daisies decorate

A high church doorway brightly

Sun falls petals close

After the gig, we walk to the pub where I meet two excellent black labradors and, again, meet people who had been a previous gig this week who wanted to hear the conclusions I had failed to give them two nights before.

Katy, my host, says it is highly unlikely that we will be sitting up til 1:30am as I have the other nights, and she is right, we all go to bed at 145am.

The next morning I return to the churchyard. It is not populated by young men in community service vests strimming and pruning. I am seeking out the grave of two teachers.

It is beautiful day and as I look across the churchyard, I see it is a view to the salt works - there is something pleasing about an eye taking in the memorials and blossoms but with the harsh metallic lines of industry in vision.

Peter drops me at the nearest station and I travel from the small rural idyll, still untainted by whatever secret witchcraft may have been hiding in the crypts, and arrive the fizzing metropolis of Chester. Their Oxfam fortunately adds no weight to my luggage and continue on to Storyhouse, a library theatre cafe filled with seeds of civilised existence. But before I can reach it, I find out about Books on the Walls, a bookshop cafe that lives in the city walls themselves. The second I see it, I know it is for me - scones and Patti Smith while a couple with an anxious dog sip martinis (the dog abstains).

I get talking to Kate who is ebullient and full of joy and excellent cake ideas. Before long, we have hatched a plan to do an event in the shop.

I get chatting to the martini couple. She’s a teacher and he’s a truck driver. She also shows me a fantastic book of sketches. Like my pal, Joanna Neary, she always carries a book to ink the world in.

He was a teacher, but grew frustrated with the system. Despite the smallness of the shop, the thread of the web of stories is spun when a couple come in with their child, who is soon engrossed in The Tiger Who Came to Tea. It turns out, the dad is a former pupil and his fondness for the driver teacher is clear. It is also clear why he grew frustrated with his career, as it soon becomes clear he was driven by enthusiasm far more than paperwork. It clearly worked as this former pupil he taught technology to is a successful plumber.

On my departure I get talking to two more people, she is a book blogger and he has been part of the Just Stop Oil protests.

Unfortunately, I have left the shop with further book weight, including Gay Aliens and Queer Folk by Emily Garside and You Have Not Been Defeated by Alaa Abd El Fattah.

The final Cheshire Rural Touring Show is Tarvin Village Hall and Library. They have new toilets which they are very proud of. They were opened by Gyles Brandreth’s daughter. The brilliant Jen and Steph from rural touring kindly give me a lift to the village and I hastily rush off in search of some haiku and clerihew material. A dripping child on the street is shouting to his mum inside the pub that he has successfully completed the ice bucket challenge and managed five buckets.

The best clerihew I can fine in my limited walk is for their independent chemist.

In Tarvin it’s a delight to see

The Ian Littler pharmacy

How much better than a chain store

When I find my head is sore

I meet a woman who last me five years ago, when she was twelve.

At that point, she planned to be a physicist. At seventeen, she plans to be physiotherapist. I congratulate her on just turning one page of the encyclopedia as she changed her mind.

Back at the hotel, I eat cold Minestrone soup and prepare for the week to come.

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