Longfella’s about
I’ve just been reminded of a quote from a former colleague, a statistician, who said:
“Coincidences are a most paradoxical thing; they should never happen, but they always do.“
What reminded me of that? Simply this – a couple of weeks after posting about Tony Walsh’s poem Up ‘ere (See Quotes that made me laugh #51) I’ve just read in my hometown’s local rag, Kendal’s Wezzy Gezzy, that he has now debuted his latest poem, a commissioned piece on the English Lake District; a part of the country that just happens to have been my childhood backyard.
His poem comprises the narrative to a short film, Reflecting On The Lakes, and his rendition seems typical of his style.
I suppose it was inevitable that Walsh would refer to the (in)famous Alfred Wainwright in his Lakeland verse, but at least he didn’t laud him in the way that seems de rigueur these days when anyone mentions the Lakes (‘AW’ as the ignorant, fawning masses call him lived just up the road from us and was a miserable and grumpy old git!).
If I had to be picky about the poem it would be that it mentions Kendal mintcake (a dentally-challenging confection) even though Kendal is not in the Lake District…
… and fails to touch upon the area’s finest culinary confection, the remarkable Grasmere Gingerbread.
Anyway, there’s now a trio of pivotal ‘northern’ performance pieces by Longfella on the web:
This is The Place
Up ‘ere
…and Reflecting On The Lakes
Give ’em a shot!
Postscript: For anyone interested in knowing why coincidences occur all the time, I’d recommend the book How Not To Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg. Not always the easiest of reads for the non-mathematical (despite what the review, below, states), but sufficiently textual to give anyone an insight (it also covers, among many other things, how to win the lottery and why all electoral systems seem to have a democratic deficit. See a review here for a better insight into the book).
