Fat

I’ve never written a poem about sex before. It’s a first.  It might be a last.

Fat

If that orgasm were human

it would be the fat woman

in the sitting room,

flesh molded to the sofa:

springs shot, feathers flattened,

a spittle of foam poking through the cloth

under her pale thigh

blue-veined like knotted string

thick and

astonishing.

A stuffed cake-cushion.

Some orgasms are just thin

and only eat lettuce.

Silver Thread

I’ve had it up to the back teeth with metallic thread. It’s a pain: it splits like giraffe legs on a frozen pond, it won’t go through the eye of a needle and it tangles without so much as a ‘sorry’.

Trouble is, it looks good….

I’m using split stitch which is a labour of love but the finished piece is tactile and smile-inducing, even if I have a punctured finger. I hate wearing a thimble, it makes me feel like Mrs Tiggywinkle….102 and spherical. 

Will this be another one for the wall? Suggestions as to what to do with it please!

Sea Urchin, Kenya

Sea Urchin

 

I got up in the night,

foot pad on cold tile

an edge broken and crumbled, sharp,

and stood at the window

watching the near light turn blue,

watching the sea gap before sky

hardening from indigo

to verdigris,

its white reef ridge

a chalk line marking the end of sea,

watching limp frilled palm leaves shiver

over water,

breathing with the quiet dry rasp of tide on sand,

my foot still sore where the jet smooth needle

pierced,

where it slipped through skin into flesh,

skewered and stayed

hard black

until Hero, the boy from the village,

peed a hot stream of acid yellow

which pooled on the sand

and I laughed

at its ordinariness.

 

Africa Cont.

Arrival at Mombasa

 

At Mombasa after rain the potholes pool red

blood spotting the runway,

shining like clots in the sideways zinc-glint of sun,

slicing through clouds the colour of bruises.

 

You’ve been here before. I know.

But not by air,

by open car, too-fast spraying rusted earth along dust roads

coming from Nairobi.

Too fast to smell the resin-high frangipane blossom

or pick mangoes,

growing wild as blackberries in a hedgerow.

Too fast to the cobalt sea.

 

Your knuckles are white-boned gripping my hand

thin skin soft stretched

as the wheels skid on rain,

but we slow to standing

and the scent of Kenya begins to seep in through the cracks:

a sweet tang of hot damp air,

of earth-mud and diesel.

Couture and a Grumble

The Fashion and Textile Museum on Bermondsey Street is a gem.

I spent an afternoon in the company of Dennis Nothdruft, curator of the recent Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies exhibition, looking intimately (and fiddling with gloved hands) at examples of British couture and French Haute Couture from the 1940s onwards. I’m always taken aback to find that the insides of couture frocks, even the Diors, are unlined, their innards really quite raw with strategic pieces of elastic straggled across the insides of bodices like cooked spaghetti. 

I went to see the Hartnell/Amies exhibition hoping that my opinion of British couture would change, that I would find something glorious over which to swoon. I didn’t. I felt exactly the same ambivalence at the V & A’s couture exhibition a couple of years ago: the French stuff is adventurous and covetable; the British, a little obvious in its embellishments and ever so slightly dour. Perhaps it’s the exhibitionist streak in me, the throw-caution-to-the-wind provocative side that’s not too bothered about good manners (in some things) and that’s what these clothes reminded me of: jolly good manners and respectability.

Is it any wonder that we don’t have a modern British couture industry on a par with that of France?

We had the talent and lots of it…Hartnell, Amies, Molyneux, Worth, Morton, Stiebel, Creed to name a few all had couture houses in London by the 1950s and employed British pleaters, furriers, embroiderers, accessory designers and manufacturers. But: we still had rationing, little support from central government (couturiers had to pay tax at 22% on sales each quarter) and although expensive fabrics were made in Britain, most were exported. Paris was seen as the bastion of taste, had a long tradition of couture and its couturiers could command higher prices. It also had government backing and a large pool of highly skilled workers. It’s not surprising that British couturiers were a little risk averse in the experimental design department and chose to produce small, wearable collections with the events of the social season in mind. Not surprising then that these frocks really don’t float my goat (I know it’s ‘boat’ but ‘goat’ makes me smile).

The French government the and Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture are justifiably proud and protective of the French couture industry. It’s tightly regulated and the list of accepted Haute Couture houses changes each season, for that season. Exclusivity is prized and, as anyone with a whiff of economic nouse knows, there is value in scarcity. A canny political stance in the current climate where sales of luxury goods are rising and appear to be defying the economic doldrums. Anyone can beetle on down to Selfridges and pick up a dress off the peg for a couple of grand or a coat for a couple more, and if money’s really no object then why not have something a little more exclusive? Valentino’s Haute Couture sales rose 80% in 2010/11 (Guardian newspaper 23.01.12), Armani’s, 50%. 

We do have Savile Row (and a few other hotspots of tailoring talent), however, and I defy anyone vaguely interested in fashion not to be in awe of the skill of the tailor and protective of it. Perhaps this is our British equivalent? Covetable, hand made, crafted clothes. I can swoon very easily over a Savile Row cuff or lapel or buttonhole.  Those in positions of power, particularly with reference to local planning legislation, ought to be charged with protecting Savile Row’s identity: it’s not simply a street of attractive shop fronts but a place of industry. A treasure and one under threat.

Pigs might well fly.

Rant over.

 

Photographs: Norman Parkinson and Stephanie Wolff

Flu

I’ve had flu.

The proper one where you can’t function and your skin hurts and everything’s inflamed and all you can do is to stare into the middle distance and wait for it to leave. I haven’t read anything, written anything, made anything for weeks and I’m still off coffee.

Flu

I’m trying to float

in this deep iron bath,

raising my pelvis from the cold and

tilting my head into warm water,

ears filled with dead sound.

And it works for a while,

looking up at the shower head,

hanging hoof-like from the ceiling.

There is a rough-maned, zinc-hued horse

pounding the attic floor.

Trapped.

Snorting steam.

My hands are floating on the surface nudging foam.

Can I feel the inside?

Watch me.

I reach a finger into a blue-oiled bubble.

Gone.

I see myself in a

solitary water drop on the tap.

I am a small, twisted, one-eyed

swelling.

I wait for the next

and the next

until I am cold.

Pattern Cutting and a Little Arrogance

I have just bought my first book on pattern cutting. It’s a bit late. I know.

I’ve been sewing for 30 years (I started young) and have figured out a few things (I’ve examined very expensive jackets in fitting rooms, raising sales assistants’ hopes of a sale, watching their eyes glaze over when I hand it back with a convincing reason for it not being good enough – I’m quite good at fakery), taken things apart, fitted and fitted and re-fitted. Some things still give me trouble: the correct angle for the back seam of a pair of trousers; the proper gradient of the front seam of a sleeve.

The comforting thing is though, that I seem to have been doing many things correctly: I make blocks and paper patterns and toiles. I can fit a placket pocket, make a decent shoulder and pleat to perfection. I do like a puzzle: it’s gratifying when you crack it for yourself but I’ve been arrogant enough to think that I didn’t need instruction. Wrong. 

The point is that mustering the courage to experiment is so much easier when you have the crutch of knowledge and I wish I’d bought this book sooner: sound knowledge underpins creativity.

Hats off to Mr Lo…

(And perhaps there’ll be more ‘How To…’ on here rather than faits accomplis….)