.and what if the referendum was secured, by the single vote, if it was predicated on: only and only if, there's a 60% consensus... the current debate is taken place, because the consensus is, extremely marginal... we're talking about fringe politics, outlier political opinions... the the remain vote is argued with the same verocity as the leave vote... for the benefit of outlier opinions... if only there was a predicate: it will be passed... as long as there's a 10% difference between the votes... 51.9% for leave to 48.1% for remain, of the country having voted... if only the whole point of voting, was akin to the "ancient" enforced tactic of drafting men to serve in the army... 67.7% voting areas voting to leave... 32.3% voting to remain... yeah... the "obscure" parts of england... with scotland, clearly being an anomaly with regards to "obscure" rural regions... should the argument come: concentration of power, in urban babylons.

someone should, really, really try to remaster
that vague piece of work

                       that pristine rhythm
    section: notably on the song bite now bite
from the album
          eat your heart out -
                              by... a belgian band:
of all bands... it had to be, belgian...
  ******* choccies (KLINIK) -
   oh look, an intra-racial slur...
                                                     chocolatiers...
because what would be fun:
  if language was plain, safe,
                                                      in vitro:
and not the islam to the individual -
   whenever: i, am to submit,
                     to the language of the other?
well obviously malice is reserved
for something else, but not for breathing,
thinking or feeling,
   or for that matter:
     the "problem" of idle hands...
itchy hands...
               i guess some of the throng,
of the volk: chatter chatter chatter...
    bite... chew... but then forget to
swallow... (sow s-, s-, swo-, swo-...
'the **** an A charge in, eh?
                                     i guess, that's how).

but no one
likes to see
narrow
verse
likening it
to the Milan
fashion
show
catwalk

                               and all those poems
that look like this:

|begins here


               (no
      move-
                                 -ment
                 in
               between)


|ends here:

|zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
|zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
|zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
|­zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
|can anyone please tell me...
   why zee / zed:
              is a conotation
                        depicting the process of sleep?

and all this nonsense:
                   england is spelled with
a capital: who says it's anywhere but london?
E this, E that,
    E sat on a wall
       and...
                    didn't fall accidently...
i know a rat when i see one...
   Nigel, Nigel (see... capital N,
implies emphasis, like italics or a colon
does)
       Nigel... can you please bring back
your fwend, Dawid?
                     just a few questions...
2 and a half 'ears lay'ter...
   and... no end in sight...
to those loitering... shuffling their feet...
how many votes do you actually need...
when there was only one
                     for die volk
- and i have to admit...
       it was close...
                roughly                      51 to 49...
i know why they voted leave...
           because of the people who poured
in, most, probably momentarily
back in 2004...
                              the people who were
taught two, of 20th century's prime lessons,
by foreign entities...
               arbeit macht frei
               und?
                        communism.

         so no laid-back work ethic coming
with the windrush, was there?
                    conflict of interests...
**** it, if i were strapped to a caribbean
island, i'd have a laid back work ethic:
                             ka-reeb-ib-ean.

yet still this whole blah blah debate...
          like... let's forget the good friday
agreement...
   but finally...
            we can have the old terrorists back...
so...
            maybe the IRA will
                  out-compete the jihadis?
or at least scare them?
  or... dunno...
                                            ol' Jack...
ol' Jackie boy'o will: simply...        unravel?
am i rooting for it to happen?
no...
                            but it would suggest
that i'm rooting for being part of
                a historical event,
                            like the treaty of versailles...
or the weimar rep.,
                            and i was the voice
on the bottom,
               sifting through
                     eclectic ambitions to find:
culture that will never become
mainstream...
                                           almost
forever destined for the: archaic archive,
now forever the footstuff
                            of the gargantuan a.i.:
alternatively known as a.i.p.:
                   artificial intelligence purgatory.

- hey, i can't compete,
    i'm just a kid that forgot to bring
his crayons, and instead brought
   some matchsticks and toothpicks.

if only: 2 years prior to the referendum
they had a plan...
   but they thought they could do
a joker trick,
         so there you have it: agent of chaos...
agent of chaos says:
  people, 1 vote, politicians?
         an infinite number of votes by
the looks of it...
                  voting is not reserved
for the people, de facto,
                       given:
we now have a strange despot on our
hands... der volk...
                    what a strange monster...
was i leave or remain?
   neither, considering that i ended up
drinking to stay somewhat sane
for the past... oh... 10 years...
    on debit...
                well... why would i even
consider drinking into the excesses of
phantasmagoria              on credit?
that would be stupid, as stupid didn't.

in summary: to minor points...
    i can understand why people don't like
poetry...
                                                 porcelain...
or the fact that their everyday language
is already peppered with poetic techniques...
figuratively speaking...
                   akin to:
   where does the technique of poetry
end, and the comedy begin?
                     yeah, that: "not literally" part?

who would mind:
   it's not an elitist "thing" to like or dislike
a medium...
                 i like the "breathing" space in
the optics... of... the never to be seen
                              literary paragraph...
i like cascades...
                         paragraphs are sometimes
a strain on the eyes...
like watching really fast cars
zoom past you on a very small race-track...
**** just gets dizzy...

.......................................................­........ (click)
.........................................................­........ (click)
.........................................................­.......... (click) etc.

hence?
           well on the up-side...
once you've read some magnum opus...
say... the cantos...
    for some strange reason...
you can sit back, listen to some choccie
music from the underground...
open the book...
   and just stare at the poetry...
    without having to reread anything...
a bit like...
                  a painting...

                                    sure as **** you
can't do that with a novel,
      with its rigid, cluster-**** of a descriptive
paragraph: she said, he said,
then another descriptive paragraph:
he said, she said...

               as much as i love novels...
  give me a poetics of a framework of freedom,
or a philosophical monologue
    by some helmut
    (german) - oh look...
     another intra-racial slur...
    helmuty: germans...
                  derived from?
              helmut kohl -
                    german chancellor 1982 - 1998;

ah... what an enriching experience.

12 Monkeys
17 Girls
127 Hours
2 Days in New York 2012
2 Days in Paris 2010
2001 A Space Odyssey
360
A Beautiful Mind
A Bridge Too Far
A Few Good Men
A Single Man
A Perfect Getaway
A Serbian Film
A Very Long Engagement
A.I.
Absolute Power
Adaptation
Airborne
Air Force One
Airplane 1
Airplane 2
Albert Nobbs
Alex Cross
Alpha Dog
American Beauty
American Gangster
Amorres Perros
Amour
Anchorman
Andy Warhol's Bad 1977
Andy Warhol's ******* 1964
Andy Warhol's Eat 1964
Animal Kingdom
Annie Hall
Anti-Christ
Apocalypse Now Redux
Apollo 13
Arachnophobia
Apt Pupil
Armageddon
Babel
Backdraft
Bad Company
Bad Education
Badlands 1973
Barton Fink
Basquiat
Before Night Falls
Being Flynn
Beneath Hill 60
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Billy Madison
Biutiful - Spanish
Blade 1
Blade 2
Blade 3
Blade Runner Final Cut
Blades of Glory
Blood Work
Blue Valentine
Breach
Broken Arrow
Born on the Fourth of July
Boyz in the Hood
Bullet
Bulworth
Brothers
Caddyshack 1 & 2
Career Opportunities
Carlos The Jackal The Movie
Carne by Gaspar Noe - French
Cashback
CB4
Charlie Wilson's War
Chelsea Girls 1966
Cherry
Chinatown
Ciao Manhattan ft. Edie Sedgewick 1972
Cinema Paradiso
City of God
Clear and Present Danger
Closely Watched Trains - Czech
Contact
Corpse Bride
Courage Under Fire
Crazy Stupid Love
Dark Shadows
Dave 1993
Daybreakers
Days of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Dead Presidents
Defiance
Desperately Seeking Susan
Despicable Me
Detachment
Die Hard Quadrilogy
**** Tracy
***** Harry
Django Unchained
Dogtooth - Greek
Dogville
Doubt
Dracula, Bram Stoker's
Dragonheart
Dream House
Drive
Drop Zone
Dumbo
Dune Extended Edition
Ears Open, Eyeballs Click
Easier With Practice
Easy Rider 1969
Edward Scissorhands
Empire of the Sun
Encino Man
Enter the Void by Gaspar Noe
Eraser 1999
Eyes Wide Shut 1999
Face Off 1997
Fallen
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fight Club
Fill the Void
Fish Tank
Fitzcarraldo
Five Minutes in Heaven
Flickan 2009 - Swedish
Flubber 1997
Folks!
Forbidden Planet 1956
Fracture
Friday 1995
Friday After Next 2002
Frost Nixon
******* Amal - Swedish
Full Metal Jacket
Funny Farm 1988
Funny Games
Fur- An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
G.I. Jane
G.I. Joe Retaliation
Gangs of New York
Gangster Squad
Garden State
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Ghostbusters 1
Girlfriend
Girl, Interrupted
Glengarry Glen Ross
Gomorra - Italian
Great Expectations 1998
Greenberg
Grindhouse Death Proof
Grindhouse Planet Terror
Groundhog Day 1993
Grumpy Old Men
Grumpier Old Men
Gummo
Gus Van Sant's Last Days
Half Nelson
Hannibal
Havoc
Haywire
Heartbreak Ridge
Heat
Hell on the Pacific 1986
Hesher
Hitchcock
Holy Rollers
Hook
Honey I Shrunk the Kids
Hyde Park on Hudson
I Am Curious Blue
I Am Curious Yellow
I Heart Huckabees
I Stand Alone by Gaspar Noe - French
If Looks Could **** 1991
I'm Not There
In Bruges
In The Line of Fire
Inglorious Basterds
Inland Empire
Innerspace 1987
Innocence
Interview With the Vampire
Jacob's Ladder
James Bond - Diamonds Are Forever 1971
James Bond - From Russia With Love 1963
James Bond - Goldfinger 1964
James Bond - Never Say Never Again 1983
James Bond - On Her Majesty's Secret Service 1969
James Bond - Thunderball 1965
James Bon - You Only Live Twice 1967
Jane Eyre
Jeremiah Johnson 1972
JFK
Joe Versus the Volcano
Johnny English 2
Julien Donkey-Boy
Juno
Just Cause
Kapringen aka A Hijacking - Icelandic
Ken Park
Killing Season
Killing Them Softly
Kindergarten Cop
Kingpin
Koyaanisqatsi
Krippendorf's Tribe
Kiss the Girls
La Vie En Rose
Last Night
Last of the Dogmen
Leon: The Professional
Leonard Pt. 6
Les Miserables
Lie With Me
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Lions For Lambs
Little Children
Lord of the Rings Trilogy BR Extended
Lord of War
Lost Highway
Love and Other Drugs
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love Liza
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Mad Max 1979
Mad Max 2 1981
Mad Max 3 1985
Major Payne
Malcolm X
Man on Fire
Manhunter
Maverick 1994
Meet Joe Black
Melancholia
Menace II Society DIrector's Cut 1993
Mesrine 1 Killer Instinct - French
Mesrine 2 Public Enemy - French
Milk
Minority Report
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol
Mister Lonely
Money Train
Moonrise Kingdom
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
****** By Numbers
Munich
My Sassy Girl 2008
Naqoyqatsi Life As War
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
National Treasure Book of Secrets
Never Cry Wolf
Never Let Me Go
New Jack City
New York I Love You
Night on Earth 1991 - Italian
Nixon
Not Fade Away
Notes on a Scandal
O Brother, Where Art Thou
October Sky
Olympus Has Fallen
Ondskan - Swedish
One False Move
Out of Africa
Outbreak
Palmetto
Paris Texas Criterion 1984
Passenger 57
Paths of Glory 1957
Perfect Sense
Peter Pan
Philadelphia 1993
Pinocchio
Pirate Radio
Platoon 1986
Pleasantville
*******
Project X 1987
Proof
Quiz Show
Rabbits
Revolver
Robocop Trilogy
Robot and Frank
Rolling Stone's Gimme Shelter
Romance and Cigarettes
Romeo and Juliet 1996
Sahara
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler's List
Searching For Bobby Fischer
Secretary, The
Seven Years in Tibet
Sgt. Bilko
Shame 2011
Shine
Shooter
Shopgirl
Sid and Nancy
Sin City
Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow
Skyfall
Slackers
Sleepers
Sleeping Beauty 1959
Sleeping Beauty 2011
Sleepy Hollow
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Somewhere
South Central
Sphere
Spread
Spy Game
Stand Up Guys
Stay
Summer Hours - French
Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Synecdoche, NY
Syriana
Talk To Her - Habla Con Ella
Taken 1 & 2
Takers
****
Taxidermia
Tetro
Thank You For Smoking
That Thing You Do!
The Adjustment Bureau
The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorcese 1993
The Bad Lieutenant - Port of Call New Orleans 2009
The Basketball Diaries
The Beach 2000
The Believer
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Black Dahlia
The Blue Lagoon 1980
The Book of Eli
The Boxer
The Constant Gardner
The Conversation
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Darjeeling Limited
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Day of the Jackal
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
The Fifth Element
The Flock
The Flowers of War
The Fountain
The Getaway
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2011
The Golden Compass
The Good Shepherd
The Good The Bad and The Ugly
The Goonies
The Green Mile
The Grey
The Help
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Hurricane
The Hurt Locker
The Ice Storm
The Ides of March
The Illusionist
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Impossible
The Informers
The Invasion
The Iron Lady
The Island of Dr. Moreau
The Jackal
The ****
The Killer Inside Me
The Kingdom
The Legend of Bagger Vance
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys The Tribe
The Lost Boys Thirst
The Machinist
The Mask
The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976
The Master
The Mechanic
The Money Pit
The Naked Gun 1
The Naked Gun 2
The Naked Gun 3
The New World
The Pelican Brief
The Place Beyond the Pines
The Prestige
The Queen
The Raven
The Reader
The Red Balloon
The Right Stuff
The Road
The Rock
The Rocketeer
The Rules of Attraction
The *** Diary
The Saint
The Shawshank Redemption
The Silence of the Lambs
The Skin I Live In - Mexican
The Soloist
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Thin Red Line
The Town
Transformers Trilogy
The Tree of Life
Tron Legacy 2010
The United States of Leland
The Usual Suspects
The Way Back
There Will Be Blood
There's Something About Mary
Three Days of the Condor
Three Kings
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
To the Wonder
To Rome With Love

Tombstone
Total Recall 1990
Trainspotting
Trash Humpers
True Lies
Two Lovers
Two Weeks in September(Brigette Bardot) 1967
Tyrannosaur
Unbreakable
Uncle Buck
Unforgiven
Unleashed
Unstoppable
V for Vendetta
Varsity Blues
Vertigo
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Videodrome
Virtuosity
Wag the Dog
Wake Up Ron Burgundy The Lost Movie
Walkabout
Wall Street 1987
Wall Street 2010
Wanderlust
Water World
Wayne's World 1 & 2
We Are The Night
War Witch
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard - French
Weekend 2011
West of Memphis
What Doesn't **** You
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
When Harry Met Sally
Where the Wild Things Are
White House Down
White Material Criterion 2009
White Oleander
Who is Harry Nilsson?
Wolf 1992
Womb
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Zardoz 1974


Documentaries & Music Videos


BBC - Life in Cold Blood
BBC - Planet Earth
BBC - Rolling Stones Crossfire Hurricane
BBC - Great Bear Steakout
BBC - Ice Age Giants
BBC - Insect Worlds
BBC - Life on Earth 1979
BBC - Lost Cities of the Ancients
BBC - Operation Snow Tiger
BBC - Penguins: Spy in the Huddle
BBC - Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice
BBC - Richard Hammond's Miracles of Nature
BBC - The Life of Birds
BBC - Wonders of Life
David Blaine Collection
**** Proenke Collection - Alone and Solitude, The Frozen North
Encounters at the End of the World 2007
Nanook of the North
National Geographic Wild Kingdom of the Oceans Giants of the Deep: Whales
Shine A Light - The Rolling Stones
Vladimir Horowitz - Der Ietzte Romantiker
Vladimir Horowitz - Live in Vienna 1987
Vladimir Horowitz - The 1968 TV Concert
Whale Adventure with Nigel Marvin

The Politician Nigel Farage,
Fancied a saucy massage,
He had quite a shock,
As she couldn't see his ****.
Which she claimed "Was a mere mirage."

JWS

‘This is a pleasure. A composer in our midst, and you’re seeing Plas Brondanw at its June best.’ Amabel strides across the lawn from house to the table Sally has laid for tea. Tea for three in the almost shade of the vast plain tree, and nearly the height of the house. Look up into its branches. It is convalescing after major surgery, ropes and bindings still in place.
 
Yes, I am certainly seeing this Welsh manor house, the home of the William-Ellis family for four hundred years, on a day of days. The mountains that ring this estate seem to take the sky blue into themselves. They look almost fragile in the heat.
 
‘Nigel, you’re here?’ Clough appears next. He sounds surprised, as though the journey across Snowdonia was trepidatious adventure. ‘Of course you are, and on this glorious day. Glorious, glorious. You’ve walked up from below perhaps? Of course, of course. Did you detour to the ruin? You must. We’ll walk down after tea.’
 
And he flicks the tails of his russet brown frock coat behind him and sits on the marble bench beside Amabel. She is a little frail at 85, but the twinkling eyes hardly leave my face. Clough is checking the garden for birds. A yellowhammer swoops up from the lower garden and is gone. He gestures as though miming its flight. There are curious bird-like calls from the house. Amabel turns house-ward.
 
‘Our parrots,’ she says with a girlish smile.
 
‘Your letter was so sweet you know.’ She continues. ‘Fancy composing a piece about our village. We’ve had a film, that TV series, so many books, and now music. So exciting. And when do we hear this?’
 
I explain that the BBC will be filming and recording next month, but tomorrow David will appear with his double bass, a cameraman and a sound recordist to ‘do’ the cadenzas in some of the more intriguing locations. And he will come here to see how it sounds in the ‘vale’.
 
‘Are we doing luncheon for the BBC men? They are all men I suppose? When we were on Gardeners’ World it was all gals with clipboards and dark glasses, and it was raining for heaven’s sake. They had no idea about the right shoes, except that Alys person who interviewed me and was so lovely about the topiary and the fireman’s room. Now she wore a sensible skirt and the kind of sandals I wear in the garden. Of course we had to go to Mary’s house to see the thing as you know Clough won’t have a television in the house.’
 
‘I loath the sound of it from a distance. There’s nothing worse that hearing disembodied voices and music. Why do they have to put music with everything? I won’t go near a shop if there’s that canned music about.’
 
‘But surely it was TV’s The Prisoner that put the place on the map,’ I venture to suggest.
 
‘Oh yes, yes, but the mess, and all those Japanese descending on us with questions we simply couldn’t answer. I have to this day no i------de-------a-------‘, he stretches this word like a piece of elastic as far as it might go before breaking in two, ‘ simply no I------de------a------ what the whole thing was about.’ He pauses to take a tea cup freshly poured by Amabel. ‘Patrick was a dear though, and stayed with us of course. He loved the light of the place and would get up before dawn to watch the sun rise over the mountains at the back of us.’
 
‘But I digress. Music, music, yes music . . . ‘ Amabel takes his lead
 
‘We’ve had concerts before at P. outside in the formal gardens by AJ’s studio.’ She has placed her hands on her green velvet skirt and leans forward purposefully. ‘He had musicians about all the time and used to play the piano himself vigorously in the early hours of the morning. Showing off to those models that used to appear. I remember walking past his studio early one morning and there he was asleep on the floor with two of them . . .’
 
Clough smiles and laughs, laughs and smiles at a memory from the late 1920s.
 
‘Everyone thought we were completely mad to do the village.’ He leans back against the gentle curve of the balustrade, and closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Completely mad.’
 
It’s cool under the tree, but where the sunlight strays through my hand seems to gather freckles by the minute. I am enjoying the second slice of Mary’s Bara Brith. ‘It’s the marmalade,’ says Amabel, realising my delight in the texture and taste, ‘Clough brought the recipe back from Ceylon and I’ve taught all my cooks to make it. Of course, Mary isn’t a cook, she’s everything. A wonder, but you’ll discover this later at dinner. You are staying? And you’re going to play too?’
 
I’m certainly going to play in the drawing room studio on the third floor. It’s distractingly full of paintings by ‘friends’ – Duncan Grant, Mondrian, Augustus John, Patrick Heron, Winifred Nicholson (she so loved the garden but would bring that awful Raine woman with her). There’s  Clough’s architectural watercolours (now collectors want these things I used to wiz off for clients – stupid prices – just wish I’d kept more behind before giving them to the AA – (The Architectural Association ed.) And so many books, first editions everywhere. Photographs of Amabel’s flying saucer investigations occupy a shelf along with her many books on fairy tales and four novels, a batch of biographies and pictures of the two girls Susan and Charlotte as teenagers. Susan’s pottery features prominently. There’s a Panda skin from Luchan under the piano.
 
These two eighty somethings have been working since 8.0am. ‘We don’t bother with lunch.’ Amabel is reviewing the latest Ursula le Guin. ‘I stayed with her in Oregon last May. A lovely little house by the sea. Such a darling, and what a gardener! She creates all the ideas for her books in her garden. I so wish I could, but there’s just too much to distract me. Gardening is a serious business because although Jane comes over from Corrieg and says no to this and no to that and I have to stand my corner,  I have to concentrate and go to my books. Did you know the RHS voted this one of the ten most significant gardens in the UK? But look, there’s no one here today except you!’
 
No one but me. And tea is over. ‘A little rest before your endeavours perhaps,’ says Clough, probably anxious to get back to letter to Kenzo Piano.
 
‘Now let’s go and say hello to the fireman,’ says Amabel who takes my arm. And so we walk through the topiary to her favourite ‘room’,  a water feature with the fireman on his column (mid pond). ‘In memory of the great fire, ‘ she says. ‘He keeps a keen eye on the building now.’ He is a two-foot cherub with a hose and wearing a fireman’s helmet.
 
The pond reflects the column and the fireman looks down on us as we gaze into the pool. ‘Health, ‘ she says, ‘We keep a keen eye on it.’
 
The parrots are singing wildly. I didn’t realise they sang. I thought they squawked.
 
‘Will they sing when I play?’ I ask.
 
‘Undoubtedly,’ Amabel says with her girlish smile and squeezes my arm.

Today we shall have the naming of parts. How the opening of that poem by Henry Reed caught his present thoughts; that banal naming of parts of a soldier’s rifle set against the delicate colours and textures of the gardens outside the lecture room. *Japonica glistening like coral  . . . branches holding their silent eloquent gestures . . . bees fumbling the flowers. It was the wrong season for this so affecting poem – the spring was not being eased as here, in quite a different garden, summer was easing itself out towards autumn, but it caught him, as a poem sometimes would.

He had taken a detour through the gardens to the studio where in half an hour his students would gather. He intended to name the very parts of rhythm and help them become aware of their personal knowledge and relationship with this most fundamental of musical elements, the most connected with the body.

He had arranged to have a percussionist in on the class, a player he admired (he had to admit) for the way this musician had dealt with a once-witnessed on-stage accident that he’d brought it into his poem sequence Lemon on Pewter. They had been in Cambridge to celebrate her birthday and just off the train had hurried their way through the bicycled streets to the college where he had once taught, and to a lunchtime concert in a theatre where he had so often performed himself.

Smash! the percussionist wipes his hands and grabs another bottle before the music escapes checking his fingers for cuts and kicking the broken glass from his feet It was a brilliant though unplanned moment we all agreed and will remember this concert always for that particular accidental smile-inducing sharp intake of breath moment when with a Fanta bottle in each hand there was a joyful hit and scrape guiro-like on the serrated edges a no-holes barred full-on sounding out of glass on glass and you just loved it when he drank the juice and fluting blew across the bottle’s mouth

And having thought himself back to those twenty-four hours in Cambridge the delights of the morning garden aflame with colour and texture were as nothing beside his vivid memory of that so precious time with her. The images and the very physical moments of that interval away and together flooded over him, and he had to stop to close his eyes because the images and moments were so very real and he was trembling . . . what was it about their love that kept doing this to him? Just this morning he had sat on the edge of his bed, and in the still darkness his imagination seemed to bring her to him, the warmth and scent of her as she slept face down into a pillow, the touch of her hair in his face as he would bend over her to kiss her ear and move his hand across the contours of her body, but without touching, a kind of air-lovers movement, a kiss of no-touch. But today, he reminded himself, we have the naming of parts . . .

He was going to tackle not just rhythm but the role of percussion. There was a week’s work here. He had just one day. And the students had one day to create a short ‘poem for percussion’ to be performed and recorded at the end of the afternoon class. In his own music he considered the element of percussion as an ever-present challenge. He had only met it by adopting a very particular strategy. He regarded its presence in a score as a kind of continuo element and thus giving the player some freedom in the choice of instruments and execution. He wanted percussion to be ‘a part’ of equal stature with the rest of the musical texture and not a series of disparate accents, emphases and colours. In other words rhythm itself was his first consideration, and all the rest followed. He thought with amusement of his son playing Vaughan-Williams The Lark Ascending and the single stroke of a triangle that constituted his percussion part. For him, so few composers could ‘do it’ with percussion. He had assembled for today a booklet of extracts of those who could: Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale (inevitably), Berio’s Cummings songs, George Perle’s Sextet, Living Toys by Tom Ades, his own Flights for violin and percussionist. He felt diffident about the latter, but he had the video of those gliders and he’d play the second movement What is the Colour of the Wind?

In the studio the percussionist and a group of student helpers were assembling the ‘kits’ they’d agreed on. The loose-limbed movements of such players always fascinated him. It was as though whatever they might be doing they were still playing – driving a car? He suddenly thought he might not take a lift from a percussionist.

On the grand piano there was, thankfully, a large pile of the special manuscript paper he favoured when writing for percussion, an A3 sheet with wider stave lines. Standing at the piano he pulled a sheet from the pile and he got out his pen. He wrote on the shiny black lid with a fluency that surprised him: a toccata-like passage based on the binary rhythms he intended to introduce to his class. He’d thought about making this piece whilst lying in bed the previous night, before sleep had taken him into a series of comforting dreams. He knew he must be careful to avoid any awkward crossings of sticks.

The music was devoid of any accents or dynamics, indeed any performance instructions. It was solely rhythm. He then composed a passage that had no rhythm, only performance instructions, dynamics, articulations such as tremolo and trills and a play of accents, but no rhythmic symbols. He then went to the photocopier in the corridor and made a batch of copies of both scores. As the machine whirred away he thought he might call her before his class began, just to hear her soft voice say ‘hello’ in that dear way she so often said it, the way that seem to melt him, and had been his undoing . . .

When his class had assembled (and the percussionist and his students had disappeared pro tem) he began immediately, and without any formal introduction, to write the first four 4-bit binary rhythms on the chalkboard, and asked them to complete it. This mystified a few but most got the idea (and by now there was a generous sharing between members of the class), so soon each student had the sixteen rhythms in front of them.

‘Label these rhythms with symbols a to p’, he said, ‘and then write out the letters of your full name. If there’s a letter there that goes beyond p create another list from q to z. You can now generate a rhythmic sequence using what mathematicians call a function-machine. Nigel would be:

x x = x     x = = =      = x x =      = x x x      x = x x

Write your rhythm out and then score it for 4 drums – two congas, two bongos.’

His notion was always to keep his class relentlessly occupied. If a student finished a task ahead of others he or she would find further instructions had appeared on the flip chart board.  Audition –in your head - these rhythms at high speed, at a really quick tempo. Now slow them right down. Experiment with shifting tempos, download a metronome app on your smart phone, score the rhythms for three clapping performers, and so on.

And soon it was performance time and the difficulties and awkwardness of the following day were forgotten as nearly everyone made it out front to perform their binary rhythmic pieces, and perform them with much laughter, but with flair and élan also. The room rang with the clapping of hands.

The percussionist appeared and after a brief introduction – in which the Fanta bottle incident was mentioned - composer and performer played together *****’s Clapping Music before a welcome break was taken.

Sometimes, when I'm trying
To pretend everything's alright,
Though, inside, I'm dying,
Someone sees my inner plight;

"Nigel...Are you crying?"

I manage to hold in the tears,
As if I thought their release,
Would spread the subject of my fears,
That will not leave me in peace.

That's why, when I'm sighing,
I will not confide in you-
When I feel like dying,
I'm afraid you'd feel it too.

"Nigel, please stop crying."

If I stop the pain from spreading,
By keeping it all within,
Then there's not a tear worth shedding.
"Are you crying Mr Finn?"

"No. I am not crying."