Category Random thoughts

When Hollywood comes to call

Laurel Lindström 5 Comments

Unbound published my first novel, The Draftsman, in 2021. Absent any sort of marketing whatsoever the book sank without a trace. Weirdly (or stupidly) the publishers got 700 copies of the book printed, but had no sort of marketing plan in place to sell them. When the distribution house collapsed earlier this year and had to clear their warehouses, Unbound chose to pulp the remaining books. Before that happened we bought a some at cost to sell online and at literary festivals. The remaining copies of The Draftsman are now living new lives as recycled paper.

Despite a business model that is a great idea for prospective authors, Unbound is best avoided. The idea of crowdfunding publications, essentially the subscription model, is not new but it is an idea that depends for success on active and close collaboration between author and publisher. In the Unbound universe (would that be a u-bend?) the collaboration is entirely onesided. The author is expected to sell the books, rather than being able to trust their publisher to take care of sales. Prospective authors are instead better off working with a project manager to pull together the editorial, production, publishing and marketing processes, on the basis of a revenue split. The disappointment of working with Unbound still haunts me. But their incompetence may have turned out to have a silver lining.

The pulping means that The Draftsman is out of print and that means that the rights to the work revert to me. This is a good thing, especially when Hollywood comes to call. Except that the silver lining thing is a load of old toe. It’s real only for a brief glimmering moment, a moment that with a bit of thought soon turned into a wildfire of haemorraging fantasy. I should explain.

All this excitement was based on several emails and two telephone calls with a bunch of questions including about rights ownership (that silver lining). The emails were from people telling me that The Draftsman has been identified as a possible for a film or television series. This much we know because it is a good book with interesting characters. But the emails said this too. Me being me I forwarded these messages to the originating companies with a note that their email system had been hacked. But then I got another approach to which I responded “is this a joke?” That yielded a further message asking when it would be convenient to chat about the plan. Blimey.

Yeah right, yes you can call me because the exercise will be interesting. So a man rings, not once but twice. He’s extremely polite, professional and keeps repeating the lines. He keeps explaining the process and he keeps reminding me that the details of his emails and of the conversation are subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA), not that one has been signed. Of course this is a scam, and it’s like really, how much do you want from me to progress this. The nice man on the telephone laughed and said they would not be asking for any money. The offer is contingent on all sorts of things and having giving him the confirmations he needed to take things to the next stage, he would be handing over this project to his colleague. And that I should expect further contact within a couple of months. I am being warmed up for the sting, and yet am already considering possibilities for my protagonist, Martin Cox. Aidan Turner’s too old and gruff; a young Johnny Depp isn’t an option; Timothée Chalamet’s hair is too short and curly; the blue eyed bloke in the Bear could be perfect but he too has short curly hair. And who could play Joshua, my favourite character? The gleaming silver keeps on shining ever brighter. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Oscar Wilde’s 170th birthday dinner

Laurel Lindström 1 Comment

Guests at Oscar’s 170 th birthday bash shimmered and shone. They were stars in Oscar’s very own firmament, mingling together for delicious pre-dinner snacks and generous quantities of fizz. And it was real champagne, not the dreaded Prosecco! Robert Whelan (Deputy Chairman, Editor of ‘The Wildean’) welcomed us and James Liu performed “Serenade (for music)” a piece with Oscar’s lyrics and FH Cowen’s music. This wonderful song is a early plea from Paris to Helen to flee with him across the Aegean to Troy. She declines, preferring instead to let Paris abduct her sometime later. Much more fun. After the song, there followed more champagne, more snacks and glamorous hobnobbing. We were a small riot of sparkling colours, feathers and sequins, offset by just the right amount of two tone penguin formals.

Midmingle our Hon. President Gyles Brandreth made a very special welcome and presentation to Joan Winchell, thanking her for supporting the newly published collection of selected articles from The Woman’s World. He pointed out that “if it wasn’t for her this wouldn’t be happening …” adding that “without her we would not have had this book”. He reminded the happy crowd that it had been an ”exciting Oscar Wilde week for many of us, culminating in this evening”. As he handed over the gift to Joan, Gyles explained that, “we are all about to bow or curtesy to you … it’s a British tradition …[you have] been a true friend to us and to the memory and to the genius of Oscar Wilde”. Joan responded with gracious acceptance of the lovely photo and an invitation for Gyles to blow a kiss from her to the crowd. The crowd happily accepted and returned kisses of their own in number.

From the grandeur of the National Liberal Club’s (non)Smoking Room, some 100 + guests moved to the equally auspicious David Lloyd George Room for dinner. Properly warmed up with predinner drinks and canapés people took their seats in keen anticipation of what came next, having no real idea of what that might be. Anticipation is everything, bringing to mind Oscar’s observation that ‘the suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.’

We didn’t have to wait too long for Vanessa Heron (Chairman and Editor of ‘Intentions’) to extend her own warm welcome to everyone, especially those who  had travelled long distances to this dinner. And Vanessa tipped an appreciative nod to her predecessor, Don Mead (Hon. Vice President), “who has almost certainly attended more of these dinners than anyone else”.

Merlin Holland, Oscar’s grandson and archivist, then proposed the toast to to his grandfather. Merlin describes himself as the “keeper of [his] family flame”, and shared family memories touching on what his grandmother Constance had gone through after Oscar’s fall. She faced “an appalling social problem” so horrible that she had to distance herself and her children from all things Wilde, and she did so by changing her name. The change of name was wise, because Oscar never did listen to advice or try to avoid notoriety. He particularly ignored the many requests to keep away from Bosie. Sadly or maybe not, he welcomed Bosie back into his life to sow yet more sorrow and disharmony. Merlin explained that “only this time it happens in slow motion which is worse”. Oscar’s view was that he needed “an atmosphere of love … I need to love and be loved … I still love him, how could I not love him, he wrecked my life?”

In De Profundis Oscar explains that he “was no longer the master of my fate, the captain of my soul” (the reference is to William Ernest Henley’s 1875 poem Invictus). Merlin reminds us that with these lines in De Profundis Oscar had recognised the depths of his collapse and could begin to “come up out of the depths”. He ended his toast preliminaries with a quote from Frank Harris’ 1916 biography of Oscar Wilde where he relays a conversation Frank once had with Oscar. With considerable prescience Oscar had predicted that “a hundred years hence, no one will know anything about Curzon …  whether [he] lived or died will be a matter of indifference to everyone; but my comedies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and even my unhappy fate will call forth worldwide sympathy.” How right he was about this and so much more. We shared Merlin’s toast: “my grandfather at this, his 170th birthday”. Happy birthday Oscar.

Guests then tucked into three courses of lovely food and more wines. Conversation flowed in a glittering, joyful, sometimes unexpected and definitely noisy torrent. We clearly all shared the unmatched joy that is love of Oscar Wilde, the man, his life and his amazing achievements. Oscar would’ve loved it.

Eleanor Fitzsimons (Hon. Patron) rounded off the evening with a few profiles of the contributors to The Woman’s World. The likes of Elisabeth of Wied, first Queen of Romania, Marie Corelli the English novelist, and Dr Mary Marshall, who along with six other women was forced to campaign to be allowed to graduate as a medical doctor. Wilde championed many women of ambition, ability and courage, using The Woman’s World to give them a platform and visibility. Copies of the book were available for sale at the dinner, but did not last long. The moment for purchasing a copy passed too fast, and like the evening the moment was over much too soon. Drifting home sleepy on the train, I am certain that over us all Oscar’s bemused spirit was surely smiling.

© Laurel Lindström 2024

Welcome to the Oscar Wilde Society

Unspoken or speechless?

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People with sore throats apparently have sore throats because they are not very good at expressing themselves. Difficulties we’re facing but can’t express, so we get a sore throat? Nah. People with sore throats may just have sore throats and be in need of gargling with a 1:5 solution of TCP. 

If you’ve trouble with self-expression, it’s much more effective to build a very high, very thick wall. Stay behind it as long as you need to and keep adding bricks when necessary. This is completely opposite to what the head doctors will tell you because it amounts to repression: oh no I’m repressed. And it’s doing me in. My mental health, oh dear. Except no, not expressing yourself isn’t doing you in at all, it’s providing you with a safe space behind walls that only you can occupy and this is not so bad.

Everyone has these walls to some extent or another because it’s how we protect ourselves, how we hide what’s important or the effects of trauma. It’s also where we can stay when times get tough, so that we can work out how to get through those gnarly times. We can wait and figure out what happened, how we feel about it and what we can do to deal with it, which is usually not much. Mostly the best thing is to be patient and be still, to lie in the dark and watch as the wiggles in your eyes weave unseen webs and rehearse their silent chorus. You know it all.

We can talk about stuff and share, or keep behind a wall. Either way anxieties and insecurities, fears, are absolutely who you are along with the rest of what makes you you. But owning such things can be hard sometimes, especially if they’re reflected in your conduct. Fear and insecurity drive behaviours and creativities: we can always do better. It takes a genius on the scales of Lennon and McCartney to have the confidence to say, actually that piece of work is not so bad. And then they could only make such judgements in later life, once the crazy Beatle years were over and they were further along on their respective journeys.

For people aspiring to write fiction, does it maybe ever happen in the same way? Do we ever look back and say, I hated that at the time but actually it isn’t so bad? Time maybe the magic ingredient no one can add at the point of creation. As with music, revisiting what you created ages ago can be instructive for what you are creating now: it shows you boundaries, different walls that you might want to extend or penetrate. For those walls, the limits to your creativity, the more creative work you do, the thinner and lower they might become. We can always do better. There are always more words. 

The next time. The next time bricks get added to your walls is unavoidable. Bricks, mortar and the next brutal trowel are always close at hand, just waiting. But not because of the work. The next time the walls start going up doesn’t come with mean comments about the piece or with people laughing or mocking what you’re trying to do. The next time the walls start going up is because of stuff that traumatises and confuses you, undermining who you are, what you are. And if you are a writer or a musician those safety walls can have nothing to do with the work. The work’s apart from you and your walls; it’s more important. Walls that go up because someone doesn’t like your story or articles are flimsy and easily downed. They are trivial, false and fragile figments you can ignore: there is always more to say, more words, more stories; you can always do better. So when a piece gets criticised, instead of letting a wall go up let come a moment of joy, of elation. Comments and criticism confirm that someone has bothered to read your words and consider them. They’ve made the effort and taken the time to respond to what you’ve written. Creative output and you are intrinsicly bound yet separate, so your walls keep out the work as well as the rest of the world. Be content to toss words over the parapets and watch them fly away across the sky. And be happy if somebody finds them.

© Laurel Lindström 2023

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English as she is spoke

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English has played quite a role in spreading culture, commerce and other things beginning with c across the globe. The language owes much of its success to its habit of agglomerating new words and meanings. And the fact that the English are too lazy to learn other languages. They believe that speaking English at volume will do the trick. It doesn’t. English speakers prefer to pinch words from other languages and make them work, often very effectively. Pyjamas from Hindi, zeitgest from German, ombudsman from Swedish, schmuck from Yiddish, divan from Arabic, croissant from French. You get the idea. English is a collection of words from other languages, pronounced wrong. Things are more complicated and far more creative with Cockney rhyming slang, but that’s for another day. 

The greediness for new words that makes English so dynamic isn’t matched by its ability to care for words; we let them get messed up and mangled without much of a fight. We allow bits of our language to fall into dereliction, and never think about why those bits have been relicted. We forget to use words even though they break no rules. Do you ever feel gruntled basking in the sun’s warmth instead of disgruntled because of the coolth?

Situations and people we don’t expect to run into can be very disarming but when we are expecting to see them we rarely feel a sense of arming. And if it’s hench people or environments we’d prefer to avoid, we can be pretty ruthless about getting ourselves elsewhere. If we change our minds we surely return with ruth. Except we don’t, even if we have decided that the hench people are couth rather than uncouth and that places are lapidated rather than dilapidated. Actually that one’s a bit of a cheat. To lapidate means to stone to death. But onwards.

First impressions can be accurate or deceptive and what you think is an accurate first impression might actually have misled you into some sort of false confidence. It might not take much to misle you; a person’s demeanour (they might have meanour, but we don’t mention that) and manner depends on the impression they want to give. How devastated we feel when we discover they’re a crashing bore depends on the circs. There’s only so much chat about the best place to get an MOT in Ireland one can take (Belfast apparently). Once you’ve regained consciousness walk away. The sense of devastation gone and feeling fully vastated, you’ll be ready to share alternative hospitality. Unless, or is that less, the encounter has left you hospitalised.

Unlike structured languages like German or Swedish, or even French, the English language is unruly and wayward. The collective linguistic naughtiness of some two billion speakers makes of English a perpetual chaos. Few people are aware of inventing words, yet still English vocabulary blossoms with no trammel whatsoever. Unruly but consistently inventive, it’s got some 170,000 words in usage. Most people work with 20,000 to 30,000. Unlike the rule driven Swedes and Germans, English speakers are not ruly, they are rule breakers. From the messy growth of English vocabulary we can infer that English is a bonkers language. Or is that a verb usage too fer?

https://www.newyorker.com

Three years on

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

It’s that laugh. It’s that laugh still echoing three years on from when it stopped. And a random unexpected picture. He’s sweaty and hot, a pint to hand, drumsticks sitting on the tom. And beaming at the people shyly coming to say how much they enjoyed it, saying his name, telling him where they’ve come from, how often they’ve heard him play and do you know such and such who came with me the last time, that time in Ghent, or Hastings or wherever. Always he is smiling back, nodding, buoying them up with his kindness, his generosity. He might have remembered, but he’s distracted thinking about the beats and patterns. So he laughs with them and they go home happy and excited.

For us the laughter was a soundtrack, along with the jazz, weaving its way into and around our early lives. Laughter and silliness touching all the days, a comfort and a place of safety, reassuring and always telling us that things would be fine. Loose tooth, cat scratch, falling down the stairs, something horrid on the plate in front of us. Laughter fixed all of it; it was his remedy for us and perhaps for himself.

As those few short years passed slowly from laughter to sorrow, the laughter shifted to sighs and patient smiles, glancing looks and long hugs. Tight hard cuddles instead of giggles and then everything changed so fast and he was not there like he used to be. No more late night jam sessions or squeaking stairs in the darkness. No more jokes or teases, just a sullen scowl as the path once lit with joyous gold turned dark and scary. Uncertain, we were stepping through thorns and murky holes, trying to bypass the unexpected decay of wonder. But it didn’t work. Instead were many years of distant and disparate unshared lives, peppered with outreach and lonely calls back into the past. Eventually the future reclaimed all of us and just as unexpectedly what came next brought back the laughter.

Time took all of us along, and we followed in the noisy wake of him, following but never quite catching his riotousness. And still he’s always there in my head, in silence or in the music. Thank you for that and for the laughter, the wisdom, the kindness, the patience and the love. The time. Through all the complications and confusion, the absences and losses, the distractions, the otherliness of life, through everything, he has always been with me even if the plan went its own way. So thank you Daddy for holding us still and for your constancy living on in loving memory.

Writer’s block and how to solve it

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There’s been lots of chat online recently about overcoming writer’s block. Writer’s block is defined by some site Google thinks knows, as the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing. And that’s a load of old toe. I can state with complete confidence that never in a career spanning 40+ years have I suffered from this terrible condition. And the reason for this is simple: I can’t afford it, not just because without the article there can be no invoice. I can’t afford it, because without getting on and writing something, my head implodes.

It’s not just me. Writer’s block is a problem no jobbing writer, say a journalist or a copy writer can allow. Hilary Mantel was asked at some event if she ever go it and how she resolved it. I can’t remember the exact words but in essence she said no, and that writing is something that cannot be blocked. You sit down and write something, anything and see what happens. Try it, try writing out your nine times tables in numbers and words and see where it takes you. If it only takes you to the ten times table, go backwards. See what clever things you notice about the nine times table.

A way more serious problem is a lack of ideas to turn into stories and here too Hilary had a solution: read a newspaper. You’ll find a host of stories presents itself, especially if you’re looking at smaller local titles. The point is that ideas spring from your observations of what is all around you. Wherever you can find scenes or communications about life and people, you can have something to say: the discovery of a long lost relative; a pony who can speak English with a Welsh accent; vegetables that double in size in the fridge overnight; a mysterious visitor you thought was just the new postman and who turns out to be your first lover in disguise. And so it goes on.

Writer’s block is not a problem, it’s an excuse, an indulgence that puts the complainant first and centre, and overlooks the writing. More interesting is why someone thinks they cannot write, have no ideas, no stories to tell. It might be reasonable to say that individual trauma justifies shelving the pencil or pen or keyboard for a while. If you’re distracted by some family worry, your spreading midriff or how to pay the electricity bill, writing is not going to be top of the list of what to do with your time. In the case of the electricity bill, there’s motivation right there to get on with it. In the case of other dramas though, perhaps a writer is so sensitive that any kind of practical or emotional disruption is sufficient to knock them off course.

For me, it’s the opposite. The worse things are the more buried I get. The hardest part about writing a weekly blog isn’t overcoming a fictitious block or coming up with ideas. The hardest part is the same as it has always been, it’s that contact problem. Not people or networking mind, it’s just getting the backside into contact with the chair and the fingers with the keyboard. It’s the old problem of finding a round tuit. I have to get one every week to make sure the noise in my head reaches the page. I suffer not at all from writer’s block, but massively from the maelstrom that’s constantly raging in my head. Perhaps now its a little quieter, but I know the noise will be back soon. Like writer’s block it’s all in the mind. 

I can’t…

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

I can remember George Lewis and how the room smelled of smoke and beer and sweat. Breathing deep I can remember being up so very high and seeing the top of my Dad’s head. I can’t remember why I was on George Lewis’s shoulders when I was two years old, only the persistent rumbling noise; shapes, shadows dancing random across my eyes. Maybe the pictures were real, maybe not.

I can remember later in the street feeding the rag and bone man’s piebald horse. The horse couldn’t see me unless I stood front of him and my mother wouldn’t let me do that. She didn’t understand that the blinkers blocked the view or how the scent and heat of his shining black and white coat embraced me. I stared up not down, breathing deep. I never saw what Dad helped the toothless rag and bone man load up onto his cart. I can remember too the meandering echoes of Billie Holiday and New Orleans jazz. 

I can remember much later standing on the corner of Cambridge Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue waiting for you. Looking. Would I know you now that you are old, would you know me now that I am nineteen? And then there you were, I saw you. I watched you looking furtive and anxious and guilty. But for whom the guilt? Maybe for all of us. Then we sat awkward and afraid of each other, no mention of sitting on a man’s shoulders or wanting to look a piebald horse in the eye. It was just uncomfortable words passing as conversation between a lonely daughter and her estranged father. The girl was unacknowledged. The man was unknown. They were anonymous, cloaked a hidden shared yearning, wanted none of this to be true, wanted that none of it had happened.

But it had; it could only keep on happening unless the pattern changed. She wanted it but he didn’t. “It was a long time ago.” Denial, hiding, blocking, rejection. Rejection again, but that wasn’t true either, just the thing he knew he had to do. There were other considerations, other truths, other hearts he must not let break.  

The sounds and chaos of emotions grown and slowly settled over many years, over many sad walks around Cambridge Circus, over many times in the 100 Club and the Pizza Express in Soho. The tears in the dark, the heaving gulping sobs, the weeping and slow tears for what was so long gone, were ceased. The laughter came back, the joy of hearing him play, of seeing faces smiling from the past. “It should never have happened” Monty said. And then Dad died. And no it never should have happened but it did and out of destruction he had build much more. He had given something to share, something of love remembered.

A new CD with tracks from 1959. Dad on drums and George Lewis on clarinet. Listen to it? Absolutely. But not just yet. I can’t …

The Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival 2024

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The Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival is coming up. It’s only the third year running for this event, but #twLitFest has some impressive headliners: Michael Ball, Michael Palin and others not called Michael. The programme is organised by genre with sessions at various venues in Tunbridge Wells, from the 9th to the 12th May, 2024. Organisers expect to welcome more than the 5,000 visitors who came last year.

Literary festivals are supposed to be a bookish version of a musical festival, but they are not quite the same. There’s much less mud involved and at a music festival it’s more likely that most people have already shelled out for the work of the performers. A music festival is more like a two way thank you: thanks for buying my records, thanks for making those records. It’s a celebration of an intimate and shared relationship, whereas a literary festival is primarily about promoting books and networking. A literary festival puts authors in front of readers in the hope that they will buy, so the focus is squarely on the authors. But a literary festival should be as much about readers, because readers are the market and they are increasingly oversupplied.

Let’s not forget that everything to do with publishing, music or books, is a business. Whether it’s books, magazines, newspapers or albums, the bottom line is money: money funds production, marketing and distribution. With books the route to the money can be especially slow and meandering; the connecting lines are convoluted and often quite entangled. There are many interests involved and many slow processes from the authors and writing, to agents and editors, proof readers and publishers, designers, production, marketing people and publicists. All these interests should get as involved in literary festivals as they possibly can, because this is where readers rove about and the readers are the ones who part with their cash for the books they want.

Authors take part in a literary festival to get exposure, to entertain and to sell. Exposure helps sales of current titles and smooths the route into the charts for upcoming titles. This is part of what the celeb lit culture is all about. Each showcase is an investment for the next book, reducing risks associated with the author and their work. In this context, a famous children’s author can do a completely irrelevant and random stand-up routine, knowing it will give a boost to sales of an upcoming, as yet unwritten, memoir or gothic novel. 

The literary festival model could be about more than celeb profiles, like taking risks with new writing, like engaging readers more actively. Why not throw in moderated panel discussions about things readers care about: new authors, reviews, book lengths, demographics. Live debates would be a good addition, with big names getting involved rather than just passing through. A celebration of story telling, imagination and points of view from the ordinary to the outrageous, encourages readers to get involved. All of this involves risk.

Risk is fundamental to any business investment but the book business is pretty risk averse, whether it is into new authors or even coming to events like the Tunbridge Wells Literary Festival. The days when publishers took risks are long gone. Most of them sit behind layers of corporate interests far from the places where readers roam. Getting up close and personal with readers at a regional literary festival might make an interesting change for them. And a little more risk from publishers might make for a more interesting book business for everyone else. 

English as she is spoke

Laurel Lindström 2 Comments

English has played quite a role in spreading culture, commerce and other things beginning with c across the globe. The language owes much of its success to its habit of agglomerating new words and meanings. And the fact that the English are too lazy to learn other languages. They believe that speaking English at volume will do the trick. It doesn’t. English speakers prefer to pinch words from other languages and make them work, often very effectively. Pyjamas from Hindi, zeitgest from German, ombudsman from Swedish, schmuck from Yiddish, divan from Arabic, croissant from French. You get the idea. English is a collection of words from other languages, pronounced wrong. Things are more complicated and far more creative with Cockney rhyming slang, but that’s for another day. 

The greediness for new words that makes English so dynamic isn’t matched by its ability to care for words; we let them get messed up and mangled without much of a fight. We allow bits of our language to fall into dereliction, and never think about why those bits have been relicted. We forget to use words even though they break no rules. Do you ever feel gruntled basking in the sun’s warmth instead of disgruntled because of the coolth?

Situations and people we don’t expect to run into can be very disarming but when we are expecting to see them we rarely feel a sense of arming. And if it’s hench people or environments we’d prefer to avoid, we can be pretty ruthless about getting ourselves elsewhere. If we change our minds we surely return with ruth. Except we don’t, even if we have decided that the hench people are couth rather than uncouth and that places are lapidated rather than dilapidated. Actually that one’s a bit of a cheat. To lapidate means to stone to death. But onwards.

First impressions can be accurate or deceptive and what you think is an accurate first impression might actually have misled you into some sort of false confidence. It might not take much to misle you; a person’s demeanour (they might have meanour, but we don’t mention that) and manner depends on the impression they want to give. How devastated we feel when we discover they’re a crashing bore depends on the circs. There’s only so much chat about the best place to get an MOT in Ireland one can take (Belfast apparently). Once you’ve regained consciousness walk away. The sense of devastation gone and feeling fully vastated, you’ll be ready to share alternative hospitality. Unless, or is that less, the encounter has left you hospitalised.

Unlike structured languages like German or Swedish, or even French, the English language is unruly and wayward. The collective linguistic naughtiness of some two billion speakers makes of English a perpetual chaos. Few people are aware of inventing words, yet still English vocabulary blossoms with no trammel whatsoever. Unruly but consistently inventive, it’s got some 170,000 words in usage. Most people work with 20,000 to 30,000. Unlike the rule driven Swedes and Germans, English speakers are not ruly, they are rule breakers. From the messy growth of English vocabulary we can infer that English is a bonkers language. Or is that a verb usage too fer?

Part 1 of Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol

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This is one of my favourite poems and one that clings especially tight in these strange times. I am sure you will enjoy it:

Ballad of Reading Gaol

1

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
‘THAT FELLOW’S GOT TO SWING.’

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame
On a day of dark disgrace,
Nor have a noose about his neck,
Nor a cloth upon his face,
Nor drop feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty space.

He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see
Dread figures throng his room,
The shivering Chaplain robed in white,
The Sheriff stern with gloom,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one’s throat, before
The hangman with his gardener’s gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear
The Burial Office read,
Nor, while the terror of his soul
Tells him he is not dead,
Cross his own coffin, as he moves
Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air
Through a little roof of glass:
He does not pray with lips of clay
For his agony to pass;
Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek
The kiss of Caiaphas.

… he was the Jewish high priest during the years of Jesus’ ministry and apparently plotted his murder.