25 Saturday Jul 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
For shall the poet starve for words
Whilst shivering in the rain?
And will he drown of silence
By the wetting of this brain?
Or could he turn to pen and air
To make his heart beat fast?
And feed himself on visions
So his thirst is quenched at last
And so I’ll not defend my words
As poets sometimes do.
The words of senses sown,
To the senses are due
Walsall (12.VII.75)
24 Wednesday Jun 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
The BP Portrait Awards
You told us to lock eyes,
Get up close and personal;
Be inspired by Hogarth’s words
And if in doubt, swipe right.
But I didn’t expect a face-to-face with Fairfax
Over the Sancerre and sea bass.
But the Roundhead was a better with pike blocks than with banter
And sadly for me he sat impassively
As I munched on burrata and asparagus,
So I talked instead with Karen.
You might have warned us Dr. Schama
That we’d been invited a Game of Thrones theme night dinner
Where House Stuart showed once more how if you win, you lose
And three big names – Strafford, Laud and Charles
Looked down at us with hauteur and as yet their heads,
As we sat below the salt
Contemplating life’s greatest dilemma:
Of being wrong but romantic;
Or being right, but repulsive?
18 Thursday Jun 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
The alchemy of life’s best demonstrations are found
In sudden switchback whirls to happiness,
As when you stumble upon a random piece of heaven
Around an unsuspected turn.
Today Nature envisioned for us the perfect set:
A sky cerulean pan, unblemished and unwashed;
Big trees with names as challenging –
Black Locust, Cockspur, Hawthorn, Slippery Elm
A man-made Garibaldi pointed the way
Beyond the copper glints of water towers in the lunchtime sun.
The audience gathered and seemed the perfect sample
In gender, age and color,
They cradled dogs, stroked touch screens,
Caressed familiar shoulders, checked the progress of probing ants
Or slept off the late night booze on shaded lawns.
Protected by the hawthorn trees, stood the matt black grand
Its veteran keys flanked by plastic buckets – as yet unfilled with either folded notes or metal.
A third up-turned bucket became the seat for Colin Huggins
Our virtuoso in torn jeans, a pork pie hat and the cheery patter
He introduced us first to Frederic Chopin then to Phillip Glass
He holds us all inside his fingers
And in a moment of sweet modulation
We sit within a circle inside a Square
Held In the perfect balance of infinity.
May 2015
17 Sunday May 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
Tags
For Babs
A generous afternoon gave us
Tea and history,
Mystery, romance and war.
We remembered past visits,
Pictured the family line,
Of parents and their children’s children.
The sun returned in splendor after
Hesitant rain,
But the wind blew through wasted staterooms,
And we, high above the court and ditch
Were sentinels of an empty stage,
Waiting to play our part
In rituals of courtly love.
And afterwards, I framed your face in tracery;
You launched a kiss towards me
And became another layer of history
Here, and in miniature somewhere in the cloud.
.
26 Sunday Apr 2015
Posted in poems of place, Poetry
For Alex and Sarah
The slow motion soundtrack of Spring
Is of fervent excavators, insistent sirens, impatient horns
And the clattering treble of a daisy chained kindergarten
On-the-move and cute in red tabards.
Today the advance guard Easter daffodils
Are parading their yellow and green colors
On recovering lawns
Beneath as yet un-resurrected London planes.
In this theater, my seat is in the southern stalls
From where I watch a transitional stage project all this,
But also what has gone before:
Pre-colonial wilderness; retreating bluecoats;
The grieving tears of mourning families in a potter’s field,
The war cries of abolitionists,
The clattering of the elevated ghost train,
Protesting voices for peace and love,
And the sounds of the Midtown zone of No-Go.
Enjoying now the simple comfort of a bistro seat
-Mobile and thus empowering say the philosophers of public space-
I sit cozily inside this waffle-boarded open topped box
Contemplating scarves and sunglasses,
The fine old library, the resting carousel
The stiletto Chrysler, the taller Empire State and above all,
Feeling grateful for the park of William Cullen Bryant.
Poems
20 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in Essays, Marketing Flotsam, The Uselessness of History
How The Value Engineers helped bring the first new food to the world since yoghurt
Breakthroughs are notoriously difficult to bring to market, especially when they involve something simultaneously as basic and yet as culturally significant as food.
But such was the challenge The Value Engineers inherited when it was approached in the early 1980s by a small science start-up in High Wycombe that was funded by two food industry giants: RHM and ICI.
The story had begun 20 years earlier when Lord Rank, convinced that the world was hurtling into a crisis of food supply, tasked his Ph.D.’s with the search for alternative and more nutritionally balanced sources of protein.
Having scoured five continents, it was perhaps ironic that they discovered exactly what they were looking for in a field in Marlow, not very far from their lab in High Wycombe.
It was a tiny plant and because of its microscopic size, they decided to call it myco-protein, and they spent the next 20 years researching its properties and assessing its suitability as a novel food. Myco-protein, when grown and harvested, has the bite and fibrosity of meat but without any of the negative nutritional complications that were becoming the subject of increasing health concerns in the 1980s. It was also an exceptional carrier of flavour. This made myco-protein a first-rate choice as an alternative to meat, especially beef.
After extensive consumer clinical trials, followed by food standards clearance and product development that included partnering with some of the U.K.’s biggest names, myco-protein was soon doing the rounds of the food trade and NPD conferences, describing itself as a Tomorrow’s World next big thing.
If only it was all that easy. Following on from the the disastrous failure of new smoking materials in the 1970s and the frankly indifferent success of soya, the trade proved to be a little sceptical of this new test-tube food. It appeared to be another one of those technologies in search of a market.
By 1983, and having already invested tens of millions of pounds, the main board of RHM showed signs of losing patience. Accordingly, and with a slight air of double or quits, they formed a joint-venture with the bio products division of ICI. Its goal was to build a pilot plant with a small capacity to prove (or otherwise) the existence of real consumer demand for myco-protein. A small executive team was formed to run a budget, make investment decisions and give myco-protein its final commercial chance.
At this point, the TVE founder partners were approached and were asked to pitch for some consultancy against the following essay question:
‘We have a new exciting food technology and a development budget of £1 million. What would you do with the money?’
In the somewhat Spartan accommodation of the Nissen hut where the start-up was based, we told the CEO that the two most important things to sort immediately were to acquire a good quality overhead projector and the best filter coffee machine money could buy, because in order to light the blue touch paper, they were going to be doing a lot late nights and a lot of presentations…
Thus, began the highly successful collaboration between The Value Engineers and what became known as Marlow Foods, together building the brand we all know today as Quorn. Incidentally, Quorn was originally going to be called Origen, but because of complex global naming and legal issues, it was decided to use an existing RHM asset, a regional sauce brand called Quorn, which was then only on sale in the Midlands.
Over the following 10 years Quorn and The Value Engineers grew and grew together.
TVE, acting as Marlow Foods’ primary marketing partner, provided strategic advice on positioning the basic raw material (“A distant relative of the mushroom family…the right food at the right time“), the identification of priority customer segments (J.Sainsbury, Unilever), the development of priority products (Supremes, pieces, sausages minced and even ice cream), all with the development of the appropriate brand architecture and personality.
Following Quorn’s successful launch in the UK in 1985, TVE went on to work with Marlow Foods on product launches in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, and created the innovation roadmap that paved the way for Quorn’s subsequent global development and later business success. Wal-Mart’s recent decision to list Quorn in 2000 US stores shows that what was once considered an unfamiliar niche has finally become part of the food mainstream.
10 Tuesday Mar 2015
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Let’s just not flirt
Or even skirt
Around the issues of our connection.
We’ve swopped and swiped,
Blue-toothed some bytes
And tindered the touch-paper
Of our affection.
No more quip tease
Nor banter, please,
Cease mindful meditation!
My data’s capped, we’re sharing apps
Let’s synchronize some recreation.
So kill mode coquette,
Go full salami, less roquette
It’s time to seize the day.
But should this thought
Still come to naught,
Then as last resort
Please meet my magic spray:
The Lynx Effect (*Known as Axe In France and most of Europe)
13 Friday Feb 2015
Posted in Fiction
I had been slipping in and out of a clammy semi-consciousness for some time when the sound of a streaming morning news show brought a finality to this semi-sentience; I realized my new situation had given me a new problem: an excessively warm room. The bedroom I shared in Armitage with Seb, my brother, had no heating and frequently, no electrical power either. Thucydides, our ancient family cat, was an occasional welcome alternative, but only to the former.
My mind had by now fully rebooted and had switched back to the news report.
“The ceasefire in the Crimea is continuing to hold and the Praesidium has allowed water supplies to flow once more into the Ukraine. Meanwhile Princess Diana and Prince Alexey have returned from their vacation in Shanghai and will host a garden party for lucky VIP guests here in Historyland.’
‘How exciting. Lucky VIPs.’ I muttered and tried to find another content stream.
‘Can I help you with something, Robert Lyttelton?’
It was that female voice again, the ethereal one I had heard late last night when I had finally found my room having click-signed a million forms in exchange for a key. Despite feeling exhausted, I was startled by what seemed to be a woman in my bedsit telling me she was my Digital Assistant and Technology Valet -whatever that was. I said I was tired and asked politely if we could do this another time.
‘Sure. No problem, Rob Lyttleton,’ she said, ‘we can finish set-up later.’
And now this morning, she was telling me this was later.
‘So can I help you with something now, Robert Lyttelton?’ Somehow hearing my full name spoken like that seemed just a bit alien.
‘Perhaps I can stream to the vistel to your left?’
I looked at the wall and saw a full-sized female avatar who (or which?) seemed to be in her mid-20s, about the same age as me.
‘May I give you a simple advice? Just ask me something and I will do what I can to assist you.’
‘Well you could start with your name,’ I said.
‘My name is Alicia Zachery and I’m configured by default to be friendly, straightforward and submissive. Is that to your liking? Other genders and personality types are available to download.’
‘I see,’ I said, playing for time and began to perform a number of body lunges – the standard stretching routine for pike men in Bagot’s Regiment of Foote.
‘Can we talk about this later? For now, I have to get ready for my induction. Do you happen to know what’s in store with the weather today?’
‘If by “store” you mean what the weather outside will be like today, then absolutely, Robert Lyttelton. It is currently a dry, sunny and in fact typical January day. But please note: a frost alert! The minimum temperature will be -4°, and out of the sun you will need a warm coat, scarf and handware. Would you like me to propose a place for a warmful breakfast pause?”
‘Thank you, but no,’ I told her, ‘I am sure I can find my own place for breakfast,’ and smiling to myself I considered just for a moment the idea of ‘warmful handware’.
My next few minutes were spent considering the luxury of an ensuite shower complete with apparently unlimited hot water. A quarter of an hour later, scarfed up and wearing my Bagot Montero cap, I made my way towards the induction meeting. It was indeed a marvellous, crisp and sunny morning as I walked through the Big Cast Zone, the area of Historyland’s campus dedicated to employees and associates. There was already plenty of evidence that I was in a theme park dedicated to history. Just ahead of me, I saw two Native Americans in war paint eating sushi next to a gladiator, complete with trident and net, the latter thrown nonchalantly over his shoulder. To my right there was a larger group of what looked like Middle Kingdom Egyptian Warriors who were working out with a blue track-suited personal trainer whose T-shirt featured a bold letter H in blue.
I followed signs and walked along a dark connecting corridor out of the Cast Zone and into the Grand Piazza, a square lined with arcaded porticos where guests were seated in the sunshine taking breakfast or studying their Tabs. I was looking for Tudor Way. All the main routes in Historyland were named after the world’s great ruling dynasties and had distinctive colours. Tudor Way was the red path and it would take me directly to the Citadel, Historyland’s directorate and management centre. Soon I had found the red path and was walking through a shopping arcade which seemed to have mixed up historical eras in a very curious way, and there at the end of it, I saw the chimneys and gables of the Citadel: Hampton Court on the outside, and vibrant technology hub on the inside with café bar, box office, travel centre and guest waiting area. I noticed a sign to a Cast Zone space that had its own reception area. Here, sitting at a desk looking formidable was a woman called Prudence Piéton. I edged nervously towards her.
‘Good morning. My name is Rob Lyttelton… a new cast member.’ I was hesitating. ‘I arrived yesterday. I am here for my induction.’
Prudence looked at me, consulted her Tab and smiled.
‘Welcome Dr. Lyttelton. I see you arrived from the Pale yesterday and you are here to be our new Historian-in-Residence’
I nodded, which was an unnecessary gesture, because Prudence Pieton was not asking me a question.
‘I am sure you will find everything in Historyland will be very different to the Pale and most interesting for a keen student of history like you. Please take a seat,’ and pointed to a small waiting area. I sat nervously and regretted that I hadn’t taken Alicia’s advice about breakfast, as I was now feeling hungry and a little lightheaded. Then, as if taken in surprise by some bold ambuscade, I saw her for the first time and was completely captivated. It was her short copper hair, the cobalt eyes and that scarf poised so elegantly around her neck. I didn’t know anything then about scarves, but this one looked expensive and was also a proper Roundhead orange. Fortunately, I am glad to say that that the rest of her dress seemed definitely more Cavalier: she wore a corn linen jacket and carried a Tab cased in bronze. Then I noticed her delicate ivory hands and the lime green of her nails. The elevator doors closed and she was gone.
08 Thursday Jan 2015
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Naseby, 2008
A Maytime full of memory,
Of Eurostar and travellers’ tales:
A Provence of insect men not Mayles,
Of Vieux Télégraphe and the other red-nosed,
Big hearted vignobles of Chateauneuf
Captured on a postcard
A tour of the terroir Anderson – proud and comfortable –
Garden, sèjour and library;
A meeting with Mother; sherry proffered but pended,
A lunch of local hams and cheeses, of Harborough curd tarts,
The essence of gentility,
And thence, the battlefield tour.
The Colonel and his Lady
In the Vanguard of our party,
Facing up to the New Model wind
And the opportunism of dragoon’ed trees swaying
Against the cavalier horizon
And at a parallel moment,
Somewhere else in the cloisters of history,
Stand some Moss Close boys in the Lichfield Street flat,
Searching for forgotten Merioneth roman roads,
And there in Tomen Y Mûr’s shadow,
John points out the road for us,
Our faces beam.
Veritas Filia Temporis!
24 Wednesday Dec 2014
Posted in Poetry
Tags
For DCW (1936- 2013)
I wonder what you would have thought
Of this glorious summer of the Car-Park-King?
From the start, I know your instinct would have told you
This was indeed your long lost son of York.
And what would you have made of
The Minster versus Leicester cause celèbre?
No doubt you would have declared for heroic Ebor,
But are no less content to see him lie in honour
Close to where he fell.
But what-oh-what would you have said about
The last Plantagenet’s blond, angelic locks?
Brimming prouder by the family scoop that brought the news,
I see you smiling in your chair.
In life’s simple rhythms, we stumble upon
Enthusiasms we share with people we have lost,
Which in their bitter sweetness, create
The urge for conversation, consolation or both.
Tant Le Desiree
Flotsam and Jetsam 