Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

I never heard  a welder laugh before noon  until   I dropped an apple at 0700  and it rolled  towards  him. Ha       ha            ha, You dropped               your apple.  I can show you  so much life,  I told her Life more honest  than the blush of a laugh from a rolling apple.

In the 6am warm up,  shrug off the injustice of failing to recall the first of the dreams you'll have about her,  and meet the road. Make it want to feel the tapestry that exists in the kingdom within your chest, and run it in,  until the earth itself amends the terms of its inheritance. 

It was the fight that was going to hand Carl Froch the glue that would seal his boxing legacy.  A domestic fight against a man eleven years his junior.  George Groves had never fought for a world title, while this was Froch's eleventh consecutive world title fight.  Froch: lightening-fast, hard as nails, granite-chinned with bombs in both hands.  Our best pound-for-pound fighter who can count himself among only a handful of British boxers who went to America and won.  And George Groves.  Who'd lost Adam Booth, his trainer, a few weeks earlier because he was more interested in training David Haye, his now-retired stablemate.  Groves.  Unbeaten, but only so up to commonwealth level.  A chin largely untested.  Mortal enemy of James Degale, who thinks he's ugly, but whom Groves had beaten as an amateur and as a professional.  But Degale is no Froch.  Froch came second in a super middleweight contest to end all others: The Super Si...

for L.C You will try and play down what you think he thinks you mean to him, and it is true when you say that every man awaits his great shift in purpose. I have seen many of them stood dockside,  fixed, anachronistic and stowaway still, pleading stoic to be woven into The Sea. But he is not that man.  And this is not his adventure.  Plain sight tells from the tension that unwinds from around his eyes when he sees you   that one day he will find a ship  for the simple unnautical adventure  of telling you that she bears your name, and will go on to describe it to you in such detail  that you will dream he brings it home and will warn him when he sails it too close to the fire.  

You'll try and play down  what you think he thinks you mean to him, but you know he needs you,  as you him,  because you have watched him  when he didn't know you were watching and have have felt the tension unspool around him  when he sees you. Whoever you are, and wherever you were, and whatever it was  you did it with - the result is enough to shock a passerby  from the unmistakable, uncensored evidence of calmness in his eye.

You invariably chose to have it sent to your parents' address - safer, yes, but a way of convincing them that your social status lies somewhere  between F ailure and C onqueror  of Language . So when your mother calls to say, You've received a letter,  you'll know by the way she says Letter that she's not talking The AA or Boots Opticians. The address is handwritten, she'll whisper. Of course, she'll know  your next question  because  you've asked it before:  Does it look like my handwriting? She knows your handwriting.  She's probably kept the other  stamp-addressed envelopes that you'd opened when you still had light in your eyes. but she'll say I cannot say for sure . Don't get your hopes up. As a general rule of thumb, if you can still remember  your mother's first name,  it's much, much too soon.  

It took a while, but summer has well and truly arrived.  The pale-faced pessimists who said that summer would never come now languish, fan-swept, in the coolest room in their houses.  These are the same pessimists who never believed we would find ourselves with a British Wimbledon Champion come summer's end.  They will have to save their pent up mockery for another grand slam.  Unfortunately for them, and as an extension to celebrations of last year, this summer has been another flag waver's paradise.  Just when we thought we'd expelled enough patriotism for one decade after the Queen's Golden Jubilee and The London Games, along comes 2013, or (for the optimist among us): 2012+1, or simply: The Update.  It's as good as any Super Saturday.  So we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of music festival season.  This week is book-ended by two of my favourite festivals: 2000trees, which enjoyed wall-to-wall sunshine last weekend, and Latitude thi...

I offer my arm as a right angle, and in its taking, you learn, perhaps, through the calm  pulse  of our stroll, the way in which, or the sense of the way in which my hip is set. 

Imagine for a second that I am a cyclist on the final stage of The Vuelta a   Bolivia .  I have climbed to the summit of 4,496 metres above sea level, through the high plains of Altiplano, Lake Titicaca and finally   La Paz .  It is the highest and arguably the most challenging tour on the cycling calendar.  When I first arrived, the locals had told me in hand expressions and broken English that the summit climb would make my lungs scream.  This morning, I saw Padre Perez anoint every ambulance with holy water.  Such is its intensity, I’m told he does it every morning during the tour.  I know the task ahead, but knowing this did little to settle my nerves.  The apprehension mostly leaves me when I’m on the road.  All I can do now is focus on the game plan and the wheel of the man in front.  This is the final stage.  For all the pain a rider has to push through on a climb at altitude, we always hope the final ascent ...

When you frown, your face screws into a knot not dissimilar to that of a clove hitch, though to compare you to a knot as useful as this one would be to labour it with a comparison it doesn’t deserve.  There is beauty in seeing a well-groomed, happy, obedient horse tied neatly to a hitching post outside of a saloon. There is no beauty in your frown. In fact, I do not know a horse, rope or post in history that has been afflicted with the separate or collective ugliness  of your scowl. I am reasonably confident of this supposition and I will stand by it. However, I must distance myself from objectifying matters, because it is an overly simplistic device used to derive an element of humour from a place where there absolutely is none. And therein lies my problem.  Or rather, your problem. So for fear of comparing you to something marginally favourable, it is only fair that I compare you to yourself, because the only thing that comes close...

I'm currently reading Matthew Sweeney's 'Black Moon'.  Sweeney has been one of my favourite poets ever since I discovered his prize-winning poem, ' The History of Glassblowing ' a few years ago.  For me, it's his sense of humour that gives his poetry lasting appeal.  It's inventive and often fantastical, and his poems are a real joy to read.  Humour in poetry requires a very light touch for it to work on more than one level, but Sweeney does this with incredible skill.  As a result, his humorous poems are understated enough to avoid becoming distracting or intrusive.  'How to Win the Lottery' is taken from his 2007 collection, Black Moon, and is absolutely an example of one such poem. 

Nurse: Before you give blood, I've just got to ask you a few questions. Me: Okay. Nurse: Have you done any strenuous exercise today?  Me: Yes-I mean no. By yes I mean no. Well, maybe. Nurse: Which one is it?  Me: It's a possibly-but-pretty-please-I'd-still-like-to-give-blood. Is that an option on your sheet? Nurse: Mr Wiggins, I'm going to have to press you for a straight answer. Me: It depends how you define strenuous. Nurse: What did you do?  Me: I went on a small bike ride. Nurse: How small?  Me: A medium-sized small. I cycled back from Cheltenham. You see, I don't have a car at the moment. Nurse: How far did you cycle?  Me: It's not as much about- Nurse: Sir, how far did you cycle?  Me: Five miles, give or take. Nurse: Give or take?  Me: Um, now let's see. No, it was five miles exactly.  Nurse: And how fast did you cycle?  Me: Now, you see: that's the thing. I had to rush back to make this appointment. Nurse: How long did you cycle for?...

Thursday 26 th    July 2012 The Lonely Planet book states that Kurama is a retreat for Kyotoites who need to get away from the pressures of the city.  The receptionist at J-Hoppers Hostel in Kyoto said that it would be a lot cooler there, and indeed it was: the higher altitude (Mount Kurama rises to  1,916 feet)  in an area of little congestion allowed us at least a little respite from the overwhelming heat of Kyoto that has tormented us since we've arrived.  The train weaved the 12 kilometres north-west through dense forest to the small rural town of Kurama.  You can understand why the residents of Kyoto City like it so much.  For one thing, the train provides a transition from big city to small rural town that is as soothing and restorative as any journey I've ever experienced.  The vast green borders that the train cuts through allows the traveller - Kyoto resident or otherwise - a much-needed period of reflection before the real ...

I must join Matt Merritt at Polyolbion in drawing attention to Michelle McGrane's blog, Peony Moon .  In her latest entry, Michelle interviews Helen Ivory in which she talks about the inspiration behind her latest collection, 'Waiting for Bluebeard' (published by Bloodaxe Books, 2013).  That interview can be found here .  I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Helen Ivory as she was kind enough to publish one of my poems on her extremely well-regarded poetry webzine, Ink, Sweat and Tears .  I urge everyone to take a look.   The interview concludes with a picture of a mouse reading one of Helen's poems.  What more could you want?          

I know my brother will agree with me when I say that we both had a blissfully happy childhood, and this was in no small part due to nan.  She was a strong woman: strong-willed, strong-minded.  Strong was a regular prefix.  But she also doted on us with that strength and we doted back.  Another of her many good qualities was her generosity, which as a kid translated to pocket money.  Such was this generosity that receiving pocket money from her – particularly during her final years – was like receiving a tax-free second income.   Nan was someone who saw things plainly - sometimes a little too plainly, though sometimes not.  Her methods, also, were occasionally received with suspicion, such as the time when I was eight or nine.  We were having tea around nan and granddad’s.  My hands needed to be clean for inspection at cub scouts later that evening and soap wasn’t doing a good enough job of removing the ink I’d got on them.  So Nan ...

Hippocampus: it projects rostrally. Write something about the brain – not like a technical poem, but one pertaining to the brain. The lateral geniculate nucleus is part of the thalamus, a mid-brain structure that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, amongst other functions, such as the generation of neuronal oscillations, and it’s also a target for deep brain stimulation, which is a treatment designed to attenuate resting tremor in Parkinson’s Disease. Russians managed to transplant the head of a dog onto the back of another dog, which could blink. Head transplants are a thing of the future.  Take the head off a paraplegic and swap it with the head of a comatose patient. Have you seen Face/Off?  Basically, that film , but instead of the face, it’s the head. 

Dad!  Dad!...I can't work it!...I've read the manual...It has loads of foreign words...I am reading the English section!...Words like "Mains Charger" and "Socket"...It sounds unreasonable to me...Wait for what?...Power?...Honestly, dad.  You aren't making any sense...How on earth can they expect me to wait?...And what are these dangly white things?...Ear what?...You are joking, right?...There is no way I am putting those  in there ...And this is something granddad did for fun?...I'm just saying it's unprincipled...All I'm saying is that perhaps that fruit company should have stuck to making fruit.           

Today's cryptic crossword in today's Citizen went better than expected.  This is usually slightly more difficult than The Sun's cryptic, and I'm usually left struggling after half a dozen clues.  But today I managed to do half of it: 12/24.  I sat in the garden while I did it, so perhaps it was a combination of sunny weather (rather restorative after such a long winter!) and St. George's Day - a dragon of a puzzle, albeit half-slayed.  A few clues in particular made me chuckle: 23a: Right in the middle of the cemetery (4,6) Answer: Dead Centre As far as cryptic clues go, this was quite a straightforward one.  Easy to work out but a nice little pay off.   16d: Forty five and not yet married? (6) Answer: Single As you can see from my scribbling at the bottom, numbers within clues usually suggests that roman numerals should be used, so I wrote "XLV" to see how that would fit into the answer. Then it dawned on me that a 45 is a r...