Little and Great Bookham

Miniscule marks on a map pinpoint their location,

Just south of the London conurbation,

Little and Great Bookham have quite a story to tell.

From the time of the Domesday Book, 

So many illustrious and infamous inhabitants who started out, passed through or passed away there. 

I suppose it is not surprising that people who made a living from their writing were drawn

To a place called Bookham

Indeed a few notable writers have spent time there,

There was the poet, the playwright, the profligate and the politician

And that was just one person, 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 

A great deal about him can be and has been written

Jane Austen used to go to stay with her uncle and aunt. 

The Reverend Samuel Cooke of course wrote sermons,

His wife, Cassandra Cooke, like her niece, was also an author.

‘Emma’s’ ‘Highbury’, it’s surmised, was in fact Great Bookham.

Clive Staples Lewis - inventor of The Pevensie children, Mr Tumnus, 

The White Witch and Aslan

Spent his formative years under the tutelage of Mr Kirkpatrick 

While war was waged across the English Channel

  

Not long after, relatively speaking, Newly-wed Prince Albert, later King George VI

And his bride, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later “The Queen Mum”

Spent their honeymoon at Polesden Lacey,

One of Bookham’s three stately mansions.

During the Second World War, 

In another of Bookham’s great houses, Eastwick Park to be precise,

Canadian Armed Forces found accommodation,

As did the King and Queen of Yugoslavia in the Old Rectory.

In 1943, a little boy was born in Great Bookham,

Who grew up to be the bass player and songwriter for Pink Floyd

Roger Waters’ dad left soon after to fight in the war,

 but sadly never returned,as he was killed abroad. 

Though it might seem quite ephemeral, but Louis Essen, Scientist,

Discoverer and calculator of the precise speed of light,

And inventor of the highly accurate measurer of time, 

The atomic clock, ended his time in Bookham.

And with that, I close the book on the yarn of Bookham, Little and Great.

By John Fairlamb © 2025

Tolerance

Daubed on the Berlin Wall - Four Picasso-esque heads

Two are happy smiling faces, looking at each other 

Two faces grumpily look the other way. 

The title of this Mary Mackey artistry - 

(First painted in nineteen-ninety - and then again in oh-nine (2009))

On an historic relic of division 

Tolerance

Carl Popper wrote that unless we’re intolerant of intolerance, tolerance will lose.

But what exactly is Tolerance?

My understanding is that it's the willingness to accept things that we do not like or agree with.

Tolerance is a tool in the hands of the people with power.

It’s they who decide where and when to apply it.

And when they do they expect gratitude and adulation in return.

In other words, it’s a master-servant thing.

The ‘tolerated’ must always “know their place”

And that that tolerance is not irrevocable.

There can be no respect in toleration for when respect enters the room, 

Toleration must change and become acceptance.

Many marginal minorities have sought tolerance,

Never dreaming that the overlords might be capable of more.

Racism, bigotry and prejudice are not halted by tolerance,

They merely go into hiding - but they’re never really out of sight

Even though they think they are.

Tolerance is but a first faltering step in the right direction - towards true unity.

It cannot remain as merely toleration but must grow and develop in acceptance, even love.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

Jewish people were compelled to pay to be tolerated -

With the infamous Tolerance Tax

And even though that specific tax didn’t last forever,

There’s always been a price to pay for the oppressed.

Tolerance in Britain, was the 1967 Sexual Offences Act

That removed anti-sodomy laws 

But that acquiescence came with many caveats,

Such that in 1988, Margaret Thatcher 

Brought in Section 28

Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Islamophobia, Xenophobia - 

Let’s just call it hate - now demands to be accepted.

A luta continua - The Struggle Continues

We must be extremely intolerant of hate

And combat it with LOVE. 

by John Fairlamb (c) 2025

Fact and Opinion

 Fact and Opinion

I was taught that there are two distinct categories of information:

Fact and Opinion.

Fact is what we know to be so,

Observable or at least deducible

It’s the holy grail of any crime detective in solving a case.

Fact is science. Science is facts

As much as we like to think we know that we know that we know,

The truth is, no-one can know all the facts

This leads us to something of a grey area of spirituality and religion. 

Proponents of any religious system hold

That their dogma and doctrines, the content of their holy writ 

Belong in the first category: fact

And teaching of anything different is ‘mere opinion’

Or more harshly - heresy.

One might think that the other category should be

The opposite of fact: falsehood, fiction

But actually the other category is opinion

At least that’s what I think!

You see, there I express my opinion -

You’re free to agree or disagree, as you see fit.

Opinions are an individual’s perception of reality -

It might be correct, in which case the information is also fact.

The one who holds an opinion assume they know the relevant facts

But this is where it becomes problematic

We like to think that we base our opinions on facts.

Opinions can be, and often are, just wrong.

We can be mistaken about the facts or maybe we were misinformed.

Opinions might be based on prejudice.

And this is where opinions become dangerous

Especially when they masquerade as facts.

Wait! There’s another category of information: Misinformation.

The deliberate attempt to misrepresent the facts or conceal them

We also call this propaganda when employed by powerful people

To manipulate the masses.

It’s my opinion that propaganda exists everywhere

And whether it’s governments or individuals who control the media

There’s an agenda that relies upon

People not knowing what’s going on.

This poem is not meant for young people

This poem is not meant for young people

It’s a poem about dreams and aspirations

Of course young people must dream big and aspire

To change the world and make it better

To fly, and as many a school motto does imply,

To aim high!

But this poem is not for young people

We’ve been fed the line: 

You can do anything you want to! You can be whoever you want to be!

But that’s not reality

There comes a point that, for one reason or another

Our long-cherished aspirations are

Simply not within our grasp.

Here’s the hard cold fact:

Life is not a level playing field

We’re not all the same

And it has nothing to do with how hard we work

Whether it’s intellect, looks, physical strength or money in the bank

Some people have more than their fair share while others miss out.

This poem is not a lament

Just because our lives don’t turn out 

as perfect as we might’ve once envisaged

Doesn’t, or shouldn’t mean that all’s lost.

It’s all about what we do with the cards that have been dealt to us

We all admire the people who rise up 

above difficulties in life and achieve a lot. 

You might not have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth

But have you made the best of what you’ve got?

 

Sylvain et Lola

 

They couldn’t be more different:

Sylvain in his sixties and Lola, her twenties

 

But each has known trauma.

 

The older trauma was the younger’s.

Just a child of ten,

Not sure what was happening when

Lola watched his mother go through a “violent depression”.

Could he lose her? – What would happen then?

 

His mum did come through that traumatic time for her, and for him.

 

Sylvain – the violence came much more literally and suddenly

And more recently (sadly homophobia is not dead).

 

Out of nowhere, he was set upon by thugs who threw him to the ground,

Hurled homophobic slurs at him while they kicked and hit his dancer legs with iron bars.

Not young, Sylvain feared for his life.

 

As the two shared their hardest times,

you could tell that the telling was to some degree a reliving

of those awful moments – and tears were not far away.

 

Yet the telling and the tears

both for themselves and for each other

were healing and strengthening.

 

As the two shared their hardest times,

Lola and Sylvain found a solidarity

And they agreed that tough as those experiences were,

They both emerged stronger.

 

Context

Watching Drag Race France – Season three – the sixth episode was a make-over challenge where the contesting queens were assigned an older LGBT person to makeover into a drag character to walk the runway with them. Lola Strega (drag name) was assigned to make-over Sylvain. The poem is about the conversation the two had while Lola did Sylvain’s make-up.

 

If they cancelled Christmas

 

Christmas means something to everyone

Not to say it’s all tinsel and fun,

Some might prefer if it was gone,

For them, not a happy season.

 

Christmas, ostensibly, a Christian holy day:

Jesus, as they like to say,

Is the reason

For the Season.

 

His birth, the Nativity, is what it’s all about

The narrative of what came about

Recounted, reenacted, year in and year out.

We love to tell the story (or is it stories?)

 

Of Mary and her fiancé, Joe and the little donkey, in tow.

Going down to crowded Bethlehem, the stable, the manger,

The angels, shepherds and three kings.

Who cares if it didn’t actually happen in quite the same way.

 

The songs we sing to tell the stories are widely known and sung.

Caroling in the high streets and on the market square,

Also in schools, churches and cathedrals, in fact anywhere.

There are famous carols in many a different tongue.

 

Then there are the meta-Christmas doings,

Cards and presents and Christmas trees,

Decorations and multicoloured LED’s

Turkeys, puddings, mulled wine and mince pies

Gingerbread houses, crackers! What’s the prize?

 

And who could forget Old Saint Nick?

We love pantos, and plays and a good Christmas flick.

Dicken’s Christmas Carol with Scrooge and Tiny Tim,

The Nutcracker Ballet and Midnight Express

 

I’m sure every reader could add things

Of which I’m not aware, or about which I forgot.

But what if for some reason all of it was gone

Christmas banned and prohibited – how’d we cope.

 

How would this change us if every vestige was eliminated?

I imagine and believe that people for whom the belief is real,

Though the paraphernalia might have been taken away,

But the core belief will remain unmoved.

 

My question I believe reaches beyond the merely hypothetical

Conjecture and speaks to our ability to empathise

With people in desperate straights, like people in war situations

Find things that mean a lot are taken away.

 

Sometimes it’s not prohibition but life’s realities

Mean Christmas cannot happen in the same way.

So as we celebrate this festivity, let’s spare a thought and perhaps a prayer

For people finding it tough at this time of year.

 

Hot and Cold

Lying in the hot tub, chilling 

Thinking about temperature:

A good looking person is really hot

But if they're nasty then they're cold as ice

An angry person has a hot temper

And if they're furious, they're fuming.

A popular person is really cool,

but a friendly person is warm hearted.

If you're angry with someone, you may give them the cold shoulder

But if you're in trouble or in charge at work, you're in the hot seat.

A sensitive topic is a hot potato 

But a hot button issue gets everyone talking and definitely arguing.

An addict who wants release may try going cold turkey. 

That is a brave thing to do but they might get cold feet.

Chilling in the hot tub, 

The hot streak of ideas has turned into a trail gone cold

I'd better get out and get dressed

Before I catch a cold!