Folding Up, The South Bull

Too much dithering in the house, picking up books (Lowell's 'History' and Glyn Maxwell's 'On Poetry') in order to defer... what? Going fro a run for one thing. But Maxwell's book gave me an idea for a workshop, which was useful, and Lowell's left me with that wonderful image, which Anthony quoted in the second line of the following short poem (one of his series of 'Hironyms' titled 'Lowell to T.E. Hulme'): 'My mind’s not right, but with my ear to the ground / I heard the bass growl of Hiroshima // And a beating-out of images that enlarge the heart. / Is nothing bad in itself except disorder?'

The run with Lola was useful too, as I managed to get lines/images for another of my 'Unheroic Couplets', the following (untitled, like yesterday's):

Unpatterened, the afternoons/evenings blur
though now I scan each one for a wingbeat signature.

Took a drive out to the South Bull again, where I met a guy I've spoken to before, repacking and tidying up his van with all the food & drinks and coffee-making accoutrements. He was friendly and very generous with his time, letting me shoot quite a few frames of him and his van with its cheerfully-lit interior, and to top it all gave me a lovely cup of free coffee. 

He's been coming here regularly for six years. I asked him if he ever encountered any trouble, staked out here at the end of the Poolbeg edgelands. He said hardly ever, partly because of all the CCTV, but he mentioned one incident, where several cars all pulled in together (like a posse of bad guys in a Western, I thought) and a bevvy of young lads got out and headed straight towards the van. What saved him, he thinks, was that one of the lads said 'I know him. He's alright', or words to that effect. So he served them without bothering to count the change and hightailed it out of there, as I would have.