‘The Domain’

Welcome to extracts from Paul’s 2020 book ‘The Domain’

Here are some excerpts from the book, if you enjoy them, please consider buying the book £9.99 plus p&p.

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Email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

Text: +44 (0)7813 574778

The Summer of Love (1967)

“Come on… square go, nae chibs.” * Their leader sneered at me with undisguised distain.

I had been surprised on some waste ground near my home by those whose faith was led from Rome and knew straight away that any negotiation would be in vain with this particular inquisition.

“Come on, ya poof…” He snarled, and I realised my pink shirt with ringed cravat at its open neck, that I thought so trendy, was a flagrant provocation to these sink estate zealots with their razor-cuts, Celtic shirts, biroed jeans and menacingly shiny boots.

My strange clothes and long hair marked me out as so blatant a heretic, that no repentance or pleading for mercy could possibly be countenanced, and I would most assuredly deserve the full wrath of their retribution.

When they eventually advanced at my continuing silence, like all martyrs, I felt my fear turn into an obstinate defiance;

So as the first fist and kick hit home, I didn’t even try to respond, but determined not to cry out, stood my ground and simply stared beyond them at the cloudless sky.

Bloody and bruised, with no shirt left, at last I staggered home; to the horror of my mother and the shame for not ‘sticking up for myself’ of my father.

But despite the pain that swelled at every turn I smiled inside as I lay upon my bed, in the knowledge that I had found the courage somewhere not to strike a blow;

And at the obvious truth which could not be denied, that ‘The Summer of Love’ was just another summer in Glasgow.

* Glaswegian slang: “…fair fight, no knives.”

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The October Dance

The starlings billowed darkly in pointillist clouds against the autumn sky; And as the lovers watched them rise and fall as one, both silently recalled that still evening long ago, when they first kissed at the October dance.

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Twelve golden flowers

Outside my window flurries of new foliage fall, blown down prematurely from their green clouds of shrub and tree by a bitter wind;

And in the kitchen yard their litter is accumulating now in fresh mounds over the rich mulch of my neglect.

But twelve golden flowers rise pristine above its wall, each one haloed in sunlight like herald angels from a summer to come, proclaiming their glad tidings of a beauty so serene.

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