Baring all

For all the years that I've been writing, complex issues have always been presented completely as metaphor. I shy away from writing about difficult subjects, as I don't want the reader to drown in misery.

But lately I've felt the need to write about losing my otherwise healthy mum prematurely to a nasty and very rare combination of cancers. Her death was a terrible one, and one that I would not wish on an enemy. It happened during 2020, which robbed her of life improving treatment, and those of us caring for her of the support that we so desperately needed. It was lonely and traumatising in so many ways. We buried her with ten of us present, scattered at distant intervals round a massive church. 

Potentially, it makes horrible reading, and who needs that?

Her loss has left me with deep scars, and a fear of what might lie waiting in my genes for me. My way out is usually to write about it. For three years I've coped as best I can, and it is now time. 

I'm facing demons and trying to speak up. I'm lucky enough to be able to test these words in supportive open mic nights, and it was lovely to have words of support from the brilliant Julia Webb, who is writing on some similar subjects, and who told me that it's so important to tackle these subjects, and that more needs to be said. Her affirmation was so valuable.

I've posted this extract from the latest poem before, but it has been let free now...

Day after day, while they came with

News that bloomed worse and worse,

I stood and trembled on my square of carpet,

Like a puppy about to pee.

How will I paint him,

When this ends?

Like me; enamelled on with the finest

Of brushes, only several hairs thick that paint

On a facsimile of a person that sits and

Stands and walks? 

And even talks when it has to

Troubadours Around Town

My little North Norfolk coastal town draws talent up into it like litmus paper. We have renowned artists and writers of all stripes, who have flocked here over the years and settled. Like an East Anglian St Ives. One of them is the poet Peter Pegnall. I've been lucky enough to read at his Bright Scarf poetry nights, which have toured around the world and have now settled on regular nights at the Belfry Centre for Music and Arts in Overstrand. 

For National Poetry Day this year, Bright Scarf took a different turn and put together a group of poets who have read at The Belfry over the past few years. We set off around Sheringham, forming a poetic flash mob to read at various points around town, finishing with a gathering at Sheringham Little Theatre. 

The theme of National Poetry Day this year was 'Refuge', but we also tried to read poems that were appropriate to the places in which we read. It was lovely and unusual, and exhausting. Both physically and emotionally. We startled folk by popping up and declaiming, then moving on. The event ended with a gathering at the Sheringham Little Theatre, with more poets and music.

I was footsore, windswept and inspired, and in need of a massive glass of wine!

Poetry and prose

Making the decision to be more candid; to write things out. Taking the good advice of fellow writers, I'm continuing a series of poems that addresses a very dark time in my life. This takes careful balancing: how to 'write it out' while not burdening your readers with your own misery. It's possible, I know. Lots of people do it.

Having made a start with 'Little Bird', and feeling that it hit the right notes, I'm continuing with 'We All Know How This Ends'. When you know you are to lose one parent, how do you cope with the one left behind? Extract...

Day after day, while they came with

News that bloomed worse and worse,

I stood and trembled on my square of carpet,

Like a puppy about to pee.

 

How will I paint him,

When this ends?

Like me; enamelled on with the finest

Of brushes, only several hairs thick that paint

On a facsimile of a person that sits and

Stands and walks? And even talks when it has to?

I'm also continuing with my long prose piece 'Salt and Bones'. Re-reading my inspiration, Helen Dunmore's 'Talking to the Dead', I'm trying to capture some of her sensuous way of writing. That is the book I wish I had written, and I am absorbed by it. Helen was a poet too, and I love the way poets write prose. I struggle to write at length. Forty lines is my usual. 'Salt and Bones' is the story of Rachel and Brendan, their long and unusual relationship as the parents of Kate and grandparents of Amy, while never having married and being married to other people. When they realise Kate is missing, they need to look at the people in their lives and how they might be involved. Extract...

‘She’s asleep. She’s a treasure, Rachel. You’ve done a fantastic job with her. Just like you did with Kate.’ I look at him. ‘Really. You did a great job with her too. Kate is responsible for her own actions. Nobody has ever blamed you for her. Least of all me.’ The damp has settled on the house. It’s always colder here at night than inland. He shivers a little, with tiredness more than the cold, and rubs his arms. He’s too big for the room. ‘I’ve never understood why you took this place on, Rachel. It’s nearly over the edge. I’m terrified each time there’s a storm in case you’re both chucked out onto the beach. If you couldn’t afford to buy somewhere, you only had to ask. Especially now. Angela has said the same thing. We can find some money from the sale of the Greenwich house.’

‘Not that it’s really any of your business, but I could afford to buy something. Especially out here. You know that Carey’s money would go a long way here. It’s not Greenwich. They practically give the houses away on this bit of the coast. There’s nothing here; as you like to point out.’ I move over to the window. ‘But who wouldn’t want this view? Until I talk the owner into selling it, I’m stuck renting.’

‘I don’t want you to use all of Carey’s money. He meant you to have that to live on. I told him that I’d help you out as much as possible. You know that I promised him.’

Brendan’s face clouds as he talks about Carey. He was very fond of my late husband, and the doctor in him has never got over the fact that Carey couldn’t be saved. Brendan hounded every expert he could find. They colluded, the two of them, making a united front to shield me from the tsunami of grief that was rolling irreversibly towards me. I turn to look at the vast dark that I fled to after I couldn’t stand to be in our home anymore. All that came with me were his paintings. Big, quiet slabs of pale colour that hover on the canvas. Calm; like him.

Brendan comes over to stand behind me. He slips his arms around my waist and pulls me towards him, so I’m leaning against him. It’s comfortable. Familiar. I wrap my arms around his, and we look at the black night, and our own reflections in the window. I think about how often over thirty years that we’ve stood like this. He smells of brandy, as he leans down to put his cheek against the side of my head. His eyes are closed, and he looks ready for sleep. I know him better than that, though. I reach up behind me to stroke his cheek.

‘It’s late. Come to bed.’

Little Bird

After a couple of years of attending poetry nights regularly, and listening to a range of poets from very well known to almost beginners, I've tried to learn a lot. Both in the way I deliver poems and how I write them. My poems are usually metaphorical, or allegorical, retellings of my own feelings and experiences, and the more terrible ones are buried deeper within the folds.

I've always felt that it's not much fun for an audience to hear your pain. But sometimes experiences need to be 'written out'. Especially when that is how you deal with these things. A painter would do it.

So, I did it. And wrote a poem about how my mum, in her final few days, mistook her death rattle for the sound of a bird. I allowed her to think that it was. At the end, her mum came to her, as did my late mother-in-law. The poem is called Little Bird, and I can't share it in its entirety as it has gone out for submission with several others. Hopefully it will fly.

A chance meeting today with Peter Pegnall, the poet who ring-masters these events, led him to tell me that it's good to be more candid. Not to hide so much behind metaphor. And that this will allow me to change and grow as a poet. I value his advice.

The little bird stayed another day

And another and into a third.

Until at that day's close

Her mother came...

Salt and Bones

Several summers ago, when life was a battle with lockdown, imminent bereavement, terrible isolation and constant fear, a walk on the beach with my daughter sparked the seed of a little bit of prose that I thought could amount to something 

The year that was cauterised my creativity. This got shelved, along with emerging poems. I also felt it couldn't be maintained in the first person. So, I'm writing more, in the third person. Or I might give each character their own voice. Who knows ...?

I can picture a photograph I took of a wrecked boat at Blakeney on the cover. It is working under the title of Salt and Bones. It is about landscape and passion and living...

'...Rachel often wishes she could paint. This coast draws painters up from inland like litmus paper, where they settle and try to capture the pure essence of the place in pigment, and love. Galleries flourish, and art trails. Every old cottage seems to have someone in a fisherman's slop standing at an easel. It is unrelentingly beautiful here.'

A little knowledge

Sometimes life gets in the way. The ease with which I used to channel words that came to me into halfway decent poems has been knocked by a particularly harsh few years. It's easy to blame circumstances rather than your own lack of application, but I've been doing this for enough years to know.

And sometimes, all you need is to find a little phrase, hidden in a pile of scribbles, to make a little spark catch. I'm hopeful this time, and regular poetry nights at the wonderful Belfry Centre in the little coastal village of Overstrand, give me deadlines.

We'll see...

A Case of You

 A Case of You

Another song as poem. This is definitely one of my all-time favourites, and if anyone could sing Joni's songs well apart from her, I'd sing it all the time. I've listened to this song whenever my heart hurts for decades, or just because it suits my mood, and I wish that I could 'write things out' as well as Joni does.

It makes me think, as ever; what the hell would we do, as humans, without art? 

A Case of You (link to YouTube)

Just before our love got lost you said
"I am as constant as a northern star"
And I said, "Constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar"

On the back of a cartoon coaster
In the blue TV screen light
I drew a map of Canada
Oh, Canada
With your face sketched on it twice

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh, I would still be on my feet

Oh, I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
I'm frightened by the devil
And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid

I remember that time you told me
You said, "Love is touching souls"
Surely you touched mine
'Cause part of you pours out of me
In these lines from time to time

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said, "Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"

Oh, but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter
Bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

A late apprenticeship

 

I've been writing poetry for 35 years, have published and performed, and my poetry even helped me get a First for my degree. Getting up to take part in the Open Mic parts of the Bright Scarf nights at The Belfry, then being given my own 'support' slot, has shown me that I still have huge amounts to learn. How to read in a way that gives the listener time to absorb the many things going on in my poems. A little explanation -- throwing the audience a bone. Like the way in which a little information about the things that inspire a painter allow you to get behind their art. I thought I knew how to 'read' my poems. I have a way to go.

Performance

I've had the pleasure, over recent months, of reading poems during the 'poems from the audience' section of Peter Pegnall's Bright Scarf poetry and music nights at The Belfry Centre for Music and Arts in Overstrand. I was honoured to be invited by Peter to read a longer selection of poems in support of the very well-known poet Naomi Foyle. It was an evening of hard acts to follow, with amazingly talented poets and musicians going before me. It has been a long time since I've had to read more than a few poems at a time, and I'm not a natural at putting together a 'set list', being the unassuming sort. But I did it, and enjoyed it, and have to now try to not dissect all the things I could've done better. Isn't that always what we do?

We learn to carry on through the grieving

More songs as poems... Circumstances change the way you see any creativity. I loved this song before I had to live with loss. Over the past few years I've learned to carry on through the grieving. Simply putting one foot in front of the other. Existing only. Loss shows you the secrets people die with, either through their own design, or because they are no longer there to tell you what they feel. It is a very hard lesson to learn, and to live with. Songs help me; always. In the darkest winter of bereavement and lockdown, this song rang so incredibly true.

Smoke Fairies - Storm Song - YouTube

 

The storm came and tore leaves down
And the branches ached out loud
Like they were screaming
All night the wind took hold
And shook this hollow house
And woke the demons
And I knew I wasn't right in the head

The letter hadn't come
The one you sent before you had to leave me
And I'm never going to know what it said

Some things are secrets people die with
Some things are secrets people die with

At first light a lonesome bird
Sang a song of brooding pain
To fain believing
And I thought about the way
We learn to carry on through the grieving
And the leaves still cling to the evergreens

Some things...

Blue

This song has been accompanying me for days. Published only a day after I was born, the album released pretty much when I was, this music has been a part of my life for a long time. I'm a sucker for a concept album, which I've always thought of this as. A circular journey around everything that can hurt and heal your heart.

I've walked with this song in my ears, in the blue landscape of snow, whilst working my way through isolation and bereavement, working and a skewed way of life that bows to nothing we hold dear. I've bought the sheet music and picked my way through very little bits of it, though Joni's songs are very difficult to sing unless you're her...

Blue (link to song)

Blue, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey Blue, here is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Well there're so many sinking now
You've got to keep thinking
You can make it thru these waves
Acid, booze, and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs lots of laughs
Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue I love you

Blue here is a shell for you
Inside you'll hear a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me

© April 20, 1971; Joni Mitchell Pub Corp

Learning to write prose

 As a poet, I write very concisely. Every word means something. Over recent years I've started to write longer pieces. Short plays. Longer poems and spoken word pieces. The idea of writing a novel, or even a shorter novella, has eluded me. How do you keep writing for that long?

I've always been a reader. I read my grandmother's Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt novels at the age of seven. Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre at ten. I'd always had a pile of books by my bed. I suppose this is why the past 25 years of my working life has revolved around books. But for the past few years I've found it harder to read. Life is hard, and circumstances take over. It's easier to go to work and then switch off. As I work as a school librarian, this is obviously not ideal.

Over this weird time we've found ourselves in, I've learned to read again. Writing has never been a problem. Writing a novel, or a short novella, has always been an ambition. To have characters who do what you want them to do. Instead of reading someone else's words. 

I wanted to learn to play piano music to accompany my singing. I can't do that and it hurts. I can write words that I love. I can write people that I love. Life is short, and brutal. We need to do things that we love, and love deeply. My novella is underway, and I love the people in it already. I'm excited to see how they progress.

Freesia

More songs as poems. This is one to be listened to loud, through headphones, full of red wine and walking towards the sunset over the sea.

Freesia /Throwing Muses(The song here}

Old home night
You bent like the jackals outside
"I wish" you lisp

What's the matter?
Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Up all night
That city hates you
Won't let you walk right
You list
You kissed your last victim

Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Creep past God
Worth a shot
You deserve it
Times are hard
"I'll drink" you think
What's the matter?
How's your heart?
All night
Eyes bright
Like the jackals outside
"I wish" you lisp

What's the matter?
Don't you like the way
It all went down?

Sunset on the floor
A red and orange doorway
Freesia from the walk home bends down low and you don't know

Rainy Night House

On a rainy day, thinking about a song I used to listen to a lot in my teens, and songwriters as poets, and painters as poets. Which is where Joni Mitchell came in, as she is all of those things. Some of her rhymes can be a bit off the mark, but the whole thing just works.

There is always a song for every day, and every situation I find myself in. It's how I cope. During this whole weird time I've had a growing song list that I listen to when walking. I listen at night with headphones on and music too loud, or drive alone with the music too loud, always remembering it's deafening whenever I have a passenger. I feel deeply, and often cry a lot, which is the effect I would want to have if I'd written those songs. Not to make people sad, but to make them feel too much. I know it's something I could never do, so I give all the credit, all the emotion, to those who can, and do.

This song came to me today when heavy, warm rain started to fall. I used to listen this, taped illegally from a vinyl album I got out of the the Oldham Library record section, loud through headphones after a night out in the rain-soaked streets of Manchester. Like most songs I go back to over and over, the words mean as much as the music. They always do...

Link to the song....  Rainy Night House

It was a rainy night
We took a taxi to your mother's home
She went to Florida and left you
With your father's gun, alone
Upon her small white bed
I fell into a dream
You sat up all the night and watched me
To see, who in the world I might be

I am from the Sunday school
I sing soprano in the upstairs choir
You are a holy man
On the F.M. radio
I sat up all the night and watched thee
To see, who in the world you might be

You called me beautiful
You called your mother, she was very tanned
So you packed your tent and you went
To live out in the Arizona sand
You are a refugee
From a wealthy family
You gave up all the golden factories
To see, who in the world you might be

Creating Through Chaos

I usually document big skies and sunsets and sea states. But in this weird few months I've done it almost obsessively. Turning social media into an online journal. Logging almost every day's sunsets. Talking to myself. Trying to make sense.

In this 'new normal', one of the many buzzwords I loathe, how and why do we keep creating? When we are being steered towards an existence that is purely work, school and home, with few other human interactions, pleasure, or creative outlets.

When everything you know suddenly stops, some parts you don't like are gone from your life, along with other parts you love.

I've felt moments of elation. I've cried myself to sleep often. I've felt happiness and soul-crushing boredom. 

Overall, I've tried to channel it. Into poems, and plays, and making, and slow learning of lovely contemplative piano pieces and making and raising plants from the stone and glass-riddled patch of dull back garden. It helps.

I've created several long pieces meant to be spoken aloud, and from the perspective of isolated women. A new way of working, that gives my often-used fairy tale women a new voice.

from Bluebeard’s Wife

It would cost him nothing

To give me up; to cast me

Aside like an odd shoe.

The old wound he carries

Masks his view of me.

Deep as it is, and scarring.

He will make no wound

Of me: I feel it too,

And share it. He

Has married an equal.

He has taught me well.

Each day he turns

The key and leaves

Me here, in his first

Bride’s dress that we

All must wear, patched

Over, altered for the

Shape of our bodies, the

Length of our hair.

But it fits me well,

Though the mice and

The moths have

Made their meals

Of it. I mean mine

To be the best fit.

from Briar Rose

Consider this: the tantalising sound of the sea;

Heard, but never seen.

And the blackbirds’ violent shouts from the turret walls

Taunting the cat and me.

The gorse is yellowly fat and sweating,

With the honeysuckle ready to burst.

Those fairies gave me many blessings:

Beauty; wisdom; kindness.

So what?

Could one of them not

Have given me the blessing of breathing

In this sweet-scented air without sneezing?

Oh, they turn up at the birth: guaranteed.

Take the gold plate, give out a platitude and vamoose.

No quality control. Of course, a princess will be

Fair and wise and kind. It’s in the job description.

No need for them to bust a gut.

All neatly tied-up and clean cut

And away, after a supper of

Goose and swan. A dainty pigeon

On the side. But there’s always one.

The Johnny-come-lately, the

Ghost at the feast. Turning up

When the bar’s drunk dry and

The party’s at the fag end.

Draft to Publication 3

Came across a draft of a 'found' poem. It always interests me to look back and see how decisions I make along the process of making the poem affect the final piece. When I first started to write poems, I used a manual typewriter (this was about 1986!) and so I could see every draft stage of a poem. Now, mostly I just type over them on screen and all my workings are lost.

I'm not sure why I made the decision to turn 'lightning' into 'lightening' in the published poem, but changing the meaning completely just seemed to work.

My favourite Pablo Neruda poem is included, because it influenced everything I wrote at the time I first made this poem. And the line 'Days, all one kind, go chasing each other' is particularly apt at the moment.

Draft

I love with the punctuality of a rainstorm,
watching your eye’s dismay. Oh, but the song
on the sunny beach, made up as you walk by the rims of anguish –
thinking I'd go into an endless ecstasy for your boozing stride,

waiting to explain to his face in a photograph; a head and I.
The others stand still around. I’d hold all the sea;
a snake coiled in the history of forever.
Love – the lungs stretch their intricate wings.

Memories of the evening; the weft of my lifelong ailment,
the length of our lightning.
A wind still hauls on them –
was held in by the blackbirds.

Published poem

I love with the punctuality of a rainstorm,

Watching your eye's dismay. Oh but the song

On the sunny beach, made up as you walked

By the rims of anguish. Thinking

I'd go into and endless ecstasy for your boozing stride.

I wait to explain to his face in a photograph.

The others stand still around. I'd hold all the sea;

Love -- the lungs stretch their intricate wings.

Memories of the evening;

The weft of my lifelong ailment,

The length of our lightening.

A wind still hauls on them

Held in by the blackbirds.

Here I Love You

Pablo Neruda

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Give me something good that don't get boring....

Word and image... 

I've loved this lyric film for 'Give' by Sound of Rum (click the link), ever since I first saw it. I was first introduced to Kate Tempest through her 'Brand New Ancients' poem piece. Sometimes you read poems that feel as though they've poured out of your own head. There are some by Pablo Neruda and Vasko Popa that make me feel this way. And this is how I felt about 'Give'...  I love word and image and cool music. And this is the perfect combination for me.

Give by Sound of Rum (lyrics by Kate Tempest)

New Tricks and New Frontiers

There are so many things we choose to do to heal our hearts when they feel too much. Poetry has always been my way of making sense of the world. And music that makes my guts hurt, played too loud, always, in the car or through headphones.

I sang for years, all around the country. Competitions, radio, TV, eisteddfods. Part of a mass of beautiful voices. But I've never played, and I can't sight-read. Creating is creating, though, and surely I could learn, I thought. Even at my great age.

It has been a slow process, taking my daughter's lead and learning the piano. Hour after hour of practice, my brain struggling to do two separate things at once. Flying, then crashing to the earth again, my clumsy hands failing to co-ordinate. Then one piece will click, and I'm away. It is beautiful and hurtful and hard and rewarding, like all beautiful and hurtful things are. I still can't sight-read, though...

New Frontiers
More beautiful things: also taking my first small steps into play-writing, with a new theatrical venture with Ashley Burgoyne. Our New Frontiers Theatre Company is in development, with our own one-act plays in the early stages of production. Full details at New Frontiers Theatre Company

Henry Graham

I read only yesterday about the death of poet Henry Graham. As a contributing editor of Ambit, he was responsible for my first professional publication in a journal. A painter, he turned to poetry, as painters often do. Considerably more sweary as a poet than I, he nevertheless picked out some of my poems from the doubtless massive piles of submissions, giving particular notice to Joan of Arc. They eventually took three poems, wanting to give me double page spread, for which I was paid the princely sum of £10. I never cashed the cheque....

Henry Graham's obituary in The Guardian

His reworking of Shelley's Ozymandias is right up my street....

Ozy

I met a traveller in Antiques Land
who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert . . . which somewhat surprised me, and
considering we’d never met before his frown
and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
left me non-plussed, that's not to say filled with dread,
after all buying an antique warming pan with tiny rings
minding my rhyme and meter when this black guy said
without introduction and with a mocking leer:
My name is Ozy man, I dig old ‘tings:
nothing is too unsightly, none beyond repair!
Noting bedside remains, I found I could repay
his colossal neck with a boundless stare
and quite alone he turned and walked away.

Henry Graham

Draft to Publication 2

Some poems arrive fully formed. Some take a more circuitous route. My Found poems take time; from that first jumbling together of my own words and the words of poets and poems I love to making some sense from them. To make them say what I want them to say.

Even at their most metaphorical, they always express something about me, and are never entirely separate. I have to tread carefully, to not overwork and dilute. Sometimes, my final draft undergoes only the tiniest of changes before publication. Sometimes it's for the best, and sometimes I wish I'd left well alone.

Found Poem II from The Sublime & The Ridiculous came to my attention today. My final draft was:

You meet the weather
coming the other way.
I suffer the air.
It is more than love,

this fiery kiss.
This animal sunset.
Words grow in
my silent mouth.

Your stark eyes tell
of the hawk's violence.
The hare's blood.
The bones at the strand line.

And the published piece:

I now wish I'd kept 'Words grow in my silent mouth' as I think this is really what I wanted to say. How so very often you can't say what you want to. I changed 'eyes' to 'pupils' to make the piece more intimate -- to express how it feels to be so close to someone that you see not just their eyes, but the very centre of their eyes and all extreme emotion. The poems say it better than I do. That's why I write them. These poems are raw, and needed to be left. Some poems stand working over. Some just don't....