Welcome to the Armstrong-Dixon Line where North East England based writer Keith Armstrong and artist Peter Dixon share their views on the world and all that surrounds it.
Expect rants, politics, poetry, history, photography and all sorts of........stuff.
I met this wild woman across the Isle of Man, she touched me where a railway was. She took me down to Port Soderick to lay all her dreams on the line. She was a raving girl from Ballasalla, with a compartment for each of my moods. By the time she laughed in Ronaldsway, I was out of my depth with her love. In Ballabeg, she ran over my ricketty words, made me sing with an anxious refrain. Now, I’m missing the great beauty that’s gone, all that warmth and the light in her eyes. If ever I’m back in that Port Erin sun, I’ll chuck her the flowers from this poem.
In a tide of yellow and red, I staggered with a brass band mob at the surging Carnival. I felt the sound of drums and the thud of my head as the girls lifted up their skirts and laughed at me. Crammed into the Bonte Palet with booming frogs, I supped the pouring ale of centuries; I tore myself away from the prancing, leapt into a cab with a cackling driver to make it to the dimmed suburbs. Across this field, you could barely feel the joy and antics of the Brabant people in the town. Down Palestrinastraat, Vivaldistraat, I groped. Along Mozartsingel, past Bachstraat and Chopinstraat to Wagnerlaan, my heart began to ache with the lack of music and dancing. On to Beethovenlaan and Verdistraat to Brucknerstraat, the curtains twitching as I staggered, with folk songs gone and my tongue emptied of lyrics. To Schubertsingel and, at last, Cesar Francklaan, the sudden silence of a drowned village, an orchestra shot dead with the bullets of icy tears from blind windows, sullen neighbours and their droning hymns.
