Once a month, an excellent newsletter comes through the letterbox of all lucky Lewes residents – mine arrived today and, to be honest, I’d forgotten all about my role in this month’s issue.

Because Lewes is a relatively civilised town, our local newsletter runs a monthly poetry page and today it’s my turn to be featured within its pages with the reprinting of my Fibonacci poem, George Harrison (published last year by Musepie Press in the Fib Review).

It commemorates my meeting with George, one of the Fab Four, during my television days. Seeing it again brings back some vivid memories of the days when I was lucky enough to meet most of The Beatles.

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This isn’t the first time that I’ve written about my Fibonacci poetry on these pages but today, I’m particularly thrilled that I have ten new poems published in The Fib Review #19 which came out over the weekend. These poems, written to a syllable count taking self-imposed rules from the medieval Italian arithmetician, Leonardo Fibonacci, the so-called Fibonacci Sequence when a pattern is seen in the relationship between  numbers written to the pattern 1: 1 : 2 : 3 : 5 : 8 :13 : 21 : 34  etc. etc.  At it’s simplest the pattern means that each number is the sum of the previous two but you can, of course, reverse the order and do a whole number of variations. I’ve loved imposing this discipline on my poetry and now, thanks to the continuing support of The Fib Review‘s editor Mary-Jane Grandinetti, I have been writing ‘Fibs’ for over five years, forty-five of them published in fifteen consecutive issues of The Fib Review, the World’s leading Fibonacci publisher. Heres’ the link where you will find my ten poems plus a whole lot more.  http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/index.html

This summer I’ve been sorting all my Fibonacci poetry into some kind of order, there are now 62 of them, and found that they sat together happily enough and, without being a literal narrative, they tell the story of my many brief encounters with people in my personal life but also in the years when I worked in television. Sorting them out and writing some to fill the gaps, it was a bit like putting together a photograph album so, it was not much of a struggle to call the collection, Brief Encounters. Some of the latest poems have been about meetings with famous people, some admired, some feared and some disliked. It’s possibly a form of poetic name-dropping but I hope it adds up to more than that. Not all the encounters were with the famous – some are friends, some strangers and, a few, are imaginary encounters with some of my fears and obsessions.

In Issue 19 of The Fib Review,  four of the ten poems deal with my meetings with the famous – vivid memories all. As all four are now deceased, it seemed like a good idea to memorialise those brief encounters among my latest Fibonacci experiments with minimalism. I hope you’ll enjoy them.

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I never met Ravi Shankar but I loved him dearly like many of my generation. I was one of thousands of people in the West who first listened to Indian music because of him. For me, the great musical discoveries of my late teens were Mahler’s Symphonies, Medieval music, Indian sitar playing and Sgt Pepeer’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They still merge in my mind at times as the sound of the 60s Counter Culture but really they were my coming of age sound tracks.

It is strange that later in my life I should make television programmes and spend some “quality time” with two other great musicians who both spoke of Ravi Shankar with an affection that bordered on love. I spent some time in George Harrison’s London kitchen, the both of us perched on the kitchen unit tops discussing oriental religions and what they meant to him and, in the importance of things, the profound influence of Ravi Shankar. I can still remember the sparkle that came into George Harrison’s eyes during this conversation. I was amazed that, at the end, George apologised and said he hoped he had gone on too much about it all. As if!

I made a number of programmes with the much missed violinist Yehudi Menuhin who made some still famous recordings with the Indian virtuoso. Menuhin was a truly humble man, as was, or so I am told, Ravi Shankar. The meeting of their musical brains was moving and humbling for all of us too. I spoke to Yehudi Menuhin about Ravi Shankar and he said he thought that Shankar was one of the truly great musicians of our time and he then called him, an extraordinary phrase, “the Indian Mozart.”

George and Yehudi shared that mix of celebrity and modesty with firmly held enthusiasms and a lot of personal charm too. They both communicated their love for Ravi Shankar.  I may not have met him myself but I like to think that I almost did.

Here is the man himself and then two other recordings – one with Yehudi Menuhin and the other with George Harrison.

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Well, it’s September and I read somewhere that we are now meteorologically we are in Autumn or Fall if you don’t say Autumn even though the season of Autumn doesn’t really begin until 21st September.   Meteorologically Summer didn’t really exist in these parts in 2012 and is now officially the worst, meteorologically for 100 years so the only difference now between July and September is that the daylight hours will begin to grown shorter. Considering the amount of rain and the low temperatures, my small Lewes garden doesn’t look as bad as I feared it would.

It is actually quite pleasant sitting out there in a coat and scarf and the roses have decided to come back for a final flush too.

I heard on the radio that warmer weather is on its way, about time too, but whether I like it or not, it is beginning to feel like Autumn which always used to mean back to school. I have a lot of things to do this September so I’m not complaining – the less the heat, the less the distractions.

I did get some good news this morning too about the garden. The Sussex Archaeological Society who own the ancient Brach Mount that borders the garden have written to say that they are going to sort out the over-growth that has been taking over this year with its dangerously destructive crop of sycamore trees. Maybe my little invasion with my secateurs spurred them on – hope so.

So if the Summer is over but the Sun still decides to shine, I feel a touch of George Harrison coming on – after all it’s been a long cold Summer. Oh, yes, before the music, here comes the sun!

Here’s George in 2007 with some famous friends:

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