Standing on the Cast Iron Shore: PMC 7067 XEX 709/10 Mfg. in UK ©1968

The seawall along Elizabeth Walk is where I go when I want to lose the claustrophobia.  You see the ships in the harbor, you get the endless cricket green of the Padang; it’s never crowded.  I wander along, just saw a movie at the Capital with Rimmer and Steve.  I’m alone now, walking and smelling the salt and rotting seaweed. Soundtrack plays in my head and I synchronize my steps to it and it carries me along.  “Standing on the cast iron shore yeah,  Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet yeah…looking through a glass onion.”  This jammed up tumble of words is desperate, serious, but odd for sure. The singer just insists on sticking in those “yeahs” even thought there’s no room.  And the the word beat, the emphasis on certain syllables in “looking through a glass onion”  sound like Shakespeare, or a poet speaking in another language. Mr. Leonard tells me a glass onion is a monocle.