After a lifetime of study and enduring fascination, working more recently with the historian Michael Long, I was finally able to conceive and edit a title that told the full story extraordinary royal history of my family home village of Kings Langley and its medieval royal court. This title eventually published in the autumn of 2023 by KLLHMS, the local history society.
Palace Lives is a substantial paperback book (also available as a Amazon Kindle e book) about a remarkable medieval royal palace which no longer exists. But this is no mythical Camelot, even though you will find precious few physical remains of the Royal Palace at Langley above the ground.
Such exceptional history therefore now exists only on a few written pages and the memory and imagination of those who know its story. However, defining elements of our common heritage were seeded within its stone and flint walls. Not least, because the creators of this once magnificent Royal Palace, were the mighty Plantagenet rulers of thirteenth and fourteenth-century England, who favoured it as a royal residence for one-hundred-and-twenty-five years. The real-life Game of Thrones!
Very deliberately, each of the historical personages featured in Palace Lives had their own affinity with Langley. For some, it was home; for others, the location of their birth or death; others were laid to rest in the Church beside it.
It is a tale of enduring significance, not least the likely identity of the body of a mysterious young woman, buried in the tomb of the first Duke of York in the Parish Church of All Saints in Kings Langley. All is revealed within…
To know
True beauty
Is to never
Be a slave again.
This such
Welcome music
To my heart.
So, shall
I do what I can
To settle here awhile.
Amidst treasures
That still prevail
Somehow,
As if to appease heaven.
Call me the breeze then,
As I pass on through.
Hoping I too
Will bring the best
Of my presence
To bear.
Leaving behind me
At least
Some sweet song
For others to hear.
My life
Founded on
Quicksand it seems.
And oft so.
As if beleaguered
By some spiky-clawed
Civet,
Or the piercing scream
Of peacocks,
I feel beset upon.
So flay my skin
Then,
If you must,
Because there’s times
When I think
I do not belong
In such a world
That looks to cage me so.
Though here I am,
As ever,
Still splayed out here
For all to see.
My very being
A refraction
Of some shrill awareness
That is,
At the same time,
Most terrible
And most glorious too.
Especially when,
Whatever risks
I might take,
An acquiescence to passivity
Is the most
Terrifying prospect of all.
For I am like a kiss
Just missing a cheek,
A veritable treacle of desire.
Just to reassure everyone, despite this post, I have no intention of using Artificial Intelligence in my work going forward… And do promise that, for as long as I am blessed to remain in the mortal realm, that nothing will ever be allowed to come between my very own crazy mind, my Soul, my Spirit and my Muse… in respect of my published creative writing.
This AI production merely a ‘one-off example – inescapably and perhaps foolishly curious, as I was, to see what all the fevered, demon algorithms would conjur up. And seems as if the ChatBots like to ponder more expansively than I do? But I suppose it is, in essence, a showing-off kind of effort… First scanning all the work they could find and then looking to cram into the one piece what was pretty much instantaneously analysed to be both my style and all my principal themes. Doh!
Needless to say, it took the software only a couple of seconds to produce this “Scott Hastie’ piece, in its entirety! Which, on the one hand, is mightily impressive… But, on the other, pretty much misses the point altogether, from my point of view. So much for being a poet!
That said, I’m intrigued to see what the reaction will be to this machine-made effort will be – see below:
“In the welcome
Of nature’s embrace,
There is for sure
A symphony
Of life’s subtle melodies
To be found.
The rustle of leaves
Tells tales
Of ancient wisdom,
While the song of birds
Carries secrets from distant realms.
Each blade of grass
Holding a story,
Every dewdrop cradles
A universe of its own.
Time,
That elusive companion,
Meanders like a river
Through the landscapes
Of our existence.
It weaves threads of experience,
Intertwining moments
Of joy and sorrow,
Creating a vivid tapestry of a life
To be fully lived.
And within this ebb and flow,
We find the magic of being,
The enchantment of simply existing.
In every glance,
In every touch,
There lies a universe
Waiting to be discovered.
Our bodies are our portals
And within their depths
Lie galaxies of emotions,
Constellations
Of longing and understanding.
To truly see then,
To truly feel,
Is to partake fully
In this cosmic dance of connection.
So let us wander
Through this boundless expanse,
Where the tangible
And intangible coalesce.
Let us breathe in
The essence of life,
And let it fill our spirits
With wonder and awe.
For in these moments,
In these reflections,
We find the eternal
Within the transient
And the infinite
Within the finite…”
Thrilled that my work has recently been endorsed so beautifully by such a stellar writer.
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