A good breakfast in a hotel after a first night in Shrewsbury; I have my journal, Physics Education, by my cereals bowl. A lady dressed in blue from head to toes pushes a double glass door, heads to the Breakfast Room and pauses until the waiter shows her to the table next to mine. She is early for a cooked English breakfast. She waits. She pins her eyes on my Journal. Her hands unzip and go through her blue luggage, clogged up with her essentials, at the same time as talking to me.
"I love Shrewsbury. The guide who took our group for a history tour of the town told us with a nostalgic voice, Shrewsbury is now known for its many charity shops. I’d say there are also plenty of hair dressers for all styles.” She smiles and adds, “If I may, please enjoy this book. I'm guessing you teach Physics. Perhaps you could pass it on to one of your students.'
"Thank you," I say, taking the book. 'Yes, I do teach Physics. What an unusual title, Physics for Poets."
"It was several days ago now," the lady said. "I was on the opposite pavement to this hotel. I'd been looking its balcony, which Charles Dickens once referred to, and had turned away from it and gone into the Severn Hospice Charity shop. I wished to choose a book for the evening. The Christmassy silver cover caught my eye, also the red apple badge on Sir Isaac Newton’s chest. I bought it, but I can’t understand or read it as poetry."
That was it. The minute I bent my face to take a spoon of cereals, the lady vanished. No breakfast for her, not even a cup of tea.
Inside the book, I saw that someone had left a note numbered (4) at the first page of Chapter 5, entitled The Romance of Energy.
Written in red ink it said: The star expands into a red giant or a red super giant. On the back of the same note, written in luminous blue, were the headers of the paragraphs of the same chapter The many faces of energy, Binding Energy, Stars, Planets and Life.
Was this my first poem, made up out of the structure of the chapter?
If I think of stars or red giants, I'll always remember my nose up towards the heavens the first time I noticed the very special sculpted Lion over the doorway of this hotel, pulling into its car park beneath a clear winter sky. The tail of this, the Percy Lion, was a mystery. I knew about the Alnwick Bridge’s lion and its unique straight tail, the Brentford Syon’s Park second Percy Lion with a straight tail too. Oddity of oddities, I even found a third Percy Lion with a straight tail at the very top of this Hotel, all tensed and isolated as if in self-defense, and crowned with stars? But this curly-tailed lion - I didn't know what that was about.
What I do know, though, was that the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury took place here! Does the Percy Family know all about the Shrewsbury Lion that re-emerged in 1962 at the rear of the hotel, rich in the history of the town? His eyes and pride appear placed on the town centre and in the map line out to Battlefields.
And dear Lady in Blue, if you had taken time for a breakfast I would have shared with you that piece of art and read out to you about the Lion Hotel, including all the things that the guide who led your tour didn't mention.
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