Home and Away

“We’re thinking, Dad... We’re thinking of moving.”

Christine watched her father’s hands as he washed the cups. Suds clung to his fingers as he lifted the dripping cup from the bowl and rinsed it under the tap. His wedding ring glinted through the bubbles.

“Oh are you?” he said, taking another cup and running the dish-mop around the inside. “Well I hope you’re not going too far.”

She felt a cold grip around her heart.

“You need to be in striking distance,” he said, “so I can keep an eye on you, eh.”

“Perth, Dad.”

“Perth? What do you want to go there for? Can’t say I know it really. Your mother and I stayed a night there on the way up to Orkney that year, but I can’t say I... we didn’t see much of it really, you know, just went to the b’n’b and straight off in the morning...”

“No, Dad...”

“We went for a stroll by the river - that was lovely actually, but more than that... Why? Has John got work up there or something?”

“No, Dad, it’s not...”

“I mean it’s not close but, well, I suppose it’s on the train line up through, eh... I mean Scotrail was pretty good, I seem to remember, but...”

“It’s not Scotland, Dad.”

“What..? Course it is, it’s what... fifty miles north of Edinburgh, isn’t it... something like that. We were driving then of course. I wouldn’t drive it now mind, not with my back...”

“It’s Perth, Australia, Dad. Western Australia. John’s family are...”

“It’s what? No, no, no, it’s definitely in...”

She saw the realisation cloud his eyes as he looked at her. He looked back at the bowl of bubbles and the cup slipped from his hand and splashed back into the bowl. Soapy water splashed onto the front of his shirt.

“Damn! Damn fool thing!” he said.

Christine reached for a tea towel from the radiator and tried to wipe at the wet shirt.

“Here, give it here,” he said, “I can do it.” He snatched the tea towel from her. “Damn fool thing!”

Christine grabbed the roll of kitchen paper and tore off a length. She squatted to mop at the pool of water on the floor.

“What are you... Leave it, will you, just leave it!”

“Sorry, Dad, I was just...”

“Leave it. I’ll get the mop in a minute. I’ll do it... Just ... Just... why don’t you go through. I’ll bring the tea in a minute. I won’t... I won’t be a minute. You go in’t room, I’ll bring it through. Do you want a biscuit?”

“No thanks, Dad.”

“I went to the VeeGee, John’ll want a biscuit... I bought a pack of... You go through and make sure he’s not mucking up the settings on the TV. I’ll be through in a minute.”

Christine popped the pedal bin open and dropped the kitchen towel into it. She turned and slipped out into the hall. She felt the tightness in her throat. Her cheeks burned red beneath her eyes. She couldn’t face John straight away. He was happy enough flicking through the channels on the television.

As she reached the sitting room door she stopped.

“I’m just popping upstairs a moment, love. I won’t be a min... there’s something I’ve been wanting to find.”

John was sitting on the sofa. He didn’t respond. She watched him for a moment looking from the TV to the remote and back again. He pressed a button and suddenly the volume boomed for a second before he found how to mute it again.

“John? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah... sure... whatever.”

She started to move towards the stairs but he hissed to stop her.

“Hey, Chrissie,” he whispered, “did you tell him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he, you know... how did he take it? Is he ok?”

“I don’t think...”

“He’ll ... give him time, he’ll get used to it. Did you mention ... you know...?”

“One thing at a time, John. One thing at a time.”

She climbed the stairs and was instantly engulfed in her childhood. While Mum and Dad had made many changes to the house downstairs - the kitchen extension, the French doors from the dining room - since Mum died nothing had changed. Upstairs they hadn’t even redecorated. The brown stair carpet, the textured wallpaper on the landing - the very air of the house felt unchanged, still, thick with the memory of dust and central heating. The towels hanging on the landing banister to dry - that slight odour of moisture from the bathroom, not damp but... used. The afternoon sun threw a certain glade of orange light from the frosted bathroom window out through the door and onto her bedroom door. Here was the ceramic plaque bearing her name that Dad had put up on her sixth birthday when she and Cicely finally stopped sharing and she got her own room. “Christine” in black cursive writing on a pink background with little primroses and bluebells framing the word. She fingered the dent in the door that Dad and Uncle Kev had made moving her new bed into the room. How mad Mum had been.

Christine stepped into her bedroom and cast her eyes around the familiar shelves: her childhood books; her collection of ceramic animals; the peacock feather in the heavy-based glass specimen vase. She glanced at the shade on the lamp, decorated with teddy bears dancing and hugging each other; the string of fairy lights strung across the wall above the bed; the array of stickers gleaned from her youthful magazines and stuck randomly across the headboard. She sat on the bed for a moment, felt the strange silence of memories crowding through her heart.

A noise from outside broke in upon her consciousness. She stood and walked to the window and drew back the curtains. Her father was stood in the garden, his hand resting on the bike shed. She couldn’t see his face but, silently, his shoulders were shaking.

Me reading 'Home and Away'

prompt: baby thoughts

The girl down the corridor

I have never told you
have I
about the girl
whose name I never knew
with angular features
a long sharp nose
and shaped eyebrows
skilfully shadowed eyes
with hair
cut short
and gelled up
into a fine comb

who had a room
down the corridor
from you in halls

I never told you
did I
how she and I
caught each other's eye
from time to time
how she would smile at me
even while you held my hand
and how
while we were studying in your room
you and I
I would listen for footsteps in the corridor
Fancy a coffee?
I would say
and you always would
and I would dutifully trip along
to the kitchen
in the hope that she might be there too

and sometimes she would be
and while the kettle boiled
we would courteously
dance
a light flirtatious gavotte
between sink and cupboard
kettle and coffee jar

and I would fail to say
all the things to her
that I had planned to
because of you

and she would ask about you
because that was a respectful
and a safe
thing to do

Night visitor

Those are not
the sheets you feel
slip sliding over
your sleeping skin,
but these, my hands,
come wandering
across a thousand seas

my silken palms
have sailed the wind

seeking a golden smoothness
on your thigh
sweeping the sweet bowl
of your belly flesh
the subtlest softest

pillow of your breast
and now 

with phantom fingertips
I trace your velvet nipples
trace your lips
I taste your tongue
I kiss your neck

your back

your hips

I rove among the stars
and find you
shed bone and blood and skin
to race the sky
and find you

I become the breeze
and wind these spirit arms
around you
in an astral cloud's embrace
I bind you

A Disappearing Act

Dr Gwendoline Trowell had the capacity to disappear.

Whenever she found herself in the company of more than four or five people she discovered it to be desirable to reduce her presence to such an extent that she might slip away and not be missed by the gathering until they, by mutual consent, decided to part from each other.  At this point there would be a general questioning as to where Dr Trowell might be - did anyone see her leave? One thought perhaps she might be in need of a lift home as the weather had certainly ‘come in’ this evening... And eyebrows would be raised and shoulders lightly shrugged as each member would quietly mumble of their ignorance of her whereabouts.

Dr Gwendoline Trowell never felt comfortable amid such gatherings, be they friends, so called, colleagues or even family. She was one who preferred her own company and found it difficult to accommodate the needs of others - the questions they asked, the responses they required. Small talk was anathema to her. She would lower her voice to a barely audible level, shorten her answers to a phrase or a word and finally an ‘I don’t know, to be sure...’ by which means she would leave her interlocutor adrift in a sea of unknowing, dissatisfied hesitancy. They would start to find their clothes itching and their attention drifting to the lie of the nose hair within their nostrils; their eyes seeking someone else’s, anyone else’s, across the gathering in the hope of more stimulating, rewarding conversation.

Dr Trowell, an intelligent, quietly articulate and informed woman, found she did not require herself to present her acquired knowledge for public scrutiny. Some acquaintances might describe her as introverted, some might say withdrawn, nay, aloof. However, she felt no necessity or desire to defend herself against such judgements. Despite her intelligence she was deliberately, resolutely free from opinion on most matters and consequently lacked any social ambition to present a case or argue a point.

Despite her best efforts however, it was with alarming frequency the Dr Gwendoline Trowell found herself in such circumstances. Being the sole physician within this small community she was regarded with the same degree of respect and honour in which her predecessor Dr Nightingale had been held. She was judged by many of the towns more prominent movers and shakers as an integral member of ‘polite society’. She would be invited to any and every meeting called in the name of some local issue - the inadequacy of street lighting; the lack of receptacles for the depositing of dog excrement; later, after a satisfactory outcome, the continued determination of local dog owners to scatter, willy-nilly, the droppings of their canine companions.

Dr Gwendoline Trowell, also an Elder in the local United Reformed Congregation, was the first name mentioned when local dignitaries were required to populate committees. She was seconded onto the Jumble Sale Committee, the Charitable Donations Committee, was appointed a member of the Harvest Festival Committee, voted prime candidate to chair the Celebrate The Animals Day Committee and many more.  She would dutifully attend and purely by that attendance she felt she contributed, and was indeed thanked by those who had appointed, invited or seconded, for her valuable contribution and the personal sacrifice of her precious time. Inevitably however, the coffee would start to flow after the business was done. Fairy cakes, or if the season required them mince pies, would appear and Dr Gwendoline would find herself closing down, folding herself up, shrinking in form, becoming more and more translucent, until that blessed moment of complete invisibility when she could be confident that her presence was not only no longer required but, moreover, not even experienced by her fellow committee members.

She would step back slowly, allow the space between others to become a void, a vacuum that naturally required filling. She would observe the subtle movement of feet, the shifting angles of toes and elbows, the wordless language of shoulders. She would systematically gather her belongings around her, then build them into the structures required for departure - coat folded and draped upon her forearm; handbag looped over wrist then carried to the crook of her elbow; gloves held in the correct alignment in the palm of one hand. And then after the required period of silent contemplation of the group and with the slightest of voiceless clearing of her throat she would reverse and then turn towards the door, unnoticed, unseen, unmissed.

Back at her front door, as the key turned in the lock she would mentally allow the emotional tumblers within her mind to fall away. She would release the collected tensions of the day with a series of short ‘Ah!’s.
Kettle on. ‘Ah!’
Cat stroke. ‘Ah!’
Jim Reeves, slippers, sofa. ‘Ah, ah, ah!’
A cup of tea and a schooner of sweet, rich cream Sandemans - she would sit and read into the small hours, murder mystery being her favourite fare, preferably with graphic descriptions of forensic autopsy.


So when the local drama group - performing as the Minster Minstrels - asked her to become a patron, she felt, as ever, obliged to accede. She attended meetings quarterly to ensure that the group’s charitable status was held up to scrutiny and that all monies raised and expended were correctly accounted for.

After a twelve months, she was asked if she could assist in a more practical way in the mounting of the Christmas pageant - a retelling with music of the legend of Sleeping Beauty. She agreed to act as assistant to the wardrobe ‘mistress’, Mr Carmichael.

The following year - Cinderella - Mr Carmichael regarded her assistance as understood, and Dr Gwen found herself also undertaking other light Stage Management duties including a brief foray onto the stage itself as part of a sleight of theatrical deceit. Cinderella was to be transformed at midnight back to the raggedy girl of Act One before the very eyes of the audience. There would be an extravagant lighting effect, a cloud of purple smoke (in keeping with the Fairy Godmother’s richly coloured cape and bonnet) and it would fall to Dr Gwen to enact the heroine’s fleeting escape, dressed as the be-cindered urchin, while Annabelle D’Urquhart, playing the titular role, performed a rapid change in the wings.

Dr Gwen played her part competently enough. Annabelle, in her princessly regalia, exited the stage under the cover of purple haze, and Dr Gwendoline scurried out in her rags, an arm shielding her face as if in shame, but really simply to preserve the illusion that the transformation had been magical and instantaneous. But Dr Gwen noticed the shortness of her breath, the racing of her pulse. She recognised the dryness in her mouth and the taste of adrenaline at the back of her throat and afterwards, only afterwards, recognised the pleasure of the moment and the slight fall of disappointment when the performances were all done and the production but a memory.

It was however the following year when Dr Gwendoline Trowell found her voice and as Snow White’s wicked Stepmother, Effluvia, she commanded the stage at every entrance and sent several small children home with dampened undergarments and nighttime terrors.

And afterwards, as she sat in the evenings and cast her mind back to the boos and hisses she had received, and the thrill that such responses had evoked in her, she found herself revelling in the memory of those moments. She found that Sandeman’s Sherry now seemed rather too sweet and that Vodka had a somewhat pleasing fire. She found herself purchasing a packet of cigarillos, despite the professional diatribes she had listened to as a junior doctor and had frequently relayed to her patients.

She decided, as she considered her various duties and responsibilities, that Mr Turbot, whom she had always found to be rather opinionated as Chairman of the Rotary Club would probably do well to keep some of those opinions to himself in future, otherwise, perhaps, she might find she had to ‘say something’. In fact was it not time for one or two changes in the accepted state of affairs in the Rotary Club and in one or two of the other organisations of which she was, was she not, an integral member?


prompt: A poor disguise.

24.09.2019

Ill Wind

It didn't snow straight away but she knew it wouldn't be long.

She'd woken in the morning to an unfamiliar metal squealing as the weather vane on the barn swung round to the North. And to the sound of banging. But she didn't think. Patrick would have known to go and close the barn doors but Patrick was gone. There were so many things he used to do of which she was simply unaware. They'd made a good team. But now, alone, she was a novice again, and she cursed herself for the things she didn't do until it was too late.

Coombe Farm nestled in the rounded belly of the valley end and usually benefited from the shelter of the rolling hills that cradled it. The fields on the northerly side bathed in generous sunlight and the wooded slopes of the hills opposite softened the breath of the warmer winds from the south. But at this time of year, the wind swung around and sharpened its edges. It smelled of frost and peat and smoke and damp. It seeped through the cracks in the door and rattled the glass in the windows.

The wind wrapped itself round the back of the house and found the year's gathered detritus – old sacks, leaves, straw – and scattered it back across the yard. She felt as if she'd been found out. Everything the wind said was cruel. A judgement. The songs it sang were bitter and grating. It found her flesh between her clothes and dragged its sinister blade across her skin. There was no getting warm. The smoke backed down the chimney and smutted the clothes on the dryer in front of the hearth.

She cursed the wind every moment she had to venture outside. She cursed Patrick too for leaving her to this, this bitter solitude. She stayed in as long as she dared, putting off the tedious tasks she knew she must perform. She went to the back bedroom and opened the blanket box, cursed the moths that had evidently been feasting on the blankets and garments within. At last she found it Patrick's old Guernsey and the looseknit shawl her mother had worn. She wrapped herself against the oncoming grief of the wind.

She battled across the muddy yard and opened the henhouse. The five were hunkered on the lowest perch, their heads pulled down into the shoulders of their wings, feathers ruffled up such that she could see the purple grey roots of their plumage. She tipped grain into the feeders and cracked the ice in the water trough but the birds remained in their maudlin meditations, sullenly blinking at her for disturbing them. She could feel their annoyance. Should she leave the flaps open? They showed no inclination to venture out into the gritty wind.

'You've got drink. You've got scran. You'll survive a day,' she said.

It was only after she had lowered the flaps again that she heard the beating of wings come from inside,

'Ah, bugger you,' she said. 'Bugger the lot of you! You'll stay in there now and like it!'

Now the snow had started, thick and fast. It had plastered itself across her back much more thickly than she had realised as she tended to the chickens. She turned her head as if to challenge the beast wind but was forced to squint her eyes against the icy blasts. Snow crystals stung her cheeks. Head down, and pulling the shawl tighter around her, she set off across the yard to the barn.

And now she saw her mistake, the barn door had been flung open before the wind. She should have come here straight away – as soon as she had caught the sound of the weather cock grinding its unfamiliar wail. The barn had shuddered and swallowed gust after gust of the shouting wind.

During the night the milker had given birth. She had heard the animal lowing, a dark rich guttural moan. Patrick would have recognised the signs and she would have left her bed and followed him to the barn, lantern in hand, to see to the animal. She knew how to follow him. She knew how to be at his right hand. She knew what he would need before he knew himself. But with Patrick gone, the rhythm was upset. The natural order was in chaos. The sound and sights that were language to him, cues and clues as to what he needed to do, now went untranslated for her. She was alone and the wind sharpened her aloneness, tattering the memories of their life together, ripping their story from the landscape and leaving her with broken words, fragments of their togetherness that no longer meant anything but just hung like brittle flags, dissolving under the acid breath of the North wind.

The milker lay on her side. A black motionless mound was spilled in the straw beside her.

Snow still gusted in through the open barn door. It had been closed the previous night as usual. She had made sure of that. But as had so often happened before, the wind change had challenged the latch and caught the great timber panel full force, splintering the wooden closure like kindling. Patrick had had to repair it many times, had often said he should get an iron fixing from Howlett the farrier, but had never got round to it.

She cursed him again, this man whom she had loved so deeply, relied on so completely and who had left her so suddenly.

It was her grief at losing him that was transfigured into this anger at him and now, as she stooped to test the little corpse for any vestige of life left, she cursed Patrick until the tears ran. She held the head of the calf in her lap, pulled at the mucus that still clung to its muzzle. But nothing. The animal's eyes were half open but glazed and dim. The neck was stiff and cold.

The milker turned her head towards the woman and a deep rolling growl rippled in her throat.

'Tis too bad, old girl. Too bad. I'm sorry.'

She stood up. Pushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist. She bent and found the calf's front hoofs and, holding them together in one hand dragged it out of the barn. The umbilical cord trailed after it, terminating in a massed clamp of blood and slime and mucilage. She would figure out what to do later. It would come to no harm now, no greater harm anyway, and the cold wind would slow the rotting. She left it around the side of the barn and covered it over with some old sacking.

The snow was falling thicker still and no sooner had she pulled the sack over the little corpse, than the flakes began to blanket it.

She rubbed her hands on her skirt, cupped them together and blew into the opening between her thumbs. As she stood and looked down the valley, into the very throat of the wind, she saw a dark smudge among the falling snow, moving vaguely, slowly, towards her. The smudge moved in the rhythm of a person walking, head down, trudging through the thickening quilt of powder.

She saw the body opening and closing with each heavy step.

A person, a woman, coming towards her – a dark, hooded figure looming out of the snow towards her...

19.02.2019

No waiting

I will no longer wait
for this bus
because buses slow down
if you are waiting for them
and it makes no odds
if I see the very first moment
of its bumper
rounding the corner
at the end of the road

It will either come
or it will not come
whether I wait 

or not

No
I will no longer wait
but I will stand here
because this bus-stop
is as good a place to stand
as anywhere else

and I will watch the sun
creep in and out of the clouds

and I will watch children
running near the kerb

and I will hear their parents
scolding them

and I will watch
a starling
on the gutter of a house
preening itself

and I will breathe
the bus-stop air
rather than the air by the crossing

and that will make a change

and perhaps
while I stand here
watching and breathing and listening
I will count the chips of paint
on the bus-shelter
and fancy that I can see a face
forming in the dry stud
of chewing gum
that someone has posted
on the glass

and I will imagine 

the sweetness of the gum

on my tongue

But I am not waiting for the bus
because it takes too much energy
and I don't have that kind of wealth

No
No waiting
for the bus
even though
you said
you might be on it

Dead Pigeon

Walking home the other day I came upon a dead pigeon in the street.  The way it lay and the colour of the carcass led me to imagine that rather than being crushed into the pavement it was actually emerging out of it...

I snapped a photo of it and my talented friend Adry Ruiz (@xxxadryxxx) translated it into a pencil drawing to accompany this poem

From the ash of the asphalt I am born

fledged from flagstone streets

I will dance for you through broken air

for you will I thrill in flight

I am the chill of the wild in the town

I am a child in the still of the sky

settle my soul in the spirit world

fashion me feathers and fly

as a shaman's cape will I shelter you

although I am crushed and torn

for though my entrails grace the ground

no harm to me now can come

I'll dance once more through the greasy air

dance once more by the bridge

dance once more on the frosty street

where you creatures of the city live

come, dance with me as the day begins

dance with me as it ends

feed me scraps from the morsels bag

feed me love from your lips

I have the courage of an iron bear

the grace of a violin

I have the strut of an ancient mare

that drinks by the river's brim

for though I am crushed and split apart

though I am shattered and crazed

I live with you in the city's heart

wherever a city is raised

the first language of love

of love

there are five languages

the five love languages

are a tool to improve

your relationships

is there a problem with your connection?

quality time

spending time

focussed

on each other

this is the first language of love

the people in this picture were all murdered

by an F16 strike on the building

in which they were

in which they were sheltering

this picture is all that remains of the family

the people

in this picture

were all murdered

having trouble viewing this?

are you having trouble viewing this?

if you are having trouble

is there a problem with your connection?

some need words of affirmation

so tell your loved one

this is the first language of love

Syria’s children are dying

blood leaves their bodies

blood is leaving their bodies

here we have

physical touch

is this how you receive love?

this is the first language of love

there seems to be a problem

with your connection

please check and try again

five tips to turning your life around

after you've lost your way

this is the first language of love

acts of service

perform acts of service

for your loved one

if you continue to see this message

contact the person

in charge of your network

give and

receive gifts

for this is the first

the first language

for this is the first language

of love

In the Queue - Cashier Number Five, Please

“Is it your birthday, Doreen?”

“It is my birthday.”

“I saw your badge.”

Doreen’s wearing a “Birthday girl” pin badge.  She perches on her stool counting out the woman’s money.

“I’m taking tomorrow off, Jean,” Doreen smiles, “making a long weekend of it. Might have a facial.”

“Ooh! That’s nice.  Is it a big one?”

“Not particularly,” says Doreen.  She mouths “forty-five” through the glass.

“Oh, I had you as older?” says Jean.

Doreen stops smiling.

“How much did you want, then?” Doreen asks

“I’ll have the full two hundred.  I’ve gave up smoking and every week I’ve been putting it aside – twenty pounds a week.  Now I’ve got two hundred!  Just from not smoking.”

“Amazing,” says Doreen.

“I’m still doing them e-ciggies though.”

“Right, but they’re much cheaper, aren’t they.”

“Oh, so much cheaper”

Crystal is serving me.  She’s new.  There’s a sign above her window “Staff in training. Please be kind.”  I push the banking under the glass as kindly as I can.  A small rubber band rolls out of the cloth bag, too.

“I’ve just got some banking to do and a bit of change – oh, and a small rubber band,” I tell her.

“Oh, haha!” says Crystal.  “Er…”

Dawn has been spring-cleaning the shelves on our side: one by one emptying them off, wiping them down with a J-cloth and a bit of spray, then popping the things back on exactly the way they were but without the dust.  She comes up to the counter to talk to Crystal.

“Have you not done banking before?”

“No,” says Crystal.

“You’ll be fine.  Doreen, soon as you’ve finished Jean off can you help Crystal?”

“’Course I can, lovey.  I’ll help you, lovey, I’ll just finish Jean off, you’ll soon get the hang.”

“Here,” says Dawn to me, “look at the colour of my hands,” she spreads her fingers out to show me their blackened tips.

“That’s me done,” says Jean.  “ Bye all!” and she walks out struggling to close her purse around her two hundred.

A man walks up behind me heading for Doreen who has sidled across to look at what Crystal is doing.

“Hello, Len,” they all say.  He’s a regular I’m guessing.
“Hello, girls,” says Len.

Crystal is occupied slowly counting out my twenties into piles of four and wrapping a fifth around them, so Doreen slips back over and sidles her bottom onto her stool to serve Len.  Len puts his card in the card machine.

“How much do you want?” says Doreen.

“All of it,” says Len “soon as I can remember my number, er… .”

Dawn has taken the rolls of silver wrapping paper off the high shelf above where Len is standing.  Now she tries to put them back but they topple off and one hits Len on the head.

“Oh!!  Watch out skies a-falling!” says Len.

“Oh! I’m so sorry, Len!” says Dawn and another roll topples down.

“Wo-oah,” says Len “you take your life in your hands in here!  ‘Sallright Dawn I won’t sue you.”

Dawn picks up one of the rolls from the floor and taps him a hollow knock on the head.

“Steady on, lass,” says Len, “that’s my weakest point! Oh, hang on…” he’s remembered his number and presses it carefully into the machine. “Had to be rattling round in there somewhere! I’m obliged to you.”

Crystal’s been picking up speed; she’s finished the tens, and fives too, and is just fiddling the loose change onto her little coin rack.

“Did you get them bees, Len?” asks Dawn

“What?” says Doreen.  “Bees?  What bees?”

“Oh, did I not tell you,” says Len, “got chatting to a man over Wombwell way last Sunday.  Beekeeper chap.  BMW they used to call him - Bee Man of Wombwell.  But he’s ninety three and he’s giving it up.”

“And you fancied a bit of honey on your porridge, didn’t you Len!” says Dawn.

“Eh, it’s not just that,” says Len.  “I do, like, but it’s not just that.  He says he’s got hundred thousand bees but he wants to give them away.  So I says, well I’ll have ‘em.”

“ Blimey!” says Doreen

“I know!  With all the equipment, like.”

“Hundred thousand!  That’s ever so many.” Doreen can’t quite believe it.

“But you took them back,” Dawn chimes in, “’cause when you got them home there was one missing!”

“You’ve not done it before though, Len,” says Doreen

“No, no,” says Len, “no, not done it before – don’t know one end of a bee from t’other.”

“Haha!” says Dawn, “well I reckon you’ll find that one out soon enough, Len.  Eh?”

“Oh, be-hive yourself!”  says Len.  “Be-hive yourself!”

"Eh!  I'm Queen Bee around here, aren't I Dor?"

"Oh, yes."

Dawn grabs her midriff in her hands and wobbles it.

"Look you can tell I've had too much of that royal what d'you call it, y'know..."

"Jelly," says Len

"Ay, that's it," says Dawn, "royal jelly.  Too much royal jelly!"

Negotiation #5

What are you doing tomorrow?

What?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

while today there are blackbirds

feeding young in the garden

and today the sourdough

is gently lifting in the kitchen -

its first proving

and today is the first day I have

time to sit down

since the last time

I sat down?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

when tomorrow is probably filled

up already with moments

blocked with time and trouble and toil?

What are you doing tomorrow?

What am I doing tomorrow?

How easily you clatter the question around

Yes well

there is an Agenda

for tomorrow

I do have an Agenda

for tomorrow

but today

I have only

headings and subheadings

and outlines and landscapes

and plans and pre-frontal projections

and while a few papers have been

submitted for my early consideration

I cannot navigate

the complexities of tomorrow

until the vagaries of today

have been drawn into play

What are you doing tomorrow?

Ah, but if I were to tell you

something

for the sake of an easy answer

it would inevitably be

a short story

of possibles and maybes

a novella of nuance and supposition

a wish-list of the terrifying

and the fearsome

What are you doing tomorrow?

You come here with your crowbar question

levering yourself

into the slim and early tracings

of my promised tomorrow

I was just wondering…

you say

with your innocent

fingers fiddling

with thin porridge on the stovetop

and a sketch of an idea

somewhere across your brow

and I am wary of that sketch

because it is in that sketch that you

forge a steel cage that imprisons me

tomorrow

for it is that sketch

that fetters the ankles of my spirit

tomorrow

that channels the energy of my spirit

tomorrow

that breaks the resolve of my spirit

tomorrow

and casts me

into the pit of your desires

and the fuddle of my despair

What are you doing tomorrow?

If you insist on that question

then there is no tomorrow

do you not see?

there is no tomorrow

no tomorrow

I was just wondering whether you might be able to pick me up from the supermarket?

Negotiation #2

Are you washing up or cooking?

What?

Are you washing up or cooking? I’m not doing both.

No, well I don’t expect you to do both

Good , because I’m not.  So which are you going to do?

Well, which would you rather do?  You’ve been out all day – would you rather sit down while I wash up, and then you cook?  I could make you a gin. Or would you rather wash up and then relax?

God I’d love a gin – been fantasising about one all afternoon!

Ok, so I’ll wash up and make you a gin and you can cook.

I must say I had hoped you might have washed up while I was out.

Yes, well, I have been busy.  I haven’t just been sat around all day.

No, I know…

I have been working, too, you know.  I haven’t just been sat watching youtube, you know.  I have actually been working. 

Yes, I know…

I have.  I’ve booked a course and I bought those train tickets and I’ve been looking at holiday cottages.  So it’s not like I’ve just been sat here doing nothing.

Yes, I know…

You think I don’t do anything while you’re out, don’t you?

No of course not…

Yes, you do. You think I’m just sat around doing puzzles or watching television.

No I don’t.  I…

Holidays don’t just book themselves, you know.  Someone has to do the research.  Someone has to make some decisions.  If we left it to you we’d never go away anywhere.  You do want a holiday, don’t you?

You know I do…

Well, then someone has to sort it out then don’t they.

I’m very grateful.

So pardon me if the washing up isn’t done just when you walk through the door.

I’m just saying…

Pardon me!  But I have been busy you know.  I have been doing things for us, too, you know!

I’m tired.  Do you want a gin?

I’ve sent you a link to four cottages.  Four!  I’ve looked at hundreds and you only need to look at four.  So I need you to have a look and tell me which one you like best.

Ok.  I’ll look next time I’m on.

Make sure you do because we haven’t got long and they're going fast for those weeks.

I will. Gin?

Of course.  Did you get my text?

No.  I’ll make them then, shall I?

God – why don’t you ever check your phone?

I did check.  When did you send it? I checked before I left work.

About half an hour ago.

Well I would have been on the bus then.  I can never hear it on the bus.

I can hear mine on the bus all right.  You need a new phone!

What did it say?

What?

The text.  What did it say?

We’re out of tonic.  So if you want a gin you’ll have to stop at the co-op.

too poetry

some things are just too poetry

for poetry

a spinning wheel

a honey spoon

a waterfall

a silvery moon

a constellation of stars

the tail of a fiery comet

a rainbow

arcing across the sky

a baby’s bonnet

in fact

don’t write

anything to do with night

no owl or wolf

or bat or ghost

no candle – shining in the dark

http://imgbuddy.com/

weather is a problem too

with April showers

or blazing sun

a sudden fall of snow

frost or mist or fog

a cotton-candy cloud

is just too

LOUD

for a poem

other
poetic animals to avoid

are

horses

well stallions
cats
well toms
or tabbies

dogs

eagles
and their eyes

timorous mice
they've been done before
and better

snakes and lizards

spiders

starfish

whales

eels

weasels

the first cuckoo

longing is difficult

and love

and lust

and patience
and a first kiss
or a last kiss
or falseness

and pretence

a garden fence

mud

dust and rust

trust

especially if broken

derelict houses

with fractured window panes

in the rain

where no-one has lived for years
not really lived

old cars

worn carpets

rugs and wallhangings

pictures

in frames

and old photographs on pianos

slatted Venetian blinds

parlour palms

oh and
you
your arms

your eyes

your mouth

your nose

especially if you are a baby
and it is a button

your heart

my heart

your blood
my blood
and the things blood does

milk

tears

tea
sympathy

plums

cherries

overripe blackberries
dripping from vines
all just a bit too rich for me

and now I think about it 
there's not really much 
you can write about 
at all