I’b Godd A Code

You bay hab sub trouble understanding be today; I’m fud ob a code.  I hate habbing a code.  By face leaks, by eye is swoden shut, I can’t sleed and I cough so buch I need reinforced bloobers.   If I eber see dat man again, I may hab to kid him. 

I followed Viv’s excellent advice (see comments) and kicked the Hub out of bed in the middle of the night to make me a hot toddy.  He is a master at the art of mixing alcohol and hot water, and it’s one of the reasons I won’t let him escape.  I am seriously sleep deprived this week, in spite of the revivifying properties of rum and lemon, and I am a little disappointed that the mucus wouldn’t let a poem in for the penultimate day of napowrimo. The prompt was to write about something in the news, but yesterday was a slow news day, if I remember correctly: nothing going on but a little political fallout from the most inept politician of a generation; and in the evening, just three blokes chatting about what they’re going to be doing next Friday.   However, writing poems about events in the news is one of my favourite things to do, so I have a few that I have written over the years to share with you.

The first one was originally a series of senryu that I wrote as events occurred; once Mr Blair resigned, I thought they would work better as an overview of his time in office.  Apologies to my non-UK resident readers, who may not understand the references or the reason for the invective.  Also, apologies to those who may have seen some of them before because they have already been posted on my blog (I’m not too worried, though, as I only had three readers when I started).

Ha!  Talk about a Freudian slip – I accidentally left out the ‘s’ when I typed ‘Mr Blair resigned’; look what’s left: ‘Mr Blair reigned.’

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Lies, Damned Lies and New Labour

The Blair Which? Project,
One: EC or not EC? 
Was it a question?

The Blair Which? Project,
Two: To bomb or not to bomb? 
Iraq’s the question.

The Blair Which? Project,
Three: To loot or not to loot? 
Why, without question.

The Blair Which? Project,
On Going: To freely duck
each awkward question.

Blair’s Bonus Project,
Ongoing: To harass the
usurping PM.

Coda  

Prime Minister Brown’s
Day: so many decisions,
so little spine.

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 This one refers to the huge row over MP expenses.

Parliament Fiddles as Britain Burns

Marx is writhing in his grave:
Government is the
odium of the masses.

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 Michael Jackson Died

Troubled man.  Childhood
fame is not worth the gravestone
it is written on.

 

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An Explanation For The 1000 Students Taking The 2009 Politics Exam Who Complained That It Was Unfair Because They Didn’t Know The Meaning Of The Word ‘Despotic’

Despot
Pol Pot
Bad lot

P.S.

Future of Britain:
Worrying

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Good News 

Idi Amin’s dead.
Enough said.

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Today is the last day of nablopomo (National Blog Posting Month).  I succeeded in writing a post a day but failed miserably in the task of commenting on at least ten other  nablopomo posts; but I did squeeze in a few posts on the theme, ‘BIG’.  I failed because I was overtaken by my enthusiasm for napowrimo.

Sadly, today is also the last day of napowrimo.  I won’t be posting a daily poem anymore, though I will revert to my habit of posting an occasional one as the mood takes me.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of having to write a poem a  day.  I’m not sure I succeeded, but it was fun trying.  I would like to thank everyone who commented on my poems and the rest of my regular audience who don’t care much for poetry but tolerated it anyway.  I would also like to thank my husband my children my dead mum my dead dad my deceased nans my dog my dead cats (3) my time in South Africa awful as I sometimes found it cheese & onion crisps chocolate (love you forever, darling) BGT this country’s ridiculous government toilets bees You Tube snoring Shakespeare Mango Groove my determined to help me get a job Launch Pad tutor and the town of Stockport.  Sorry if I missed anyone out.

Determined to stick to the principle of writing and posting the poem on the same day at least one more time, I cobbled together this from the final prompt, ‘free day,’ as in, write whatever you like; you’re on your own now, dear. 

Just when I think my South African collection is finally complete, up pops another prompt to remind me that I really ought to see a therapist to get my time in South Africa out of my system once and for all: for me, the word ‘free’ always conjures the image of the first free and fair South African election, in which the Hub and I queued for twelve hours to vote – bizarrely, one of my happiest memories.  Tory Boy was also there but Spud Bud was two years and one drunken night away (just kidding, sweetie pie, honest). 

It is actually called ‘1994’ but the underline cuts it in half.  I typed the number out for the blog and I’m thinking of keeping it because I like it’s Orwellian overtone.

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Nineteen-Ninety-Four

Free at last!
Free at last:
random deaths;
the odd bomb blast.
Carjack, rape,
home invasion –
all in the name
of emancipation.
Burglar bars,
security gates,
armed response…
…packing crates.
Free at last.
Free at last.
South Africa –
I’m free at last.

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Poor Sue

The full story can be found here.

Is there anyone left in Britain who thinks that our Prime Minister should be allowed to run a bath, never mind a whole country? I don’t know who ‘Sue’ is, but she’s going to get it in the neck when the boss gets back to the office. Still, she has only herself to blame – fancy letting him loose in public like that. It was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I actually have some sympathy for him: everyone is entitled to dislike anyone they please; and they are also entitled to bitch about them behind their backs. It’s not nice, but it’s human nature. What worries me, however, is that he seems to think that merely raising the immigration question makes one a bigot. He’s going to drive a lot of people into the BNP’s arms if he can’t talk rationally about something that worries so many voters.

Two curious things: Mrs Duffy seems to think – from her comments to the media – that he called her a bigot because she asked him about the national deficit; while he thought the conversation was a disaster, when it clearly wasn’t.

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Day 28’s prompt was ‘inspiration’. You will see from the length of today’s poem that I wasn’t feeling it:

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On Looking For Inspiration

A lot of sweat
for not much yet.

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…Ummmm…just went to embed the prompt page and discovered that the prompt was actually ‘intuition’. I am mortified at being caught out in this way.  I can only claim that I misunderstood what Prompt said to me, due to being bunged up in every facial orifice. I have made my sincere apologies to Prompt and she has accepted them, though she won’t be voting for me when I bid to become Poet Laureate, despite being a lifelong Poetry supporter. I will be sending an email of apology to everyone who fears me and wants me removed as their Beloved Leader.  Jeremy Vine has also asked me onto his Radio 2 show so that I can be filmed with my head in my hands, realising that I have just lost my job and I’m serving my final week’s notice.

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Just went to my Virgin home page and it’s official: Cheryl Cole is the world’s sexist woman.  Who’d have thunk it?  You’d think Richard Branson could afford to employ a proof reader; I didn’t realise the economy was quite that bad.

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Did I just break the world record for the most use of the word ‘just’ in one post?

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I’m Sick

I apologise for not replying to your emails and comments or for checking out your new poems for napowrimo yesterday.  On Monday, a man who must have lost the use of his arms because he couldn’t raise them to cover his mouth, coughed on me.  Now I have a throat that could star in a Ninja Knives advert and enough self pity to revert to teenagerdom.

I spent yesterday at my do I really have to get a job when I feel like this? course and chasing printers around Stockport (a story for another day).  Then I went to bed.  I have dragged myself out again this morning and I am overdosing on vitamin C in an attempt to get mobile because, actually, I do really want a job even though I feel like this.  I may not get to your poems and emails and comments today because it has taken me thirty minutes to write this between the dramatic hand on fevered brow and checking for plague pustules on my arms, so apologies again.  I quite understand if you ignore me.

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We only have two more days of napowrimo and I don’t want to fail so close to the end, but I really wasn’t up to writing yesterday, so here’s  a pair of acrostics I prepared earlier:

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Countdown 

Death is sweet instants away; or perhaps bitter
Years.  We know not when, or how.
Sure that it will come, patient
Time counts each day; softly
Opens the doors to
Paradise and elsewhere,
In certainty.
Always.

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A Response to Complaints About My Last Poem 

Unlike
Thomas More
Or his seminal
Piece – his peace dream –
I have no hope that
Any future world will be agreeable.

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To Bee Or Not To Bee

Never judge a book by its cover _ I am not a bee; I am a hover fly

  

The bee is back. It came in through the bathroom window yesterday morning; had a look around; disdained the decor, and left. It did the same thing this morning. I’m not sure my nerves can take it. In the spirit of know your enemy, therefore, I looked up some bee facts:  

• they have five eyes, as if they’re not weird enough
• life expectancy is 28-35 days, so I may have another month of this
• honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated.  Bet that puts you off your breakfast, doesn’t it?
• in her whole lifetime (it is always a her) a worker bee will produce only 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. Makes you wonder why she bothers.
• a bee is not born knowing how to make honey; she goes to bee school to learn
• male drone bees do no work and spend their time copulating.  Some things never change
• it would take around 1100 bee stings to cause the average human being to die; I find that strangely comforting
• honey bees have hairy eyes
• honey never goes off: a jar of 2000 year old honey in an Egyptian tomb was said to taste delicious.
• Bees vote on when to swarm or which food source to concentrate on, and they vote by moving nearer the proposer they support (proportional representation by any other name would smell as sweet)
• it is against the law to kill a bumble bee in Britain
• Ancient Rome’s tax system was paid in honey, not money
• bees don’t snore – I want a divorce right now

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I was woken again by the Hub’s nasal activity at about four this morning.  Instead of tossing and turning or throttling him, this time I got into Tory Boy’s empty bed and went straight back to sleep…to sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there’s the Hub.  

I am beginning to suspect there’s a connection between the bee and the snoring; think about it: bzzzzz/zzzzzz….I bet the bee is lost and thinks it can hear the hive in the distance.  

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Yesterday’s prompt was to take an old abandoned poem and work on it again.  This is one I wrote in 2002 and I keep going back to it but it’s still not right:  

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On Reading Make Believe  

Gerda Mayer still
mourns her Dad
decades on.  Time
not had.  My
Dad died; aeons
ensued…count
the days is what
we do.  Killed
by Nazis, cancer,
hatred, disease:
still our dead
stay dead.
We living grieve.  

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Britain’s Got Eccentric Talent

I thought this was bizarre but weirdly entertaining:

And this was just fantastic:

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I have had some bee issues this weekend, as in, what be you doing here in my house, bee?  The same bee tried four times to park in our bathroom.  The Hub put it out each time and closed the window in the end (just what you want on a warm spring day – a closed toilet window…).  Even as I had my bath I could hear it buzzing for entry.  The Hub said it also tried the bedroom window but was defeated by the net curtain.

I think bees and ants send out scouts, looking for a place to set up home and terrify the residents, like gangs moving into the hood.  I was lying in the bath thinking about this and wondering if other unmentionable insects – unmentionable because it gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about them – do the same thing, when I felt one touch me and I shot straight up, finding myself balancing on top of the shower door and gazing down on a sponge.

We are not allowed to kill any insects except flies in this house, which is hard on easy to make my flesh crawl me.  One day it might come down to a straight choice between the Hub and a tin of insect repellant.  If I haven’t had enough sleep, he’s in big trouble.

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The prompt was to write about the first thing somebody said to you after reading the prompt.  As I was the first one up yesterday, it wasn’t too exciting.  I also think I’m off my game a little; could I have napowrimo fatigue?  Here’s a senryu to prove it:

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A Child’s View

I’m awake, ha ha!
he cried; not caring that life,
the despoiler, lurked.

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Friends, Romans, Countrymen: Slice Off My Ears

Isn’t it funny how you can love someone with all your heart and all your mind, but not with your ears?  I have been awake since five-thirty because the Hub is snoring.  Have you ever slept with a snorer?  It ain’t pretty. 

Although awake so early, I have only been up since six because I gave him every chance to moderate his behaviour: I stroked his back; I cuddled him, which usually makes him hot and he moves away, settling down again without snoring long enough for me to go back to sleep; I tossed and turned and thrashed and harumphed in the hope of waking him up without having to poke him in the side and shout, ‘Oi! You! Shut it!’ but he was so deep into the Land of Nod I could have brought in a brass band to serenade him with Wake You Up Before I Go-Go and he’d have death-rattled through it.  I did briefly consider violence but decided against it on the grounds that I would not sleep well for the next twenty years in whichever prison I found myself in; I got up instead.

I had better confess at this point that the Hub may be a snorer but I am a super-snorer; I am so bad that every night he has to wear ear plugs and refrain from smothering me with my own pillow.  I blame Spud (another good reason to have children): I never snored at all until I was pregnant with him.  He made me so huge that I didn’t leave the house for the last month of my pregnancy, apart from Christmas Day, when the Hub took eight of us out for Christmas Dinner (him, me, Tory Boy, four parents and a niece) because I couldn’t reach the stove top unless I lay on my back on the kitchen counter and slithered along it with my arms stretched above my head.  Makes it difficult to mash potatoes, I can tell you; I have the scald marks on my scalp to prove it.

I have a feeling that this post isn’t finished; it needs a pithy ending.  I am so tired, however, that I’m out of pith.  Make it up yourself; I’m going back to sofa.

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We had to find a common phrase and write from it; I have read some fine poems over the last 24 hours that have arisen from the prompt: mine isn’t one of them.  I’m afraid it just didn’t inspire me.  It happens like that sometimes.  Maybe I just need some sleep.

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A Clichéd Life

At the end of the day
comes tomorrow
and tomorrow
and tomorrow;
and all our yesterdays
have been and gone.

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Toilet Humour

I haven’t talked about Spud for a while so I thought I would mention that he is at the schoolboy toilet humour stage.  He always giggles when we pass a butchers called Tittersons, and he think it’s hilarious that someone keeps changing the second ‘o’ to a ‘c’ on the Cook Street sign.  He told us that in P.E. they were given equipment called ‘nuts’ to use and the teacher got fed up with the class not listening and yelled, ‘Will you lads stop messing with your nuts!’  And then she blushed a mighty red.

He came home one day to say that he had accidentally got into trouble.  He came across a crowd of students walking to the hall and, being a nosey little git – for which we are always scolding him – he followed the crowd to see what was happening.  What was happening was that they had all been up to mischief and they were being sent for punishment in the hall, and Spud found himself being punished right along with them.  He told a teacher that he hadn’t been involved and she said he could take it anyway for being a nosey little git (or words to that effect).  He was surprised to find that instead of indignation, all he got from us was a ‘serves you right for being nosey, you nosey little git.’ 

Talking of being nosey…once, on my way into the school where I help out, I passed a group of staff in the head’s doorway, chatting, and as I passed someone said excitedly, ‘My husband phoned and said “Madonna’s bouncing on our trampoline!” ’  I passed back that way at least four times before I was able to collar the head and find out what had happened.  Turns out ‘Madonna’ is the name of the woman’s pet hen.  Either way, it’s a bizarre image of a scrawny old bird bouncing on a trampoline in someone’s back garden.

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This prompt was to write about an unlikely pairing – a speaker and an event that wouldn’t normally go together, for example, Nick Clegg becoming Prime Minister.  It led to an idea about racism (the Lib Dem’s terrible immigration policy still being fresh in my mind) but it’s not quite there yet; it has no title and I will definitely be coming back to it.  I must post a poem a day, however, so here it is:

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Dog asks, ‘Cat, will you marry me?
I’ll give you dedication. 
Add your devious nature and
we could found a nation.’ 
 *
Cat sighs, ‘Dog, I am surprised:
you’ve ideas above your station.
We could never marry;
it would be miscegenation.’

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I have been dying to use the word ‘miscegenation’ in a poem ever since I first heard it when studying Dracula.

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PS

Speaking of leaders’ debates and South Africa, Nick Clegg’s proposals to only send immigrants to parts of the country where they are needed sounds awfully like the pass laws to me:  Welcome to Britain!  Apartheid is alive and well and coming to a doctor’s surgery near you.

No thanks.

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Bill ‘n’ George’s Excellent Adventure

I have the day off today.  Yesterday was good again, particularly my home-made lunch of chicken & coleslaw sandwiches and a pudding of jelly (sorry, Tory Boy; but you forgot to take them with you and they have a sell-by date).  I haven’t eaten jelly for years; it was delicious, if mushy.

It was while eating lunch that I overheard this: ‘I have to clean three times a day, every day; I think I caught that OCD off me mate.’

I have learned some stuff this week, so it has been worth the effort of getting out of my pyjamas before ten.  I am a bit slow on the uptake, though: it was only yesterday that I realised the course has an actual name, Launch Pad; we are ladies who launch.  It also clicked that everyone except me is a single mother.  That explains the three-hour session on childcare provision and benefits.  I was wondering.

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I thought last night’s leaders’ debate was much better than last week’s; we saw some blood and guts, at least.  David Cameron’s problem is still that he’s too polite, however; that’s the problem with being well brought up.

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Today is St George’s Day and Shakespeare’s purported birth and death days.  As one sounds like a great story and the other wrote a great story, it is fitting that they share a date.  I will be out waving the flag in our local park tomorrow; I wonder if the George Formby Society will be present?  Nothing says ‘English’ like a bunch of old men on ukuleles.

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This prompt is a wordle:

 

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If you haven’t come across it before, a wordle is a picture of words, like a category or tag cloud on a blog.  You put in a whole bunch of text and it makes a picture, with the most-used words appearing bigger than the least-used words.  Here’s a wordle of what I have written so far:

 

Um, scrap that…I’m on the Hub’s computer and I’m not allowed to change anything without his permission and Wordle wants me to install thingies before it creates a wordle for me and I dare not on pain of prolonged tickling of the feet, so you’ll have to have a go yourself.

We were supposed to use one or all of the words in the wordle.  I went with ‘reverberate’ because I was thinking of ‘the shot heard around the world’ which exemplifies the meaning of the word, but I left it out in the end, because it didn’t work in the poem.

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Why I Left South Africa

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A bullet cudgelled

a child’s skull,

forcing hatred from me.

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A Good Day

Good fun yesterday at Housewives ‘r’ Us: we had a debate on the relative merits of employment versus unemployment. The consensus seemed to be that the number one reason any of us wanted to work was to escape the kids. Second was money, because it enabled us to bribe them to let us go.

I have to say I am really enjoying the daily routine of having to shower, catch a bus and take a packed lunch. It’s nice to have a reason to get up in the morning besides beat my best score. I have been floundering a little since graduating; I just don’t have enough to do and housework has never interested me beyond straightening the cushions in the lounge. I am really hopeful that this will lead to a job. I hear the hospital is looking for cleaners.

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Day 20’s prompt was ‘perfectly flawed’.  I’m going to paste part of it here because I like the story: In ancient times, Persian rug makers were deeply religious and believed that only God could make something perfect. They would deliberately drop in a small faulty stitch, a flaw, into each Persian rug. In doing so, a ‘Persian Flaw’ revealed the rug maker’s devotion to God — Karel Weijand.  Yesterday was a good day and I got a senryu out of it; I had to really think to find the flaw because I was happy, but I have a good standby; see if you can spot it:

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A Perfect Afternoon

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No money, but sun,

my love, and the hope of what

may come.  Contentment.

 

Let’s Dance

I think we’ll have some Mango Groove because we haven’t had any for a while. I love this track because when you hear it you just have to dance.

I am feeling optimistic today. Yesterday’s getting lazy housewives into gainful employment session was much better. I think perhaps Our Leader was gauging character the first time, seeing who needs reining in and who needs dragging out by the neck. When the loudest of us decided to call a smoke break the OL was quick to stop her, and she immediately backed down and sat down. Like children, we just need clear guidance and to know our boundaries.

We are given half an hour for lunch and it was interesting to see who brought their own and who could afford McDonalds, a packet of crisps, a chocolate and a cool drink. Those who profess to be poorest bought take out; the rest of us brought packed lunches, including one who dipped her cold Coronation Chicken sandwich in her tomato cupasoup – bleuggh! The girl who can’t fill her cupboard brought nothing at all and wouldn’t accept anything except a spare cupasoup; I suppose she couldn’t face the sandwich.

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The prompt is ‘heroes’. I wrote the first one in response; the second has nothing to do with the theme but I am sharing it because it prompted the third, which I wrote after hearing a story told to me by a fellow poet; and it contains useful information for goldfish owners. Apologies if you’ve seen the last two before.

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Still Waiting

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My hero will be the one

unafraid to stand against

the bullies and the bombs.

Who will act on principle,

not polls; who will lead

where the brave will

follow, and

free us from terror.

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An Interesting Fact About Goldfish

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He is green around the gills;

He is floating on his side.

You can see that he is ill;

You assume that he has died.

An ordinary mistake

Goldfish owners often make.

He can be resuscitated:

He is merely constipated.

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A garden pea, minus shell

Rescues him from goldfish hell.

Soon, he’s swimming round the bowl,

Can’t recall his bunged-up hole.

Little fishy’s full of beans.

Moral: always eat your greens.

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My Hero

For Jock, who saved a life

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Viv’s Other Half kissed a fish

Whose life was null and void.

He who once had breathed his last

Cried out, ‘Hey, Jock! Not so fast!

I know I’m quite a dish

But I never go for boys.’

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Don’t Worry, Be Happy

My first day at job club was interesting. I met a couple of women who no wan’ be there; one who looked like a victim of domestic abuse; a young woman whose greatest desire was to get a job because she had promised her little boy that when she was working she would fill the food cupboard; and one who claims to live on £55 a week but has her own spray tan machine and regularly uses it on her five-year old daughter, right before they put on make up and nail polish. She is also a great admirer of Jordan’s and shocked to hear that she was dumping Alex Reid. She filled the role of ‘gobby one’, directing when we should have smoke breaks and go off-topic to hear about fights in the street and new neighbours who can’t control their kids. She was very funny but I can see the course being hi-jacked unless our course leader nips it in the bud.

Some of what we did repeated what we were told last week at the introductory session; some of it was not relevant to me because I don’t have child care issues; and some of it was useful.

I wonder if there is a course that tells you what to say to a worried teenager?  Spud has occasional health scares that he blows out of all proportion to their reality. And by ‘health scares’ I mean that a finger nail snaps off but, by the time he has thoroughly researched it on the internet when he should be doing his German homework, he has himself dying of liver disease or arsenic poisoning. To be fair, I did think that his last big health issue – which involved a race to A&E and an appendectomy – was wind, so he has some grounds to look out for himself; but he does worry more than he should. He is a born worrier. If he reads this, he will worry that he’s worrying too much. He’s going to find life hard if he doesn’t relax a little.

The problem is information overload: he watches the news; reads the paper; checks the internet. They all report bad things, especially about children, and it affects him. He believes he knows when the problem started: a friend of Tory Boy’s died aged sixteen, in his sleep and from a suspected epileptic fit. It affected us all: he was a lovely boy and he died far too young. He is buried near my Dad and we always stop by and leave a flower when we are there. Telling Spud not to worry is useless, of course; might as well tell me not to eat three boxes of Maltesers on Christmas Day. I try to steer him in the right direction by pointing out that, if he lives to 120 as is being predicted for the population because of medical advances, he’s going to be pretty annoyed when he gets there to find he wasted his life worrying he might unexpectedly die.

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Yesterday’s prompt was to write about a light bulb moment.  I was standing in the shower thinking I had never had a light bulb moment when bang! (or should that be flash!?) I had a light bulb moment.  Not to my credit, I’m sad to say: my friend J gave me a lift home on Saturday after a writing workshop and she took out her copy of Writers’ Muse (which I had asked her to bring) to show me her work published within its pages.  I was about to look but I suddenly thought of the  derby and wanted to check the score so I put the telly on and let’s just say that 93 is not my favourite number.  Then I went off to make drinks and came back and talked about myself.  J is far too polite to show off so I never did get to look at the magazine. 

J, I apologise for being so self-absorbed and rude.  Please stay as my friend.

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Today’s poem is short, dear reader; I know that’s how you like them.

8

A Light Bulb Moment 

8

You are old, said my child;

your face is wrinkled;

your hair is grey,

your neck all crinkled.

And what is that awful smell?

Have you tinkled?

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Suddenly,

I know I have an option:

I won’t kill myself –

I’ll put him up for adoption. 

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Oops! Forgot The Title

This is a quick post because I start my back to work course today and I have to spend the time before bus getting ready like real people.

8

8

The prompt was ‘meow’; here are some cat poems:

8

In The Street

8

I met a white cat. 

That cat was fat.  A car drove

past…splat!  Flat fat cat.

9

0

Man’s Second-Best Friend

9

Sitting in state in

the garden, Cat contemplates

his rotten fate: damned

 9

an inferior

runner-up to Dog – that one,

peeing up the gate.

9

9

Feline Sad

9

My much-loved cat is
dying. He makes no noise. My
life has no-purr puss.

Somehow, he caught the
mange. Hairs fell out one by one:
he’s a no-fur puss.

At last his pain is
over. He gasped his last breath.
Now he’s no-air puss.

9

9

Muffin the Cats

9

I once owned two cats named Muffin,

but not at the same time. 

One’s buried under a conifer;

the other under a lime.

I’m afraid it often happens:

one cat, one car will flatten.

Every time.

9

9

Happy Birthday Tory Boy

This is a really late post but I have had a busy day – mostly crying over my lost youth and wondering how it is that the child I once lovingly cradled in my strong young arms can now bundle me into a cupboard and hold the handle so that I can’t get out.

I’m so happy to be 20

How to lose ten pounds in one day

Tory Boy slept until noon, emulating his father who had a rough day yesterday and a pain-filled night. To ease the Hub’s entry into the day, we all piled onto our bed – including the dog, who refuses to be left out – and TB opened his cards and presents. He got something to watch, something to read, something to eat, something to spend, something to wear and something to disguise the smell.

I made our lobster dinner which turned out to be lobster dinner for one because there was so little meat in what looked like a frozen cockroach, it was tiny. The Birthday Boy got that because we bought it for him anyway, and we had left over lamb instead.

The birthday person always has the birthday cake after the birthday dinner, and lingers in the lounge while we try to find the matches that only come out five times a year, including Christmas. I have a thing about candles and fire and they have to be blown out immediately and not allowed to burn down in case we all die in our beds. We use the same candles every year and the one for our Christmas table still has two thirds to go despite being made the centrepiece for Spud’s clay Father Christmas candlestick in 2001. It goes back to the comforting orange light bulb my Dad put in our hallway so that we wouldn’t fall down the stairs in the dark: I can’t remember how many times in my childhood I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking the orange glow was the house burning down around me.

We always film the cake presentation – you will notice there are two in the above photograph – and today’s ceremony went something like this:

Hub, Spud & Me: Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Tory Boy…

Me: The camera’s not working.

Someone: What you going to do?

TB: Those cakes looked liked boobs when you carried them in.

Me: The camera’s not working…

Hub: They’re meant to look like breasts.

Me: …oh yes, it is. I had my finger on the thing.

Hub, Spud & Me: Happy Birthday to you.

Tory Boy has had a quiet day but he is exhausted from all of the campaigning he has done and I think he was glad just to spend it horizontal. He leaves us first thing in the morning with a suitcase full of food but he will be home when his exams are over. I hope. You never know with these children who grow up when you’re not looking.

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napowrimo

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I am only just getting in under midnight to qualify for my daily poem post. It is not to the prompt because I forgot what it was and I didn’t get a chance to write anything but this little thing I am still working on; bear with me, it’s a work in progress:

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Futureversity

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Dead tutors in the classroom

Dead students in the halls

Dead bibliophiles stacked in piles

In mortuaries and morgues

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Love of truth is on the wane

No-one seems to care

When courts impeach freedom of speech

The right to think is hurt

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Baby Love

Forgive the babygro - I was a new Mum; I bleached everything

Tory Boy is home for the weekend; hooray!  We haven’t seen him since January.  He has a head of curls that would make  Shirley Temple   weep with envy.  I don’t know how the people he doorsteps can take him seriously.  He is going out canvassing with the local prospective MP today; the people of Stockport will probably beat him up for that fuzz.  He is getting a hair cut tomorrow; I promise before and after photos.

I use the term ‘home for the weekend’ very loosely, of course.  He was out canvassing in Lancaster all yesterday and expected to get in about midnight; then he phoned to say he would be home at seven, which he was, for half an hour; two friends picked him up and returned him to our care around eleven, and he went straight to bed.  As I mentioned, he will be out all day today.  It is his birthday tomorrow and he plans to sleep all day, then he’s back to uni first thing Monday morning, unless I can tempt him to stay by cooking his favourite meal.

The menu this weekend is as follows: a choice of crumpets or pancakes for breakfast; roast lamb with all the trimmings tonight; lobster tomorrow; whatever lunch he wants if he is here; mince and pasta on Monday if he stays.  The last one is a much tastier meal than it sounds and TB loves it.

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Yesterday’s prompt was to write about a memory provoked by a smell.

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My Babies

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I miss my children as babies

They would make a commotion

Reek of baby lotion

Pass many a motion

Inspire devotion

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Before neglecting them

I would throw myself

In the Arctic Ocean

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They let me feel

The best emotion:

Unpolluted love

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