Viv’s Not Dead

This is a first for me: an epitaph about someone who is not yet dead, nor likely to be (stray buses permitting).

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Viv’s Epitaph

She arrived.  Survived.  Made those around her smile.
Whatever age she was when she died,
it was too young.
Her many friends mourned.

She tried; she often succeeded.
Sometimes not: she made mistakes, like anyone.
But none her friends – so many friends –
ever needed to forgive.

She tried it if it was new,
if it was interesting, if it was fun,
if it was challenging.
If it was necessary.

She made things: beautiful things,
lots of things – quilts and poems
and children and devoted friends,
so many friends.

She was never mediocre.
Tart, upon occasion; and also kind, generous, warm.
Valuable and valued.  More will remember than will
ever forget, this great loss to so many friends.

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Viv is my next interview subject and I include this poem to give you a flavour of her before we start.  Viv wrote her own epitaph in response to a prompt and I felt she was too hard on herself.  I took her various statements and put my spin on them.

Viv and I met through the Open University.  In 2007, the year we both took the OU’s Creative Writing course, another OUer set up an online critiquing forum. Which means the first thing Viv and I probably said to each other was, That doesn’t work; try this.

Viv writes lovely poetry.  She excels at traditional forms, forms that I’m afraid to attempt myself.  They often come almost perfect from her pen and don’t need much tweaking.  She has been published quite a bit.  And she only took up poetry in her late sixties.

Viv makes the most sumptuous quilts.  My family owns three of them and covet more.

She has a real joie de vivre, which I knew online for four years; and finally enjoyed in person, when we met last year: Viv and her charming husband Jock invited us to visit their lovely home in France.  We laughed the whole time and it was as if we had never not known each other.

I apologise that I don’t have a photo of Viv by herself.  I don’t know how that happened; I probably couldn’t bear to be away from her.

Let’s find out a bit more about Viv:

How many colours has your hair been?  

Brown, pepper and salt, reddish, blondish, white = 5, of which all but two came naturally.

Who is the most annoying celebrity?  Why?  

Does that twirly-moustached idiot on the Go-Compare ads count?  We have to mute the TV when he comes on.

How do you cook eggs?   

Let me count the ways!  Boiled, poached, scrambled, fried, omelettes, French toast, in Scotch Eggs,  baked in cakes and meringues,  broken into  a well in a sausage pie and… and…  Or were you after a teach-in?

[See what I mean about tart?]

Karaoke: with or without alcohol?   

Never been, so I’ve no idea

Can you do a foreign accent? 

Yes, I’m like a sponge for picking up ambient accents.

Will you share an embarrassing moment?  

Off the top of my head?  Lost in Somerset, leaning out of the car to ask a passing pedestrian the way, IN FRENCH.

Tell us something about yourself you haven’t yet shared in your blog.

Could there be such a thing?  It’s all there for the world to see.    Ummm, I used to smoke.  Any use to you?

What would you give up rather than your computer? 

Alcohol – but I hardly drink at all these days, so that would be easy.  Is that cheating?

How do you feel about misplaced apostrophes?  

Rabid, and I blush down to my toenails if I find I’ve done one inadvertently.

[See why I love her?]

Tell us why we should read your blog. 

I don’t know.  It’s a mystery to me how I get so many readers.  I do my best, but it’s not funny, there’s nothing special about my poetry and  it’s a bit of a mish-mash of: (mostly) poetry prose, pictures, fiction, food and (I hope) some fun.

**

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For those of you interested in history, Viv’s war memoir is worth a look.

Go visit Viv at her blog, Vivinfrance, and then come back and thank me.  I nagged her into starting a blog so I deserve all the credit for unleashing this lovely woman onto the world.

Joke 503

fruit salad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My friend Michelle sent this email doing the rounds.

Famous quotes

• Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
• If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
• We never really grow-up, we only learn how to act in public.
• Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
• Evening news is where they begin with “Good evening” and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
• I thought I wanted a career. It turns out I just wanted pay checks.
• A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
• Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, “If an emergency, notify:”, I put  “DOCTOR.”
• I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
• A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
• You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
• Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
• A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
• Hospitality: making your guests feel like they’re at home, even when you wish they were.
• Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.
• Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.
• I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not sure.
• When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water.
• You’re never too old to learn something stupid.