Clean and tidy

Tuesday October 7, 2008

I’ve idled through today, I’m ashamed to say.  Apart from writing a new poem, that is.  I did ask if there was anything he wanted me to do apart from making tea and such, but he just grunted a ‘No’, and handed me his empty cup.

Ah well, there’ll be plenty for me to do with my brand new black rubber gloves and a bucket of hot soapy water when he starts emptying kitchen cupboards.

Sally has written to say she’s received the settlement cheque in plenty of time to clear through the banks before completion.  Which is good, though I can’t help but add my own sour footnote that there’s plenty of time so long as the banks don’t crash while we’re in transit.

I was asked today what the stock exchange is for?  Would the world collapse if it were not there?  Straight answers are ‘I don’t know’ and ‘No, of course not’.   I suspect, privately, that with the benefit of hindsight, we’d not have invented the darn thing.  Trouble is, like an unpleasant, selfish child, once you’ve made it you can’t very well throw it away.

Hey ho.  It’ll all be the same in a hundred years time.  Meanwhile, like dusting and vacuuming, you get on with the job and enjoy the momentary buzz when everything is clean and tidy.

 

Vacuuming and dusting

This cold damp day

Lumbering along, thinking of packing cases and the whisper-quiet of my books as they wait to be re-sited on shelves in another place, a poem came along to warm my heart:

 

THIS COLD DAMP DAY

In the wet grass at the edge of the field
I found a round-woven bird nest, winter-empty.
I picked it up carefully so as not to un-weave it
and pressed my fingers into the soft-lined cup,
feeling the warmth of the parental breast almost
as though it lingered, longing, on this cold damp day. 

And standing in the wet grass by the edge of the field
I looked up over the breast of the hill to a wet washed sky,
feeling the warmth of the sun almost
as though it lingered, loving, on this cold damp day.

–John Bailey, Somerset, October 2008