I don't like poetry, especially modern stuff. Most of it is just typing, if you ask me. I liked the stuff we did at school, Keats, Kipling and Kubla Khan. But I cannot bear people reading it in that "po-tree" voice that they use. We had a very expressive English teacher, given to a Special Poetry Voice. She also used to rub her own knees when reading the sexy bits. This made me nervous and self-conscious on her behalf. I think it is one of the most mortifying things one human being can do to another, reading poetry at them in a meaningful way. Oh God, I have just remembered boys strumming guitars and singing at me through their hair..I have gone all hot with embarrassment at the mere recollection, and this last occurred several decades ago. And people dancing towards one is also frightening..New Year's Eve, that can happen. I find exuberance generally rather alarming, in anything. I like to have some warning. One thing I loved about London was that no-one "popped round". Elaborate arrangements had to be made in order to have a rendezvous with anyone, and in those days we had no mobile phones. So no last-minute text messages, no answerphone cancellations. If you made a date you had to really want to see the blighter. When I lived in Huskisson St., I became far too popular. People would drift round because they were bored, drunk, hungry or had been locked out.Or were itinerate musicans coming to deliver their demo tape and staying to roll big smelly joints and eat my Hobnobs. Sometimes I would find them passed out in the kitchen, with their heads in the cat litter tray. I had a day job at the time, and was notoriously brisk with them. If they were still there when I got home, they would have to hoover or do the dishes. One notorious Bad Boy of Rock cleaned my Venetian blinds. I think he wrote a song about it.
One of my friends thinks I'm a boy. His evidence for this is that I don't like flowers (unless poisonous or funereal), and am indifferent to shoes,chocolate, and handbags. There's not a great deal of point getting excited about shoes if you have trouble walking even in bare feet. A handbag to me is a capacious repository for broken biros, a makeup bag that would give a mugger a hernia, fagslighterkeysmoneyphone.I have one, and I rag it to death. Then I throw it out and buy another one. If there is chocolate around, and I am in the mood, I will eat it. If not, I scarcely give it a thought. I like jewellery, but not proper grown up stuff you would get burgled for. I like costume jewellery,e.g. dragonfly brooches that quiver their wings and frighten small children. I like great big emphatic necklaces; not so much a "statement" as a declaration of war. And, has been witnessed by many a friend unfortunate enough to be in a carpark with me, I cannot tell one car from another. Hopeless. And furthermore, I don't care. The GB is finding all this rugged individuality rather wearing. The Early Teen is a conventional creature. The cry goes up; "Why can't you be NORMAL?". I asked him what he felt was a "Normal Mum", and it seems that what all these lanky boys with strange trousers desire is a Fantasy 1950's Housewife Mum. Well, I wouldn't mind one of those either, but I would also quite like a dragon. Equally mythical. "You ought" he said sternly " to WANT to make my dinner,make my bed, do my ironing, wash dishes, peel potatoes blahdeblah". "Do you like doing all that?"" No, it's Gay.."
Sigh. He doesn't QUITE dare say "Because you are a woman", but that's what he thinks. They all do. I don't blame them really,if there was even a slight chance of anyone thinking that their mission in life was to do all the boring bits of mine for me, I would cling to that possibility as did that drip in "Titanic" to a life raft. And he can't do the "Oh I am SO inept that you will lose patience and do it for me" because I am already doing that one.Poor creature. But still, there is very little chance of him taking me for granted as a provider of hot meals and clean shirts. I carry on as though I have given him the Koh-in-Oor diamond if I so much as rinse a teaspoon languidly under a running hot tap.
And I am terribly encouraging if he forgets himself sufficiently to make me a cup of tea. Every Mother's Day, I get a "You Are Just Like A Mother To Me" card. Do you think he's being sarcastic?
And so, back to poems, which is where we came in; the GB wrote this affecting verse in my Mother's Day card last year. " I love you right up to the Moon
Although you are a Proper Loon". He has clearly inherited my talent for bathos.
One of my friends thinks I'm a boy. His evidence for this is that I don't like flowers (unless poisonous or funereal), and am indifferent to shoes,chocolate, and handbags. There's not a great deal of point getting excited about shoes if you have trouble walking even in bare feet. A handbag to me is a capacious repository for broken biros, a makeup bag that would give a mugger a hernia, fagslighterkeysmoneyphone.I have one, and I rag it to death. Then I throw it out and buy another one. If there is chocolate around, and I am in the mood, I will eat it. If not, I scarcely give it a thought. I like jewellery, but not proper grown up stuff you would get burgled for. I like costume jewellery,e.g. dragonfly brooches that quiver their wings and frighten small children. I like great big emphatic necklaces; not so much a "statement" as a declaration of war. And, has been witnessed by many a friend unfortunate enough to be in a carpark with me, I cannot tell one car from another. Hopeless. And furthermore, I don't care. The GB is finding all this rugged individuality rather wearing. The Early Teen is a conventional creature. The cry goes up; "Why can't you be NORMAL?". I asked him what he felt was a "Normal Mum", and it seems that what all these lanky boys with strange trousers desire is a Fantasy 1950's Housewife Mum. Well, I wouldn't mind one of those either, but I would also quite like a dragon. Equally mythical. "You ought" he said sternly " to WANT to make my dinner,make my bed, do my ironing, wash dishes, peel potatoes blahdeblah". "Do you like doing all that?"" No, it's Gay.."
Sigh. He doesn't QUITE dare say "Because you are a woman", but that's what he thinks. They all do. I don't blame them really,if there was even a slight chance of anyone thinking that their mission in life was to do all the boring bits of mine for me, I would cling to that possibility as did that drip in "Titanic" to a life raft. And he can't do the "Oh I am SO inept that you will lose patience and do it for me" because I am already doing that one.Poor creature. But still, there is very little chance of him taking me for granted as a provider of hot meals and clean shirts. I carry on as though I have given him the Koh-in-Oor diamond if I so much as rinse a teaspoon languidly under a running hot tap.
And I am terribly encouraging if he forgets himself sufficiently to make me a cup of tea. Every Mother's Day, I get a "You Are Just Like A Mother To Me" card. Do you think he's being sarcastic?
And so, back to poems, which is where we came in; the GB wrote this affecting verse in my Mother's Day card last year. " I love you right up to the Moon
Although you are a Proper Loon". He has clearly inherited my talent for bathos.
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