Day: March 9, 2017

Stan’s Yorkshire puddings

Tea pot
Tea pot
 
  • Stan was cooking the Sunday dinner.As usual up North it was roast beef and Yorkshire puddings.Stan was very good with  Yorkshire puddings.
    They ate them with gravy before the main course just to maintain tradition.Even Emile,their talking cat, loved a pudding soaked in thick meaty gravy..Suddenly the kitchen door burst open and in rushed their neighbour Annie… covered in blue paint.
    What’s happened to you,hinny,Stan enquired naughtily.Surely you are not house painting on  a Sunday?
    No,I never paint  thee housemyself,she responded.I was in the shed and a stray cat was up on the top shelf.It leaped off  and knocked over over this  old tin of paint.I’m wondering how to get it out of my hair?The paint,not the cat!
    What type of paint is it?
    It’s emulsion paint.
    Well,I’m afraid you can’t get it out!
    I can’t go around town with blue hair,she cried hysterically..
    Well,all I can think is,I could cut off a little of your hair.
    OK, if that’s the only way.she said,being keen on Stan’s touching her even if only on the head.
    Can I stay and eat with you?
    Of course,sweetheart.Now here are some pinking shears.
    Have you no ordinary scissors?she screeched fractiously.
    No,we lost them.But pinking shears will give a layered effect.
    Stan began cuttting the left side of Annie’s hair.Then he went around to the right.
    She looked in the mirror,The left side  is a bit longer than the right.
    OK I’ll cut off a bit more on the left.
    Oh,my God.The shears slipped,it’s gone really short!
    All Stan could do was cut the remainder of Annie’s lovely hair so it was only 2.54 cm long all over.
    Suddenly Mary came in,I didn’t know you were a hair dresser she said sardonically to her husband.
    Well,Annie got paint in her hair so I’ve trimmed her hair.
    Trimmed it..it looks like she won’t need a cut for about two years.
    Annie began to sob noisily ,terrifying Emile who was hiding behind the flour bin.
    Well,Stan answered, it will be easier to wash and dry and no need for rollers etc
    I think it looks charming.
    Why pinking shears?Mary whispered.You could have used my dressmaking ones.
    Well,.too late now mioawed Emile sarcastically.
    Well,I think it looks sweet,said Stan bravely.
    Meantime,you have burned the puddings again
    Just like King Alfred and the cakes.Men are only good at savoury and meat dishes.
    It takes a woman to cook puddings and cakes.But Yorkshire puddings are savouries.
    I wonder how Wittgenstein would have classified them ?   cried Mary enthusiastically.
    Not Wittgenstein again,moaned Stan,can’t you move onto someone else?
    Whom do you suggest?
    Try Carnap for a while.
    Oh,he’s more of a logician,Mary said defiantly,You see I love Wittgenstein as a human being..
    Are you committing adultery ?Stan demanded  dominatingly That’s an exaggeration,He’s dead i believe.
    That’s what they all say,shouted Stan angrily.
    But what about you and Annie?
    Well,I get lonely with you lecturing and researching all day long.
    Surely you could wait till I come home?
    I suppose so,though a harem has always been my dream!
    I think you are past it,said Mary rudely.
    That’s not what I see, said Emile quietly.
    Meanwhile Annie had washed her hair an it dried in tiny uneven curls all over her head.
    It looks quite fetching,they decided as they sat down to eat the charred yorkshire puddings.
    What an exciting Sunday especially for Stan who enjoyed touching and playing with women’s hair.
    I wonder if it’s a mental illnes?
    I’ll have to look on the internet.Still, better than panic attacks, he thought consolingly as he carried the roast beef into the dining room where the women were discussing religious topics including a curiousity about why Christians were so anti Semitic despite Jesus’s wish for people to love each other.and besides Jesus being God,he was also a Jewish person too on his mother’s side.
    That’s interesting,Stan thought,Here people think he’s English!What a weird world it is,to be sure.
    Little children,love one another,as someone once said many years ago but humankind is still in the toddler stage of development I fear…. and going backwards too.

And places full of light

When the sun is high and bright and strong
We  feel that it will always be the same
But when we live  on earth we know we’re wrong
And for that darkness we have got a name

Now in England we  have lights and screens
We do not fear the dark, the  devils’ night
But often in the winter we will dream
Of summer heat and places full of light

The steps  at Aldeburgh where we saw the sea
The cliffs at Lyme and Charmouth in the spring
But from  such places I dread  memory
The  pain of loss is  hard and no child brings

Now the sky is lilac in the dusk
In creation I find what I trust

Hatred keeps people away

You loved me, but not the  true way
I am not sure  of how I can say
You could not take
An error or mistake
If you can’t  trust  then it ‘s safer to hate

Hatred keeps people away
You projected yours every day
I hoped trust would grow
But I don’t think so
Love makes us  open to blows

 

I noticed you found a new friend
You smile and you hold her slim hand
I wish I could warn her
Her life will be stormier
Dancing on eggs  till the end

What keeps this man going on
Who will be his new victim?
He starts with great charm
Before the alarm
Rings in  the mind and he’s gone

He broke my new window one time
He had to escape from his crimes
He swings to and fro
He wants us to know
He is the best or the worst every time

 

No shades of grey are perceived
So little mistakes make him scream
He curses or blesses
Endures many losses
He’s the cat who upended the cream

Are you a writer?

Hare_Otmoor2017

 

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/signs-you-are-a-writer/

 

“Writing is a sacred calling that pulls at your soul.

It is the air that you breathe and what makes your heart continue beating. Your soul is filled with words that have no meaning until you sit down and pour them through your heart like a sieve. This is what writing is to the writer. The writing profession is unlike any other because it is not a profession to us. It is a way of life. We are drawn to it, sometimes despite our best efforts to pull away.

You will find us scribbling endlessly on scrap paper, writing during our lunch breaks at a corner table, and sitting at our computers for 20 hours at a time. We write because we have to write. Sometimes, our words are pleasing to other people and that is good. We write even when they are not. If this is not you, you may not be a writer. You may just be good at writing.”

Late blooming writers

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How Writers Can Take a Lesson from Late-Blooming Writers

 

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Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens worked as a lawyer and later as an insurance executive. However, he also wrote poetry during his off hours during most of his working life, except when his daughter was young. Stevens returned to writing around the time his daughter turned nine years old.

Wallace Stevens’s poetry matured and evolved as he got older, and his best work was done later in life, between the ages of fifty and seventy-five. In fact, Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize at seventy-five years old for the book The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens.

Mary buys a dummy

 

New cats today

While Mary sat in the kitchen on a large pine chair looking at Hotter’s  latest shoe catalogue,Annie was creeping up the garden path in a pair of turquoise suede elegantly heeled shoes matching her teal tencel culottes and matching blouse.Round her neck was a large lump of amber on a gold chain handy for beating off muggers or lustful men
Despite the heat she was in full splendour with  golden beige tinted moisturiser from Langone of Lyons on her lovely complexion,pink eyeshadow  from Yves St Current and dark brown boot polish as  her mascara had run out and she’d not been out for a while to buy more
Annie ran the last few yards and darted like an eel into Mary’s 1970’s  kitchen.
What on earth are you doing,dear? Mary asked her.Those shoes look unsuitable for  leading anyone up the garden path.Mind you,I do like them
Oh,I’ll explain,Annie said huskily.
I told  that therapist across the road I was  living with you.
What exactly do you mean by living,Mary asked anxiously.
Well,he said yesterday that anyone who lives alone must be lacking in some way.Except for him of course as he had full  analysis with Alfred Zion.
You mean Wilfred Bion,Mary told her.
Zion,Bion,what’s the difference?
It shows your  lack of education,Mary told her.Not that education nowadays makes much difference when almost anyone can get a 1st or 2.1.After all would you pay £90,000 for a third class degree in Aeronautical Engineering?
That’s not quite what I would have done, said Annie.A degree in flirtation and pleasing men would be more up my street.And cooking of course although I once did have an interest in Hebrew and Aramaic.
It’s not a way to progress in  a neo-liberal economy,although reading the Hebrew Bible is always interesting.Personally I  prefer  that to the New Vex-a man.The stories,the love songs,the action.Mary’s round eyes gleamed with intellectual life and a bit of  languorous lust
How about God? Annie asked her.
He seems to have changed as he related to his people.But he was a friend despite being an abstract concept.Though one could hardly call him a concept as he is inconceivable.
Mary’s voice faltered as  she was stunned by her own articulacy and wondered what she might say next that could offend millions around the globe.
You should write a book,Annie said kindly.
I think I am ill-equipped to write about God.And ,also ,I am saddened to see how his  own people  have been treated.I can’t dwell on  it over much as I already feel weak and weepy.
Why what have you  been doing,asked Annie.
I have been sorting out clothes to  give to the hospice shop. I’ve got a big bag
full already and  2 bags of newspapers and rubbish of various kinds which somehow creeps into my bedroom…  tissues,cotton wool, old hairbrushes.I am hoping to get it nice and neat before my sister comes to see me in August.And no doubt she will not be happy even then.She’d like me to buy a  small new house with a  lovely bathroom and kitchen. But I don’t want to leave my neighbours behind.If I won the lottery I could get the neighbours to move as well.Love thy  neighbour  etc
And now I realise I have far too many pans despite burning several.But it’s a big decision for a woman who was  famed for entertaining friends with  scorching Beef Vindaloo and lemon mousse that  tasted like  rubber.Giving that up is a big wrench.
Why can’t you carry on, asked Annie.
Carrying on is precisely why I can’t do it.Now I am a widow the wives of my former  colleagues and  my own women friends are afraid I will steal their husbands.
Emile miaowed in ecstasy as any  talk about  the love lives of his family were always intriguing.He was hiding as usual behind  the stone flour bin.
Don’t you see,said Annie.If we pretend we are living together then you can mingle with men without suspicion.
This is beginning to sound like a spy story,Mary told her.And do not drag me into  a character part  in the play  based on your romantic love for that psychoanalyst.
He looks ugly and boring to me.
Oh,that’s just a projection,Annie told her.You are defending yourself against acknowledging how much you long to lie in his arms and let him smother you in kisses.
Well,said Mary,I see you have been reading Freud for beginners again.
Or is it Freud for Dummies?
Mary recalled  how nice her dummy used to taste when it was dipped into a jar of malt and codliver oil.Maybe that is the answer,she thought.
I’m going to Mothercare,she called as  she ran out of the house in her green trainers and denim trouser suit.See you later.
Annie sat in the kitchen wondering how soon she could see the psychoanalyst again without  being accused of sexual harassment.Even   old age has not deterred her from seeking a replacement for dear old Stan.A few tears ran down her cheek and Emile  jumped out and sat on her knee.

Human chaos

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Rosa Benchez was standing in the hall  of her deluxe modern semi holding a bag of potatoes in one hand and the  snail mail in the other.Someone was knocking on the door.Rosa put the potatoes down on the bureau next to three broken  clocks and  some pink gloves.She got her camera out as she opened the door as she had a plan.
What is all this stuff doing here? asked her neighbour Rosamund Pilchard
I am doing  photographs of people’s homes and the meaning of such images  and I am starting  with this as an expression of  the loss  I have sufferedsince Charlie Blogge threw me over.Human chaos I might call it.She recalled burning the engagementt ring
She added  a banana to the heap and took several shots with her Kodak Bridge canera
What can I do for you? she asked
Do you know how to make trifle,Rosamund demanded
Yes, but you can buy it  in Waitrose
I  have got this man coming tomorrow from Soulmates.I want to make an impression.I know men used to buy women meals but now it’s different
Did you meet him in  the coffee shop?I saw you there with a strangely handsome  man last week.I liked the look of him
Well. they say don’t let them have your address but as he says he is an MP it should be ok
Is he  really an MP,asked Rosa?You are very  naive,you know
He may be one of those Euro MPs. That  Nigel Farage is.Not that I would date him
I am surprised he’s not met some gorgeous lady  already  over thre.Though you are very beautiful,dear girl.Brussels is very intriguing.Here,take this glass dish.I can email  you the recipe.
What I was thinking was.:will you ring the bell at 8.30 pm tomorrow and pretend you need an egg or some sugar.Then you can meet Saul and tell me what you think of him.Not then but later…
I am no expert on men,Rosa gurgled.I just made a big mistake with Charlie Blogge.I met him!He was ok online but in real life  he is mean and selfish.He only wanted one thing. and it was not sexual love.
Perhaps he hoped you would change him for the better? Rosamund whispered softly
Why can’t he change himself?
If you have a few friends you trust you can ask them for any criticisms they have of you but you can’t  do it with a boyfriend as it is a delicate task to choose the  right moment to say:
I’d rather live with  a gay man  who wears orange velvet trousers and dyes his hair green than with a selfish pig like you.Sex is not the most important thing in the world.Love is my priority
Rosamund was amazed.
I read in the Guardian than a woman of 87 in a Care Home asked for a vibrator.I suppose it’s better than having sex with a horrible man, she mused thoughtlessly
Do you think so? Rosa asked It’s completely different  than having someone there gazing into your eyes and wrapping their arms round you and calling you by a pet name.But I suppose it passes the time when you are stuck in  a Home.It’s exercise of course, as well.
Nowadays  there’s less love and kindness and more sexual experiments said her neighbour.
They are not real experiments as those have to be repeatable and independent  of the observer,Rosa murmured
Why bring in the Observer?  Rosamund asked.What about the Express or the Telegraph
Well,it’s immaterial as  it would not be the same making love while  bein abserved,Rosa told her.Some people might freeze up.Some may enjoy it
They gazed onto the garden where two cats were having  fun on the lawn
Shall we have a cup of tea and some Xmas cake?
The teapot was lying on the floor where Rosa had kicked it when she got up to vent her rage at life.She picked  it up and washed it tenderly
They sat in the lemon painted  room thinking about all the  men they had known and sometimes loved
Will we ever find someone  else suitable? Rosa asked.I sometimes wish I was gay as then we’d have more to talk about with another woman.But I don’t fancy it somehow.There is something missing.
I know what you mean,Rosamund giggled
I didn’t   mean that, it is just  a man is different.Greedy.lazy and can’t use a carpet sweeper as he cannot find the switch.It’s interesting to toy with them and play with their Meccano.
It certainly is.Or persuade them dolls are more fun that engineering
And so say all of us