Mary was making her supper.She put a pan of chickpea dahl onto the stove
 Fortunately the heat was low
Emile decided he must watch the pan as Mary had burned eight in the last three years
He wondered what  to do if it  began to smell odd.
I suppose I could bite Mary’s  ankle ,he thought.But she might kick me.He decided to ring 999
Hello, my mother has set  a pan on fire and I have burned my  foot.Can you send Dave please.
You have a strange accent.Where are you from?
I’m Albanian ,he boasted
So is your mother Albanian?
No, it was my father and we don’t  know his name.
Well, it sounds suspicious.Are you an illegal immigrant?
No,it was all legal.Except they weren’t married and as mother is English I believe I have the right to stay
Oh,I wouldn’t be too sure of that.When Jesus  applied for asylum they sent him straight back.
Where to?
Wherever his father lived.
So that’s why we never saw him again!
I can’t keep talking like this.I’ll send an ambulance.
OK, said Emile.
Dave the paramedic ran in wearing a trench coat and trainers.
What’s happened?
Mary has left this pan on.She’s writing again
Well, it seems she has also left some bacon cooking.Good thing she has you , Emile.
Mary walked in
What’s happened?
They are threatening to deport me to Albania,Emile purred.I told them my father was from there.
Well, it is possible,Mary agreed.But  they can’t prove it
Let’s hope Emile is not made to wear a yellow star on his collar and sweep the main road with a toothbrush. said Dave.
It would take a very long time unless all the cats in Knittingham were sent there as well.
Why doesn’t the Council buy a vacuum cleaner,asked Emile?
That is the least of our troubles, muttered Dave.
And so say all of us

The shift to Autumn comes as a surprise
Summer was extreme  yet it has died
The intense sun, the air on naked flesh
The sweat and strain, the heat, the thirstiness
As in the meadows we were walking by
Forgotten were the worries of past days.
We had knelt and wept and wished to pray
Words came very hard and with delay
Or suddenly like hailstones in a rush
A strange Autumn

We do not want revealed the  unknown way
We wish to be the same and life to stay
Yet like blood, the sudden tears will gush
As if the poison of the grief will flush
And we the final bill must surely pay
In Autumn

 

 

we

---

“A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.”

Speaking as an ex-lecturer in maths and statistics, how can I prove this is wrong?
By collecting data?

---

To be uncertain.live in mist and fog
To tense the eye and feel the mind’s  a bog
To hope but not to know what it’s for
To be afraid of who comes to the door
As  if the visitor may be a dog
Fierce  yet irritated by  a frog

Who owns this machine, am I a cog?
Or am I lonely, mentally unfed?
Friendship is not purchased from  a store
We feel uncertain

Life is easier, teachers do not flog
Criminals not hung   nor  flung in mud
Yet of all  the world’s ills we are made aware
As at our little screens we  fearful stare 
Seeing refugees and  children dead
Calm is uncertain.

 

 

What time is it, the old man said to me.
Time for conversation with no fee
We have to pay the therapist to hear
Why we feel we need to live in fear

Lurching yet graceful ,the old black cat sets off.
Slowly he circles the edges of the garden in joy.
In the car ,though still in a shut basket,
He always knew when we came to the turning of the road.
Was it the cherry trees in blossom,a scent
Or something we could never be aware of?
I would open his basket in the car.
He comes out and descends so carefully
Onto the pavement,then tries to bound up the path,
The long wooded back garden is his total joy.
He would sit watching tiny frogs in a deep pond in the sun.
No doubt he longed to catch one.
He once brought a robin indoors,
The bird was completely unharmed.
Must have been his gift to me
We released it later after its shock had worn off.
Now he can only hobble,
And soon, his thinness warns me, he'll be gone.
No cat has ever loved or will love like this cat,
A rescued, terrified animal.
His eyes say everything to me.
I look into their clear-jewelled greenness
I look into a deep,still glowing sea of light.
The last day,finally, all day,he's on my knee.
I say"goodbye,goodbye,Pussy".
And he's gone,just before tea.
Now the garden seems empty.
Love leaves a gap.
Love leaves us bare
Love leaves us stripped.
Yet Love is eternal grace.
A mystery of faith.
I believe.
Believe.
Be.

https://thescribeunbound.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/that-chaunge-sank-into-myne-herte-roote-depression-and-medieval-literature/

Extract:

“Thomas Hoccleve wrote his Complaint [to a friend] in around 1420. That’s nearly five hundred and ninety four years ago. Yet, we read with empathy as he struggles with feelings of listlessness as the summer turns into winter. The Complaint‘s Prologue opens as follows:

After that hervest Inned had his sheves,
and that the broune season of myhelmess
was come and gan the trees robbe of ther leves
That grene had bene and in lusty fresshness,
and them in-to colowre of yelowness
hadd dyne and doune throwne vndar foote
that chaunge sank into myne herte roote (l.1-7)

Hoccleve describes the ominous visual signs of the transition between autumn and winter as Michealmas arrives and robs the trees of their adornment. The yellow leaves that fall and are ‘throwne’ under careless feet contrast with the green, ‘lusty’, fresh, feeling of summer. The most sinking feeling comes as the change of the season sinks directly into Hoccleve’s ‘herte roote’ – the innermost depths of his heart. We know that feeling, right? That sense that the cold, dark, days are physically seeping into the depths of our souls?

Hoccleve continues:

…and in the end of novembar, vpon a nyght,
syghenge sore as I in my bed lay
for this and othar thowghts which many a day
before I toke sleape cam none in myne eye
so vexyd me the thowghtfull maladye. (l. 17-21)

It’s the end of November, as it is today, 593 years later. Hoccleve is lying in his bed, sighing from the bottom of his heart, thinking over the thoughts that are bringing him down. These vexful contemplations drag him so low that no sleep will come. He lies awake, in turning sleeplessly in ‘thowghtfull maladye’. The very process of thinking is a disease to Hoccleve – his invasive thoughts afflict him like a physical malady.

 

Read it all.Click the link