Category: Thinkings and poems

Everybody needs to be bad enough

My own photograph

Are you a bad enough parent? We’ve heard of good enough mothers through the work of Dr DW Winnicott, but surely mothers need to be bad as well and fathers do but how bad do they need to be?

Murdering their children will be too bad, but never disagreeing with them will be too good

Be bad enough to others to make sure you are respecting your own boundaries you know it makes sense and you read it here first in a similar manner you need your baby to be bad enough because if the baby is too good she will be ignored and made use of by unkind parents

Everybody needs to be a little bit bad enough to preserve their own self while living in this curious unequal society

Genuine mistakes by the voice to text

My husband was in the hospital and he tested positive for  TV

That’s all right you can turn him on whenever you like

The surgeon drained my knee with a lozenge. Or was it a Syrian?   I wish I’d learnt to read when I was blunder

Did they put a primula in the back of your hand first?

She said your knee is twice the normal size, are you in any discomfort?

I knew my stockings were too tight, so I said, no.

She said, you don’t seem to realize the toll this is taking on me.

So I suggested she should change her job.

I was having a problem  distinguishing between myself and other people.

She said, all this pain is bad for you. Would you like a morphine patch on your shoulder?

I said, what about putting it on my bladder I would really like that better

She said I’ve never been so consulted in my satired life. You have to put the patch on your skin on top of some blood vessels

So I said, what about putting it over my heart?

Maybe you could inject it right into my heart directly.

That will be assisted dying and it’s not even legal yet so I will be committing murder.

I didn’t realise morphine was so dangerous. And it can make you feel depressed as well as killing you

Have you noticed now that nearly all the doctors are women and they work part-time and they tell you at 8:00 p.m. in A&E,

stop talking because I’ve got children working for me at home.

Is it my fault if they employ foreigners as  underage slaves?

Anyway I think I might be going deaf when I recover from all my ailments I  have to go to the doctor and say

I can’t hear you

And she will shout

What?

Modern slavery in Britain a serious things l

By the way there are people here we brought from Africa tempted by the offer of money and they are working as carers being paid the minimum wage and their own money to the company that brought them over claiming their needed it for their visas.

It’s a form of modern slavery in my opinion and it’s disgusting I have met some of them and they are lovely people some are qualified teachers and other professionals

The poverty in their home country is great and the life expectation is not very long but this is no reason to exploit them.

The importance of presence which is now undervalued in our modern lives

I’m learned from my experiences in the nursing home especially those I had with two very old ladies with dementia but also with a lot of personality as well. one of them said to me if only I could have visitors who didn’t keep talking I would just like to have someone there like my son in the room but not constantly talking. I was glad that I was able to be with her for an hour and a half on her last day of life. she was conscious but in severe pain and I sat by her until the nurse asked me to to leave because they had to wash her. When I got to the door she said say goodnight everyone. It was only 3:30 in the afternoon but I did what she wanted as I said on her behalf goodnight everyone good night it was a great privilege to know this Welsh school teacher who was a mother of three children the other woman was more severely affected by dementia I learnt from observation and experience that I could communicate with her much better if I was present snd fully aware of my own body. You could say when I was indwelling in my body. then she would respond even when she seemed mentally disturbed. through this being present I became fond of her I would say that in the end I loved her; she was very different from the angry person who swore at me when she finally said: you are so gentle, I love you K

Cobblestones and weeds

 

 

DandelionClocks
Image by Mike Flemming.Copyright,

Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds
In the little street  we  children played
While nature fought back, spreading out  wild seeds

Old women reached for grace with rosary beads
When I call.I don’t know what to say
Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds

Neighbours borrowed eggs and helped in need
What was my entire world has shrunk, decayed
Still nature fights back,  flinging out wild seeds

The cobbles have been tarmacked till aggrieved
Here we once enjoyed school holidays
Cracks  for insects,cobbles,gutters,weeds

Girls played  with doll’s prams,boys disagreed
All the world was here, where’s left today?
While nature  blackened, blasting out her seeds

Where are mother,father,oh dismay
I am old and they lie in the clay
Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds
Nature acts still, spreads out flying seeds

 

 

In the gutter

O

While the priest annointed him with oils
I played in the gutter all alone
I hoped to find the marbles we had lost
Or from the melted tar to pluck a stone

The summer was so hot the cobbles baked
Looking like a row of fresh made loaves
There were no fishes in the millstream’s rush
Nor a place where bread and Saviour rose

I found a florin in the cobbled street
I found two marbles lying near a grid
I found a daisy squashed in a wide crack
I saw a spider hanged in its own web

To summarise ,my father went away
The Queen was crowned and we just had to play

Marbles

I remember you boys rolling marbles down the gutter

And how you prized them, have beautiful they where when you rolled them on your hands in the sunshine

I remember you climbing  fences and falling off walls while I stood by to admire you

We found a well in someone’s allotment covered over mr by tin.

You frightened me with tales of boys vtorturing frogs.

Maybe you were frightened of the prospect of national service.

Sometimes you talked about the Nazis

But you could never have said  to anyone that you were afraid.

Before that I remember you climbing up the piano trying to get to the Christmas tree on the top.

You seem so full of energy alive so happy and yet it was not true

Later you developed panic syndrome I could hardly believe it

And then you died with Parkinson’s disease

You were lonely in the nursing home. I hoped when you drowsed that you remembered the marbles and playing rounders in the street

You taught me how to bowl over arm. I wanted to play cricket but it never happened How full of possibility the world seemed, the energy, the joy, the lust for life.

Now just a handful of dust

A brother

The Poems of Seamus Heaney review – collected works reveal his colossal achievement | Poetry | The Guardian

Northern Ireland coast

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/09/the-poems-of-seamus-heaney-review-collected-works-reveal-his-colossal-achievement

Positive thinking can make success feel like the only acceptable option. But humility allows for grace

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/06/positive-thinking-can-make-success-feel-like-the-only-acceptable-option-but-humility-allows-for-grace?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Our conjoined self, dismembered, broke apart
Give me courage on the journey slow

In good times , we may lose our self in flow
To be self-conscious makes shame rule my heart
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Do we have no self when partners die?
Bewildered, can I find the way to start
Give me courage on the journey slow

Where is my best path to discover
The way to mend a self, holed by grief’s darts?
Without your gaze, I’m nobody I know

Like a ship strikes rocks deep down below
I risk getting hit without some charts
Give me courage on the journey slow

Will I know myself when new betrothed
To mirrors unfamiliar to me old?
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Give me courage in the darkness gross.

My childhood left me terrified of anger. Then a teacher showed me how to use it as a force for good | Marisa Bate | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/06/childhood-terrified-anger-teacher-drama-class-rage-men

In between two raindrops

Some evenings, the sky turned pink

We were happy, lying in the grass

watching the sun set,

arms around each other.

Seemed like eternal life had come

Earlier than forecast
.
Those weathermen are often wrong!

They need new training.

I shall remember you

in that timeless moment

in between two raindrops,

in between two tears

The sea from the pier

You are smiling on the pier above the sands

The rippling waves stretchef out like children’s hands

You look so strong I cannot comprehend

Your fatal illness and its grievous end

You were never  patient on dry land

You were living well and  feeling grand

We crossed the road ; I held your cold thin hand

  I suffered so much torment,would I mend?

I saw a fluid shape as dark it pranced

Through the open door it swiftly danced il

With the  well known wiles of Tudor kings

Hoping they can make it on the wing

I learned with grief , it came to take you back.

Across the river wide ,my love, my lack

Menu to divert

Avocado pear with prophecy
Melon and cake salad [ iced]
Carrot and weak soup
Battered beans all aching
Casserole of jam with funny bones
Salmon and duck eggs in dream sauce on white mice.
Fishcakes and celery tarts
Vegetarian man with pearl barley.
Hot spiced reef with pasta
Chilli beef and barmaid
Seven pear trees with roasted roots
Icecream and sausage jelly on custard tarts
Shoulder,breast and sweet lady
Toothless spies, wholemeal bred

Underground

On a whim I went to Downing Street
They charged me fifty pounds for both my feet
Then  no-one anwered when  I rang the bell
I looked in through a hole, the penny fell

I claim I saw the tide was coming in
Riding high with whales, oh they were thin
What next , a  golden galaxy implodes
Stars shoot out like sparks  from other worlds

Jonah rode a whale to London Town
Still  in shock, he   did not hear a sound
All tongues will  dry until we see the flames
The burning bush, the prophecy, the Name

For  Sophocles I  spent a million  pounds
My credit card’s still bouncing underground

Ode to a light bulb

Oh,light bulb foreseen by our God
Save us all from darkness’ rod
You are our Saviour as foretold
In prophecy by ancients bold.
We will worship you at night
When sunken is the sun so bright.
We’ll watch TV and Kindle fire
No more to play shall we aspire.
We’ll wear ourselves out watching screens,
As from a can we eat baked beans
We’ll send for pizzas with our phones
With which we never feel alone.
We might talk to our partner dear
Though to text is easier.
We see the neon street lights gleam
Where once we saw the moon’s cold beams
And in bed we read our books
With a kindle or a nook
We put beneath out pillows fair
I phones which we long to hear
Can one have too much new light?
From technology some take flight
For gone are seasons, and their fruit
As our computer we reboot.
New potatoes all year round
Avocados once quite rare
Now are seem ‘most everywhere.
Melons,grapes and fresh green peas
As the birds sing,life’s a breeze.
Oh light bulbs,fluorescent tubes
Electric candle, light is cubed.
We thank you for extended days
Maybe we’ll find time for prayers.
God is great in mystery
No light bulb can help us see.
In silence,darkness, meditate
Wonder what will be our fate.
As retribution for our wrong
Satan stabs us with his prongs
He needs no more light in hell
The fiery furnace cooks as well.

Such gentle words can break our sullen bonds

tresco_2019-4

A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach
Can touch, can move, can embrace in its sounds
The inner soul where its vibrations teach.

When cut off, silent,after sad defeat
Such gentle words can break our sullen bonds
A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach.

We must not torture nor torment in speech
Our heart, the centre of our morbid wounds
The inner soul with its vibrations speaks..

From our eye, a tear springs with relief
From imprisoned sulking, jump with a great bound!
A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach.

Muscles weaken,but the mind stays fleet
Humour and its cousins are our clowns
The inner soul by its athletics speaks.

I smile and smile yet rarely do I frown
For I will rise up, even when low down
A word that by a friend can reach,provoke
In our souls ,deep memories will evoks

You can’t just press ‘undo’ on your life. To move forward, you must first feel your grief and rage

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/06/you-cant-just-press-undo-on-your-life-to-move-forward-you-must-first-feel-your-grief-and-rage?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

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114 Funny Death Puns and Jokes (Die Laughing!) – Independently Happy

114 Funny Death Puns and Jokes (Die Laughing!) – Independently Happy https://share.google/r4yS8t6sDhVbOpUgL

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Will glass coffins become popular?

Remains to be seen!

Diagnosis

By Katherine

The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.

  • Discharge status: Alive but without permission.
  • Healthy appearing decrepit 69 year-old male, mentally alert but forgetful.
  • The patient refused an autopsy.
  • The patient has no past history of suicides.
  • Patient has left his white blood cells at another hospital.
  • The patient’s past medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40 pound weight gain in the past three days.
  • She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December.
  • The patient experienced sudden onset of severe shortness of breath with a picture of acute pulmonary oedema at home while having sex, which gradually disappeared

Joyce Carol Oates on memory and personality: An interview – Los Angeles Times

https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-joyce-carol-oates-20160405-story.html

G

Yet our tendency to forget the haunting brilliance displayed in the short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” in the novel “Them,” the novella “Black Water,” the Marilyn Monroe novel “Blonde,” and to focus instead on her tweets or the sheer volume of her catalog seems fitting, because her latest novel, “The Man Without a Shadow” (Ecco: 384 pp., $27.99), is preoccupied with the act of forgetting. It tells the story of a charismatic amnesiac, Elihu Hoopes, whose short-term memory has been destroyed by encephalitis. Though Eli, his ailment and an image he can’t seem to shake — the disturbing anamnesis of a girl’s body floating just below the surface of a stream — are at its center, the book is as much the story of Margot Sharpe, a neuroscientist who enters Eli’s life as a graduate student but over time becomes much more entangled with her patient’s world. The novel wrestles with our complicated acts of remembrance and the various ways memory constructs and colors our emotions and ethics — our entire identity. After all, it’s memory that allows you to discern where you are going, where you have been.

Oates will appear at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 9. This phone interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What carries you from one book to the next? Does an image come to you or a character or an idea you want to explore?

In a long work like a novel, a number of elements have to come together. It’s like a river into which many tributaries are flowing. The river builds with different smaller streams. You have one idea and then another and then another. I always start with characters about whom I care. I like to work with characters who are representational. I am interested in the personal, but I also want to write something that has a larger significance in terms of society.

“The Man Without a Shadow” is not only a fascinating portrait of its two main characters, Margot and Eli, but an examination of memory as the very bedrock of the edifices of our identities, our personalities.

I’m interested in how we fashion our personalities out of somewhat selective memory. We forget much. It is both very natural and very normal to forget a good deal. Things that we remember may have a certain cast. As in a movie, there’s a certain tone, of lighting, of music, of sound, so with our memories some people have a natural tone of melancholy and others have a more optimistic or cheerful tone. We all know people who are determined to be upbeat and other people who seem to be looking over their shoulders all the time, wounded and complaining. Personality to me is the ultimate fascination — how we’re all so different, and yet we’re very much alike in many ways.

How did the function of memory determine the book’s structural and aesthetic choices?

The novel is constructed as if it were notes on an amnesiac. A neuroscientist is keeping a personal journal and part of that is the novel, but then we’re also in Eli’s memory and imagination too. We see what he’s remembering of his past. He’s haunted by his past. That’s true of many people. There are seminal incidents in people’s lives that they keep returning to and thinking about. He’s tormented by something that happened when he was very small and didn’t have any ability to comprehend. He’s trying to comprehend it with his art.

Author Joyce Carol Oates talks with Michael Silverblatt during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC on April 19, 2015.

Author Joyce Carol Oates talks with Michael Silverblatt during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC on April 19, 2015.

(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

Are there similarities between comprehension through art and science? You write of Margot, “She has always asked questions for which there are not ready answers. To be a scientist, Margot thinks, is to know which questions to ask.” Is that also in some way the definition of a writer?

A scientist is someone who is really looking at the causality of things. If you were a political scientist, let’s say, you would look at the current political situation with Donald Trump and the others in a very analytical way, seeing it maybe as part of a cycle of American politics. A scientist is always looking at the context, whereas most people just read the newspaper and throw it out. “Does this thing have consequences?” “What does it mean?” “Is there a precedent in history?” These are questions that a scientist would ask, and a novelist asks these questions as well.

calendar@latimes.com

Malone is a writer and professor of English. He is the founder and editor in chief of the Scofield and a contributing editor for Literary Hub.

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I’m starting on the beer

He said he had got dizzy and he thinks he saw the Light
It was mainly migraine but I recognise his plight

He didn’t want to drive me to the bitter end
So I called a cab and went there ;I met some lovely friends

He carved the joint on Sunday and then he left me here
I’ve finished all the brandy and I’m starting on the beer

I will lose my mind on purpose and write from my own heart
If I act like crazy, take me to the park

We had a cat from Tottenham,I preferred him to a man
I didn’t have to cook at all, he ate straight from a can

The cat we had much later, we thought he was a girl
The vet burst into laughter so I scratched him with my nails

Then we had a black cat, very small and round
She got bored and went to Mass. Jesus was her friend

Now the cat has cancer and I am feeling gloom
Put a first class stamp on me and send me to the moon

The vet is getting friendly but I have got no dog
I’ll have to get a virtual one but will it keep me snug?

Mary finds her phone

When Mary went to bed she wanted to put her phone on the charger but she could not find it

First she thought shall I ring 999 and she asked Emile for his opinion but he didn’t know what to say

She ran the number and she could hear it ringing but it was downstairs and she was feeling tired so she thought to herself I will get it in the morning mlll

MotherI want an i-mssk Emile whispered into her ear she lay on the bed

So she said her night’s prayers and got into bed wearing a long cotton night dress with blue flowers all over it and the silk eye mask that she liked very much

Mother I want an eye mask cried Emile

Well you can’t have mine because it will be too big for you and it will drop off ot it might even strangle yo will surely in a world as large as this one must be somewhere someplace where they make eye masks for cats to wear at night.

We’ll have to look on Google he thought to himself it will give Mary something to do tomorrow apart from trying to find her phone.

The next day Mary went downstairs and she rankg the landline with the number of her mobile and it began to ring but it wasn’t in the living room and then before she could walk across the room it stopped ringing

Oh what a bloody nuisance she thought to herself she tried again

I’ve heard of lies done lies and statistics she said to herself but that is a decent sort of lie m I am the owner of the phone and I am not turned it off it must have run out of batter don’t worry mother Emile cried

It must be here somewhere but not the bedroom or the living room

Do you remember fractal geometry she asked the cat nervously

I don’t believe I ever heard of that

Well what a PS2 was in ordinary geometry is a short distance like between thrill and Colin bay if you follow all the internets of the coastline an infinite distance. Oh god sort the cat I hope she’s not going to go on to infinity and different levels of infinity and so on because to be honest cats are not interested in infinity we are interested in living creatures people mice routes dogs horses Beatles frogs but definitely not infinity which is an abstract concept far beyond the reach of the mind of a cat like me.

Cup of tea and sat down thinking it’s going to take me infinitely long to find this phone so I will die while I’m looking for it

She stared down at the blue roof and taught there’s no point loosing at the blue rub it’s not in this room it must be in the hall or the kitchen

Suddenly an idea came to her, it’s in the hall darling.

Stan is that you? I can’t manage very well without you because you’ve got better eyesight than me or at least you did but how do you know it’s in the hall where are you? Can people in heaven loop down and look at lost objects for their relatives?

So she went into the hall and she walked towards different door and there on the floor underneath the tablet a Catholic weekly periodical load a phone

well that’s very peculiar Mary thought because she had come so her subscription 18 months before and she had not been receiving it and now by some miracle someone to put it through the door and said London right on top of the phone except there was a tiny bit peaking out and she must have noticed that previously without making it concerts. She picked up the phone and almost kissed it for joy

I must be more systematic because unlike the infinite length of the coastline the life of a battery in a phone is only a few hours

So that means you need a plan

the phone rang as soon as she put it on the charger and it was a neighbor Annie.

What are you doing today question mark do you fancy taking Emile out for a walk?

He is a cat not a dog

I think you have some ulterior motive for asking me that.

Well I’m feeling very shy today but I need to get some exercise so I thought if you iand  came with me it would give strangers something to talk about

Yes will you proposing to put Emile on a lead because he will not like that

Well you can sit on your shoulder I have seen nothing the tone there is a man with a white coat on Sunday mornings he takes it into Marks and Spencer’s.

I wonder if he is enquiring about winter clothing forecast because it’s somewhere they could expand into although since cats are very small it might not make a lot of profit and yet at the same time because they are so small the tailoring and the fit will be very difficult and who’s prepared to pay millions for a coat for their cat when they could simply keep the caf at home by the fire

Next thing that we’re doing makeup for cats she said to Annie as he told her about Emile wanting a silk I mask.

Well at least he won’t be asking for lipstick and I shado

?

The pinking shears

Stan was in the new black and cream kitchen cooking the Sunday dinner.As usual in the 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 neighbor Annie… covered in blue paint.
What’s happened to you,Stan enquired cautiously.Surely you are not house painting on Sunday?
No,I never paint myself,she responded.I was in the old shed and a stray cat was up on the top shelf.It leaped off knocking over this tin of paint.I’m wondering how to get ot out of my hair?
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 loudly,even a touch hysterically.
Well,all I can think is that I could cut off a little of your hair.
OK, if that’s the only way to get rid of that damned paint.Can I stay and eat with you,babe?
Of course,sweetheart.Now here are some pinking shears.
Have you no ordinary scissors? she cried fractiously.Oh,bleedin’ ‘ell!!
No,we lost them.But pinking shears will give a layered effect.
Stan began cutting the lefthand side of Annie’s hair.Then he went around to the right….his left or her right?
She looked in the mirror,The left is a bit longer,she murmured vampishly.She falt like cussing and swearing but she didn’t know enough bad words so far in her life.
OK I’ll cut off a bit more.Stan whispered into her neck.
Oh,my God.The shears slipped,it’s gone really short,he shouted.
All Stan could do was cut the remainder of Annie’s lovely hair so it was only 2 cm long all over.
Suddenly Mary came in,
I didn’t know you were a hair dresser, she said sardonically to her errant husband.
Well,Annie got paint in her hair so I’ve trimmed it off.
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 watching some ants.
Well,Stan answered, it will be easier to wash and dry and she’ll have no need for rollers etc.Why,I could do it for a living.
I think it looks charming.
Why pinking shears?Mary whispered.You could have used my dressmaking ones.
Well,too late now mioawed Emile sarcastically from the bookcase filled with the entire Penguin cookery book collection over thirty years.What a pity it took up so much space in the tiny kitchen.
I think her hair looks sweet,said Stan bravely.
Meantime,you have burned the puddings again.Just like King Alfred and the cakes.Men are only good at savory and meat dishes.
It takes a woman to cook puddings and cakes.But Yorkshire puddings are savories.
I wonder how Wittgenstein would have classified them ? cried Mary enthusiastically.
Not Wittgenstein again,moaned Stan in mental torment,can’t you move onto some other philosopher?
Whom do you suggest? she said grammatically.
Try Carnap or take up gardening.
Oh,Carnap’s more of a logician,Mary said defiantly,
You see I love Wittgenstein as a human being.
Are you committing adultery with him ?Stan demanded thoughtfully his eyes bright like lasers.
That’s a wild exaggeration,He’s dead,Mary muttered.And he was,er,gay!
How do you know? That’s what they all say,shouted Stan angrily.
But what about you and Annie? Mary said venomously.
Well,I get lonely with you lecturing all day and studying Wittgenstein and mathematics all night
Surely you could wait till I come home? Mary said sharply
I suppose so,though a harem has always been my dream!
I think you are a bit past it now at 99,said Mary.
That’s not what I think, said Emile quietly.Cats and men…how do they do it?
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 illness?I’ll have to look on the internet.Still, better than panic attacks, he thought
consolingly as he carried the roast beef onto the dining room where the women were discussing religious topics including a curiosity about why Christians were so anti Semitic despite Jesus’ wish for people to love each other.and besides being God,He was also a Jewish person too.
That’s interesting,Stan thought,here people think he’s English!What a weird world it is,to be sure.God was not a white Eton educated man.He may have been brown with a long black beard and a moustache.Did he smoke?
Only when he thought nobody was looking!Then he had flames coming out of his ears,Well,it made him laugh,you see.It’s Sunday soon so get ready.The Lord is nigh and he has a new hat on too

An Upside to Envy, and a New Reason for That Commandment – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/science/11tierney.html

Traditionally, envy is linked with the eyes,” Dr. Smith said, noting that the word comes from the Latin “invidere,” which mean to look at with malice, or cast an “evil eye.” Just as an invidious comparison is by definition bad, so is envy defined by some psychological researchers to be inherently malign.

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At Whitby

I wish I were at Whitby by your side
From the Abbey Steps we saw the whole
The sound of gulls aswirling round our minds

The atmosphere of Yorkshire blunt and kind
Salty air,the North Sea,winds that groan
I wish I were at Whitby by your side

See the children taking donkey rides
The fishermen look anxious , happy, worn,
The sound of gulls is swirling round my mind

From Saltburn,Staithes to Bempton bold cliffs rise
Then Bridlingon where Hockney was a boy
I wish I were at any by your side

The two weeks break seemed long when we arrived
Now all my past seems like an old map torn
The sound of gulls is calling you to mind

To be in Whitby is to be alone
The pie shop’s open yet I feel forlorn
I wish we were at Whitby side by side
The sun and air, I dream into your mind

The cliffa of North Yorkshire

Wwlalking on the beach at Redcar Bay.

The Cleveland hills are not so far away.

The cliffs begin at Saltburn we walk there.

Filling up our lungs with North sea air.

The pier is long, whenever is it used?

In my mind, I see it far away

Cliffs begin and seabirds will amuse

The super structures wear into decay.

David Hockney Bridlington,sea views

I walk on this wet sand without my shoes.

You went out on a boat around the bay.

Now you’ve gone so far, so far away.

I wish I had come with you in the boat

I wish that you could read what I once wrote