Monday, July 18, 2022

Scorchio

A weekend 'phone conversation with my father:

Him: "Sorry to bother you but I need a bit of advice, I'm feeling very warm and I'm starting to get a bit breathless."

Me (feeling breathless due to the combination of asthma, heat and the effects of having, on Tuesday, taking advantage of the cat I don't have's practising for her Backwoodscat Badge to fumigate the house after she'd brought in little friends): "Have you had one of those ice lollies I bought you?"

Him: "I'm saving them for when it gets warm."

If you ever wonder where I get it from. (He had an ice lolly and he was "100% better!")

I had thought the cat I do not have was being uncharacteristically sensible in not sunbathing in the back garden this morning until I saw that she'd found a patch of sun by the closed front gate which meant the postman had to jump over the wall to post today's junk mail. She came in briefly but any hopes that she might come in and stay cool were dashed when she used the litter tray and trotted back out again, demanding tuna with menaces. She's lying on her back in a clump of marjoram with a woodpigeon sitting in the cherry tree not four feet above her head and they're both fast asleep. I'm staying indoors and leaving the silly beggars to it.

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

An outbreak of poetry has occurred


Oh golly,
It's so jolly,
Bunting far as eye can see
Across closed pubs
Adorning food banks
For the royal jubilee.

Grannies knitting
Postbox cosies
Cry: "God bless her, everyone!"
And there she is, 
God bless her, sitting 
Polite
Through celebration.

"Is that Titchmarsh or Nick Witchell?"
Asks the Queen of Party Hats.
Aunty's airing hardline views on
Media-confected spats.

Grandpa, cold, has put the fire on,
Best suit pawned to pay the bill.
Someone brought a Party Seven,
For each Union Jack and Jill.

Bunter preens amidst the chaos
Drunk on power and disrepair.
Nanny taps the eighteenth century:
"Jacob, are you still in there?"

So here we sit
Forlorn and luckless
Shades of glory hand-me-downs
Hard the bread
And grim the circus:
Too much shit
Too many clowns.