This is what happens when you put two amateur dishwashers in the house with no dishwasher detergent.
Jack twits-
"in Dickens' Uncom Traveller: 'though time may roll on and bear all its sons away...i do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce more simply'"
Books read in April
Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Emma by Jane Austen
and assorted scuba diving magazines (the norm)
Hats off to Carol Ann Duffy, the first female UK poet laureate. This is her National Poetry Competition Winning Poem.
Whoever She Was
They see me always as a flickering figure
on a shilling screen. Not real. My hands,
still wet. sprout wooden pegs. I smell the apples
burning as I hang the washing out.
Mummy, say the little voices of the ghosts
of children on the telephone. Mummy
A row of paper dollies, clean wounds
or boiling eggs for soldiers. The chant
of magic Words repeatedly. I do not know.
Perhaps tomorrow. If we’re very good.
The film is on a loop. Six silly ladies
torn in half by baby fists. When they
think of me, I’m bending over them at night
to kiss. Perfume. Rustle of silk. Sleep tight.
Where does it hurt? A scrap of echo clings
to the bramble bush. My maiden name
sounds wrong. This was the playroom.
There are the photographs. making masks
from turnips in the candlelight. In case they come.
Whoever she was, forever their wide eyes watch her
as she shapes a church and steeple in the air.
She cannot be myself and yet I have a box
of dusty presents to confirm that she was here.
You remember the little things. telling stories
or pretending to be strong. Mummy’s never wrong.
You open your dead eyes to look in the mirror
which they are holding to your mouth.
