A Period Property - Rightmove

How Lovely, a lavatory,

With a fat, golden pine seat,

Beneath a pair of net curtains,

Draped to suggest Victorian elegance.

What a picture, how graceful.

And two reproduction, four poster beds,

With chintzy pelmets.

And the factory next door makes no noise,

In those endless, steel sheds.

And a knotty pine fitted kitchen,

A knotty, fitted-pine knitted, spotty kitchen,

A snotty, spitty, pitted pine kitchen,

Just the fashion, once,

But not sufficiently long ago to be tasteful.

Just the thing, for a Georgian house,

And a plethora of fat leather sofas, turquoise.

And a conservatory, uPVC,

For conserving cane and wickerwork and glass topped bamboo tables.

And all for a million pounds,

Because it has stables.

Vintage Ear (Or A Strange Question In My Inbox.)

Are you still considering vintage ear?

Does this item still catch your eye,

As it flaps in the wind, perhaps,

Having grown a little larger each year?

What is there still to consider?
Click the link, you could still be the highest bidder.

I'm sure you could make up your mind, 

If only you would try.

Let me help.  Firstly a vintage ear

Has the advantage of allowing you to hear,

Subjectively.  No need to tune in to everything.

Birds won't bother you, or your wife.

You will find

That life

Is much more peaceful, but never fear,

You will still discern

The absence of any faint click

Denoting the failure to switch off the light

When some other member of the household

Leaves a room.  You'll still be up to that trick.

And any whispering of curses under breath,

Will be absolutely loud and clear.

Vintage ear is not a disadvantage,

Unlike vintage sight.

Don't get left behind.

Vintage ear is very much the in thing

Amongst people of your age.

It vies with baldness, grey hair turning white,

Wrinkles and extra freckles

For the feature most likely to make you appear

Like a sage.

(When I opened the email so that the full title of the subject was revealed it turned out to be   "Are You still considering Vintage Early Twentieth Century Gilt Framed Mirror?")

You Know The Type

You know the type:

You met them first, quite a while ago, now,

In some orange Penguin paperback.

You had fallen for the hype,

And really thought that critics ought to know

A good writer when they came across one.

You believed, had faith.

Or did you just prefer to show

You knew the fashionable names to drop?

Anyhow, you were taken in.

It was the age of innocence.

And, although you thought the characters tiresome,

You felt you ought to appreciate them,

Even emulate them, in their endless sophistication,

With their great minds, and Oxford education,

And their fashionable ways,

And their dinner parties, and their bed hopping.

Because they possessed the one, single qualification

Guaranteed to give them status:

They lived in London.

They were not rural,

They were not Northern

And somehow you forgot the one thing they were:

Pure fiction.

Watching The Sea From One's In Land Living Room.

Oh I do like to be beside the sea side,

as it flickers in the corner of the room,

where the sand cannot insinuate itself in every crack,

and the brilliance of reflected light 

is tempered by interior gloom:

a sulky fire, a sulky husband and the dark night, winter black.

Yes, I do like to be beside the sea side

where it flickers in the corner, and the spume

and azure air,

or the peaceful, turquoise ocean

make a backdrop, as I stare

at a lovely muscled back,

or a six pack, toned, firm, tight,

at smooth and burnished gold-brown skin 

masculine, 

hard, warm and thin,

(never touched by sun tan lotion)

ripped! Rippling hypnotically, erotically, in waves,

in explanation of the notion,

of sympathetic motion

as Poldark rides, half naked, along the cliff top track.

Hashtags And Flowers. (To the tune Kelvingrove)

There are hashtags, there are flowers, there is candle light
There is signalling of virtue, but no end in sight.
There is following the crowd
And pretending to be strong,
There is acting like a coward
Shielding what is wrong.

There are words in mealy mouths,
There is hot air and guff
There are many good intentions
But there's not enough
Of the sort of strength we need
To protect us, and indeed
We'd reject it if we saw it
For our brains are fluff.

Out Of Time

I seem to have run out of time,
It has fallen behind the cooker.
It slid off its hook on the wall.  
I have also run out of interesting.
Interesting depends on portions -
Portions depend on time.
You can't just gorge.
You can't read every article 
In the rightwing press
Enjoying being incensed by the state of the country these days
And the feeling of boiling blood.
You can't just feast
On every piece of seventeenth
Century or Georgian furniture
For sale in the auction catalogues,
Or examine every antique on eBay
And make yourself sad
Knowing you can't scheme
About getting hold of the next one,
Because you bought one last week
And you have to ration. 
You can't look at every single
Historic property on Rightmove
Because you just get constipated in the head.
You can't get on at all
When time has fallen off the wall,
And got stuck behind the cooker.
Even when you own two longcase clocks that bong.
And don't bother pointing out 
The digital clock on the computer,
Because digital time comes from digit
Which means poking finger,
Scrolling finger, and it is entirely unrelated to real time
They just don't compare.
Real time is behind the cooker 
Getting covered in brown gunge and dog hair.

Kick Ass Woman

When I'm grown up I'm gonna kick ass,

with agility,

and a northern working class accent.

I'm gonna be feisty, I'm gonna be hard as nails

on the outside, with a vulnerable, soft centre,

a certain fragility.

So I will never kick ass unnecessarily. 

And if I start the descent 

into a redundancy of sass,

or feist, I will remember 

that being a northern, female heroine entails

a massive, unsubtle contrast,

an almost schizophrenic mentality.

Bearing that in mind I shall then find

some experience on which to draw,

or think of 'me Nan',

and hard times, and endless grind,

so that I can look wise and sympathise,

before dusting myself down 

and kicking different ass, or kicking ass differently,

because I will be nothing if not creative

in my ass kicking ability.