Know it all

See you:
Small girl with big laugh,
The tickle of a ladybird’s feet
The glob of an earthworm
On the palm of your hand,
The silky stroke of the grass heads
On your arms and shoulders and face
As you stagger your way through the big field.

You are small

And in love with daisies,
In love with the billy goat
Whose head you rub with your head,
You talk to the dog
Because she is family,
You are outside all the time,
Scratching with a stick
Where the chickens scratch.

Your mother tells you

The names of the flowers

And shows you that she likes butter
In the shine
Of the buttercups
Under her chin,
You know not to eat them
But she lets you eat primroses,
Their softness gums
To the roof of your mouth
Like the names of the flowers.
 
Your father carries you in a blue backpack
With canvas that rasps under your nails
And cold metal struts
That sting your legs.
You hold your father’s curls in your hands.
You are tall now,
The sun is your friend,
You belong to everything,
And everything belongs to you,
You are not indivisible,
You are everything in the world.

February - bit of beauty

the 404

It said 404 and meant page not found
It said 404 and it’d gone to ground
Oh 404 don’t you just hate
When it’s 404 and you have to wait
When you go back page and you click again
And if it’s 404 that’s the moment when
You got 404ed so you gave right up
And you went away and you had a cup
Of tea
And wrote this instead
Sod it

Winter afternoon

December sunlight flashing through thickets
Running close to the ground as a hare does
Mud field of ploughed stripes
Everything stripped back to sparseness
For autumn is generous
Summer tender
Spring miraculous
But winter is strict with us
Parental in its propriety
Hawthorn and bramble
Hedging us in
With the rules of survival
The rest of the year
So much frivolity.

Have a nice day

While in town today during my failure to buy any Christmas presents at all but after my achieved non-aim of giving Boots all of my money, I needed a convenience so I went to the library because as you see above, it has rather lovely Victorian wooden stalls with entirely appropriate and very polite instructions on the back of the loo door. While therein I found an piece of graffiti which distracted me from the rain soaked over Christmased outside world.

You get a better quality of graffiti in a library. And it reminded me that no, I was not at one. Near. But not there. And so I went onward. And it was worth it because sometime later, after more present buying failure, I found this:

Out there, some person, some person who works in a fast food establishment where curry and chips are a selected highlight decided that window decoration was called for it being December and all. Or maybe the boredom level just escalated to unbearable. Or maybe they are just naturally creative and very frustrated. Operating under the classic maxim: "Use what you've got" they did. A plastic cow. Some polystyrene burger boxes. A pint glass. Some dying roses. Some marbles. A piece of silver foil left over from wrapping fried dead animal. A nice background poster conjuring up possibilities of Mediterranean luxury foodstuffs. And the genius element - the triangular angle of pizza boxes focusing on that happy clappy message.

It made my day. Thanks after hours greasy kebab chicken nugget curry in a burger chip ketchup shop person.   

Three pieces of life advice

a familiar trait

So my cousin and me go to this nice hotel to have a cup of coffee. Actually the coffee is for him, I want a hot chocolate. The getting of these items is a tale in itself. We go to pay. My cousin gets out his wallet. He tells the waitress that he doesn't have any change. I don't have any change either I say, but I've got a rock. And I pull a rock out of my jeans pocket. Actually it's a crystal and that obviously makes me even more woo woo. It's only a matter of time before the tarot cards come out and I start doing a reading. And then my cousin who admittedly was once also a bit woo woo but who is now the sort of buff glacier climbing-landy driving-boat piloting bloke who makes waitresses go all daft says, "I've got a rock too," and pulls one out of his jeans pocket and puts it on the bar. And I put mine next to his. "We're cousins," I say to the waitress as though it explains everything. And then I think - This is the best thing that has happened to me in ages.

Public transport in Guernsey

Good night god bless

Calender guide

January - Desperate penury
February - Depressed grey misery
March - Ooh ooh ooh it's a leaf and and I went out without my thermals on!
April - Thermals, shorts, thermals, shorts
May - Awesome
June - Now this is the life!
July - GIVE ME MY HOLIDAY. NOW.
August - Oh here it is. Bit hot though isn't it?
September - Broke/fat/poor/flaking and lightly miserable post holiday but have to buy new shoes because back to school, regardless of fact you left school in 1956
October - We didn't have much of a summer did we?
November - Glump
December - Options a) or b)
a) Woo hoo love Christmas glitter sparkle let's decorate absolutely everything in sight and wear Santa earrings (my Mama)
b) Grunt go away why did you buy me this? Scrooge (my Papa)
New Year's Eve - amateur night for non practised drunks
January 1 - OMG not again. Why? Why? What have I done to deserve this?