Yes, it looks as if Spring has Sprung! What a change from the freezing weather I wrote about in the last post. This post is a bit late – have been busy out in the garden, and would you believe, writing a poem about Richard Coles. Lots of outside clearing and tidying has been done – even Philosopher has been mysteriously moved to clear out of some of his sacred objects to celebrate the spring weather. We’ve been on some nice walks, too – including a trip to Rye Harbour when the tide was incredibly low. You could walk on wide expanses of sand and approach strange structures I have never seen before.
Lets clear up one thing first. Writing a poem about Richard Coles? WTF? Well, despite the fact that I decided to ‘deplatform’ myself from WI events a few years ago, Anita, the current Chairman of the Board of Trustees (of which I am still a member) rashly asked me to do a slot for our up-coming virtual Annual Meeting webinar, which is happening on 24 March. ‘Write us a poem’, she said. My slot also includes the introduction to our main speaker – the Rev Richard Coles, so I thought I’d do the introduction in verse. Risky, eh? However, as the man will be sitting there listening to it, Battleaxe will have to mind her manners…
Purely in the spirit of research, I am currently watching Coles learning to do stand-up comedy on telly, with a group of other celebs – Baroness Warsi would you believe, some bloke off Love Island, a Coronation Street actress one has never heard of, and Shaun Ryder out of Happy Mondays, who comes across somewhat worse for wear. (Don’t you sound so sniffy, Battleaxe – this is a woman whose favourite viewing in recent weeks has been Pooch Perfect. In another life, maybe I’d have been a dog groomer…). Also, I have always fancied stand-up comedy myself but trouble is, I can never resist laughing at my own jokes. I have struggled at poetry readings when reading out a humorous poem I have written – laughing so hard I can hardly get the words out.
Philosopher has been a star this week – built me an excellent new potting table. Then, get this. Totally unprompted, honestly I swear I knew nothing – he went to the shed and unearthed his precious stocks of President Spreadable Butter cartons, ready to go to the tip. He has been saving them ever since we moved into this house in 2012, partly ‘to put things in’ but also to form an art installation, the ‘Butter Mountain’. Nothing has been stored in the cartons, and the Butter Mountain never materialised. Here he is with the teetering piles of his hoard. What horrifies me is the sheer volume of butter consumed in this house since June 2012… by just two of us. Talk about a mega cholesterol-rousing Fatberg… no wonder Battleaxe had to have her gall-bladder out.
Lots of spring flowers are emerging – we have snowdrops in the garden, celandines, daffs and oddly, crocuses. I have never seen them before, so don’t know where they have come from. Did the previous owners of this house plant them? If so, where have they been?
We tried to go for a walk in the Country Park this morning, but even though it has been dry and sunny for a few days, deep mud still makes some paths impassable. It reminds me of what it’s like trying to follow our leader’s Road Map to Freedom…. Hah.
