annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Today
There was a moment this morning when I was standing at the kitchen sink, listening to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast as he was reading poems from Selima Hill's collection 'Men Who Feed Pigeons'; poems he says that are funny and dark, "as if they were co-written by Victoria Wood and Samuel Beckett" This one - I apologise for not being sure about the line breaks - he went on about them being important, but there you go, I'm guessing. I fucking love this:
The tea is cold/the parking/ is expensive/ the women nag /everything is hopeless
The man /whose tea is never hot enough /peering at the row of fancy cakes/ that may look good/ to everybody else/ but not /as usual/ good enough for him
He moves as if he's not/ in pain/ exactly/ but wary /like a man dressed in/ glass
I always think I don't like poetry but some of it just hits the spot. And made me think, yes, this moment. So it was like this. As I didn't wash any dishes yesterday, there were loads to do today. The counter to my left was stacked up with teetering piles of dirty bowls, mugs, crockery, a frying pan, the dog's bowl, all squashed up alongside the bags of summer flowering bulbs I bought at the garden centre. The square, black washing up bowl full of tepid water and too many bubbles, my hands reaching around for a stray tea spoon. I'm wearing my nightie, although it's 1 pm - I'm going for a swim so will wear my costume but don't want to put it on yet. This nightie is old, maybe five years, a faded mid blue, in some lovely soft cotton, long with cup sleeves, and a single button at the front. I don't know why I love it so much but I hardly ever wear anything else - I wash it and get it dry ready to wear again. We're not far away from the fabric just perishing and going into unrepairable holes all over, like my best skirt did in the end.
Frank is chatting away via the bluetooth speaker, in his Brummie accent, excited - he loves this poet and wants to share his joy. There's also the sound of me clattering clean pans down on the metal draining board, of hundreds of starlings suddenly arriving, chattering loudly, gathering on the hedge and the bird feeders in the garden. I can smell the washing up liquid, Eco, probably bollocks, but doesn't smell as repugnantly artificial as Fairy Liquid. Also my little broken-handled stovetop espresso pot making me a cup of coffee, making the smell of home. Out in the garden the wind is blowing everything around, snapping stems on some of the tulips before their buds have fully opened - I can see it through the window which is all smeary again, though I only washed it a few weeks ago. The fat black cat is sitting on the garden table - he was a house cat for the six years before we had him; now he loves outside, no matter what the weather's doing. He'll sit tall and proud in the pouring rain, like the fool he is.
I felt at one with my world this morning and thought I'd get it down.
So then I went for a swim with H my new pal and we discovered that she finished her degree in Jun 1985, the same uni, the same course that I started in October 1985. She was amazed when I mentioned the names of some of the tutors she hadn't thought of for years - my pal MC worked there so they aren't as distant to me. Today's swim marked my completion of the Arctic Tern Challenge - four swims each month from November to April, no wetsuit. Done. Proud.
It was sewing group this evening - or so I thought but I arrived to find an empty car park and a padlocked gate - looked on my phone and it had been last week. Fuck. But I remembered I'd seen a post on Facebook about a sunset swim right near where I was, for a group I haven't managed to turn up for yet so I headed down there and met a great woman, had a laugh, took this photo of the flag at the canadian war memorial and came home to watch Taskmaster, probably my fave series so far.
12:28 a.m. - 14.04.23
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