Yesterday, I said that my muse seems to have gone off on holiday. 
Chiltern Railways toilets become ‘inspiration stations’
and the story tells how the train toilets are being transformed with floor-to-ceiling vinyl images based on “attractions” along the Birmingham to London route. The only example cited is Compton Verney, an 18th Century country mansion in Warwickshire.
Continue reading “the muse bemused”
Last weekend, the pueblo celebrated the fiestas of the local Virgin. (Not the summer fiestas – those were at the end of August, and not the fiestas for the patron saint – that’s next month: the Spanish are always happy to take days off work and chase bulls through the streets or set off firecrackers.)
Continue reading “on holiday”
Some years ago I was in the south of France at this time of year. Everywhere we went there were fields of dead sunflowers lined up like troops deployed to watch the roads.
Instead of the open faces and bright golden helms and plumes of summer knights, these figures had heavy dark heads set precariously on bony stalks that were slowly bleaching to ivory as the year began to fade.
Travelling by car, we sped past far too fast for me to do more than note the overall effect.
Today, though, the stark silhouettes looking over my garden fence have reminded me of these skeletal armies. I can only imagine what it must be like to walk past field after field of them, particularly when the wind is high and their mis-shapen yellowing limbs twitch and shiver and they whisper to each other in a secret language.
A couple of days ago, I travelled on an Iberia flight for the first time in years. It was a little more up-market than the discount airlines I’ve flown with recently and even in tourist class those who bought snacks from the trolley were provided with individual place mats for the fold-down tables.
When I declined to give mine up as rubbish, I suppose the steward thought I wanted a souvenir. In fact I wanted to add it to my collection of bad advertising and extraneous apostrophes.
Monday
Wind paunches the belly
of a wifebeater while
blue-black denims drip.
The kitchen drain belches suds
and she ponders ironing
white collars.
don't confuse the narrator 