Well, no it isn’t a breeze, it’s a goddam’ hurricane out there. So although there are lots of spring flowers about, it’s not ideal conditions for taking photos.
This camelia bloom was just one of the casualties of the storms. Still, at least that meant it stayed reasonably still.
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
but I couldn’t remember who said it.
Knowing I’d kept it as one of a whole list of poetry-associated quotations, I searched my computer for hyacinths.
It turns out it was Carl Sandburg, though further investigation online suggests he may actually have used the subtly different phrase:
poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
The search for hyacinths also turned up the forgotten draft of a poem.
Continue reading “a lack of biscuits”
For reasons irrelevant, last night I stayed in a strange hotel in London. “Strange” in the sense that I had never stayed there before, and “strange” in the sense that it was not like any hotel I had ever stayed in previously.
The issue of foreigners in the UK is one that is almost guaranteed to set Brits arguing.
If the subject crops up during a social gathering, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that most British of compromises “we’ll agree to differ” – an unsatisfactory acknowledgment that there are no easy answers.
The photo, taken in the local housewares store, suggests that one reason answers are difficult is that we haven’t agreed on what the question is: do we want foreign visitors to adapt, or do we want to get rid of them all together?
I went to an open mike evening the other day. It was supposed to be in a fairly spartan room above a pub, but the bookings had got mixed up and the SWP were there before us, so at the very last minute the venue was changed.
The new venue was a basement room, although the décor was altogether too decadent to make me feel like an underground poet. The Trotskyists might have liked the wall colour, but I’m sure the spit-and-sawdust pub setting suited them better.
I say “basement”, but I suppose in fact ground level was lower at the back, or there would have been no windows downstairs. 
Not that we could access them.
It seems that the world of discovery that lies “through the arched window” is out of bounds. I wonder if the square and round windows are similarly barred.
Once more, then, I find “you can’t go home again.”
Even little ted looks rather worse for wear.
don't confuse the narrator 