Water Archives • My Dog Errol

338 • Assassin (2)

3rd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The one time I served Jack the Ripper
He’d come in my shop for a kipper.
With his dagger and cloak
He seemed quite a good bloke
Till he slew a small poodle named Pippa.

Society encourages us to think badly of a serial killer, yet one recognises this shop-girl’s guilty admiration for her celebrity customer, flaunting the characteristic costume of his profession. Here Jack’s conduct, while admittedly uncivilised, is readily rationalised, inasmuch as any domesticated dog – especially the scion of so ornamental and unnatural a breed – is already Dead to Nature. Had the fish emporium chosen to host a free-range, genetically unmodified cur, the self-styled ‘Ripper’ – like any common-or-garden customer – would doubtless have been torn to pieces a good while before the completion of his intended purchase. But it’s easy to be wise after the event.

331 • Tantamount to Extortion

26th November 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

Don’t dine at the Café du Nord
Without checking their prices beford.
One glance at the bill
For my spoonful of krill
Left me gasping for breath on the flord.

Certainly this First Year of Covid has made it hard for restaurateurs to balance their books; but habitual diners-out – having subsisted on nothing but beans-on-toast since lockdown started – fancy they’ve saved enough moolah to laugh off the Himalayan prices the more pretentious places are charging. In my naïvete I imagined that ordering nothing but an amuse-gueule would spare me financial discomfort. How wrong I was.

314 • National Trust

9th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The groundsman reports to the Duchess:
‘Your lobster needs five pairs of crutches
Having ricked his ten knees
On the flying trapeze
That we built by the pond where his hutch is.

‘And, begging your Ladyship’s pardon
We’ve finished landscaping The Garden:
Your flora and fauna
Are crammed in one corner.
This concrete takes ten years to harden.’

Meanwhile, back in Merrie England, the serfs pay lip-service to the whims of the landed classes, and the needs of their exploited livestock, while covertly expediting the blind March of Progress which tramples all before it.

284 • Street delicacy

10th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

It was carnival evening in Derby:
My shrimps burnt to death on the barbie.
I entered a raffle
And won a falafel
Cooked up from dead wasps and wasabi.

A measure of caution is advisable, during a pandemic, where street-food is concerned. This applies even when an exotic treat appears to have been gifted by fate, in compensation for previous arrangements’ having gone up in smoke. Don’t let the fresh air and cheering crowds blind you to the intrinsically nauseous nature of the fare on offer. Our appetite for a bargain is a severe and culpable weakness.

249 • A Voyeur’s Lament

5th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My Andalusian amœba …
I summon her to me: ‘Arriba!’
Yet she sulks in her pool
Coquettish, but cruel:
Unbearable beauty, Bathsheba.

‘You saw her bathing on the roof,’ as Laughing Len sang, ‘Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya.’ But am I King David, or Farmer Boldwood, observing my innamorata through a specialist microscope, made by Óptica of Seville, and formerly in the possession of Luis Buñuel? Quite why this flirting – especially since it can scarcely be pursued to consummation – should so annoy a human marital partner is beyond me.

236 • Virgo

23rd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

You may trust, under Virgo the Virgin,
That your boons and your blessings will burgeon:
But such hopes are misplaced
(Like a frog in fishpaste
Or a goat in the garb of a surgeon).

My mother had a fair-sized bee in her bonnet when it came to Mariolatry. Sooner trust an astrologer than a woman, she would often say. For a long while I was blind to the paradox in those words, but recent events in my private life, which I shall not make public here, are forcing me to re-evaluate them.

217 • Penguin farewell

4th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my penguin, Pierre,
Whose dream was to fly through the air:
Though he clung to that kite
With apparent delight
I felt for his inner despair.

It is not easy to distinguish ‘delight’ in a penguin physiognomy, and it seems probable that the dream of flying was the author’s, not that of his long-suffering pet, which is singularly ill-adapted for such manoeuvres. All too often humanity’s purported kindnesses are, at base, paper-thin masks for gnawing personal inadequacy.

215 • Oyster Farewell

2nd August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my oyster, Odette,
Who could never abide getting wet
But would snivel and cry
When the bed was too dry:
All in all, quite a difficult pet.

This Sunday’s moral dilemma. Which is more odious: to posit an inner life for a creature that self-evidently cannot signal emotion to a human being? Or to denigrate her supposed caprices, when these have clearly been triggered by needlessly-inflicted cruelty?

214 • Skintext

1st August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

This morning, a bolt from the blue:
Our tadpole has got a tattoo.
Neatly lettered in black
On the small of his back
It reads ‘What would Lord Attenborough do?‘

I confess I find it distressing when the young choose to disfigure themselves with texts they may well regret in adult life (I spent a small fortune getting ‘What would Jesus do?’ lasered off the mons veneris of my Significant Other). It’s perhaps not surprising that animals look to Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FSA as a saviour, but any responsible tattooist would have known that ‘Lord Attenborough’ refers not to the well-loved environmentalist but to his brother Richard, a noted squanderer of frog DNA in his role as the unconvincing proprietor of ‘Jurassic Park’ in the eponymous blockbuster movie.

211 • Flatfish farewell

29th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Farewell to my flatfish, Phillippe,
Who is, frankly, a bit of a creep.
As I choose my next phrase
I can feel his cold gaze
Though he wants me to think he’s asleep.

The floundering author wishes us to understand that he continues to be haunted, from another realm, by a fishlike gaze of opprobrium – which is more probably the buried memory of well-deserved contempt dished out by a grade school teacher.

203 • Omphaloskepsis

21st July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Astronomers travel to Tulsa
To view the Crab Nebula pulsar.
To spare that expense
It would make far more sense
To stay put, and examine my ulcer.

Yes indeed, with all the sparkling technology at its disposal humanity now tends to look outward, rather than inward, for its enlightenment. But why make expense a guiding principle? Why not emulate the navel-gazers of yore, who lived wisely, if not too well, on cowpats and cobwebs in hovels moulded from their ancestors’ excrements?

174 • The Crabmonger

22nd June 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Is anyone else fond of crabs?
I’ve 69 here, up for grabs:
The mother’s no beaut
But her grand-kids are cute.
They’d make a nice change from kebabs.

I have doubtless inveighed before, in this Verse Marathon, against the keeping of animals as pets. Who can remain dry-eyed on apprehending the uncertain status of these crustaceans, offered up by the crabmonger as a foodstuff, even after their family background, and personal charm, have been so heart-warmingly attested.

152 • Sapient cephalopod

31st May 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

The octopus looked in my eye
As he clung to my shivering thigh.
‘Man is scarcely unique,
Just a hideous freak,’
He observed. I could make no reply.

Alarmingly the octopus sets out to debunk Descartes‘s teaching, that ‘animals are mere machines, but man stands alone’, but its intentions are contradicted by the scenario itself. For one thing, the man is not ‘standing alone’. For another, only a unique species could fantasise such a damning put-down from a ‘mere machine’ – and then be too stupid to come up with an appropriate riposte.

100 • The Thames Look

9th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My effortless elegance stems
From standing so long in the Thames,
Where my girdle and gown
Have been stained sewage-brown
And the narwhals have nibbled my hems.

It takes vision and courage to pursue such a strategy of self-abasement and neglect; but great discoveries in Art (and Fashion) often arise serendipitously from a background of dismal privation.

099 • Tea on the Lea

8th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

When Gandhi set sail on the Lea
And fancied some tadpoles for tea
The beadle of Broxbourne
Brought five pints of frogspawn
And charged but one single rupee.

Jesus’s supposed UK excursion is celebrated in song all over Britain (‘And did those feet‘ etc); whereas Gandhi’s teatime outing on a relatively-obscure Thames tributary is commemorated only in this five-line fragment. Likewise the generosity of Hertfordshire officialdom.

033 • Pet shop

2nd February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

We know you were keen on a chimp
But the one in the shop had a limp.
This won’t be the same
But at least it’s not lame:
So let’s think of a name for your shrimp.

The trusting child dreams of an ideal birthday present, liberating, life-enhancing and dynamic. But, come the glorious day, the shameless parents make excuses and deliver something underweight, slimy and unfit for purpose. Sounds familiar, no?

026 • Living room

26th January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Zookeepers struggle to gauge
When a creature’s too small for its cage.
Though they argue the toss
Re. the great albatross
With amœbas they’re on the same page.

In contemporary culture, when we pose the same question about great and small, it’s inevitably the former that receives the lion’s share of the debate, even when the question is demonstrably fatuous.

023 • Crockery

23rd January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

We dined on five loaves and two fishes.
Each slice was quite thin, but delicious.
Seeing Christ and his mates
Had brought five thousand plates,
We stayed on to help do the dishes.

Such a lot of administrative/background work goes unnoticed, its practitioners unacknowledged. It would be nice to see behaviour like the above become the norm again.

022 • Potus alert

22nd January 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

Vacationing in The Bahamas
Misfortune befell the Obamas.
On the night she forgot
Where they’d anchored their yacht
A crocodile stole his pyjamas.

It’s a question of scale, no?