Family Archives • My Dog Errol

365 • Exile and Extinction

30th December 2020 RL Comments 1 Comment

‘There was never much call for a builder,’
Wrote the last living soul on St Kilda.
Still, that was the trade
Of my aunt, an old maid
Who was known – to the seagulls – as ‘Hilda’.

As she drowsed in her orchard one day
An avalanche swept her away:
A torrent of trash –
Plastic, glitter and ash –
From a culture in final decay.

I never met my Aunt Claudie, who was adopted before birth (both hers and mine) and never left St Kilda (an archipelago I intend never to visit). Quite how she eked a living, after 1930’s evacuation of the island (during which numerous dogs were deliberately drowned), the rhyme does not attempt to explain; as for the ‘orchard’, credulity boggles. Nevertheless it’s impossible not to feel a great sympathy for this imaginary geriatric, unable – even in the remotest isolation from the rest of humanity – to evade obliteration by the filthy forces that shape a ‘civilisation’ she never tasted.

364 • Fan tale

29th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My surrogate mother-in-law
Is becoming a bit of a bore
By declaiming my rhymes
At inapposite times
And then yelling ‘Bravo!’ and ‘Encore!’

In a way it’s nice to have a relative’s company during Christmas, even though she mainly comes round to fetch off her departed daughter’s possessions, a pram-load at a time. But she wanted to change ‘inapposite’ (‘Nobody knows that word’) to ‘embarrassing’. I told her it’s not embarrassing to hear one’s doggerel bellowed on the front porch in the small hours – everyone likes a fan, after all, and it’s quite flattering that she has them all by rote. It’s just that this is a decent neighborhood and anybody interested will have read the bulletins online anyway.

359 • My kingdom …

24th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As kids, on the farm in Atlanta
We’d leave strict instructions for Santa:
‘One horse in each stocking
For riding, not rocking,
Their minimum speed set to “canter”.’

It seems that, all things being equal
This story would merit a sequel
The which I shall try,
In due course, to supply:
At present, I’m stumped by the prequel.

One is never too young to begin coveting the unattainable. Readers will readily guess the upshot and, I trust, excuse any inability to pinpoint the root of this parlous state of affairs.

357 • Capricorn

22nd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The upcoming month looks a mess
For Capricorn: doom and distress,
Your children disgraced,
Your garden laid waste,
And minimal chance of redress.

Waking at dawn under the zodiacal sign of the Goat, I remain convinced that the practitioner of astrology is an expert in whom we can justly place our trust in troubled times.

349 • Take-away (4)

14th December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Regarding the death of my former
Relation (the one known as Norma)
Just tell the police
She’s no longer my niece
And that was the cause of her trauma.
NOW BRING ME A VEGETABLE KORMA.

Proof, if proof were needed, that a lazy diet of convenience food can induce circular, or even Moebius, reasoning: not at all what we typically expect from a thoughtful assassin.

337 • Assassin

2nd December 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

So I’m off, on this evening’s vendetta
(Check pistol, check map, check Lambretta).
I’ll be sure to disclose
When your name’s one of those
On my list, if that makes you feel better.

It’s not easy to imagine the feelings of a parent who finds out that his or her offspring has become a terrorist or Mafioso/Mafiosa. But it’s encouraging, in the bulletin above, to note at least one hitperson’s solicitude for an anxious ancestor. Let’s hope this is not an unique case.

335 • Minnie’s Boys

30th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Holed up in a comedy depôt
In fascist-held downtown Aleppo:
While Chico and Harpo
Bewitch the Gestapo,
Watch Groucho bewildering Zeppo.

Even the sharpest satire will eventually be blunted and rendered obscure by tectonic shifts in the Zeitgeist. But the Marxes’ exuberant indifference to hierarchy, dismissal of propriety, and unravelling of logic make them uniquely vibrant mentors for dissidents down the ages. Marvellously the ostensible cipher Zeppo (who died on today’s date in 1979) was, in their Vaudeville heyday, the most giftedly insidious of the four, depping on stage with seamless, imperceptible brilliance no matter which of his heterogenous siblings was indisposed or unavailable.

328 • American soap

23rd November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your strumpet, Cecile,
Is barred from our Thanksgiving meal.
She gets your dear father
Worked up in a lather:
Myself, I don’t see the appeal.

The tiny fault-lines that extended families ignore for most of the working year can suddenly broaden into ravines of foreboding as Thanksgiving looms, and the tribe prepares to converge on the parental ranch. This mother’s note – deploring the husband’s lecherous preoccupation with their son’s voluptuous consort – betrays the tragic depths of her jealous insecurity. ‘Book yourself a makeover, Mom!’ comes the reply. ‘It’s not as though you’re strapped for cash.’

327 • My brother’s keeper

22nd November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“Cain! Where’s thy brother?” “Who, Abel?
I tell you, that kid is unstable.
One day I’m ‘his keeper’
The next, ‘the Grim Reaper’.
I’m not sure I like either label.”

We do not require a Diploma in Psychiatry to identify the truly unstable party in this story, projecting, on to his younger brother, his own mental conflict. Nor do we need reminding that, when the Almighty next asked the same question, Cain had resolved that inner crisis, somewhat messily. Note that Cain did not destroy his other brother, Seth, nor their sisters Luluwa and Delbora. Are these siblings, therefore, all passive accomplices in the First Fratricide, inasmuch as they never exacted revenge on Cain? Or were they simply pipped to the post, when the assassin’s house fell down on his head?

322 • The Spurning

17th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your ward, Abigail,
Did not gain a place here at Yale;
The Provost reviled
The ‘preposterous child’
While his staff found her ‘stupid’ and ‘stale’.

Well, I didn’t gain a place at Yale either, and I urge Abigail, and other rejects like her, to wear the disdain of ivory-tower eggheads as a badge of freshness and distinction. Either that, or to sweet-talk their guardian into endowing some hifalutin’ think-tank there, with free education for his dunderheaded protégée a specified condition of contract.

321 • Harlotry

16th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your daughter-in-law
May no longer trade as a whore.
Her clients drive cars
Far, far larger than ours
And we don’t want folk thinking we’re poor.

The author of this note, discreetly popped through a neighbor’s letterbox, rightly equates social status with automobile dimensions. Such objective measures are much more reliable and indicative than a mere moralistic objection to the young relation’s profession. It is never appropriate to sit in judgment over a woman’s right to choose.

320 • The Apple

15th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Yelled Adam to Cain, ‘Listen lad,
Don’t feed that big snake: he looks bad.’
Whispered Eve, ‘It’s OK:
Take an apple a day
For your real, biological dad.’

‘Every harlot was a virgin once‘, our Great Poet reminds us; in similar spirit this morning’s sermon invites us to reconsider the First Fratricide who, as a blameless tot, feels an instinctive kinship with the serpent that seduced his mother. Adam’s mistrust of the entity that cuckolded him is understandable; yet contradictory parenting ensues, undoubtedly sowing the seeds of Cain’s transgressive development. Wiser heads than mine must ponder how Mary and Joseph sidestepped this problem, when a similar predicament beset their own relationship.

311 • Liar, Liar

6th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“Do tell! What became of that lout
Whose lies you once bandied about?
Did he close down your cult?
Or become an adult?”
“Nah. The fire in his pants fizzled out.”

Overheard this time next year, in the Smithsonian: a former Democrat and an erstwhile Republican chatting as they admire a wittily elegant ‘Tactical Chaos’ exhibit from 2020 [it’s a cloisonné enamel pin, in gold-plated brass, on which portly presidential ‘pants on fire’ are presented with little shifty eyes and a comical golden quiff … I got mine here].

309 • All at sea

4th November 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Terrible typhoon in Tampa.
Washed right out to sea in the camper.
Weather in Florida
Couldn’t be horrider.
Lots of love, Granny and Grandpa.

A postcard, serendipitously delivered this morning, summarises the tempestuous climate back home, now that America is Great Again. How thankful I am – as an ex-pat – to be breathing a (marginally) less toxic atmosphere than my beleaguered countrymen at this time of count and counter-count, rhetoric and threatoric, and gaseous White House bombast. Is there any decent American who would not prefer, at this filthy hour, to be marooned offshore in a foundering RV that reeks of terrified Gray Nomads?

298 • Decent folk

24th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your godfather, Geir,
Though scarcely a social pariah,
Has a squint and a hump
That make decent folk jump
So we’re slinging him out of the choir.

‘Decent folk’ … what a world of repugnance and shame that nauseating phrase brings up. If we all boycotted ensembles where such a term is used in earnest, choral singing would cease overnight. No bad thing, you might retort. But that end must not be accomplished by marginalising the Geirs and quasi-Geirs in our society … who are legion.

288 • Mental make-up

14th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The first time I slept with Max Factor
He claimed to be Virgo Intacta.
When I cried ‘This is mad!
Are you not my real dad?’
He said, ‘No, son, you’re only an actor.’

Folklore suggests that, in the movie business, it’s possible to sleep one’s way to the top; but this morning’s bogus instalment suggests that, in the make-up department at least, different rules apply. Here the Alpha Male swats aside the Young Pretender’s hopes, implanting in his mind an idea that would corrode anybody’s confidence. It would be interesting to know how this fictional conversation continued, on subsequent trysts. The catamite would be well advised to challenge his master with the riposte that We’re All Actors.

283 • Gyratory care

9th October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The upside-down baby of Bath
Liked to stand on his head in the hearth.
Once an hour he was turned
To ensure nothing burned.
The corpse was interred at Penarth.

Bath and Penarth lying some sixty miles apart, and in different countries, the reported choice of burial-ground seems inexplicably remote: casual readers of this brief life may suspect foul play. Note, however, that the age-at-death of the subject is not stated. We cannot, therefore, rule out the possibility that – thanks to the careful rotary management described – this obstinate individual was not roasted in infancy as first appears, but rather lived to a ripe old age, perhaps being buried in Glamorganshire after serving as a wise yet eccentric pastor until the age of (let’s say) 77. Very possibly his personal charisma was such that parishioners learnt to stand on their heads as well, the better to commune with him: after all, spiritual truths are best imparted eye-to-eye.

282 • Discharge

8th October 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

“This golden-haired Man in the Moon,
This fat-headed, pus-filled balloon,
This bag of black bile
Laced with venomous guile:
His discharge can not come too soon.”

Adapted from last night’s two-hour call with my one-time class-mate back home. No idea who or what he was ranting about … I just enjoyed hearing his rage … hardly needed a phone … [thanks bigly, Hooch]

275 • Dear John

1st October 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The pink billet-doux read ‘Dear John,
I have taken the children and gone.
Accept your comeuppance
’Cos no-one cares twopence;
It’s time to give up and move on.’

I saw it coming, as did my many readers who have been inboxing me with words of support. Thank you, thank you. Nonetheless it’s a bitter blow. She could have got my name right, the cow.

274 • Quondam entanglement

30th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Guess the kettle has run out of cream
And the kitten’s got sick of the steam.
I used to convulse
At the throb of your pulse:
Now I dance to a different dream.

To live outside the law you must be honest, as our Great Poet saith. But it’s not easy to live outside the Third Law of Thermodynamics, which wants us to believe that organised systems tend towards chaos, unless energy is fed in to sustain their structure. Today’s bulletin – not written by me, but slipped under my door by the lovely Angharad – is intended to show me that her vital energy has not ebbed, but is rather being directed elsewhere. I conclude, however, that what has actually ebbed is her ability to organise metaphors convincingly. Unless she mixed those lines up on purpose in a cruel attempt at parody.

269 • Normal

25th September 2020 RL Comments 3 Comments

Please note that your stepson, Francisco,
Is banned from this evening’s Class Disco.
When everyone queues
To kiss Mrs Hughes
A normal-sized child will get his go.

Modern-day teachers show commendable dedication, generosity and imagination in devising bonding exercises, early in the academic year, that will incline their young charges to warm to the grade school experience. This tersely-worded bulletin, however, gives the receiving family insufficient sense of their unfortunate stepchild’s infraction. Is he too large, or too small, to join his new class buddies in Inappropriate Touching with their tutor?

268 • Punctured

24th September 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

This has to be grounds for divorce
And she’s not shown the slightest remorse.
What makes me see red
Is stilettos in bed
When they burst my inflatable horse.

I trust loyal readers can endure a brief glimpse of my dirty laundry, as outlined above. Are we looking at ‘unreasonable conduct’ here, or ‘irretrievable breakdown’? (Please don’t alert Pope Clement VII to this matter, or things might end very badly. I live in hope that present-day mores condone divorce more readily than beheading, although – thanks to Unprincipled Egomaniacs in High Places – a new Dark Age beckons incontrovertibly.)

260 • Whipsnade

16th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Please note that your child, Mary-Lou,
Is banned from our trip to the zoo.
The keepers advise
That a girl of her size
Might get killed by a rogue cockatoo.

Please note, rather, that a truly enlightened society would ban all children from visiting all zoos, the better to hasten their abolition. Since vested interests will surely strive to keep them in business we must – however ruefully – concede that the extinguishing of a few toddlers, by vengeful Psittaciformes bursting forth from internment, might prove a useful catalyst in turning the tide of public opinion against such egregious institutions.

258 • Faye King

14th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Forgetting the wives they’re forsaking
Men queue for a fling with Miss Faye King:
We all know she neuters
Her second-rate suitors.
It just seems a gamble worth taking.

Incredibly there are men who would disagree that emasculation, by some painted celluloid vamp, is ‘a gamble worth taking’. What abject feebletons! We Real Men can validate our virility only through high-profile competitive mating; an alpha Hollywood vedette is both a mirror for male vanity and an antidote to the slow poison of a complacent marriage. The conquest, and satisfaction, of such illusory femmes fatales constitutes a Darwinian endorsement, a seal of machismo. In our dreams, at any rate; our most ignoble and embarrassing dreams.

256 • Other lives

12th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The stresses and strains were quite striking
All my vigorous years as a Viking.
In a subsequent life
As Napoleon’s wife
Things were frankly much more to my liking.

There are lines, all up the stairwell at home, of suckers waiting to be fleeced by my hypnotist neighbour who – in exchange for fat wads of greenbacks – claims to ‘regress’ them to previous existences. Almost invariably they were once men of action, ladies of leisure, persons of consequence. Almost inevitably his lies plunge them into deeper and deeper disenchantment with the daily greyness of their workaday worlds. So I harangue them from the bottom landing: ‘Get a grip, people! There’s another life you can live for nothing! You’re in it, now: make a move, take time by the horns, burn down the haystack while the cuckoo crumbles.’ And as they bustle off home, equipped – by my visionary rhetoric – with destinies colorfully reimagined, they almost instinctively press fat wads of greedy greenbacks into my outstretched paws.

252 • Mud

8th September 2020 RL Comments 5 Comments

There was an old man of Llandudno
Whose wife left him all of a sudden-o.
She’d chatted with Charlotte
The neighbourhood harlot.
His name was quite palpably mud, no?

Baleful and hideous, is it not, to see the conniving women of the parish ganging up on a well-nigh blameless man? Full disclosure: I have never wittingly visited Llandudno, and know nobody there trading under the name of ‘Charlotte’. Consequently the present bulletin cannot legitimately be supposed to bear any relevance to my recent history.

251 • Pre-nup

7th September 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Of course I’ll help planning your wedding
But first, have you thought where you’re heading?
Into what sort of strife
Are you plunging your life?
Into what kind of trap are you are treading?

‘Tis the privilege of a godparent to help steer his godspawn’s way through the perils of adult life … even when he has nothing sweeter to offer her than personal experience.

239 • Empty nesters

26th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I went to the Garden of Love
To marry my sweet turtle-dove.
But we got so depressed
In that tiny, cramped nest
That we each gave the other the shove.

The first line, above, is appropriated from Our Great Poet; the rest is triteness itself … well-suited to the wearisome scenario it depicts. A cuckoo typically expels its step-siblings, and step-parents, in order to annex their space for itself; but in this instance the nest is left wholly untenanted. One might expect close confines to provide the perfect milieu for connubial satisfaction; but here they promote a different category of physical cooperation. A significant degree of acrobatic rapport must have been required for the partners to achieve simultaneous expulsion.

237 • Wind-up

24th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

I have to confess, I’m in shock
At your plan to stop winding our clock.
Are you scared of the chime,
Or the passage of time?
Its tick is much worse than its tock.

You can either stare a looming personal crisis right in the eye, or try to make light of it. A short blast of nonsense – establishing some kind of bogus dualism at the heart of the matter – should be sufficient to test the troubled waters.

226 • Howzat!

13th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My son hurled a gobbet of Gouda
At a git riding high in a howdah
Who then toppled down dead,
While the elephant fled.
As a parent, I’ve never felt prouder.

Though many will admire this laudable initiative – and the consequent emancipation of an enslaved animal – others may simply be disgusted at the waste of good cheese. (Still others may suspect that the proud father has embellished the facts, in the interests of procuring an unexpected rhyme; and that his offspring’s actual feat was nothing more remarkable than lobbing a brick at a git on a bike.)

223 • Apecraft (2)

10th August 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

My brother had trained his bonobo
To play a few tunes on the oboe.
I bought my baboon
A good contra-bassoon
Yet that night she eloped with a hobo.

I have been reprimanded (hounded, even) about a ‘misanthropic tone’ that supposedly suffuses this poetical blog. ‘Has mankind accomplished nothing you would consider celebrating?’ writes one disenchanted correspondent. Well, it has: the admirable Great Ape Project has urged that chimps, bonobos and other such anthropoids should be accorded the same basic rights as human beings (exactly which human beings remains open to question). And no less a territory than The Balearic Islands extended personhood rights to the Great Apes as long ago as 2007 (one of that tribe holds temporary sway in my home country). But – cf bulletin #222 here at My Dog Errol – such envelope-stretching can come at a terrible price.

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.

195 • Smith

13th July 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Throughout the whole town of Penrith
There is nobody living named Smith.
Thus, when one gets born
They’re received with great scorn
(This may be a slight urban myth).

Hostile responses to ‘outsiders’ are fostered by malign leaders in many lands. This piece of disingenuous scaremongering, however, requires us to believe that an über-common surname is unknown in one particular Lake District community, and not to question where its unjustly-vilified new-borns can be coming from.

188 • Family ties

6th July 2020 RL Comments 4 Comments

At birth I was joined to my twin
Not by bones, nor shared organs, nor skin,
But this broad ginger beard
Which still dangles, unsheared,
’Twixt her beauteous cheeks and my chin.

I realise there could be objections to this rhyme, and I wish to pre-empt them by explaining that, in a perfect world, my first choice would have been the strong past participle ‘unshorn’ in place of ‘unsheared’; but in this Philistine age the writer who seeks to keep such charming archaisms alive is all-too often ostracised as some kind of a freak.

180 • Ms Purvis recollected

28th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Our Primary teacher, Ms Purvis,
Enlivened a boring church service
By lighting a fuse
That ran under the pews,
And made some of the parents quite nervous.

Ms Purvis was another amiable maverick on our school staff, and this had been one of her more famous Founder’s Day pranks. Of course we urged her to repeat the escapade, but I guess she’d gotten a major rap before, so it had to remain a story.

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.

159 • Prohibited degree

7th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

“On Saturday night, for my sins,
The sex-robot gave birth to twins:
Yeah, sounds kinda sweet
But the brats are on heat –
And that’s where my problem begins.”

The vicar made no apology for basing his sermon on a rhyme copied from a lavatory door. As the future promises ever-more realistic robots, he asserted, the poem’s scenario will become commonplace, posing ‘hitherto unexampled moral dilemmas’ for mankind. He seemed more interested in delineating ‘transgressive urges’ than in recommending how we should handle them.

157 • Meet the team (15)

5th June 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

You may glimpse our Owner, Sir Harold,
In tweedy tuxedo apparelled:
His wife is a Dame,
With a stupid long name,
And his heirs are all quadruple-barrelled.

Ownership, surely the root of all evil. And Sir Harold, so blinded by his own wealth, or that of his privileged partner, that all notions of good taste in tailoring have flown out of the window.

142 • Gemini

21st May 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

The outlook’s obscure under Gemini,
The Twins: things are tricky with them on high.
One says, ‘You’re in clover,’
The other, ‘It’s over.’
The end of your world must be semi-nigh.

Arising at dawn, with Castor and Pollux in command overhead, I am heartened and reassured to reflect that the astrologer can still be relied on to be straight with us in these troubled times. Except this month. Our author seems to believe that ‘Dioscuri‘ means ‘obscure gods’ — needless to say, he has small Latin and less Greek.

128 • Agent provocateur

7th May 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

My aunt, up in Appleby Parva,
Has woven a black balaclava:
Defying the veto
She roves, incognito,
Provoking all kinds of palaver.

Incredible though this bulletin may appear, my adopted country genuinely boasts a hamlet named Appleby Parva, rural, remote and right-leaning. Since the time of Lady Godiva, any kind of outgoing behaviour there is received as a scandal, so 2020’s Covid Lockdown is a boon to most residents. My British aunt, however, has the measure of her neighbours and takes a geriatric delight in courting opprobrium.

119 • Rhône

28th April 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Hats off to my patient Aunt Joan
Who taught me to play the trombone,
Or rather, she tried,
Dropping hints from the side
While I bobbed up and down in the Rhône.

No amount of patience on an instructor’s part will produce measurable progress in a pupil unless the overall circumstances are conducive to pedagogy. The informal teaching scenario here, and the diffident mode of inculcation, would garner scant praise from those who are paid to criticize professionals at work.

115 • Euphrates (Volga)

24th April 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

So sorry to read that dear Katy’s
Just drowned in the mighty Euphrates.
Her twin sister Olga
Was drowned in the Volga,
But that was way back in the Eighties.

Some would see the hand of ‘Fate’ in this double accident; others would suspect a genetically-governed recklessness where powerful currents are concerned. Equally, it could all be entirely meaningless.

055 • Puma uncertainty

24th February 2020 RL Comments 2 Comments

There is no truth at all in the rumour
That I strangled my godfather’s puma.
But I’m licensed to choke
Those who can’t take a joke
And he really had no sense of humour.

In today’s world a bad reputation prospers exponentially, often fertilised by the antics of the gutter press. Referencing concepts from quantum mechanics, the ambiguous pronoun ‘he’ in our final line ensures uncertainty about who has been throttled (even in the most sublime poetry the ‘meaning’, if any, is perforce completed by the reader).

053 • Sibling rivalry

22nd February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

In a horrible hostel at Dover
My sister seduced Casanova.
I blush to recall
How their sport, through the wall,
Spoilt my chess match with Anna Pavlova.

It sure wasn’t the Chelsea Hotel, but the high concentration of ‘names’ from various arts and eras made it the perfect battleground for (yet) another bout of sibling rivalry.

048 • Fudge

17th February 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

As far as I’m able to judge
All children are partial to fudge
Hence my gift for your spawn
When s/he’s finally born:
This slab of brown fossilised sludge.

To give sweets to a child, in this era, is to risk arrest. And would the pregnant mother be well-advised to devour this farsighted present herself, in hopes of forestalling childhood obesity in years to come?

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?

003 • Three sisters

3rd January 2020 RL Comments 0 Comment

Cordelia, Goneril: call
The hunters to dine in our hall.
Yet do not call Regan.
Since she became vegan
We have no such daughter at all.

Some time before the play begins, I assume, the alpha-male tyrant rallies his sycophants against the principled child. A pity Shakespeare overlooked King Lear’s fourth child Greta, ‘Mistaken, at first, for a beta …’