But it's your bedtime now... off you go...
In Primary School, one of the poets we studied was Pam Ayres. This installed in me a life long love of her work, she is wistful and funny and her perceptiveness captures both the Joy and the unfairness of life.
This is one that I read to my daughters last night...
OH, I WISH I'D LOOKED AFTER ME TEETH by PAM AYRES
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.
When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My mother, she told me no end,
‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!
If I’d known I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,
Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine
In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’
How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s methey are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
Amost finished 'The Bone Bed' by Patricia Corwell. Another great Kay Scapetta thriller.
You shouldn't be so sure.. Now, welcome
creating and finishing a fashion design, and reading as much as possible.
Not so fast mer.. Its time you should move now,lady girl waiting.
Hi mer, thanks for saving my spot. Yup, you could go and rest.
The Ballad of the Drama Queen
Not so long ago your heart was irreparably broken
You didn’t want to hear his name spoken
Your misery was so all-consuming -
And you were full of dooming and glooming -
That the threat of self-harm was bandied about
Just for attention, of that I have no doubt.
Yet here we are just a few weeks down the line
It seems to me that you’re doing perfectly fine
Professing yet more undying adoration
To the object of your latest infatuation
I’ll give it a couple of months at best
Until he works out that you’re an unbearable pest
And like those before him (me included)
He’ll conclude that you are emotionally deluded
He won’t want you clinging on like a limpet
He’ll be wanting, as quick as possible, to forget
That had the misfortune to learn your name
And became embroiled in your sick game
Because a stupid game is all it is to you
It’s the way you work; it’s what you do
To create drama in your sad and empty life
You engineer all the stress and strife
Then garner all the sympathy you can get
Whilst painting him as the worst one yet
Until the next unsuspecting guy comes into view
To be zeroed-in on by predatory you.
Then the whole charade will start again once more
But your game is tiresome now and you’re a bore.
There’s a chance that one day the tide will turn
And that you will finally come to learn
That love and relationships are a two-way street
And that you will somehow, some day meet
Someone who will refuse to play by your twisted rules
Just to end up on your List of Fools.
To see beyond your artifice and manipulations
And develop for you true and strong emotions
It may come to pass, who can tell
Meanwhile you’ll put through hell
Your latest beau who has yet to experience
The depth and extent of you malevolence
When you take umbrage at an imagined slight
And manufacture yet another fight
Just so that you can step back and say smugly
“Look how that nasty bastard treated me”
If I was the kind of person to interfere
I’d tell him all about you, ‘dear’
But, what the heck, he’s made his bed
He’s believed everything you said
It’s not down to me to save him from his fate
Besides it’s probably already too late
You’ve dug your claws in, good and fast
Which almost guarantees that this relationship cannot last!
