Make the most of it - I thought - catch up with OU homework - bah! Try writing a 40 line poem with a headache! Not a hope!
The biggest laugh we have had over the past three days was when the cat decided to join me in the bath. There I was up to my neck in Radox bubbles - in swaggers Dudley, never far from me when at home. He decided to jump up onto the bath which is curved and slippy but he has done it before. This time he slipped and jumped straight in - straight from a cartoon comes the tableux of me naked, desperately trying not to get scratched or bitten by very nasty cat, whilst trying to rescue said cat from rather hot bathwater. I grabbed him and hurled him out onto the floor whereupon he hissed and spat at me like a demented cat would do. I yanked the door open and pushed him out whereupon he proceeded to do circuits of the house leaving a wet trail behind him. He jumped on every bed! Two were occupied and the occupants could be heard a mile away cursing one extremely wet and extremely nasty cat.
All attempts at drying him with a towel failed miserably as he threatened to bite anyone with a towel in their hands. He lay in front of the log burner all morning and is now a very glossy if rather tetchy cat!
Somehow I doubt that 40 lines about a sopping nasty cat will be what the OU ordered so its back to the drawing board - big sigh!
I have never really been 'into' poetry. I think I was put off at a very early age - infant class to be precise. We were given the task of writing a poem about the seasons. I can still remember mine - it is etched on my memory for ever -
Spring is when the flowers start to bloom
Summer is when the roses come
Autumn is when the leaves begin to fall
Winter is when the birds have no food at all.
Not bad for a six year old but waspy teacher went right up the wall! I was truly mortified.
a) she was convinced I had copied it from somewhere - well I hadn't
b) that my parents had done it - but we did it in the lesson - I hadn't actually been home!
The only time a teacher smacked me and that was enough to turn me off poetry for life.
It was to be a crotchety english teacher, bless him, some years later that introduced the class to Dylan Thomas, John Betjeman, Ted Hughes and WB Yeats.
Don't think anything I write now will have such an effect as that first little poem in the infants - oh well here goes 40 lines to go and counting.
