Going backwards

Parallel parking is a mystery to me, and I am not good at reversing, therefore Audrey rang me early so we could get to the shops before it became a necessity.  We found a slot on the library road - my size - the sort you could get 3 double decker buses into - and had a successful shop.  It was raining and it got worse and worse.  After my coffee with Audrey, I drove back along a flooding sea road, with the rain lashing down.  I am not good at driving in the rain either, as in my Saudi years those great sprinklers in the sky hardly ever worked.  We (The Captain and his lady) have both been tackling our paperwork mountains, and have watched Bargain Hunt, and Countdown.

I have found another poem in the Penny anthology.   It reminds me of that bone-chilling evocation of sleeping rough in a wintery England in George Orwell's "A Clergyman's Daughter".


The Embankment
(The Fantasia of a Fallen Gentleman on a Cold, Bitter Night)

by T.E. Hulme

Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ectasy,
In a flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.

(From: Poem for the Day, One, edited by Nicholas Albery, Chatto and Windus)