Friday and I am doing okay as I wake up. I check my messages and my cyber litter before settling down to reading Tom’s Midnight Garden. I am brought a coffee and I continue to read. I am slow to rise this Friday as I know I am going out this evening. Of course I eventually get up and make myself toast and coffee. I then start to deal with mail that needs to go to the solicitors. I discover I have lost a filing and immediately ring the dentist. The earliest I can get in is Monday morning, so on Monday I shall go and have my filling done before I drive north to York to see my mentor and friends.

There is a bacon sandwich followed by a telephone call with from the solicitors office. It is a timely conversation to have as I am half way through drafting an email to them, so the call saves me time. I start my preparation for this weekends Poetry Stanza meeting whilst listening to more episodes of the Infinite Monkey Cage. Its like doing homework or rehearsing for an audition. All the poems have to be downloaded and organised and then of course read. The reading is not just for understanding but the knowledge of knowing that I will be responsible for reading someone’s poems on the day motivates me to get it right. After all I hope other people do the same for my poem as its part of the core experience of hearing some one else read your poetry out loud. Given that the group will discuss the poem after the reading you want the poem to be shown off at its best and of course when its my turn to read I want to do the poem justice. Below is my contribution this month, its more of a frippery this month. I think I save my more “meaty” stuff for the face to face meetings.

It’s time.
Time to say farewell,
bite the bullet and concede to the scythe.
Like the inevitably
Of harvest,
I yield.
Carefully I select
the items,
and with them the memories.
With each comes stitched in
reminiscences. 
Each pair are transitional items
that will be jettisoned,
recycled or forgotten.
Reality confrontation
at a brutal level.
A mirror that won’t be denied
And is now avoided.
I’m never going to be the same 
and gone is the possibility.
I am beyond any clever fix
My waist line will never again be 36.

By the time I have done this and I have started drafting the blog the day has gone dark. So I ease myself to the evening where I shall wrap up warm and go with my partner to meet friends for a meal at a local pub. In fact its our local biker pub and I think as a consequences does very good food. I realise only now that England are playing on TV tonight as is Pudsy and children in need. On balance I think a meal with friends is preferable.