Monday and I am awake early aware that the Builder Badgers are coming today. I make warm drinks for my partner and I and then get ready for the day. The Builder Badgers arrive so there is a quick strategic chat with them followed by coffee making before I have my breakfast and check my messages and socials. As the Badgers create a spoil heap I start an early draft of todays blog intending to write letters during the day before the Tesco order arrives this afternoon. Its a cold day so I suspect I will also be making a meal. I start to try and write a Villanelle , a form of poem that some of the local poets have been working with. There are very specific rules as follows: 1: it has 19 lines with a specific rhyme scheme, 2:it has five three line verses called tercets and ends in one four line section, a quatrain. 3: the 1st and 3rd line of the first tercet are repeated in the last lines of the following tercets, the 1st line becomes lines 6, 12, & 18 and the third line becomes line 9, 15 and 19. 4: the rhyme scheme is ABA for the tercets and ABAA for the Quatrain. There that’s it a simple sort of poetry by numbers really. Apparently thought up by the Italians or the Spanish. So, here is my first shot at a Villanelle for Villanelle.

428

Oh Villanelle Oh Villanelle how she loves to kill
with any weapon and fashion to inspire
she took their lives in ways to thrill.
This was no ordinary way for blood to spill
nor was it how most gave up the ghost,
Oh Villanelle Oh Villanelle how she loves to kill.
The boots below the tailored twill
would step ruggedly upon a neck
she took their lives in ways to thrill.
no end of ways for hearts to still
liberating souls a darker art
Oh Villanelle Oh Villanelle how she loves to kill.
From acrid poisons to electric drills
Villanelle ran the gamut of invention
She took their lives in ways to thrill.
For body disposal pigs fit the bill
their voracious appetites up to Villanelles,
Oh Villanelle, Oh Villanelle how she loves to kill
she took their lives in ways to thrill.

                                                                             428  20-01-2025

   

There you go poetry by numbers with a hint of literary sarcasm. The builder badgers are done by lunch time for the day and tomorrow they bring in all the new materials and get rid of the spoil heap, so, so far so good. While I wait for the Trump inauguration ceremony, I cannot resist, I write letters only to be interrupted by the Tesco order arriving. With that squirreled away I take my letters to the post office and pick up a paper and return home.

What followed was a scary event: the inauguration of Trump, I had decided to forego the world indoor bowls championship but wish quickly that I had not. The actual “ceremony” was all that you could expect from an infantile 250 year old country, it was the inaugural speech that was frankly terrifying, very right wing, no sign of green issues awareness (drill and be dammed), expansionist (Panama canal reclaim) , authoritarian (no recognition of the complexities of gender or representation) and isolationist ( import tariffs on everything not American). All this in the name of patriotism and “under one God” labelled “common sense”. I should have stuck with the bowls.

The evening starts with the meal I put in the crockpot earlier and then settle down to an evening of drafting the blog and reading while my partner has her singing lesson. As I run out of energy I will find some TV to take me to bed time, night meds and the expectation that I will be up early to greet the builder badgers.